Who does your business exist to help?
We know the right answer is "The Customer"....but Who is your customer?
Before you start building your site, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- What are they like? And what makes them tick?
- Where are they located?
- Are they geographically limited?
- Can you reach anyone across the entire world? Could you handle a client in New Zealand, Sweden, or anywhere in North America?
- What's their demographic, What's driving them psychologically?
There's a lot of questions that we kind of just gloss over when we're creating marketing collateral for people and when we're working through customer-centric marketing.
It's so important to get this right. It's that essential first step to make sure you're headed in the right direction.
Get the Who right, and the website will flow nicely from there. Without a clear idea of Who you serve, you'll struggle and stumble through the whole project.
If you're not convinced you need to commit to a target market, here are some reasons why it is critical:
1. You stay close to a market.
Every business is at-risk or has this fear of being disrupted. How do you avoid the dreaded phenomenon of disruption? The answer is: You stay close to the market, and you keep your ear and heart close to the market.
When you do this, you know what the market is asking for and what the market is struggling with. You can hear their longing for a better way and you can be constantly evaluating whether your company has the right solution.
2. It saves you time and helps you scale your business.
If you're trying to do a new thing with every new client, it's going to take a lot of time.
Your profitability will stink.
The problem is that without a Who you spend the whole time learning how to do new things over and over. When you don't know the industry, you have to do a ton of research each time. This will frustrate your team, slow you down and cut into your profits.
Having a clear Who with a system in place where everyone on your team can deliver consistent results helps you move a lot faster. The only way you can do that is to have a clearly defined person that you help with a clearly defined problem that you can solve with an outcome that you deliver every single time. And you just get good at that. That's how starting with Who helps you scale a business.
3. You can emerge as an industry expert.
When you’re an expert, new customers come to you. When people are coming to you, you can charge what you're worth because you're delivering a better result for your clients. Not only that but you’re saving them and yourself time.
4. A well-defined niche helps you communicate your message clearly.
Companies can't be everywhere and they can't talk to everyone.
Let's say you had a great message and wanted to be a guest on a podcast to get the message out there. Which podcast do you choose? Do you try to be a guest on all the podcasts? Well, of course not. That's not gonna work, right? So you want to, for the example of the podcast, ask which podcasts in my industry are best for me? That leads to our next point.
5. We have the opportunity to become an authority in our space.
No one wants to be a celebrity where you can’t go out for dinner without someone asking for autographs.
I guess you don’t want to be chased by paparazzi for the rest of you life. But what if you could get invited to speak at conferences, be a guest on podcasts and have people taking you out for nice dinners and then picking up the tab because they were so excited to spend time with you.
Who would argue that it is easier to sell something to someone who already knows you, likes you, and trusts you than to have to convince someone you’re the best option for them. You can't just show up one day and earn that kind of recognition. It takes time and being intentional. You have to show up in season and out of season, and slowly become known as the person to trust in your industry.
After you've done that for a while, your Whos will start to seek you out and demand that you work with them because they need the expertise that you offer.
6. You'll have a clear focus on where to show up.
"Where do I go to reach more customers?" I hear it all the time. To be an authority like we mentioned, you need to show up where your Whos are at and deliver value to them. But where do you show up? For example, you may be thinking "what social media channels should I be on? Should I be dancing on Tik TOK? Should I be sharing my sage advice on LinkedIn? Should I be posting on Twitter? Or should I be in a part of Facebook groups?" You could be everywhere, but that's not going to be effective because you have this limitation as a human of being in one place at one time. You need to be where the people are that you want to help. Let's use another hunting analogy. We've already talked about guns so this lesson is going to be cancelled anyway. If you had a ticket to hunt moose, which in Canada is a popular pastime, you need to go where the moose are. You don't just show up with a shotgun in any kind of random forest and just start shooting everything that that's moving.
The hunter thinks "Where can I strategically position myself? What's the best time? How should I dress? What sounds do I make to draw them?" And then you're going to find your moose (sorry for all the PETA people out there). Maybe you don't like my hunting analogy, but it is helpful for understanding where should we be showing up.
7. It makes for a rewarding life.
We spend around one third of our lives at work. You and your team show up for work every day with the potential to transform lives. Stats are overwhelming that only 20% of the global workforce feels engaged at work. I wonder how much more engaged we'd all be if we were connected to a customer story. It's a story about how someone had a problem, then they called your company...and you made their life a little better. They’ve improved their health, or made a bit more money to take their family on a vacation, or they stopped fighting with their spouse...whatever it is that you do, And if you and your team know and recite this customer story, everyone will find it rewarding, and they will stay engaged each day.
It's not about the money at that point or who's got a better ping pong table in the staff room, or if you offer a fair-trade coffee or not. Whats really going to matter is if they feek like they're a part of this customer's story? Are they a part of this company, having a role in serving this customer?
That's how people find joy and meaning in their work.
8. You get better referrals.
When you have a clearly defined who, they are your favorite customers and they can replicate themselves, right? Wouldn't you love to have more of your favorite people and less of your fewer favorite people, right?
So imagine if the people that you provide the best outcomes for because your processes were clear, your messaging was bang on, and they just started repopulating it like bunnies. All of a sudden, you had your best client after best client eager to hire you. That's the utopia of business, right? And you just want to have great people. You'll have better referrals because your best people will be referring you to their friends who are also very similar to them.
