When you’re writing something, you have to consider who you are writing to or you’re likely to end up with lackluster results. An ideal customer profile serves as a stand-in for your actual website visitors when you’re thinking about the content for your website. 👤 Your ideal customer and the main character of your story are one and the same.
A look behind the curtain 🙋🏼
While writing this course, I’m not thinking about you in particular because I can’t possibly know each and every person who may end up looking at this content. Instead, I have to make generalizations about the kind of people who might end up reading it and let that inform what I include, how I explain things, and what my goals are.
The same is true for your website content!
What makes up a customer/client
When you’re imagining your ideal customer, there are a lot of different categories to consider. All of these may not have a direct impact on how you speak to them or what you say, but the more realistic your ideal customer profile is, the easier it will be to write content for your website! Because of this, we encourage you to think about each category and decide whether or not there is value in defining that category for your ideal customer or not.
Categories to consider
- Age range
- Gender identity
- Budget or annual income
- Profession/role
- Geographic location
- Level of education
- Marital/parental status
- Other identities that come into play
- The situation that brings them to your product/service/advice
If you feel like you’re getting stuck defining your ideal customer because, for example, you have a wide age range in your customer base, you might want to create two or three ideal customer profiles. You could also give them names so that it’s easier to think about them and tell their story. Or you may be able to look at your customer/client base and see trends that allow you to define something, even if it isn’t true of your customers/clients 100% of the time.