Finding Your Tribe
Creating a visual pathway to understanding your client base.
If you have been following my blog you will see I did a inspiration board with you at the end of February. I love the way that they enable us to order our thoughts and get a visual grasp on what we are working on. So I thought it would be a great place to start our conversation about your tribe — the people who will make your business a success.
As an entrepreneur it is vitally important to know who your client will be. It basically determines the way you should brand your company, the style of your logo, the way you talk to your clients and the way you sell your product or service. Many entrepreneurs don’t have a clue who they are selling to and waste literally years and boxes of money targeting the wrong market.
I have quoted Damien O’Farrell before on this — “If you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one.” At this stage in your business, this is the single most important piece of the puzzle that you have to get clear. WHO IS YOUR CLIENT. So, first lets think and take notes about who your client will be. Choose a quiet place and let your mind wonder as you visualise your business and who it attracts. Next you will create an advert to ‘find’ our perfect customer. And lastly, you will create an inspiration board to visually remind you who that client is.
First, the thinking and note taking task.
Take some time to think about the following which will help for the two exercises below.
1. A list of who you think your potential clients are, quick off the top of your head.
2. Now ask yourself, what is his/her age, education, occupation, business. Are they working full time / part time, are they parents or childless? What is their income situation?
3. Now ask yourself what problem does my product service solve. Who needs my product?
4. Is your client near to you, far. In your area, country, continent? What time of year, season, month or week or day does your customer buy?
The Advert. I did this one on Canva, but you can do it on any medium or platform that you are familiar with.
a) Here you would consider the qualities your potential customer would have, what makes them an ideal client, the add here calls for a degree, experience, communication skills, what would your client be bringing with them that makes them ideal for your business. Are they local, near, far, country. religious, old, young?
b) Why would they benefit from your product. What in their situation would make them choose you, if you were in actual fact hiring, why would they want to work for you? So if you were selling puppy toys, your client would be empathetic, caring, nurturing…. Likes dogs….. If you were selling pots and pans, your customer would be working (to afford your fabulous pots) love cooking, be home/family orientated, mid twenties….. So you can see how the type of person you attract will completely change how you brand your business, and how you get the word out there to sell your offerings.
The inspiration Board. Lets create the inspiration board, it can be words, images or a combination of both. Once its done it should be pinned above your desk so that you are constantly reminded who you are talking to. You can use the medium of your choice, so it can be on paper / Canva (has Templates) / Pinterest. I’m a graphic designer, and I’m going to use Canva to do mine, just so that you can get an idea of how it is done. Remember all the point you came up with for your advert, well, were going to use those for the board. It’s really just a visual collection of your findings re your potential ideal client.
Method.
a) First search the internet for images, Pinterest, Unsplash, just generally anywhere that has images that you like and that resonate with what you are doing. As this is a personal exercise and not for commercial/public consumption, I think that saving images from other is ok.
b) Save them to a file on your computer, phone or tablet.
c) Now choose your platform, in my case Canva.
d) Upload the pages to the Canva Library and open a design space, I chose to work in n Instagram shape. Search for the mood board template. There are plenty of different designs. And drag it into the space you have created.
e) Get pasting with your images, and create words by adding text. Happy Playing. Once Done, hit the download button and save as a pdf if you want tprint it out, or a PNG for display on your screen.
Questions to ponder:
1) Do you have a clearer idea of who your client is?
2) How did these exercises change your thoughts on your target market?
Great links for ideas for vision boards.
https://artfulparent.com/make-vision-board-works-10-steps/
https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/a29959841/how-to-make-a-vision-board/
https://za.pinterest.com/scrappinmichele/vision-board-samples/
Ciao for this week, happy ‘visioning’
Jacci
Jaccir Design
www.jaccirdesign.com
