If you’ve been struggling to define your ideal buyer persona (or profile) you’re not alone.

Frankly, this is one of the most common struggles among our clients and our audience alike.

Whenever we work with our clients we dive deep into their client profile and help them understand not only who they are and where they live, but what they feel and desire.

See, knowing your client in depth goes far beyond simply knowing their age, gender and where they live or what type of business they are.

One thing nobody tells you: you’re selling what people WANT, not need.

Sales come from a desire.

If there’s no desire, there will be no purchase (even if there is a need).

This is true especially for fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands, which we specialise in.

How many times do you not do something you know you should do because there’s no desire?

And how many times do you do something you shouldn’t, because there is?

That’s the thing: for humans, doing things out of desire comes a lot easier, than out of need or responsibility.

After all, it’s just boring to do things you have to do.

That’s why we want to tap into the desire our customers have and really understand it, so we’re able to connect it with what our brands offer.

This way, your brand (and your offer) becomes simply irresistible.

It goes beyond what they need, and into the realm of what they want.

 

Your ideal client vs. your Brand Archetype

If you discovered your brand archetype already, you learned what is the primary desire of your ideal clients: this is the same desire you want to evoke with your brand.

Let’s have a look at the Brand Archetypes wheel again and see the main 4 desires we all share, that activate in us at different times (it’s when Archetypes get activated as well).

As you can see, we’ve got 4 main desires:

1. To provide structure with Caregiver, Ruler and Creator
2. To connect to others: with Girl Next Door, Lover and Joker
3. To undergo a spiritual journey with Innocent, Sage and Explorer,
4. and to leave a mark with Rebel, Magician and Hero.

Where does the desire come from, though?

Your customers will have internal and external motivations. They may feel the desire to change their life/business/looks/situation because they feel the need, or because they don’t cope with this situation well and the external world (their family, friends, financial situation or whatever that might be) is affecting them too much.

We prepared a workbook for you to define your buyer persona, so you can hang it on the wall in your office as a constant reminder who you are talking to.

So imagine you have a client who is so grateful to you and for the fact, they’ve found your business. They are thanking you and are ECSTATIC about your product or service.

I had a client who was absolutely exhausted and tired of missing out on opportunities she knew she deserved because her professional image wasn’t reflecting her true skills and potential. She was wasting time on trying to fix it herself, but she saw she’s only walking around in circles. She knew she could earn more, do what she loves and finally skyrocket her business if she could only fix those things.

We helped her understand her brand personality, discover her ideal client and determine how she wants her brand to be perceived. We helped her dream BIG and see beyond what she saw was possible for her.

Then we built a brand that reflects her true skills and potential, supported her in launching her online courses and sell her products she was thinking of doing for a long time.

Now she’s able to do more of what she loves, she’s getting great opportunities as a makeup artist and she can sell her courses on autopilot without worrying about the tech stuff. Her sales TRIPLED and she spends LESS time in her business.

Your turn: open your workbook and write down your ideal clients feelings, desires and struggles and how they feel after they work with you or buy from you.

Buyer persona profile: why do you need it?

I want you to create a profile of your ideal client and give it a name, for your reference. You can name them however you want, or use name of your past ideal client.

Creating a buyer persona profile will help you understand what your buyer needs to know, feel and understand before they show interest in your products or services. It also makes it easier to envision this person as a real person, not just a concept.

So when you create any new marketing material, offer or service, you’re able to ask yourself: will Karen need or like this? Will Jennifer relate to this?

See how this makes sense? Whenever you create new blog post, new Instagram post, send a newsletter or create a new offer, you will be able to look at your ideal client profile and try to see it through their eyes.

You will feel you know them as you know your friends and it will make it so much easier to serve them better (and make your brand irresistible to them).

We will discover your clients’ demographics like age, gender, where they live, what their job is, as well as psychographics: their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, desires, addictions, fears, work habits, social habits, and financial habits.

And yes, you can have more than one ideal client persona. Actually, most of brands we work with do.

Do your clients go towards pleasure, or to avoid pain?

People buy FEELINGS and emotions, not products and services.

Understanding your ideal buyer persona’s feelings and emotions helps you understand where she’s coming from, what she needs to feel, hear and understand before she makes any decisions.

Your ideal client’s emotions are always driving either towards pleasure or to avoid pain.

Which one is it in her case?

It might be it’s both, which is often what happens.

Then you know you need to remind her of her pain points, and potential reward she can get from working with you / solving her problem / purchasing your product.

