In this episode…

Who is your ideal client? If you answered “everyone”, then you’re really selling to no-one!

In this episode, we discover why trying to sell to everyone simply does not work and what you need to do instead to get the right type of customer.

We’re breaking it down to help you nail your niche so you can really start speaking their language.

That’s One Person. One Problem. One Solution.

So let’s dive in!

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If you’d like to find out more about our 16 week online holistic wellness program, check it out: The Healthstyle Emporium

Transcript

Amanda: [00:00:45] Hi, and welcome to episode five of the Heart Driven Hustle podcast. We are hosts Amanda and Kingsley. And in this episode we’re talking about why trying to sell to everyone simply does not work, and why you need to nail your niche instead. We’re breaking it down for you to help you find your one person, one problem, and one solution. So you really start to talk their language. So let’s get started.

Kingsley: [00:01:10] Hey guys, so excited to be here. This is actually our second attempt at  this episode. we were doing this the same time last week and our baby son who wasn’t born at the time decided to, make an appearance into this big wide world. So he’s actually now sitting in the corner, supposedly sleeping. But I think he’s facing the other way and his eyes wide open staring at the walls. So we’re going to see how long it takes before we have to stop. Start, stop, start. So if you hear our voices change it’s because this podcast is taking us 15 hours to do and about 20 takes so bear with us.

Amanda: [00:01:49] The joys of Parenthood having kids is it’s lots of fun, but it’s always unpredictable.

Kingsley: [00:01:55] The joys of what? I’m not sure.

Amanda: [00:01:57] Parenthood. So we look at what we’re talking about today. Now, what are the biggest struggles that many people have when starting out their own business is identifying their niche?

what I mean by this is considering everyone is your ideal client or avatar. Now this sounds a little counterintuitive, but do you want to tell us why Kingsley?

Kingsley: [00:02:17] Because when you’re speaking to everyone, No one will be listening

Amanda: [00:02:23] Exactly.   So what ends up happening is that you’re trying to craft a message or a response or some sort of marketing effort that is going to appeal to the masses.

But the issue with this is that the particular response that you’re writing sounds so vanilla that it doesn’t actually appeal to anyone. And I suppose think about it in terms of ice cream, yes vanilla is an alright flavor, but, well, who loves vanilla? I’m more of a caramel or something sort of a little bit fancy kind of gal.

So what actually ends up happening then is when you’re speaking to everyone you’re not selling to anyone. Or if you are, you might actually end up with the wrong type of clients. So if you consider a sales funnel, you’re casting your net really wide to begin with and then as you move them along the sales process, you’re then sort of refining who that particular client is.

But if you’re speaking to everyone and you don’t catch the right person at the very top of your funnel, you’re going to be losing them very quickly. But, we’ll go over that in a future episode a little bit more. What that actually ends up meaning is that well, for starters, you’re not necessarily going to get any repeat business from those customers. And if you consider the cost of actually gaining a new customer, it is quite a bit more than retaining customers, so that’s something to consider . And the other thing to consider is that you’re not going to be paid your worth either. So what we’re proposing here is getting really clear on who your ideal client is.

Kingsley: [00:03:50] So that brings us to the concept of one person with one problem and one solution.

Amanda: [00:03:56] Exactly. So what we’re talking about here is really defining who that person is, what their issue is and how you’re going to solve that for them. And then you’re speaking to that one particular person.

So if we take our own wellness business just to give you a real world example here. Now who’s our person we are talking to women, and if you consider the two, genders , women’s needs are very different to men’s particularly in the realm of health.

The woman that we’re talking to is in her late twenties or early thirties. Now her health goals going to be very different to someone who is say at the early twenties or someone in their late forties, they’re at very different stages of their life. And therefore they’re at a very different stage of their health journey as well.

So, when we’re actually crafting our message, we need to be very particular as to what we were talking about. Our person is also a parent. So at this particular time in her life, she is concerned about herself, her kids, her family, she’s quite likely juggling and career. Her friends and the family and there as well, there’s a lot of things was on her plate, we really wanting to appeal to that particular problem that she’s having.

