Client: The Second Chapter in the Better Bolder Braver Marketing Journey
If you’re a coach looking for new clients – your first clients or more, if you already have clients – why is it important to identify your ‘ideal’ client? In Chapter 2 of the Better Bolder Braver Marketing Journey, this is the question we answer by guiding you through finding your niche and articulating what, why and who you serve with your coaching practice.
Why do you need an ideal client?
In our Monday Masterclass session, this was the first question we discussed. What we settled on was that knowing who you do want to work with allows you to signal to those you don’t want to work with that you are not the right fit. This can release a huge amount of time and energy – you get to decide this: It allows you to avoid or move on from conversations with the ‘wrong’ people. It means you can focus on putting your time and energy into creating content for, and engaging with, the people who you want to attract.
We also described how it is easy to get stuck on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of your coaching, without ever getting to the ‘who’. Often the ‘who’ feels like an unnecessary detail, and is sometimes the hardest part to describe. We often hear coaches say “I can work with anybody” and whilst that may be technically correct, it needs a vast amount of time, energy and money to try and serve, and market to, ‘everybody’. To successfully attract Better clients, you will need to be more specific, in your mind, marketing and messaging.
How do you describe your ideal client?
This is a very common next question and we discussed how it’s actually often a lot simpler than you might imagine. A great place to start is by considering who brings you energy, excitement and makes you excited to work with them. This is the first step in articulating the ‘who’.
From here you can go on to think about who you can serve most effectively. When you combine this with who you want to work with you will narrow that ‘who’ audience down even further.
Isn’t this the same as a niche?
The next progression from working out who you want to work with is to define what makes them the same or similar to each other. In doing this you create a niche.
We then explained our favourite two exercises to help everyone gain some clarity on finding their niche. 1) The Room of Ideal Clients and 2) Email From a Dream Client. Jump to the exercises at 25:40 to watch the replay of these exercises or check out our blog on ‘how to niche your coaching business’ for more details on these exercises.
Finding your niche and articulating your ideal client takes time and won’t happen overnight. It will also evolve with your business. We expressed our belief that you are under no obligation to be the same coach this year as you were last year. You and your coaching practice should evolve over time and in doing so your ideal client will evolve too. It’s important, and liberating, to embrace this, to channel your energy into putting out what you want to attract back. To the right people, you will be the perfect fit, to everyone else you won’t be quite right and that’s ok.
The 5 levels of client awareness
The last part of the discussion was around the 5 stages of client awareness, and Simon explained how these 5 stages progress the client from being unaware that they even have a problem/issue/feeling to being a client who is actively working on it. The 5 stages are:
- Unaware: A person doesn’t know they have a problem, or can’t yet see the opportunity for change, and it can take a lot of time, energy and effort to move them to the next level.
- Problem Aware: A person knows they have a problem, or can see an opportunity for change but doesn’t know there are solutions to the outcome they have identified.
- Solution Aware: A person knows there are solutions, but hasn’t chosen one, and doesn’t know about your product.
- Product Aware: A person knows about your product, but isn’t totally sure it will solve their problem or support them in the change they want to make.
- Most Aware: A person knows a lot about your product. They are on the cusp of buying but need to know the specifics.
We then explained how thinking about your ideal client from each of these 5 stages allows you to create content and marketing messages that will speak to them as no one else has before.
Frances has previously written about how you can use your coaching approach in your marketing insofar as you might be pressing buttons for people through your marketing messaging – particularly for those who are ‘problem unaware’ – as coaches, you are wonderfully positioned to do this sensitively and with sincere and useful impact.
As we move into the next chapters of the journey, you will see how these stages – combined with a deeper understanding of your ideal client -will empower you to create engaging content that will attract better clients for you.
You can watch the replay of this Masterclass and join the next conversions live or in replay on our Crowdcast channel. If you want to take the conversation to the next level, get deeper in your understanding of your ideal client then join our community of coaches who are doing just that. Learn more and join.
Bored Panda