What Is An Ideal Customer And How To It Helps Your Homestead Business

What is an ideal customer?? But what about buyer personas, target market, or potential clients?

I don’t know about you but all of those words are enough to make my head spin and eventually throw my laptop at the wall!

Take a breath… One more time…

Ok let’s break it down into an easy thing to understand and then I’ll help you figure out how to use it in your homestead business too.

What is an ideal customer?

There are a few ways you need to look at this. There is the ideal customer you have in your head you would like to work with. BUT sometimes the people we want to work with don’t have the resources to pay for what we want to sell or they are just not interested.

But then there are the ideal customers for your product or service and these fall under the buyer persona category.

Here is what your goal should be as a business owner trying to find their ideal target market.

An ideal customer is one who not only pays for your products or services but also understands the value you provide to their life through your product or service. They resonate with your brand and actively engage with your content and messaging.

They are loyal and committed to you as a brand. They keep coming back for more, seeking your solutions to their problems or desires.

Their satisfaction extends beyond their own experience, as they are more likely to recommend you to other people they know.

Finding the right people who have their exact needs met by what you offer is going to be the lifeblood of your business.

By understanding their pain points (struggles they need solved), desires (things they want), and goals, you can tailor your marketing efforts and even create products or services to address their unique challenges.

This targeted approach increases the chances of attracting and retaining high-value customers who are more likely to stay with you long-term.

Ideal Customer Vs Paying Customer

Ok let’s talk about an ideal client or customer vs a paying customer.

A paying customer refers to someone who not only needs what you have to offer but is willing to make a financial transaction for a product or service.

I’ve had to recognize this in my own business and make pivots myself because the person I wanted to work with or could work with based on my existing rabbitry business didn’t want to pay for what I was offering.

And there is nothing wrong with that. But you have to be willing to acknowledge the fact that the type of customer you are trying to reach is not the perfect customer.

So how do you recognize when you are trying to reach the wrong ideal client or customer?

The best way to know if you are trying to reach the wrong person is if you are getting lots of reach on social, questions in your DMs, or website traffic but you are not getting people to take the bait.

That means that you are getting eyeballs but now purchases.

So how do you fix it?

First, pay attention to your current customers and make sure they are the perfect match for the company’s product or service.

Do they have specific pain points or challenges that your homestead business products directly solve?

Not sure? This is why it’s important to listen to your current customers or even the people who reach out to you. What questions do they ask you? What information do they want to know about your product itself?

It could also be something as simple as a form of payment that you are getting asked about often. — If you get asked about it 3 times in one sales season for your homestead business it is definitely something you should look into tweaking.

Make sure that you are continually making your product better in order to meet all their needs.

While both types of customers contribute to the company’s revenue, an ideal customer is more valuable in the long run.

They are more likely to make repeat purchases, appreciate the company’s offerings, and recommend the company to others.

Their needs and preferences are aligned with what the company provides, which leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Are Ideal Customer Profiles Important?

Ideal customer profiles are a valuable tool for your business to have because they provide a focused and strategic approach to targeting customers who are most likely to buy from you.

By identifying the characteristics and traits of the ideal customer, your homestead business can align its marketing and sales efforts to the right people.

Knowing your current customers can help you in creating new products by giving insights into the needs, pain points, and preferences of the ideal customers. This enables you as the business owner to create new products or services that directly solve your customer’s needs and increase potential revenue.

How To Use Your Ideal Customer In Your Business

Ok you know the value of having an ideal customer profile in your business but how do you use it in real life????

Your ideal customer profile serves as a guide for your sales and marketing strategies.

By understanding your target audience, you can tailor your messaging and promotions to resonate with this specific group.

This targeted approach improves the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and increases the chances of capturing the attention and interest of the RIGHT customers for your homstead business.

Your ideal customer profile helps you create customer-focused content.

If you aren’t going to pay for ads your only real option for building a good customer base is to be creating content and put it out on the internet. Whether that is on social media, on a blog, on youtube, or an email list.

With a clear understanding of your ideal customer’s needs, pain points, and preferences, you can create content that addresses their specific challenges and offers relevant solutions.

This approach not only attracts your target audience but also builds trust. Which is key to making a sale.

Ready To Create Your Own Ideal Buyer Profile?

There is a lot of info out there about how to create your own ideal customer file but it’s super basic and doesn’t help you create the right type of marketing. So I am going to show you how use those basic questions to help you dig deep in identifying the right paying customer for your business.