This person lives in a constant low level of anxiety and she’s always feeling as though she’s just behind the eight ball and always trying to play catch up. So really she is quite time poor, and she’s concerned that she’s not giving a hundred percent of herself to anything, let alone having any time left, to focus on her own health, in fact, she’s always putting herself last. And I know that this is something that rings quite true amongst alot of my friends circle who are females that fit within that particular age bracket, who are mums. And it’s certainly something that I get, a lot of feedback on he’s quite prevalent in our society.

So if we now look at the solution, knowing who our person is, what the problem is that she faces. Well, how are we going to solve that problem for her? And the way that we do it is we have an online holistic wellness program, which is going to meet her exactly where she is in her own health journey. Now, our program is designed to nourish her both physically, mentally, and spiritually.

And we know based upon the avatar that we’ve created, that these are the things or areas that she’s really lacking within her life. So the way that the program is designed is that is to compliment her existing lifestyle. We know that she is busy, we know she is time poor, and that she’s already suffering from low level anxiety and overwhelm.

So we certainly don’t want to add to that by putting just another thing on her plate. So what we do, as part of our program is we will then coach her through her own personal wellness transformation. So she can start putting herself first and gain control in those areas of her life, where she feels that there’s a gap.

So can you see that by understanding who our one person is, the one problem and providing that one solution and positioning his way, we are speaking very specifically to that person, to her problem and showing her how we intend to resolve it. So what we’re essentially saying here, Is that we’re speaking to her in a more detailed way that she’s going to understand than simply saying, Oh, we talked to everyone, everyone has a client and we want to help people get healthier.

Kingsley: [00:07:12] Exactly. And another great example of that… you can just hear a little bub doing some hiccups in the corner there, and we probably won’t cut them out because they’re across the whole thing so far. Sorry to get back to our point. So consider a personal trainer for a moment if you go down to a gym quite often you’ll see their posters up on the wall –  they are up on the gyms wall that I go to-  and there’s four or five of them.They all do strength training. They all do conditioning. They all do a weight loss and they all do some kind of meal prep planning or something like that. And so,  they’re all essentially doing the exact same thing. There’s no  differentiating point. And the only thing that I  have to choose by is the price point that they’re charging, because it looks like they’re all doing the same thing.

But consider if they decided to diversify a bit and if maybe one of them was speaking to me, I’m a father. Not every day I can go down to the gym. I might be stuck at home some nights, so someone that can offer me maybe home type exercises to do in between going to the gym, something that can support me,  if I’m up late at night, caring for my young son, then they’re speaking to me.

They’re offering me a solution to my problem. And they’re speaking directly to me. They’re not going to be speaking to everyone in that gym. Because some people maybe aren’t parents yet, but to me, and then too other fathers, they going to be going Bang, that’s exactly what I need!

And if I’m looking for a personal trainer or even if I just stumble across, their poster on the wall, that could be something where I go, ‘ yeah, I’m down for that. Sign me up for a couple of sessions, because you know, I’m already paying for a gym membership. I might as well get a little bit extra out of it and see what results I can get from it.’

Amanda: [00:08:59] Yeah. So true. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there in terms of, if you don’t get clear on who your avatar is, and you’re not speaking directly to them, then you do end up competing on price.

And when you compete on price, well, nobody wins. There is always somebody who’s willing to undercut you, whether it be just in the short term in order to gain a new client, or it might be something that they do as a longer term promotion, but either way you don’t want to be competing price because you won’t win.

You’ll also find that there are clients out there who would tend to just price shop and jump around as well. They don’t have any loyalty. And as I mentioned, one of the most expensive parts of actually getting a client is the, getting the client.

It is so much cheaper to retain a client than it is to get a new one. If you are competing on price, then it’s not necessarily likely that you’re going to keep that client anyway.

