ERIN MARCUS LIVE: BEYOND DEMOGRAPHICS

Transcribed by Otter.ai

All right. All right, let’s get into it. Today I want to talk about, actually, I hesitate to talk about this, because so many people give me that teenage eye roll when I bring this up, this is not the disclaimer right here. This is not my clients, or even my own favorite favorite thing to work on. But, but right now, I would say more than ever, it is absolutely imperative for you, if you are trying to create an in demand brand, trying to co create a scalable business, a recognizable brand, that helps move your business along more quickly. One of the things that you need to have dialed in more than ever is your client avatar, your client avatar. I’m talking way beyond demographics here, way beyond Single white female 30 lives in the city, you know, demographics. People usually think demographics, when I say who is your ideal client avatar, but I want to invite you to take a different look at it, I want you to think about the fact that most if not any of the other parts of your business, your marketing, your sales conversations, how you deliver your product, are really going to be the best that they can be. If you don’t know who it is you’re trying to help. Not just at a demographic level, but at a deeper level. 

So what am I talking about here? One of my favorite parts of building a ideal client avatar is the psychographics involved? What are the psychographics involved with the people that you want to help? So for example, a psychographic let me backup a second for you. A psychographic is how somebody feels and thinks, as opposed to the external statistics that define them. Right? A psychographic is, Are they warm and fuzzy? Or are they more intense? Do they make quick, quick, quick decisions? Or they are they more methodical in their thought processes? For me, one of my big psychographics, one of the leading personality traits of my clients, is they’re driven. They’re driven. It comes in a variety of ways, but they want to create a scalable business. My clients aren’t someone who is just trying to do this thing on the side, right? That’s psychographic, right? They’re driven. So what else is important with a psychographic? Something that didn’t used to be important. But it’s more important now than ever, if you might want to think about their political views. Are you aligned? Are they aligned from political views that are more important right now to a lot of people, and not just the version we see on the news? Think of it this way, there are certain businesses that function in the sustainability world. It’s going to be important to them that the other businesses that they do business with also support sustainability, so that they’re in alignment. Having these things dialed in, why is this so important? One, it makes it easier to find your people. It makes it easier to find your people when you know who you’re looking for. 

Number two, your messaging, your messaging, the marketplace is so so so noisy, right now. There’s no barrier to entry to any social media platform, anyone with a camera phone, and some time on their hands can get out there and be very, very pervasive with their messaging. If you are going to cut through the noise, if you’re going to cut through all that noise to attract your clients. The faster you’re able to resonate with them. The better job you’ll have doing it right, you’ll connect with them faster. Can you connect with them, resonate with them, show them you understand them? That fast, that fast rate of psychographics are one of the things that help you do that if you understand how your ideal client thinks and how they feel. The other thing about client avatar that I want to touch on is a lot of times people treat this as a one and done situation. They check the box I made my graph right. I have my list of demographics. I have my list of what my ideal client avatar is. This should actually be a living, breathing document that guides almost every decision you make in your business that guides almost every decision you make in your business. Because the more you understand who it is that you serve, the better job you’ll do, of solving their problem in the way that they can receive and best use that solution. So there’s some other things for you to consider and know. 

I’ll give you some examples. What are their deal breakers? What are their absolute deal breakers? In a service? situation, when you are delivering your solution? What are their deal breakers, it could be as simple as this sounds crazy, my dad is looking for a cat sitter, my dad is currently looking for a cat sitter. And he’s having a problem because people are not returning his calls, which to him is just absolutely crazy. You’re a business owner, you say you want to do pet sitting, I’m calling you to talk about pet sitting. And you can’t even return my call. That lack of communication, when someone’s not even your client yet, would lead you to believe once you are their client, if they ever bother to call you back, that lack of communication is going to continue. So for my dad as a prospect, good communication, or in this case, bad communication is a deal breaker for him. That’s a deal breaker for him. So what is your ideal client expect of your service and of your service level. If you are a luxury brand, if you are an expensive brand, your client, your prospect, your client avatar is going to have a different expectation of service than if you were potentially more of a low cost leader in your space. When you go to Walmart, you walk in expecting a different experience than when you walk into Nordstroms. It’s just how it is. So for your brand, what is the expectation of service that your client is looking for? That way you can deliver on it. And when you know these expectations, you can put them in your marketing. When you know what your client is looking for already. 

