Mastering Market Research and Crafting Your Ideal Client Profile: A Blueprint for Success!
Speak Directly to Your Ideal Audience and Sign More Clients
This is probably one of the most important guides we have created up to this day, the reason is that this is the foundation, the pillar of our marketing strategy, this is where it all starts and if you get this right, you will be on the right path to constantly getting new clients.
When you finish applying this guide you will have all the information you need to effectively communicate with your ideal client and stand out from all your competition.
I’m going to show you what we do to know the local market and how to use this to our advantage to grow businesses and brands to sell more and grow in awareness.
Here’s exactly what we’ll cover in this document:
Table of contents
So, let's embark into the market research and define the journey a client makes from the moment they think of your services, all the way to the moment they decide to purchase from you:
1. How to make a market research - and define your customer value journey: From idea to purchase.
a. Define the different stages and how people would look through each stage.
The first thing we always do is to define what people are thinking about in each step of the customer value journey, let me explain.
The customer value journey, as its name implies, is the journey a person makes from the moment they want to acquire your services, all the way to the moment they become your clients, we have reflected it on this funnel.
For example:
If a person wants to sell their home the first thing they would do is think about the options they have, think about some agents they know, how to find the best agent, or if they have friends that know good agents, this is the awareness stage.
Then, they would ask around and do research and when they read and get informed, they would start considering the best options, this is the consideration stage.
Once they do this, they would dive deeper into which of the options they have found they like the most, they would compare all the options, the benefits, the features, the experience, the case study, and everything they can to see which is the best option for them. this is the comparison stage.
Once they do this, they may go into the websites of the brokers they like the most and directly contact them, if they have their phone number they would write a text message, they may even go to your office and here they become a prospect. This is the prospect stage.
They may do this prospect phase with three or four companies, they evaluate all the sales pitches and the different brokers, and then they decide to move on with your company. This is the conversion stage.
As you can see, this is a very logical process and very intuitive that people follow to get informed and make what seems to them the best decision. With this in mind, what we do is define the steps in each stage of the customer value journey and define what people are going to be doing in each step of the funnel.
From the moment of the comparison stage, all the way to the conversion stage it is going to be very important the sales assets you have, this is what is going to differentiate you from your competition and have people choose your company.
Sales assets are all the videos, guides, tutorials, information, and content that people can see that would educate them on why you are the most knowledgeable and the right option without you even being there.
This document is a sales asset for example ;)
If you want to see how you can create powerful content and sales assets all year round, make sure to also check out this step-by-step guide with actionable items and instructions.
It is going to help you differentiate yourself from all the others on these crucial steps of the customer value journey.
Action Step:
Now that you know each of the stages what you need to do is start brainstorming what people would look for in each of the stages and type your replies on the Google sheet:
Once you are done you are going to have a much clearer idea of what people are looking for in each stage and how this would lead them towards buying from you.
The next step is to confirm the search patterns and what people are really looking for, this would help you to know for sure where to direct your advertising efforts.
b. Keyword Research and ad research.
After you’ve defined which would be the patterns of search and what would be the process of documentation of your possible clients, you have to start looking at what keywords people are looking for at each stage of the funnel.
You can access the actionable Google Sheet here:
Also, you have to see what some ads people are being exposed to based on the competition of your client, this is to know what the competition is doing.
- Another thing you can do is look for the companies that are currently doing advertising in the area and start taking ideas from there.
You are going to see some similarities in the words you use, but the idea is simple, to identify what is going on through people’s minds when they are looking for your services, this way you have a much clearer idea of what to say and how to say it to speak the language of your ideal client.
Action Step:
The steps to follow are these:
- Brainstorm all the words you think a person would look for in each of the stages:
- Fill up the boxes with as many words as you can think of.
- Get those words and look them up in the Google AdWords keyword planner
- Go to the keyword planner website: https://ads.google.com/aw/keywordplanner/
- Type in each keyword on the searching tool and press enter for it to start giving you results:
- Make sure you are looking for the words in the locations that are relevant to you (your state, your city, or the whole country).
- One thing to keep in mind is that if you get clients from all over the country or from abroad then you should separate the words and the searches based on the places where you get clients from so you data is clean.
Once you start getting some of those words you are going to fill up the Excel sheet and add also the ideas the Google keyword planner gives you:
Get these keywords
And start filling up these tables on the document
After you do this, you also want to start looking to see what ads people are being exposed to, and what the competition is saying.
To do this you go into Google and type some of the most looked-for keywords that you found, and you go further into their profiles to see:
- What are they doing on Google?
- What ads are they doing on Facebook?
For this, you would follow this procedure:
- Look for some of the best-performing keywords.
- If the advertiser has verified his identity, then you can take a look at all of the ads he is running on Google.
- Take screenshots and add them to the doc 2.a. Ads of competitors.
- If not, then just take a screenshot of this ad for us to have the copy for future reference.
At this point you already have the Google ads, now we are going to see the Facebook ads.
- Go into their website, then look for their Facebook page, and then look for the ads they are running
- To do this you go to their Facebook page > About > Page transparency > See if they are currently running ads.