What do you want to be doing instead is establishing your authority within your particular niche.

So that way you’re known as the go to person, whenever someone has a particular problem.

So if we  look at the personal trainer example, again, that Kingsley’s just mentioned, now, this personal trainer is going to appeal to busy fathers. They understand the pain points. So that way, when there’s a busy father, who is wanting personal training sessions. He’s going to go, alright, I know the exact guy or girl who is going to fulfill my need. Now, what that means is that particular personal trainer can actually charge a premium for their services. They’re going to amplify their authority. They’re going to establish themselves within their niche as being the go to person.

They’re going to be the specialist and therefore they can charge what they believe is their worth for their services. And the thing is people are willing to pay it.

They are willing to pay more for where they perceive that there is greater value and that the person is going to solve their problem for them.

Kingsley: [00:10:57] Which brings us to our all important. How do you identify your niche?

Amanda: [00:11:01] okay. So this is the nitty gritty of it all. So what we want to do is get crystal clear about the direction of your business.

Now, what lights you up? Who do you want to work with?

There’s no point in choosing a particular client avatar that really doesn’t gel with you. You need to find someone who you love working with someone that you get along with, and that you really enjoy  that style of work.

Now, the other thing to consider is your own personal experience. And one of the things that we’ve found is that like attracts like.

If we consider who our own, avatar is for our wellness program… well, she’s a female, she’s in her late twenties / early thirties. She is a mum. She has stress and low level anxiety from just general life and trying to just play catch up and get on top of everything. She feels as though she’s constantly juggling all the different aspects of her life.

Now, who does that sound like?

I know I can certainly relate. That sounds like my life. It sounds like my experience. And therefore, by having gone through that myself, I feel as I’m able to talk to women who are in exactly the same place.

So let’s now look at your niche. Who’s your avatar, who’s your ideal client?

And the way to really look at this is if we consider both the psychographic and the demographic characteristics of our person.

So demographic things like their gender, their age, income, marital status. These are the dry facts about the person.

Psychographic, now these are their personality characteristics. So this is the buyer’s habits, they’re hobbies, their spending, what are their values? And when you actually start to look at both of these aspects together, that’s when you can effectively reach your target audience or your avatar.

So it’s important that you understand both the demographics and the psychographics. Now, if I put that another way, The demographics, explain who your buyer is, whilst the psychographics, explain why they’re buying from you.

So to illustrate this point, let’s just say that you’re an active wear brand that has a line of really quite fashionable, bright, and, funky leggings. Now your target market, your demographics would be females who are in their early twenties. They are earning approximately, I don’t know, 50, 60 grand, their marital status – they’re single and they don’t own a home. So they’re just renting.

Now, let’s look at their psychographics. So what are their buying habits?   This particular person is very abreast of the latest fashion trends. They like to post on social media, so therefore they want to be seeing in the latest and greatest activewear.

They love catching up with their girlfriends on the weekends for brunch. And of course they’re in their active wear again.

So can you start to see how the psychographics really start playing into this as well? It’s not just about who they are, but it’s about like, why, why are they buying that way?

So when you have the two of these together, you can then start to craft your marketing and your messaging in a way that is really speaking to that particular person.

Now, this isn’t going to speak to everyone. It’s probably not going to speak to say the older generation who are really practical in terms of, well, I’ve already got enough pairs of leggings. I don’t need three more. I don’t need the latest trends or fashion. I’m happy just with my black pair that goes with everything.

So by trying to speak to everyone, see how you’re not speaking to anyone at all.

So, this is why it’s really important to know who that person is, what their problem is. And therefore you can provide the solution that is going to be relevant to them.

Kingsley: [00:14:47] So now you’ve discovered your niche. It’s important to write content that really speaks to that one person.

It won’t be for everyone, but that’s okay. You only need to speak to your ideal client and they’ll have a moment, like, hang on. Have they been spying on me all week? Which is pretty cool.

Remember one person, one problem, one solution.