Discover Your Ideal Client | Part 1

Discover Your Ideal Client | Lessons I’ve Learned

Our two goals:

1. Working with people and organizations that you enjoy working with.
2. Efficiently generating more revenue as measured by the acid test conversion: Advertising views to Revenue attributable to the advertisement.

With that said, here’s the critical lesson from the best-performing ads.

Show a short, remarkable story and repeat it many times (Reference: Empire Carpet).

Note |

I’m intentionally demonstrating what an excellent converting ad looks like based on two historical ones.

1. 1. Empire Carpet was and continues to be one of the best-performing ads.  It’s simple, fun, and gets to the point.
   2. The Apple ad was played once during a Super Bowl and is the definition of a viral ad.

 

Discover Your Ideal Client | Step 1

Develop a short storyboard for your ideal advertising campaign.

A storyboard is a group of 5 to 10 images that show your story. They don’t need to be good quality images as long as they make sense to you.

These are a few options to help you quickly create your storyboard:

Option 1 |

Pinterest is a helpful tool for developing the look and feel of your story. Create a new private board and pin photos and images that show what you imagine your identity to be. In each photo’s comment section, write what attracted you to the image and how it applies to you.

Option 2 |

Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create images. If you’re unfamiliar with or uncomfortable using an AI image tool like MidJourney, hire someone who is. When looking for a professional, the search term I recommend is AI Prompt Engineer. You’ll also find people who can use these tools in places like Twitter, Fiverr, and LinkedIn.

 

Discover Your Ideal Client | Example Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)

If your company sells potato chips, here’s an example MidJourney Prompt to get you started:

Cinematic Shot Subject: Female model age 35, smiling, eyes open, eating chips with melted cheddar cheese. Background: Table with a glass of Pepsi with ice on the side, dark background, amazing food, sharp focus on one face, depth of field Camera: Shot on a Hasselblad medium format camera. Carl Zeiss Distagon t* 15 min f/ 2.8 ze, Ricoh r1. –ar 16:9 –iw 0.5 –s 1000 –q 2 –style raw

Here is a resulting image:

Here’s an adjustment to the prompt to change the focus to a company that sells soda with a lighter background:

Cinematic Shot Subject: Female model age 35, smiling, eyes open, drinking a Pepsi. Background: Table with a plate of chips and melted cheese, light background, amazing food, sharp focus on one face, depth of field Camera: Shot on a Hasselblad medium format camera. Carl Zeiss Distagon t* 15 min f/ 2.8 ze, Ricoh r1. –ar 16:9 –iw 0.5 –s 1000 –q 2 –style raw

Note |

AI image generation frequently creates anomalies in the resulting photos. I’ve intentionally left them in to give you an idea of what to expect. When creating an initial storyboard, seeing anomalies isn’t important.

Tip |

Including a person in your image is advisable because it makes the image more relatable. It’s similar to why real estate agents stage an empty house with furniture–it helps people to visualize themselves in the space.

 

Discover Your Ideal Client | Step 2

What we’re trying to achieve with these methods is to answer three questions:

1. “I like the color palette.”
2. “I like the feel of the image.”
3. “This area of the image or item in the image makes me think of what I’m selling.”

Take notes about what you do and don’t like about the images.

 

Discover Your Ideal Client | Step 3

From your storyboard, the next step is to picture who would be interested in the story that you’re showing. Write down what you believe are their attributes:

• Gender
• Age
• Location
• Socio-economic status
• Hobbies they have
• Things that they might buy in addition to your product or service
• How much they might spend on something special vs. how much they might spend on an everyday item

 

Discover Your Ideal Client | Step 4

Write a one-page biography on the composite person you described.

Since there’s no data involved in this step, use it as a starting point to discover who your client could be.

 

Discover Your Ideal Client | Step 5

It’s time to gather objective data (verification) to see if you’re on the right track using Facebook or Twitter.

Select one platform and use everything you’ve described in the earlier steps to target advertising that matches your estimated client attributes.

Tip |

Using a simple and fast system to promote a post differs from what we’re after. You’ll need to access either social media platforms through a web browser to set up an advertisement with the attributes you’ve written down. This will require signing up for a professional advertising account with Meta (Facebook) or paying for Twitter Blue.

Budget an eight-day duration for $100 per day ($800 total). With that budget, you’ll be able to determine if your estimate is in the ballpark or if it’s time to rethink it.

Note  | 

If you have the budget, running an eight-day campaign using an A/B/C strategy on either platform is worth it. The total cost will be in the range of $1,00 to $2,500. The benefit: Instead of having a ballpark, you’ll have a more accurate picture of your client based on a statistically significant sample size.

An A/B/C ad campaign, also called an A/B campaign, is when you run three advertisements where everything is identical except for one variable. 

Examples:  

1. 1. The same image and client attributes but with different copy (text).
   2. The same client attributes and copy (text) but with different images.

 

Discover Your Ideal Client | Next Steps

In Part 2, I’ll show you how to set up a Facebook and Twitter advertisement. And in Part 3, we’ll work on setting up an Advertising Strategy from the lessons learned in Parts 1 and 2.

 

 

Image credits  |

Tom Libertiny  (Cover)