The Right Way to Figure Out Your Ideal Customer

When you’re figuring out who your ideal customer is, don’t stop at the surface level.

If you can nail your ideal customer by going beyond demographics, you can provide a better service.

By providing a better service, you can make even more sales. It’s really a win-win for everyone.

Tune in to my latest podcast episode to find out the right way to figure out your ideal customer.

CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!

Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hey, risers. Welcome back to Empathy Rising. I'm super excited about today's episode. I think it's one that I'm a bit passionate about and one that could get a little bit fiery in my voice as we go through this, but really When we talk about niching, when we talk about ideal customers, this is the bedrock. This is the foundation of anything that you will do in business, in entrepreneurship at all. But it is definitely the thing that we need to make our online income streams work. It is the very first. Piece of building your side hustle. And so you can already hear, I get quite fired up about it. 

All right, so now we're going to jump into the right way to figure out your ideal customer. And I know this title is a little bit polarizing. I don't often say there is only one way to do things. I really actually believe that there are multiple paths to the end result and I set my programs up that way. Everybody knows with Side Hustle there's such a meet you at where you're at. Nature, which is just a therapist nature that I can't get rid of, but. I would go so far as to say, figuring out your ideal customer is.

There's probably one way to do that, and it's my way. No, just kidding. I really do feel strongly about what's important when it comes to an ideal customer avatar because I think as we get into this, I am not the first person who has told you about figuring out your niche or figuring out your ideal customer.

I feel like everyone and their mom has heard how important it is to have a niche, and it's where it's almost like. A business owner or the entrepreneur right of passage to create an avatar or a persona that represents your ideal client. And we do this inside hustle. We do this in Space Holder. I do believe in having, manifestos isn't the right word, but I do believe in having a dossier.

I can't think of what I'm trying to say, but I do believe in having a narrative that's better, a narrative. That defines who you want to work with, and that narrative hits on a few key points. So I do believe in an ideal customer avatar. I do believe in an I C A, but each marketer or marketing teacher, including me, has their own spin on this. And there are a few key things that your I C A needs to address, such as, we need to know where your ideal customer spends their time. We need to know where they spend time. In their real life, and we also need to know where they spend time online. And we need to know this for a few reasons. We need to know what media they're consuming. We need to know what messages they're consuming. We need to know if they enjoy that or if they do it because they feel like they're supposed to, are they on Instagram because they like Instagram or Facebook because they like Facebook? Or are they on Facebook because all their family's on there and it's the only way they're gonna be able to stay connected with people? We need to know. What they do with their personal time and what they do with their online time. We take that a step further by also knowing what the ideal customer's buying preferences are. Meaning what brands do they choose? What types of things are they buying? And we also need to know they're purchasing power, right? So if they're buying a purse, are they buying a purse from Target? Are they buying a purse from Louis Vuitton or Kate Spade or whatever? We need to know their purchasing power. How much money do they have to spend? Now, these are three things that greatly inform. Who we are targeting with our marketing, who we are going to be eventually selling to, and who we are going to be serving to.

But a lot of ideal customer avatars stop here. Stop at this surface level. They have, you figure out what the person's favorite Starbucks drink is and they have you figure out what kind of car they might drive or they have you figure out where they buy their groceries. And these are important because they fill in where they spend their time, what their buying preferences are, and what their purchasing power is.

Those are important. However, those are the surface. So if you've gone through an ideal customer avatar exercise, which I'm sure almost all of you here listening have done in some capacity, you've downloaded some I c A as someone's opt-in and ended up on their email list, they tend to stop here. They gather the superficial data and they call it good they're like your ideal customer when that is actually the very basic starting point. We need to know where they spend their time because it then informs us how we reach them and how we get in front of them in an in-person, in a real-life way or in an online way. Okay, so it's not just they shop at Target, they're a Target shopper, not a Walmart shopper.