Her past experiences, beliefs, and current situation will also affect if and HOW she will decide to buy from your brand.

Creating an experience for your customer is EVERYTHING: when you create an experience that is suited for them, they will become loyal customers and they won’t even look for an alternative.

People are not ready to buy from you (yet)

What’s important to understand is that most people are not ready to buy from you – yet, at least.

They have go to through a few stages like brand awareness, interest and consideration before they are ready to hear about your offer.

To make this journey smooth, you need to understand your ideal buyer persona very well and in particular, know how they are feeling right now and what they want to feel.

So before you’re able to create your buyer journey map, you need to dive really deep into their minds and understand their environment too.

Dive deep into your ideal buyer persona

Demographics are important, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Yet so many brands describe their ideal buyer persona as: women, between 25-34, living in California.

It’s a very shallow description that is way too vague and won’t help you create a brand that’s irresistible to your people.

You will feel like you’re screaming into a void and you’ll wonder why despite a lot of traffic you don’t get many sales.

That’s why, I want you to dig deeper and really understand what’s in your customer’s head.

What are they feeling, thinking, seeing and hearing around them? What are they doing? What are they thinking but are afraid to say, or ask?

Who are they?

Some powerful questions to ask yourself are these:

Now remember, not every question will be relevant to your brand. Some of these questions will not be particularly helpful. When you look at them think about which ones would help you understand your ideal buyer persona better and make you closer to them and their reality.

Do they say what they think?

Other powerful questions you may want to ask yourself are about what they are saying vs. thinking. There could be a big difference and it can show you what they may be afraid to say, but what’s on their mind.

Using this in your messaging then will make them feel “you read their mind”, and bring them closer to your brand.

What do they do?

Now let’s think about what they do on daily basis, as it relates to your brand. Sift through these questions and think about which one would be helpful to understand your ideal buyer persona better:

What do they HEAR?

Their surroundings are very important. People are influenced by others heavily and sometimes what they hear or see around them means they will be hesitant to make a change they need to make, to invest in what they need to invest or to treat themselves.

If you’re a mother who’s surrounded with people saying mothers should always put their family first and sacrifice themselves, it will be hard for you to spend $185 on a jewellery to treat yourself, wouldn’t it?

If you’re a new business owner and nobody believes in your idea it may be hard for you to go into debt to finance your brand.

What goes on in their MIND?

This is where your Brand Archetype will be particularly helpful. It will help you understand what’s your ideal buyer persona deepest desire but also what they are thinking and feeling.

For example, a Rebel could be thinking: “I’ve had enough of this”.

A Creator could be thinking: “I’m want to bring my vision to life”.

and a Girl Next Door may be thinking: “I want to find my tribe and feel understood”.

What are their concerns?

Remember I said most people are not ready to buy from you? This is tightly connected with the fact they may have concerns that haven’t been addressed by your brand yet.

They may not have the trust for your brand yet.

They may not see you as expert yet.

They may not feel they can relate to your brand yet.

So try to ask yourself these questions:

What are their motivations?

We all have internal and external motivations.

The external motivation is when our boss tells us we need to finish this project.

Or where we feel society expects something from us.

Or simply when we’re afraid of the consequences of not doing something.

Internal motivation on the other hand, is a powerful thing. It’s something that comes from inside of us. It’s a deep desire we have, a deep longing for something.

Again, your Brand Archetype will help you understand exactly what that is for your ideal buyer persona.

You can also dive deep into these questions:

What’s their anxiety?

Your ideal buyer persona is struggling with something right now. If you find out what is it, as it relates to your brand, you will be able to tap into this anxiety and speak in a way that makes them feel understood.

What are they struggling right now with? What do they have to tolerate?

For example:

My client is worried about not having enough sales and appear as unprofessional and loosing opportunities. The fear of failure and not being able to support herself is keeping her up at night and worry.

She’s imagining she needs to go back to her day job she hated so much and that she will never live her dream life.

She struggles with being confused and doing everything herself, which leads to a total lack of time and frustration.

She secretly desires to live a life of purpose, earning a million a year and traveling the world while doing what she loves.

Now open your workbook and try to brainstorm what that is for your ideal buyer persona.

It’s a powerful exercise that will help you connect with them and attract your ideal clients through your brand messaging.

What do they expect?

There’s nothing more damaging to a relationship than broken promises or trust.

Your brand creates a relationship with your ideal buyer persona though.

So the same rules apply: if you want someone to trust you, don’t break your promises.

Your brand always has some kind of a promise. Either it’s promising to make your customers feel more attractive, more successful, or more competent, or it’s promising a magical moment or a pleasurable experience.

