Date Your Ideal Client

Too often, I see business owners frustrated with marketing. They’ve invested in a plan that they believed would work, only to discover that it falls short of their needs, and makes their goals seem impossible.

Why? They’re victims of cookie-cutter template marketing. These types of marketing templates are promises from gurus that their strategy will work for you. But, what ends up happening is that people emulate the process following the steps exactly, and it inevitably fails.

Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all process.

Marketing must:

• Fit You. You are the face of your company. You’re the representative of your business. Therefore, your marketing must fit your comfort level and you must be comfortable with your strategy.
• Match Your Business Model. There are different types of marketing depending on whether you’re business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C). Your model will dictate your process and budget. So, understanding your business model helps you craft a marketing strategy that works within your model.
• Speak to Your Audience. You need a strategy to focus on your business and your ideal clients to take them from someone who has no idea who you are (introduction) to sales (commitment).

Marketing should be about relationships. People don’t buy products and services. People by from other people. Focusing on marketing from the perspective that you are building a relationship with your ideal client will allow you to easily sell your product, service or solution.

When you look at your marketing with the mindset that you’re building a relationship, you create authenticity. Instead of looking at an ideal client as a number, your focus on building relationships helps establish know, like, and trust. And, that process is more organic, and your sales grow naturally. This is why I describe marketing as “Dating Your Ideal Client”.

At its core, marketing is both an (He)Art and a Science. Therefore, thinking of your marketing as Dating Your Ideal Client really allows you to use the art and science of marketing to drive your sales.

What do I mean by this?

Think about the process of looking for a partner in your personal life. Generally, in the dating realm, you have a “type” and qualities that you’re looking for in the person you’d like to be in a relationship with. Then once you’ve found someone you’re interested in, there’s a process you follow to establish and maintain a connection with that person.

The same is true of marketing.

You will have a “type” of ideal client with specific qualities and characteristics that you want to target. Then, your marketing strategy creates a customer experience in which they begin to know, like, and trust you.

Just like in dating, there are five stages of marketing to Date Your Ideal Client.

What are the Five Stages of Dating Your Ideal Client?

• Introduction Phase: Plan your Marketing by determining your ideal client, create a budget, dive deep into your messaging. Then, introduce your business to them in a way that they can hear.
• Flirting Phase: This is all about engagement and figuring out if you and your ideal client would make a good match. In this phase, you continue to allow your ideal client to get to know who you are, how you’ll help them, and show them the value they’ll get from you without having to make a commitment yet.
• The Dating Phase: Generate leads. Get people on your email list so you can connect with them more.
• Commitment Phase: This is the phase where people make the commitment to start paying you for your product, service, or solution.
• Keep the Romance Alive Phase: Plan to continue marketing to your clients. This continues to build lasing relationship and turns your clients into raving fans.

By thinking about each of these steps, you will be able to use both the art and science of marketing to dig into the science of marketing and creatively adapt to what the data tells you, you make your marketing so much more powerful. It’s a process and it takes time.

Often people think that once you hit the button to publish your marketing strategy, the sales will just start rolling in. This idea just isn’t reality.

Marketing is a long game. It’s a process that can take months–even years. Just like dating.

But, if you look at marketing like you would the dating process you allow yourself to think of it as more of a process and set more realistic expectations for your strategy.

You will be able to focus on one process in your marketing, use data to figure out what works and what doesn’t and make the necessary adjustment to take people from cold audience to sale.

And, you’ll be able to replicate the process as you find it works for you. Then you can scale and optimize the process in order to drive up your sales.

So, just like in dating, expect your marketing strategy to take time and investment in order to grow and scale your business. Focus on creating deep, meaningful, lasting relationships with your ideal client, and your business will genuinely and organically grow. Your income and revenue will follow.