Okay. That's good to know. But what else comes with being a target shopper? What does that unlock for us? What do we then, what can we then infer about that person because they're a target shopper and not a Walmart shopper, or vice versa, if they're a Walmart shopper, what can we then infer about them? So it's not just these surface-level decisions, it's what's underneath. So what we're gonna dive into today is what goes beyond the basics. What we really need to determine when we're crafting an I C A and why going deeper is better because here's what tends to happen when we focus on the wrong things of our ideal customer, and I don't necessarily think they're the wrong things. They're just stopping too soon. When we only scratch the surface of our ideal customer, there's a few things. That tend to happen, and the biggest one is that you end up with that avatar, that representation of your ideal customer that isn't actually helpful for you because yeah, they drink a purple unicorn frappuccino, and they drive Prius and they, I'm just making stuff off the top of my head. They drink a purple unicorn, frappuccino. They drive a Prius and they live in the city, like in the downtown area. Like you might know that about them, but that doesn't actually help build your business. That does nothing for your business and it actually does nothing for your customer because what these surface-level don't do is they don't address the why behind the basic decisions. Why a purple unicorn? Frappuccino? Maybe purple was their sister's favorite color and their sister lives across the country and they miss them. And when they drink the purple unicorn frappuccino, they feel connected to their sister, who they miss. The why is so much more powerful than what they drink. Same thing. Why do they drive a Prius? Is it cause daddy bought it for her, or is it because she's really environmentally conscious and she wants to lower her carbon footprint and the impact she makes on the planet is really important to her? Some of these things we can assume. But it's never a good idea to assume. It's always a good idea to get this data from the source, and not only the what data that we've talked about, what he drives, what he drinks, what she does on a Thursday, but why? The why is much more important because when you stay service level, what you don't get is you don't get to an emotional level. And here's two things that are true. All purchases are emotional purchases, even seemingly small or insignificant ones, even that impulse buy of the Snickers bar in the grocery store line is still an emotional purchase. It may come from the emotion of being hangry. It may come from the emotion of desiring something sweet, but there's never an emotion that is not turned on when we make a purchase. So without reaching your customer emotionally, you are less likely to make a sale. People very rarely just grab something off the shelf, put it in their cart, walk up to the. Check out and pay money for it. That's just not what happened. There's an emotional connection to that purchase. They want that item because it is going to speak to an emotion of theirs. It's going to make them feel happier. It's going to make them feel fulfilled. It's going to make them feel connected and now as clinicians, we know they may think it's gonna do that and the purchase probably isn't gonna do that, but still the motivation, the reason they buy is because they're wanting an emotional outcome.

So if you're not reaching your customers emotionally, You're not going to make very many sales. Okay? In the same vein, another thing that is true is that all transformations are emotional transformations. That's just the truth. As therapists, we know that like the back of our hand, right? People don't think they're transformed. People don't think they're better. People feel better. People feel happier, people feel more excited, people feel more grounded. It's not, I think I'm more grounded. It's, yes, I feel grounded. I feel steadier, I feel calmer, I feel whatever. Fill in the blank. So just as we cannot help, we cannot make many sales. If we're not reaching our ideal customer emotionally, we cannot really provide results. Unless they are emotional results. If you're not clear on the emotional needs of your ideal customer, you won't provide them with the results they are looking for. So then people will if they buy your program without an emotional connection to it. If they buy it, then they'll be like, oh, that sucked. That didn't work. It did nothing for me. It didn't really help me because then we didn't know what the emotions were that we were helping them address, that we were helping them transform. So when you do hone in on these deeper characteristics of the person that you're serving, two things happen and you can probably guess what they are, right? The first one is you sell better. You and your business makes more money because you are better able to sell. You create an emotional connection between your program and the person buying it, and you can directly link what's missing, what they're looking for, what they're searching for, to what your program provides.

That is why they're going to buy from you. You get to base your sales on helping, and all of us are helpers. All of us are in the helping profession, so our online income stream becomes an extension of that. We're helping in a different way that is less regulated, less regimented, and less restrictive than therapy, but our programs are still helpful.

Our programs still have integrity. We get to build relationships with genuine people because we understand people at a deeper level, and this is where trust comes in. They trust us and they trust our programs to what the second thing, serve them better. So understanding these deeper aspects of your ideal customer helps you sell better, and it helps you serve better. You get to create better products. You get to do that in a couple of different ways. You get to determine the type of product or program that is better for your ideal customer. You might be thinking you want a course, which is just a conglomeration of knowledge, something that teaches people.

And then after you get to the root of what your ideal customer is looking for, you might see what they want. Growth, which comes from a group program, you might see that they want community, they're emotionally lonely, so they're looking for connection. They need a community that comes from a membership site, right? So you not only get to pick the right program for your people and serve them better. You also learn how to present information in a way that feels better for your ideal customer. So you might say, no, I really want a course. I want a course for my lifestyle. I don't wanna offer these other programs. But your ideal customer might be looking for something deeper than just knowledge.

You may be able to use that and present your modules in a different way or a way that does connect with the emotions that they're looking at. So you can use this to change your type of program. Or if you wanna keep your type of program, you can use these, this emotional data, this deeper data too.

Construct your program in a way that is going to reach them, that is going to give them a transformation that they can say, holy crap, this worked for me. This was great. I'm so glad I did this program. You can use more relatable examples if you're using analogies or metaphors or anything in your programs like I do.

Hey risers, I have something new and exciting for you. I know you're here listening because you're daydreaming about expanding past traditional one-on-one therapy, but the first thing that often comes up is all the fear around what that might mean. It is scary to think about starting over from square one.

