Which type of clients would you ideally like to attract? You may think that by remaining open to anyone who can afford your rates and treat you with courtesy & respect, you are maximizing your income potential. You may also be surprised to learn that narrowing your focus to specific types of clients is actually often a more profitable choice, especially in the long term.
A mainstream marketing strategy, which caters to mass appeal, can work well for those whose bodies/presentations/services alight with mainstream/societal expectations/standards around the same. For those of us who offer something a bit different from that, it’s extremely powerful for us to get more specific about who we are looking to connect with, what we have to offer them, and what makes us especially well-equipped to provide the service we specialise in. Even those of us who CAN utilise mainstream marketing techniques might gain lots of benefits from choosing a niche marketing approach instead.
What exactly are some of these supposed benefits? Well there are many, and if you continue to read/follow this blog you will begin to understand & experience them over time. One poignant example is this: a client who is enthusiastic about whatever comes most naturally to you will be more fulfilling to meet with, less taxing/draining, and usually make you feel happier with your work overall. Even if the $ for $ amounts were the same when comparing mainstream marketing with niche marketing, increasing your own levels of satisfaction with your client base can make this career much more sustainable in the long run.
Hopefully you already narrowed down some sense of what your niche(s) are in my previous article, Identifying Your Niche(s). If you haven’t attempted the exercise yet, I recommend completing it before attempting this section. To create and explore your model ideal client, start here:
Tips for this exercise:
~ Please note that while this section encourages heavy use of your intuition which can include a quite bit of imagination as well, being realistic according to your own experience within the industry is incredibly vital to the success of this brainstorm in yielding results.
~ For added ease of access to the relevant parts of your intuition, try performing this exercise in a physical place where your ideal client would theoretically spend his time. For example, a bar or coffee shop that a man ‘like him’ might frequent, a public bench or park in the neighbourhood where he might theoretically work, etc. This should really help you get out of your own head/world and into his!
- Conjure that same feeling of excitement & loving your job that we started with when identifying our niche—usually this happens during or after our easiest and best sessions, where we’ve gotten paid & adored for doing something that comes naturally to us. Remember that feeling and think about the types of clients you’ve had these sessions with. What did they love the most about you? Check your Finding My Niche Venn diagram to see if what you’re thinking now matches what you were thinking then. If you’re having new thoughts now, it’s ok to add them to your diagram so that all your thoughts are flowing together and considered in the contexts of both your personal experience & marketplace supply/demand. If you also have thoughts about why your best/ideal clients love these things that they love about you, jot them down in a note on the side. If you don’t yet, no worries, as we will get into exploring that more later on.
- Now that you are grounded in a vague idea of what type of guys have come to you seeking your ideal types of sessions in the past, it’s time to really get inside their heads so we can understand how to market to them. This may feel a bit awkward at first, but the activity I suggest is actually a writing exercise in which you will profile in detail your ideal client. For this exercise to work most effectively, you MUST get specific and PERSONAL, so the client you are profiling MUST be a singular person! Not a group of people! This is NOT going to result in you having only one single client, so don’t worry about that. But you need to be able to get inside this client’s head—so for the sake of this exercise just bear with me and try it. 😉
Describe your ideal client’s lifestyle, a typical day for him. What brands does he interact with? What kinds of clothes does he wear? What media does he consume throughout the day? What are his relationships like—with his family, his romantic partner, his kids? What are his vices? How does he feel about himself? His home life? His work life? What kind of relationship does he have with his office/job? How do his coworkers think of him? What kind of dynamics does he usually have with SWers, if any? What role does SW play in his life? Is this a vice for him or something else/more? What does he usually look for in a provider? What are his deepest desires in life, generally? Can he admit all of them to himself, or only some of them? What about his deepest sexual desires? And can he admit those, or not? Is he actively seeking these experiences or do his desires lay dormant waiting to be activated? What is he afraid of, generally in life? How about sexually? How do his fears limit him from pursuing his desires? Is he someone who wants his fears challenged and defeated, or would he rather avoid confronting them? - Enter YOU. He sees your ad, twitter post, whatever. He’s SPELLBOUND. How do you fit into the fulfilment of his desires? Does anything about you scare him? Does he like it? Or does he love how uniquely comfortable he feels with you? Explore his reasons for being enthralled with you and how they relate to his desires overall in life. Which qualities of yours makes you so especially perfect to give him exactly what he needs that he may not even realise at first?? Do not be afraid to get very bluntly down to the root/heart of what is really going on between the two of you—about what you are really doing for him emotionally & psychologically along with whatever may be happening physically. (Understanding the exchange on this level can be VERY helpful in ensuring that your brand is welcoming/enticing to your ideal clients overall, as you can keep this in the back of your mind when creating all your content.)
Now that you’ve really gotten inside your model ideal client’s head, you should better understand his needs and motivations, as well as his general perspective on life. It may be different than yours, or most of the people you know. This is why we took the time to understand him via writing/etc. He may be specific & fictional, but many real actual clients will identify with his same desires, needs, and motivations. Thus he’s a good model to use as we create our marketing to ensure that we are able to speak directly to the type of clients we specifically want. See what I mean in the next instalment of this series: Finding Your Most Powerful Angles.
Please note:
If you went through this activity only to realise at the end that the fictional character you’ve created is actually someone who you dislike or find problematic, then you may not want to cast a spell that attempts to populate your client base with more people who are motivated similarly to him! It’s perfectly OK to consider that as a warmup exercise, grab a fresh piece of paper, and start again with a new character who you feel is equally realistic but a much better match for you as an ideal client. It’s also a perfectly normal thing to need to do, which is why I thought to mention it! 😉