I'm sure you're convinced by now, but we have another reason to focus on your Who.
9. You increase the value of your business.
A business that has a clearly defined target market is a lot easier to sell to anyone looking to buy a company that reaches their target demographic. A company may want access to your clients and they'll buy your company for it. If your list is too broad, it won't generate interest from a company that is focused. You can actually have one of those great exits that entrepreneurs dream about because you've found a way to make a great impact that led to a great payout one day to a company that was looking to grow into that market, and this is the last point.
10. You commit to a niche for search engine optimization purposes.
If people are searching for, let's say a lawyer in Kansas City. If you're a lawyer in Kansas City and your Who is someone in the area looking for a lawyer, maybe a personal injury attorney in Kansas City, then you can actually make sure that you have those terms in the right place, ready to show up for anyone searching. But if you're too general, you're not going to have the right words or content to show up when someone is looking for something specific.
You can actually build all of your marketing and all of your web foundation on presence around the terms, questions and issues your Who is working through. And so the clearer you are, the better your SEO will be as well. The first thing an SEO expert is going to ask you is who is the end-user of your product. The next thing they’re going to do is build out your content around what that person is searching for so that you show up on a search.
There you have ten compelling reasons why it’s better to get clear on your Who and commit to helping them.
How To Find Your Niche
Let's work on putting some pen to paper when it comes to finding your own niche. I want you to start thinking through the demographics of your Who. And there's so many different points of interest for understanding demographics. There’s a demographic for every business. Pick a segment of society you help best.
Every industry has its own specific problems. And the thing is that even in those industries, as people are solving problems, it just opens up more problems, right?
You can pick an industry and say, what are the biggest problems in this industry, maybe the size of business.
By this point, we’ve only looked at demographics...this is the boring part of your Who. Next module we're going to look at the psychoanalytical side of your, who, like what drives them and what's holding them back from getting what they want and all that. But for now, we're just thinking, “Who are these people, what do they do, and where are they located?”
Five Clarifying Questions
Before we finish, I'm going to ask five clarifying questions for you to get you clarity on finding a Who. I encourage you to take some time to reflect on each question.
1. Who do you enjoy helping the most?
Who are the people and businesses that you love working with? Like when they show up in your calendar, when they book consultation calls - you just light up like a Christmas tree, you just love it and you want to help them more with whom have I had success?
You should enjoy these people because you’re going to be hanging out at their conferences and pouring out your time and resources to helping them. You should enjoy that part.
2. With whom have you had success in the past?
You may pick somebody that you assume you’ll enjoy working with. For example, “I love working with billionaires because they have really nice conferences, write the biggest checks!”. But have you had success with billionaires who actually hired you? It's one thing to get the idea of who you'd like to help, but who are you actually good at helping? You know how to solve their problems and it comes naturally for you. It's a crisis for them, but for you, it's just another Thursday morning.
3. Who do you understand the most?
To understand them is to know their pain points, and you care about solving them. You know how to solve them. You know their struggles and you can finish their sentences. You understand what makes them tick and what keeps them up at night. And then you can understand them - they love it when you can articulate their problems even better than they can oh my goodness. "Have you been reading my mail? You totally described what I was going through. I haven't even been able to describe it like that." That's how you build trust. That's how people trust you in business. They want someone who understands them.
4. Who are you passionate about helping?
Once you solve your financial problems, you need to have the passion for showing up at work every single day and doing it over and over again. If you want to make a career out of it, you need to be passionate about these people and excited to think of ways to help more of them.
When you're passionate about a Who, you dream about new possibilities for them. That's where you get excited about the bigger story that your life is telling as a guide. You spend free thoughts imagining how to make a bigger impact in an industry.
How can you and your team help an entire industry? How much better is the world because you showed up to work and served these people? Who are you passionate about helping?
The fifth question we need to ask is a sensitive one because it deals with money...and you do deserve to get paid well for doing a great job.
5. Who pays you the most for what you do?
If you had the choice, why not get paid double to do the exact same thing you do right now? Who wouldn't want to have more free time to spend time with your family or take better vacations or be more philanthropic? Why not take it if it's there, because these people will increase your joy, and why not show up for them in helping them if they're paying you well for it.
If your Who doesn’t have access to cash or is not willing to pay you for it, you have a hobby. Hobbies are great but without compensation as a Thank You for your services, you’re not going to get far in your career...or anywhere because you won’t be able to afford the cost of getting there.
What did you decide on your Who? Should I say, "Who did you decide?" I hope that you've been processing what you've been hearing and thinking about your ideal client throughout this time. Maybe going through those questions slowly will bring out a frontrunner for Who your company will choose to serve. It's a commitment, and you have to go for it.
Like any relationship, commitment is the best way to grow together. Without commitment, you'll never achieve the depth and effectiveness that you know you want from your work
Review
Today we have covered a lot of ground.
First, we looked at the importance of starting with a clear Who. Then we addressed some of the fears that may come up when you commit to a Who. Then I went through ten compelling reasons why it's better to choose a niche and focus on serving that community.
Finally, we got specific, and I asked you questions guiding you to choose someone that you would focus on through the duration of this course.