And what about all those hours you spent in grad school getting licensed, seeking certifications, and building your practice? Well, I am a firm believer in both and. Your desire to move beyond the therapy room does not need to mean that you're selling out or sacrificing your clinical career. It simply means that you're ready for the next step.

In fact, I'd love to show you how easy it is to use the education experience and expertise you've honed as a clinician to make this evolution happen, to maintain the practice you're proud of, to build the online side hustle you are dreaming of, and to craft the lifestyle you're craving. So this new cool thing is an on-demand training called Transcend the Therapy Room.

And when you watch, you'll find out how a side hustle can give you more flexibility and financial freedom. You'll get some ideas of the different side hustles you can ethically offer, and you'll also learn how to decide which side hustle is right for you. And when you stay to the end, you're gonna score a bonus tech tutorial where I walk you through the exact technology and software I use to create those brand visuals, those logos, those fonts, those colors.

And so you'll get to get a peek into how I do this. And how you can start doing it for yourself. So if you're ready to step beyond that therapist identity and move outside the therapy room, you can sign up for the training and start working towards this new, exciting chapter of your career. Head over to Marissa lawton.com/masterclass to register.

Knowing your ideal customer more deeply. You can use more relatable examples for them, right? Then they get a deeper connection to the material, a deeper connection to your lessons, to your modules, to your workbooks, whatever it is that you're creating, and this is how you're going to facilitate a transformation.

So surface-level data for an ideal customer avatar is not going to cut it. It is just the basics. It's the step. Point five-step, maybe step one, but it's just the beginning. We need to take that deeper. 

Okay, so being bold here, let's go ahead and talk about the right way to figure out your ideal customer. And the way to do this is pretty simple. And because we deal in people and we deal in human emotion, this isn't gonna be hard to grasp, but sometimes it's just hearing it presented in a certain way that kind of lights those light bulbs off.

So what we need to do is we need to diff distinguish or differentiate between demographics and psychographics. Okay, and we know what those are. We know what the difference is, but let's apply this clinical skill, this clinical concept to our side hustles. Okay? So distinguishing between the difference or the difference between demographics and psychographics.

This isn't difficult for therapists, but it's something that we need to do. Now I'm not like going and getting Webster's dictionary definitions of these. I'm just going to like off the cuff, but demographics are what we think of as identifying information, gender identity. Sometimes I. Things like sexual orientation are important for your ideal customers.

Sometimes they aren't. I have a student inside hustle right now who is doing d e I work for lgbtq plus com or companies helping them better serve LGBTQ plus employees. So knowing things about their ideal customer's sexual orientation, or the sexual orientations of who their ideal customer serves is helpful.

Sometimes that's not gonna matter at all for you or for your ideal customer avatar. But these quote-unquote identifying informations, things that people check a box on a form. Okay? So that's what we're thinking when we're thinking demographics. And if you think back to earlier in the episode, those are those basics.

These are the starting point. We don't just gather a bunch of demographic information and say that we have an ideal customer avatar or that we have a narrative for ideal, our ideal customer. What we need to def to get into are the psychographics, and the way that I am defining psychographics just for our ease and for our purpose of this episode, is the psychographics are.

The emotion and the value underneath the emotions and the values underneath. So the why behind the depth, beneath the depth, underneath the basic demographic data. So demographics are checkboxes, and psychographics are values. Okay, so let's, we're just gonna cut keep it clear in that way. So if you've been paying attention, you can guess which one is more important.

You can tell that psychographics are what is really important when you're creating your ideal customer avatar. So we need some basic demographic data for our ideal customers. And the ones that I think are important are relationship status. If a person is partnered or not, I think is important because if they are partnered and they have joint finances, that affects two things.

It affects their brand preferences or their purchase preferences, and it also affects their purchasing power, which are two of the key things that we need to know about the person. So I think relationship status is important to know things like age. Can be important to know as well because somebody who is 22 just out of college probably has different preferences and different purchasing power than somebody who's late thirties, early forties, solidly in mid-career, and has, lived a little and doesn't drink Boone's Farm wine anymore, and also has a bit more money to spend.

So age I think, is important for our ideal customer. Something else that I think is important can be parenthood status, and also not only parenthood status but age of the child is important too. If these are people who have three kids under five, they have a very different lifestyle. Then even people who have three kids who are in their teens, purchasing power might be the same because they're buying three kids diapers or they're paying three kids car insurance or cell phone bills or whatever. So it doesn't always affect purchasing power if they have kids, but it will affect the amount of time they have. If they're empty nesters and they're, they have kids, but the kids are outta that house, that's a totally different experience of lifestyle than people with young kids at home.

