Do you know who your ideal customer is?

You should. It’s much easier to market any business when you’re marketing to an ideal customer,  the people who are most likely to be interested in what your business has to offer.

Marketing to everyone is a waste of time and resources when not everyone will go on to become a customer of your business. If you figure out what type of person is most likely to become a customer, then you can customize your marketing and content to them and be more effective.

How do you know who those people are though?

The easiest way to figure that out is to look at who your current customers are and at your past customer demographics. When patterns emerge, those are your ideal customers.
Once you’ve identified those customers, begin creating buyer personas.
According to
Hubspot a buyer persona is:
”
A
semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”

Buyer personas are a huge part of the inbound methodology but are used outside of inbound as well.

A buyer persona starts with demographics; do you have more male customers than female customers? Then your ideal customer would be male and most of your buyer personas will likely be male too.
To get more specific with a buyer persona, don’t simply compare your most common customers, but look for patterns of repeat customers and brand ambassadors, those who refer your brand to others again and again.
Likely, repeat customers who also refer a brand, share several common traits, such as occupation, age, gender, education, income, geographic region, interests, goals, challenges and even have similar home situations (married with children etc.)
Create a buyer persona for each type of person that becomes a pattern in your ideal customer base. Name each persona and try to fill out as many details about that person as you can.
When you understand what interests your buyer persona you can create content that appeals to them, and by understanding their goals and challenges you can help them solve problems to accomplish those goals.
This kind of insight creates value just in your marketing and content before they even become a customer. By creating value to those who are already likely to become your customer, you further increase that probability.

By using buyer personas to target marketing and content, you’ll be working smarter instead of harder in your marketing efforts.

It’s impossible to market to everyone at the same time, and you really don’t want to. Content that delights one type of person, isn’t going to delight every type of person. So choose the content that delights the right type of person for your business by creating and using buyer personas.