- Then screenshot some of the ads and add them to the doc for future reference.
If you are not able to find that these people are running ads on Facebook, then you go to the Facebook ad library (Google Facebook Ad library), look for the term you are looking for, and try to filter as much as possible, you‘re going to see some ads and those you screenshot and add them to the doc 2.a. Ads of competitors.
After this you have a much wider idea of what people are looking for and what type of ads they are being exposed to, this is the starting point to know how to differentiate your ads and content from the competition.
c. Look at Google Trends to see what some trends in the market are:
Go to: https://trends.google.es/trends/?geo=US and look for some of the keywords, this would give you an idea of the search patterns people have and when they are looking for those things, this may also give you some ideas on what people are looking for.
See the search patterns and what people look for, this would give you an idea of the current social thoughts and how to capitalize on that.
d. Define how you would connect with people at each stage of the CVJ
Once you have all of this information you now know the path a person would take to purchase your services and you know how to communicate with them.
You have to fill up the Excel sheet with the ads along the CVJ, this is the first step of planning the campaigns and the angles for the campaigns.
There are four stages here that resemble the stages of the customer value journey (CVJ), what you do now is to fill in the gaps to create a plan of what advertising, or what content you’re going to produce that would help you connect with people throughout the different stages.
For example:
- Step in the CVJ: You can say here if it’s awareness or all the way to conversion.
- What happens: You describe what the person has in mind here; the prospect is thinking about selling their home and starts asking around, or the prospect has the idea of designing a new home.
- Type of videos: These are the ads that they are being exposed to based on the research you previously made where you found the keywords and what ads people are seeing.
- Angle of the videos: These are your ideas for the ads or the content you’d like to produce based on each stage. An example would be: How to select the best real estate agent, or what to have in mind when picking an architect for your custom home.
- Notes: This is a space for general ideas or things you are thinking at the moment, this is important because when you are doing the research and brainstorming you will have plenty of fresh ideas that you may forget later.
When you finish this, you will know exactly what your clients are looking for and you will know how to communicate with them effectively because you know what they are thinking in each step of the journey.
Now we are going to define who your ideal client is, this is very important to go even deeper and resonate with the prospects you really want to work with.
Let's dive into it…
2. Define Your Ideal Client Avatar.
The goal of this SOP is to lead you step by step on how to fill out this form to have your ideal client avatar, if you have more than one ideal client then you have to fill it out as many times as the client needs it.
When you are filling this canvas, you want to start with the Avatar/Persona at the top.
To access the sheet, you can go to this link:
a. Avatar/Persona
Think about the customer segment you want to go after and think of what all the shoppers in the segment have in common, so the steps would be the following:
- Identify the segment: Homeowners in a given neighborhood in Boston.
- Create a fake name and add it to the form.
- It could be something like: Dennis the finance guy.
- Do not overthink this.
b. Demographics/Interests.
Example
Demographics include:
- Age.
- Gender.
- Marital status.
- Location.
- Kids.
- Occupation.
- Income level.
- Quote: What would be a quote they would like, share, and resonate with?
- Education.
- Hobbies.
- What brands, magazines, stores, influencers, and events does our ideal customer follow?
- Etc.
c. Frustrations and Fears
These are the things that our ideal customer wants to get away from, they are very self-explanatory, basically what our ideal customer doesn’t want.
d. Wants and Aspirations
These are things that our ideal client wants to move towards.
e. Key Purchase Drivers
What is incentivizing our ideal client to buy? What is his or her biggest motivation?
- One other thing that you can add here is all the things that would make our ideal client not want to buy. Basically, what would be his and her objections?
- This information you have here can be ideas you can use for your landing page.
f. Before State
You have to list all of the things your ideal client has before using your product. For example:
- Have: he has a landscape that is super outdated and doesn’t meet the renovation he just made to his new home.
- Feel: This makes him feel frustrated like he has a lower status, like something is not right and is not matching.
- Average Day: He has breakfast looks at the backyard and sees that it is a mess, this makes him frustrated at the beginning of the day. Then her arrives home after a long day of work and again it’s like his home is receiving him with the worst face.
- Status: All of his neighbors are going to see him as an outdated person who keeps his home ugly and that also makes his neighborhood look ugly, even cataloging him of being a bad father or a bad husband.
- Good vs. Evil: Nobody really enjoys the home, they get rejected by other neighbors and start becoming more and more tense about not solving this issue, which leads to problems even with his family and with his wife.
- What happens if we don’t solve this problem for him?
g. After State
- Have: Top quality backyard and entrance that even looks like a home course, with beautiful design, art, and even an inspiring backyard.
- Feel: Proud to show off, excited, empowered.
- Average day: He enjoys the most out of his mornings looking at the beautiful backyard while he has breakfast, also he is excited to come home as it would be a masterpiece to arrive at such a beautiful façade, he even starts feeling so good that he starts performing better at his job.
- Status: All the neighbors and family want to come and hang out with them at their home, they can get more social, and everyone becomes happier.
- Good vs. Evil: He has a great mood, his wife has a great mood, everyone wants to do activities in the garden, his marriage is perfect, and they can have the feeling that their home was really the best investment in their life.