So I think parenthood status is important to know. Financial status. We've been like leading up to this with everything but. What is their purchasing power? They may prefer a Mercedes, but they can only afford a Toyota, so that means champagne taste on a beer budget. If that's your ideal customer, then we need to know that about them, right?

So these are all the demographics. These are things that are basic information, checkbox information that starts to give us a fuzzy picture of our ideal customer. This is the starting point. These basics give us a direction to go, right? If it's a champagne taste on a beer budget person, Okay, now let's then take it down into the psychographics.

Let's go deeper and figure out those things, the deeper things. That's what's gonna give us the emotional connection. That's what's going to help us sell better, and that's what's gonna help us serve better. The psychographics are these. Deeper levels, right? The values behind these decisions, why are they partnered or why are they single and what deeper meaning does that hold?

Maybe they are single and they're in their late thirties or forties, never married because they came from a really crappy divorce, like their parents had a really. Violent or really high conflict or something like that, divorce. And so it has changed the way they view love. It's changed the way they view intimacy.

It has changed the way they view relationships, and that's why they are still aren't married. So that's the why. What else is deeper behind them? Maybe they really want true love. Maybe they really want that lifelong partner, but they're terrified right now. We know they're lonely, they're scared. They're intimidated.

Like now we can name emotions. Now we can name feelings. Okay. And I'm gonna step off and add a little aside here. Yes. This is hypothetical. Yes. This ideal customer avatar is, Hypothetical at this point, we don't know if they actually had a crazy divorce or their parents actually had a crazy divorce. We don't know that this is actually what happened, but we can create hypothetical scenarios.

To inform the emotions that they're feeling. Okay. While this is hypothetical, no one knows people and the human experience and human emotions better than we do. This is what we do for a living. We've done this for years in and out of many people's different scenarios. So yes, this is a hypothetical avatar right now, but it is.

You're not just guessing, you're making an educated guess, a very highly educated guess that you paid a lot of money for and have spent tons of hours honing this educated guess now. Inside hustle, one of the very first things we do is we create this educated guest and then we go out and we ask people, is this true or is this false? Is this true or is this false? And so it is no longer hypothetical. It doesn't stay hypothetical for long, but what we really need is a deeper understanding of the psychographics. Okay, so why are they partnered, or why are they single? Why do they have kids or why don't they have kids? Maybe they have children because they want a leg.

They wanna leave a legacy, they want to raise tiny humans, and they wanna just pass on some love or whatever their reasons is. Maybe they think this world's gone to hell and they don't wanna bring kids into it. Everybody has different opinions on this, so what? It's not. It's not only do they have kids, because yes, but that also affects their purchasing power and it affects their time and their energy and effort.

These things we need to know demographically, but when we can go deeper into the why and the what does it mean, that's when we can label emotions. Okay, so yes, they shop at Whole Foods for their groceries, but why do they shop at Whole Foods for their groceries? Maybe they really value that company's values, that company culture. Maybe they really want, maybe they drive a Prius and they shop at Whole Foods again because they value the planet. And by eating organically and by driving an electric car and they're, they feel like they're doing their part for the planet. So that's the why. And then what does that mean for them? What can we think about? We can think they're probably a generative person. They probably are a caring person. They probably have a. Global perspective instead of just an individual or nationalistic perspective. So we can start to assign values and emotions to these things. Okay. The demographics give us an idea of where and how to start talking to our ideal customers, but the psychographics.

Help us reach them on a deeper level. This depth is the key to your online income stream. Everything else comes from this depth. Your marketing comes from this depth. Your sales comes from this depth. And the creation of your program comes from this depth. Now, another side, we're gonna step off the path again, depth doesn't have to mean serious.

I know I'm a serious person. I know that you guys have come to expect some like passion and some kind of deeper topics from me. But depth can come across as humor. Depth can come across as badassery or whatever, right? So you don't have to be a serious somber brand. When you get to know your ideal customer deeply, you can still talk about like the world's gone to hell and that's why they don't have kids.

You can still approach that from a humorous angle. It doesn't have to only be somber and serious. Okay, so back on track. Now, this depth is the key to the two things that we've been talking about all episode, which is better sales and better service. When you learn how to figure out your ideal customer the right way, which is not just the basic surface level, but the why and the values behind their decision, you can as then get to the emotional.

The level you can identify and isolate the emotions behind their decisions, and this is what's going to help you sell your program to them. And also this is what's going to help you create a program that serves them well. All right, so told you I was gonna get passionate, told you I was gonna get fired up, but this is something that I really do believe needs to be done and isn't difficult for us to do as clinicians. It's just a matter of being pointed in the right direction. So remember, demographics are the starting point, and psychographics are the end goal. 

Keep on rising. 

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