You can talk about it in your marketing, one of the things that I say a lot is actually a friend of mine said this to me once and I’ve just taken it from him and ran with it. He said, The thing about you, Erin, is you don’t ignore the elephant in the room, you write the elephant. And that’s what I’m talking about here. Right the elephant. If you know that your ideal client has certain expectations. Can you put the fact that you will meet those expectations out into the universe in your marketing, so that by the time you have a sales conversation, it’s actually a confirmation conversation. And not let me convince you to have a conversation. The more you know about what drives your ideal client, the more you can put it in your marketing. The more you can include it in all of your pieces of your brand, the easier your sales conversations will be. So what else do you need to know about your ideal client? Right now, you need to know what else is making them crazy. Right now, with the economy the way it is, people are making purchase decisions differently. They’re not choosing necessarily between three different coaches. They might be choosing whether or not they want to hire a coach this year or not. You need to know what you’re up against competition wise, not just within your field, but what else your client avatar has on their plate that is vying for their attention that is vying for their money that is vying for their energy. The more you know that, right? The more you know that. The more you can, again, ride the elephant and answer that potential objection, or address that concern in your interactions that help them know that you’re their solution, that you understand that you understand them at a completely different level than the other players out there.

Quality expectation We went over service delivery, pricing budget, absolutely pricing budget, the thing I will tell you about pricing budget is there is no money in the middle. There is my MBA, we did a, it’s called a capstone class where we had a big competition. And they were like, there’s no money in the middle if you try to be the cheap, not so cheap, not too expensive. Not too exclusive, not so open. Like there’s no money in the middle. Think of it this way. Right now. Walmart’s killing it. And Bloomingdale’s is killing it. Who’s having a problem? Macy’s, JC Penney, I don’t know the ones that come to mind are probably out of business right now, you can’t be everything to all people. Because it makes it impossible to find your people. It becomes a very watered down version of whatever problem you solve. And right now, people want solutions to their problems. They want to know that the thing that they invest in, is going to deliver on either the problem that they need solved, or the experience that they want to have, the experience that they want to have. You need to know what they hate about working with your type of business or any type of business? What do they hate about it? What do they hate about it? I once had a woman tell me she hates modules. I was like, okay, that’s what you’re gonna let stop you okay? Right. Like she told me she hated online, the online component of programs she joined. Okay, I’ll use one for me personally, I get very easily frustrated with technology. I have all the empathy and patience in the world for different strategies to grow my business. But I’m very short tempered with my technology. So when I go to make purchasing decisions, I look for solutions that are very straightforward, and won’t require me to screw around with technology that I don’t already know how to use and that I don’t already have involved in my world. I just recently had someone approach me, looking to trade podcasts, she’d come to mind, I’d come on hers, and she wanted to exchange messages via Voxer to do it. I don’t have Voxer. I know Voxer doesn’t have it. I’m sure it’s absolutely fine. But I already have LinkedIn DM, Facebook, DM, Instagram, DM, two different emails, a phone number, a business phone number, you can text me like I don’t need to. I am not interested in yet one more way to exchange information with somebody. And I just let it go. It wasn’t that important to me. I just Okay, if that’s the only way you talk to people, then that’s not my person, you need to know that. Like in this case, it probably doesn’t matter. But you need to know about the prospects of the clients that you are trying to attract more than ever, breaking through the noise, breaking through the noise in the marketplace. And because of the economy, making sure that your ideal client is convinced and understands that you can solve their problem way way way before you get to a sales conversation is more important than ever before. If you are really trying to build, grow and scale your business. 

Hopefully that gave you a different way to think about things. If you are interested in going deeper. We are on day two today day two of build your indemand brand live workshop. You are welcome to join us if you register you’ll get the replay so you can catch up from yesterday, like in a minute. Because we’re going all week with going deep on the components of creating a consolidated effective brand that will help you really scale into multiple six and seven figure businesses just go to in demand brand in demand brand dot conquer your business.com you can register you can join us and I’ll see you there