The Art of Attracting Your Dream Customers | Customer Personas Guide

The last blog focused on repelling customers. I asked you to stand for something, get to know your customers better and set their expectations of what they can expect of your product/service. This time, we're gonna look at how to attract your dream customers.

One powerful lesson we can glean from big brands is the art of laser-focused targeting. Understanding your customers' needs and wants with precision is not just a strategy; it's a game-changer. Why do I stress this? A laser focus is a straightforward, efficient path to building trust and boosting sales, giving you the confidence to easily navigate the market. 

Targeting a broad demographic is really hard. People have different interests and things they love, making it very difficult. It's gonna cost you a lot more time, money and energy than focusing on a little niche area. 

When you find your niche and dive into what they want, it's gonna be a lot easier to work out what they want to come away with and how they want to feel afterwards.

Conversations have become simpler, almost like talking to real people, and building relationships has become more than a task- it has become a joy. Engaging with people who resonate with your brand is not just efficient; it's fun. 

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An example of this is a new offline networking event I've put together called Chatterbox. It's about allowing people to catch up with people in a similar position to you.

I work from home, and there's a lot of other people who work from home, just like me. It's an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and meet more people. But also share that experience with other people. The idea was sparked by having conversations with people!

Deep down, people wanted connection. They wanted to end that isolation. That's what they come away with. They want to feel like they can reach out to others, ask questions and be heard. And understand that it's okay to feel isolated and lacking business clarity. 

If you're in Newcastle, Australia, you should come along – it's free –you just have to grab a coffee or a piece of cake. We dot them around different venues around Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. Take a look at the Chatterbox Instagram account for more details.

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Seth Godin's quote sums everything up, "Reach is almost always the wrong path. Being known by lots of people isn't really the goal. What you're really seeking is to be trusted, to be heard, to be talked about and to matter. And if we look at any brand that's succeeded, that is what they've done." 

If you speak to everyone, you actually speak to no one. Showing the importance of outlining a crystal clear target market.

We have to move on to find out who is your brand someone. As one of my great mentors, Meg Purser, would say, "Who's your who?" Who is that person that you are speaking to? 

To simplify it, we must dive deeper into brand or buyer personas. Let me illustrate it with a baby food buyer persona. 

Baby food customer persona

We've got young kids, and naturally, we care about what they eat. We want the best for them so they can thrive. That thinking leads us to look at organic baby food brands. 

Parents as a demographic are too big. We need to laser-focus. 

You can have a couple of parents who love the idea but can't afford it. They might want to see promotions and special offers. They will dip in and out of the brand when you send them an offer. They may sometimes make their own food for their baby. 

Alternatively, there will be parents who can afford it and don't have the time to do cooking. They will love everything about the services and preach to others. They'll be your dream customers who make consistent purchases.

They could also be single parents who have a completely different set of needs and wants. They might consider making all the baby's food, but they may find it challenging every week. 

The persona might be looking for a fresh, organic, transparent, relatable, and convenient solution to their lives, and you could maybe throw a little humour in there, too. They are part of the generation that Google's everything. They might also be regular Amazon shoppers, Click and Collectors, who love the convenience of just having it come straight to the door/boot. They may crave a seamless customer experience or journey.

I'm trying to illustrate that we need to generalise our personas first, then narrow them down to focus on their needs. Clean, organic foods, convenient ordering systems, affordable, premium - this list could easily continue.

Connect with customers and grab the Emotional Branding Download.

How to create a brand persona

When running a brand strategy workshop, we'll typically talk through three to four personas for that product or service.

You might build a persona from scratch or base it around a customer you already know/work with. 

I will dive into a persona I've created in the past. Pay close attention to how real the person seems as I bring them to life – hopefully, it inspires you to write one and asks you the right questions.

Brian, the Explorer. 

Brian's 28 and has an older brother-in-law, John. John loves the finer things in life. And introduced Brian to the world of craft beer. 

Being the explorer that he is. Brian loves discovering different flavours and new things. Every time his favourite breweries drop another release. He gets a rush of blood and rushes straight to the bottle shop to buy the beer.

While he is there, he picks up five other craft beers. Brian isn't motivated by the alcohol content. But the flavour exploration leads him to drink some pretty radical concoctions. But he doesn't care as it's something to chat about with friends and Facebook groups.

He gets online and chats to them about the different beers. Meanwhile, his girlfriend can't understand why it takes him 30 minutes to pick up six beers in the bottle shop. 

Well, he reads every can label of every beer he picks up. He is drawn to the different can designs and will most likely put the empty on a shelf like a badge of honour. 

He has built trust in four or five stand-out breweries that he knows will always give him a good beer, no matter how odd. He wonders if becoming a head brewer would be a bit fun. But his main concern is he would drink too much. 

His favourite Instagram accounts are Range Brewing and Mountain Culture, and he watches how-to-brew tutorials on YouTube.

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That's one distinctive persona, and we could have gone further – looking at daily habits, his job, favourite coffee orders, et cetera. 

We could go way further and do a persona for Brian's girlfriend. Scenario - she wants to go in and buy him something for his birthday but doesn't know what he'd like, so she needs help. 

There are so many little ways we can start breaking down the customer personas.

To write yours, take a goofy gander through these questions. Then keep at it until you get 3-4 personas.

• What does the person need? 
• What would make their lives better? 
• What's their biggest challenge?
• What are the defining characteristics of their personality?
• What do they desire in customer service? 
• What do they value most in life? Ooh, that's a big, juicy one.
• What's their age?
• What's their stage of life?
• What's their life stage?
• What's their gender?
• What does the family unit look like? 
• What's their job title and industry?
• Where do they live? 
• What do they value? 

There's a lot of questions you can ask yourself about your customers.

The results of having a brand persona

Three amazing things happen after this.

All that laser focusing you do will help clarify your messaging. So you can relate to your people without sounding like a robot. 

And by looking at brand/buyer/customer personas, you can build a clearer picture of how brand visuals can look! Those little signals (like favourite breweries, Instagram accounts, and can artwork) are useful information that can be used to pick out brand aesthetics, colours, fonts, and logos. 

Your personas will also reflect on real-world issues that might be affecting them. How are they currently feeling?

In the last few years, we've had the COVID-19 pandemic. Are the psychographics you are picking out still relevant? Or do you need to adjust them? 

If you wanna know a little bit more information, feel free to reach out and connect up and start making you think about, you know, building out your own characters.