Going Deeper Than The Idea Customer Work Book

There are thousands of those workbooks that just touched the surface.

Even in some paid course workbooks that I’ve taken that are pretty expensive still don’t go deep enough in my opinion.

You know the questions:

• What is their income level?
• Where do they like to shop?
• Where do they live?
• What’s their marital status?
• Do they have kids?

And that’s all well and good. But what does that even mean?

We need to go through and ask ourselves, what does that tell us about them? What does that tell us about their mental state?

While I’m not going to go through all of these I am going to walk you through a few of them so you can figure out how to find the key characteristics that will help you in your homstead business.

Then help you learn how to decipher that information around what it could do and tell you about your customer.

You also need to approach these questions with the product or service you are going to offer. Someone’s home may not matter as much to someone who sells livestock as much as it does to someone who makes candles. See what I mean?

Know the questions that matter to your business.

Where Is Your Ideal Customer’s Geographic Location

So this one is another thing that not so much the building she lives in, but where she lives that matters.

Questions To Remember:

• What does it tell you?
• And what can you pull from that to use to relate to her?
• What resources does she have close by?
• Does she have to go a little way to get anything?

So for me personally, I live in the country I am within 15 minutes of a small town but those small towns only have Walmart and Kroger.

They don’t have things like shopping malls or Kohl’s or Target or anything like that.

Well, can you use that information to relate to her? Any of those little words or frustrations or things that you can use in your marketing, in your blog post or any other content.

• So if I was looking for recipes I don’t want an ebook that uses products I can only get at whole foods.
• I care about affordable shipping prices if I am looking to buy beauty products or things for my home.

Anything that you can do to touch your heart and go “oh, this business owner gets me.”

Her Marital Status

This one I almost skimmed over because it can either affect you or it can not. It’s not really something that would affect every business. But here are some examples of where it would.

Let’s just say you were a high-end jewelry maker.

If she’s going to spend a couple hundred dollars on a jewelry item, she may have to talk to her spouse about that. Or it might have to be a Christmas gift or something like that.

Your marketing message is going to be a whole lot different if your jewelry items are 20 bucks and it can go in her clothing budget.

Stuff like that is when knowing what marital status is will help you in your business.

What Are Your Ideal Customers Values?

This is key for people who make products.

• Does she care about organic?
• How does she feel about animal testing?
• Does she care more about how the product works than anything else?

Per personality type matters too because this help you know what kind of content you need to create.

• Is she laid back?
• Is she dedicated and driven?
• Is she indecisive
• Is she naturally skeptical?
• Is she guarded?

These are things that are KEY!

Personally, I would love organic beauty products but I care more about how well it works over that.

I don’t care if a candle is hand-poured or soy. I want it to smell up the room.

I am very driven and skeptical so if you are trying to convince me about a movement (healthy living) I need to see proof before I spend hard cash on that product.

Finding Your Avatar Won’t Happen Overnight

Now, the one thing I want you to remember is this is not going to get clear for you overnight, or in the month. Maybe you have a good idea, but as you go and create content and get deep into this. You’re going to find more and more parts of her that come out.

Its easy to think that when you’re narrowing in on your person that it’s going to exclude others. But that’s not the case. There are so many people that will fall on either end of your avatar and relate to 50% of your ideal avatar or 20% of it, and they will still buy from you.

But by doing this it makes your marketing easier.

So take time to understand your avatar and just know that it’s going to take time.

And the other thing that I want you to do and remember is that this person’s not going to stay the same. Your business will change and your business desires will change as well. If something just doesn’t seem right don’t feel bad about it.

Watch our social media engagement or customer responses and tweak them as you go.

Personal Example

The perfect example of your customer changing is in my rabbitry I started with ideally reaching people who wanted to show rabbits. And it did well for a while.

But now it’s shifting because I’ve become more widely known, and people are finding me on Google and the message is spreading and I am shifting more to the person who’s looking for a nice indoor pet.

Do I have them indoors? No. But my ideal customer is shifting.

So I am re-vamping my messaging a little. I am changing the “product offer” and I am making it a little bit more of a luxury experience. I still get both customers but the market started to change and so did I.

Take time to find the right type of person to target for your homstead business. Make sure you enjoy them but you also want to make sure they are willing to buy your products.