How to create an Ideal Client Profile

What is the “Ideal Client”?

In this day and age, there are countless marketing agencies, most of which offer roughly the same or at least very similar services. Because of this many clients switch their agencies rather often, not staying with the same for an extended amount of time. That’s why the market for marketing agencies is sometimes called the “sea of sameness”, which is obviously not a good starting point to look for new, potential clients and customers or for them to find you. Because of that, strong branding and advertising are essential for long-term success but that’s not all. In order to differentiate between “ideal clients” and ones who are not because they don’t fit your marketing style, your pricing, etc. it is very helpful to create a so-called “ideal client profile” in which it is specified how the ideal client for your business looks like regarding factors like buyer persona and expectations.

Reason to create an Ideal Client Profile

By creating an ideal client profile it can be much easier than before to identify possible clients based on how well they fit your marketing agency. This way you will be able to separate clearly between the best clients who are in your target market and those who are not. The clear benefit of creating an extensive ideal client profile is that it saves your agency from a lot of unwanted and unexpected expenses and makes it very easy to create a segmentation of your potential customer base and target audience by client personas, geographic location, etc. It will help a lot with Personalization, Content Creation, Keyword Research, and Sales Process which in turn will make you a lot more attractive to those specific prospective clients who look for an agency exactly like yours. An ideal customer profile specifies your ideal client by needs and expectations but can also incorporate factors such as client demographics, client psychographics, education level etc. and will greatly help with finding new clients.

Personalization

When mainly working in a specific field or industry it can be very useful to adjust your agency's appearance (website, advertising) to clients in that field. This way they can easily identify you as a marketing provider that is more likely to fit them and their needs.

Content Creation & Mapping

Once you have established your ideal client profiles you can start creating personalized and custom-made content. This can include blog posts, social media posts, marketing- and sales tools, webinars, marketing campaigns. You will then want to sort your services, products, and content in a way in which you can easily assign clients content that fits them and their needs. For example, you should keep in mind how long a client has been working with you and adjust your lineup and services accordingly.

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Keyword Research

Once your clients search behavior including their language has been understood you can start creating targeted articles that include keywords they frequently use or are more likely to search for in the future. This step can also help with future advertising and choosing your partners for future collaborations.

Sales Process

The ideal client profiles will most importantly give important insight into the decision-making process of your clients as well as enable you to predict their purchasing behavior. It helps you to find out what sort of agency partner they’re looking for and makes it easy to fit that description. Creating one or a few ideal client profiles will make you cater to mainly these specific groups of potential clients and thus make you stand out from the competition and look much more solid and professional regarding your services. Once you have your ideal client profiles you will be able to use the above-mentioned marketing strategies and activities much more effectively.

How to create an Ideal Client Profile

It is actually rather simple to create an ideal client profile:

List your best Clients

Conduct Interviews with Them

Combine the gathered Information and create your Client Profile with it

1. List your best Clients

This step is mainly brainstorming your most profitable client relations out of your current clients, collecting the longest-lasting ones, the quality of the relationship (Are there frequent delays or is constructive feedback common?), is your client objectively happy with the quality and scale of your services? Is it a small business or a larger one? (The basic question should always be: Is the client-agency-relation beneficial for both? In what ways?) (Statistics or other data from Google Analytics for example can also be very helpful here) With these and more questions answered you should be able to create an extensive list of your best and most valuable clients and allow you to specify what type of clients they are..

2. Conduct Interviews with Them

Once your list is complete try and conduct interviews with these clients to find out their view on your relations. Ideally, you would want to do these in-person but survey tools are also a possible solution. Following are some useful questions split into several important fields.

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Decision Maker Information

What is your role/job title?

How long have you been at the company? How long were you employed at your previous role?

What skills are required to do your job?

What tools do you use in your job?

Who do you report to? Who reports to you?

What does a typical day look like?

What people in your company make decisions about selecting a marketing agency or technology vendor?

Company Data

In which industry or industries does your company work?

What is the size of your company (revenue, employees)?

Where are you located?

What is your marketing budget per year?

What percentage of this is used on outside resources -- agencies, vendors, freelancers?

How many in-house marketers do you employ?

What does your sales cycle look like?

Goals & Challenges

What are your job responsibilities and priorities?

How is your job measured?

What does it mean to be successful in your role?

What are your biggest challenges? important successes?

Information Search Process

What sites and publications do you frequently visit to learn new information for your job?

What associations or groups do you belong to? What conferences do you attend?

What social networks do you use and how do you use them?

How do you begin the search for a new agency? Do you search for a company on Google? If so, what keywords do you use? Do you use an agency search firm or an online database?

Identifiers

How do you handle conflict?

Do you like to work independently or in a group?

What style of communication works best for you?

Objections

Why is it difficult to work with an agency? Why would you want to bring the work in-house?

During the sales process, what points about our firm made you hesitant to work with us?

Where did you turn to find out information about our agency from other sources?

Purchasing Decisions

Why did you decide to work with our agency?

Why have you stayed with use for X years?

What did the decision process look like for your team?

How are we unique from other agencies you have worked with?

What are three important qualities you look for in an agency?

3. Combine the gathered Information and create your Client Profile with It

Lastly, after all, important information is gathered you can start creating your Ideal Client Profile/s. These can be structured as you see most fitting for your branch and agency or even be in a much more graphical form but can also follow this simple client profile template:

Background

Demographics

Personality/communication style

Goals

Challenges and how the agency can address these challenges

Objections

Purchasing process

Agency’s fit or elevator pitch to this specific segment

After that your Ideal Client Profile is done and can now be used and reviewed by your marketing team, sales team, etc. to then lead to better client acquisition through better marketing efforts and marketing messages from your side.