Michele DeKinder-Smith

Knowing Your Ideal Customer – The Key To Developing Products and Services

Women entrepreneurs care about their customers – and the best way to serve those customers well is for business owners to specifically define their ideal customer.

Women entrepreneurs care about their customers, and want, more than anything, to provide them with solutions or to help them take advantage of opportunities in their lives. The best way for a woman business owner to serve her customers from a place of true caring and compassion is for her to learn precisely who her ideal customer is.

Most female entrepreneurs have a general idea of who their ideal customer is. For example, a business owner may target women, or women with children, or even women with children of a certain age. Even more specifically, a business owner may target busy working moms. For marketing efforts, products and services to have a maximum impact on customers, though, a business owner needs to get even more specific. Consider the variety of subgroups in the group “busy working moms.” Some may be career women, and others may be entrepreneurs. Some may be married while others may be single.

To market her business to precisely the right customer, and to get that customer excited about what the business does, a female entrepreneur must narrow that ideal down to a specific person – someone who she can keep in mind whenever she’s creating promotional materials, products or services – she can even give this ideal customer a name.

Using the same example, a business owner may define her ideal customer as Sarah, a 38-year-old married professional who has three children younger than 12. She loves to be part of her children’s activities and volunteers at their schools several times per month. She’s constantly juggling her romantic relationship, her corporate career and her children’s activities.

Once she gets crystal clear on who her ideal customer is, a female entrepreneur can then clearly tailor her marketing message, as well as her product and service development, to that ideal customer. She can speak to her prospective customer’s heart, to her mind, to the problems that are plaguing her.

Sometimes, a female entrepreneur may have more than one ideal customer. There are two main ways to deal with this situation. First, a business owner may choose to serve only one market. When her company grows and is able to support two markets, she can then branch out and serve a second market. Second, a business owner may choose to create a separate series of products and services to be marketed under entirely different brand names or web sites – directed at entirely different ideal customers.

As an example, a well-known relationship expert has two separate product lines – one for entrepreneurs who are in relationships, and one for mothers who are in relationships.

The bottom line: not all customers need the same solutions. For a business owner, understanding precisely who her business’ ideal customer is will provide clarity as she moves her business forward.

Article Tags: Ideal Customer, Business Owner, Female Entrepreneur

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