Either way, you need to always deliver.

What about what your ideal buyer persona expects from a brand like yours?

There could be a big disappointment on their part if they don’t get what they expect.

So let’s think about what this actually is: what is it that they hope to get from your brand? What is it that they hope to feel? Who is it they hope to become?

Again, your Brand Archetype will help you tremendously with this, so make sure to discover it with out 1-min free quiz.

Ask yourself:

 

For example:

– My client expects to be treated with respect and for me to answer her emails within 48hrs.

– My client expects me to deliver the highest quality service.

– My client wants change NOW. She does not want to experience bad results where she pays premium prices.

– My client would feel angry if and disappointed if the website I create for her would be difficult to edit, would not look professional and would not help her reach her goals. She would feel she spent $5k+ on something that is not an improvement at all.

– MY client would be WOWED if I helped her discover what she didn’t know, dive dep into her business and absolutely transformed it so it’s more than she ever expected.

Connect the facts and data with the energy and intuition

This is a great exercise not only for those of you who are visual (I know it’s most of you!), but for those who’d like to have a quick reminder of your ideal buyer persona above their desk.

Also, after we’ve discovered a lot about them, we’re going to “seal” that knowledge inside our brains by adding visuals to it.

It’s just simply going to help us remember it all better and make it more prominent in our brain.

What I want you to do, is to open Pinterest and start looking for images that represent the energy and the feeling of your ideal buyer persona.

Then create a moodboard that represents your ideal buyer persona energy, personality, activities and surroundings.

You can pin images of:

• People
• Places
• Interiors
• Quotes
• Activities
• + more

The idea behind it is to create a visual representation of your ideal buyer persona’s world.

And start pinning what feels right.

Yes, you read it right: what FEELS right.

See, your brain has it all figured out right now and it’s time to fire up your subconscious to make the connection between the logic and data we’ve put down on paper and feelings and energy.

That’s when the magic happens!

At the end of the exercise, I’d love for you to comment below and share your moodboard link with us with a short description of who your ideal buyer persona is.

But Alex, what if I don’t know the answer to all these questions?

We get it. You may be creating a new brand and not know your ideal buyer yet, or you may simply not know the answers to these questions.

Then it becomes hard to go through the exercise.

Of course, you can assume a lot of things about your ideal buyer persona. This is what most brands do at the beginning anyway.

Thankfully, there are a few ways you can get these answers without guessing:

Do your research

There are plenty of opinions, questions and doubts going around the internet. If you know how to do the research, you can find out almost anything about your ideal buyer persona.

Try to go to Facebook groups related to your niche and see what people are asking for, struggling with and sharing.

Go to Amazon book reviews and see what people say “they missed in the book” – if it relates to your niche.

Go on Quora and see what people are asking – but also what they are replying.

Follow hashtags on Instagram and see what people are posting.

Search for something on Google or Pinterest and see what search recommendations it gives you: this is what people are searching for.

Be creative and think about where your ideal buyer persona spends their time and asks their questions and start “stalking them” (in a good way).

Send a survey

I met a lot of brand who have large audience, particularly on their email list, but never ask them questions.

People LOVE to talk about themselves!

Send out a short survey that’s easy to create and use (like Typeform, for example) and ask your audience open questions that will help you understand them better.

Once you get replies, you can go a step further and invite some of these people on a short interview.

Conduct interviews

This is a really powerful exercise because it helps you ask further questions and really understand your people.

You can either interview your past customers or clients, or people who would be your potential customers.

Ask them questions you don’t know how to answer yet and see how they explain it in their own words. Then remember to use mirror words in your brand messaging. This will make them feel understood and heard.

It’s a good idea to offer a $20 (or more) gift card as a thank you for a 15minutes chat. After all, people are busy, so if they give you their time, it’s a big deal.

Do a poll

Have an audience on Instagram or Facebook? Do a pol and ask them things!

Like I said before, people LOVE to talk about themselves and clicking on a poll is almost irresistible (admit it, you click it whenever you see it!).

Use this psychology fact to your advantage and ask them what they like or dislike, what they prefer or what they struggle with.

Ready to get started?

You’re ready to define your ideal buyer persona now! Download your workbook and start filling it up.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t know some answers or you struggle with articulating your ideal customer personality.

This is an ongoing process and you will want to update it and re-define it as you go.

Go ahead and take the first step though, as this will bring you closer to having an irresistible brand.

Comment below to share your Pinterest board url and any questions you may have!