Your Ideal Clients. You Know Their Age, But Do You Know Their World?
Updated: Oct 4
Your ideal client is a woman aged 45 to 60. She runs her own business, likes walking, travel, the occasional gin, daily yoga and enjoys a decent coffee. Lovely. You know enough about her that you could probably buy her a suitable birthday present. But could you write something that makes her stop scrolling and think, “How do you know exactly what’s going on in my head?”
That’s a different level of understanding. And it’s where your marketing starts to become much more interesting, both for you and for the type of client you want to attract.
Plenty of business owners have completed an ideal client exercise and think they’ve well and truly ticked that box. They’ve chosen an age, a few life facts and filled a page with hobbies, interests and other demographics. Hell, they may even have given them a name! Then they sit down to write a social post or create an offer and still wonder, “What on earth do I say?”
Age, location and occupation are all useful. But they won’t necessarily tell you why someone needs your help now, what they’ve already tried or what would make them feel confident spending money with you. For that, you need to take a deep dive into their world.
“I’ve done my client avatar, so I know my audience.”
I hear this so often but mostly, its work done at a very top level. Let’s imagine two women of the same age, both running coaching businesses. On paper, they could fit the same ideal client profile beautifully.
One is starting out and feels uncomfortable telling people what she does. The other has an established business, a full diary and a growing suspicion that she’s created a job she can never take a holiday from.
A message about finding your first clients could interest the first woman and sail straight past the second. A message about building a business that gives her room to breathe could have quite the opposite effect for the one running a successful business.
Same age. Similar services. One wants clients. The other wants her life back.
What’s happening in someone’s life or business changes what they notice, what feels relevant and what they’re willing to act on. If your marketing only reflects their demographics, you could be describing them accurately while missing what matters to them completely.
That’s why I encourage people to ask, “What’s going on for them when they start looking for help?” There’s far more useful material in that answer than in a well-intentioned list of favourite hobbies.
The first thing they say isn’t the whole story
“I need to be better at social media” sounds like a fairly straightforward problem. But what does “better” actually mean to that person?
Perhaps they spend hours creating content and have no idea whether it helps attract enquiries.
Perhaps they know their subject inside out but freeze/waffle on when they try to explain their value.
Or perhaps they’ve been told to post every day and are wondering when they’re supposed to do the work people actually pay them for.
Those are different problems hiding inside the same sentence.
Jump straight to the solution and you risk creating something useful for a problem they don’t really have. Listen a little longer, a little deeper,, and you can begin to understand what’s making life difficult, what they want to change and why it matters.
This is where a “That’s Me” moment comes from. Someone recognises their own experience in your words and immediately feels understood. You’ve given them a reason to pay attention.
“A broader message gives me more chance of attracting customers.”
If your expertise can help lots of people, surely your marketing should cover all of them? So, your message gets stretched. You help people gain confidence, achieve their goals, overcome challenges and reach their potential. All perfectly respectable ambitions. Also, the sort of generic wording that could belong to thousands of other businesses.
Your reader has to work out what any of it means for them. That’s quite a lot to ask of someone casually scrolling, who may not even know you exist yet.
A business confidence coach, for example, might support new business owners, women returning to work and first-time managers. Their coaching expertise may overlap, but the client situations don’t. Confidence in introducing your new business at a networking event feels very different from walking into your first team meeting as the new manager.
Your business can serve more than one type of client. Each message needs a clear sense of who it’s speaking to and what matters to them. That gives someone a much better chance of recognising, “That’s exactly what I need.” And choosing a focus doesn’t mean turning everyone else away. It means giving the person reading your words something specific to recognise.
They’ve got a history. Your marketing needs to respect it.
Your ideal client arrives with previous experiences, expectations and a few doubts. They may have paid for support that disappointed them, tried advice that didn’t fit their circumstances or spent months attempting to solve the problem alone.
That history matters. Someone who has already tried three different approaches may be thinking, “Why would this be any different?” If your message simply promises the same result again, you haven’t answered their question.
A potential coaching client might want change but worry about being pushed too far, too quickly. Someone considering business support might be concerned about the time it will take to explain everything. These concerns can sit quietly behind “I’ll have a think about it”.
Understanding them helps you explain your approach more clearly and give people the information they need to make a confident decision. You can’t do that by assuming every hesitation is about the price.
Listen for the difference they want to feel
Even when you understand the problem, there’s another layer worth exploring: what would solving it make possible?
“More confidence” could mean being able to state a price without immediately offering a discount.
“Less stress” could mean finishing work without spending the evening mentally replaying the day.
The broad ambition gives you a topic. The everyday difference gives it meaning.
This is where taking a deeper dive into client clarity becomes useful to your marketing. You can describe a change someone recognises and wants, in language that feels familiar to them.
Your best clues may already be in your inbox
There’s a temptation to respond to disappointing marketing reactions or results by producing more. Another post, another freebie, another offer. Before you add to your To Do list, look at the conversations you’re already having.
What do people say when they enquire?
What keeps coming up in sessions?
What have they tried before?
What makes them hesitate about trying again?
Their answers can help you see whether your message reflects their experience and whether your offer makes the next step feel manageable. Notice the phrases they use before you translate them into the professional language you use to describe your work. They say, ‘I’m tired of doubting every decision.’ You write, ‘Find personal empowerment.’ Would they even recognise that you’re talking to them?
Having a deeper client clarity will then guide what you create. If you decide to develop a digital product, for example, knowing one specific problem someone wants help with gives you a clearer starting point. You can create something they need to resolve that, rather than packaging everything you could teach.
Client Clarity is the first pillar of my Effortless Marketing Framework because it gives ALL of your marketing a really strong starting point. It helps you decide what to create, how to explain its value and how to make the next step easy so that your ideal clients can say yes to what your offer them.
I’ll be exploring this further in “Getting Clear on Your Audience”, my session at the FREE 3-Day Online Business Growth Summit on Tuesday 6 October at 11.45am UK time. We’ll go deeper into what you need to understand about your ideal clients, beyond their demographics, and how that understanding strengthens your marketing. Also how you can package your services into digital products or courses to generate income with less of your time.
If you join live, there’s also a free Client Clarity Check-In workbook to help you take your client understanding to the next level.
For now, take another look at that ideal client avatar work you did in the past. You know how old they are but what can you dive deeper to understand so that your marketing content start to make them say, “That’s Me”?
