When Clients Don’t Know Their Ideal Client
By Levina Kusumadjaja
Client A: We don’t have an ideal client, we don’t know who our ideal client is.
Client B: We don’t want to have just one ideal client. We just want to serve everyone, every customer that walks in to our store.
Think back on your experiences as a brand strategist so far. Have you ever had your client responded to you in such a way? Have you ever had them tell you that they didn’t want to have an ideal client?
If you ask them why, most of them would express that the concept of “ideal client” or “ideal customer” feels binding and limiting to them. It feels like the strategy requires them to only work with a certain group of customers, while they want to grow as a business and be able to attract as many customers as they want. The word “ideal” sometimes gives the impression that this group of customer is now the only people that the business or the brand can connect with.
For another group of clients, it’s not that they are against the concept of building a brand strategy around an ideal customer persona. They genuinely don’t know who this ideal customer is. So when you ask them, “Who is your ideal customer?”, they get confused. Perhaps they have never heard of the concept or they have never thought about it before.
In both scenarios above, you are faced with a challenge as a brand strategist: finding out your client’s ideal customer persona, when they themselves don’t know who that person is. However, there is hope with this challenge because most people know the type of person they would get along with, and this is the same with your clients. They have people that they would rather work with, they just need your help to see and articulate who these people are.
Although this challenge might sound daunting at first read, I promise you that it is a challenge that you can overcome simply by taking a step back and approaching the discussion from a different angle. Here are some questions that you can start with if you find yourself stuck in the workshop:
Why did you start your business?
Who would you want to work with?
Who do you understand the most?
If you notice, the term “ideal customer” or “ideal client” aren’t even mentioned in the questions. You are just asking your client about the kind of people they would love to work with or serve through their business. And to do that, you can use so many different angles to build the persona from. You don’t have to ask your client about their ideal customer to find out about their ideal customer. You can ask them about the vision of their business, the dream they had in mind, the people they love, and so many other things to point you to the ideal customer persona that you are trying to uncover.
So, when you feel stuck in building your client’s ideal customer persona, don’t get fixated on a framework or a tool. Take a step back, and try something different—even if it means abandoning the framework that you have been using all along. Maybe the different angles aren’t like the questions you were taught in your brand strategy class, and perhaps you have never tried using those questions in your strategy workshop. But that doesn’t mean the different methods and new ways won’t work—you will never know until you try.
Cheers!
Levina
Get the Brand Strategy 101 FREE Mini Course
Tired of being an order-taker? Start getting paid to think. Subscribe now to receive helpful content, plus instant access to this free video course. 6 days. 6 videos. 10 minutes a day.
About the author:
Levina is a writer based in Indonesia. Because of Melinda Livsey, she recognized the power of brand strategy for every creative. She is sharing about her learnings as she goes to help creatives have fun in their growth and journey of building brands. Connect with her on LinkedIn and say hi!