Know your ideal target customers – How to Find Clients Online

In my last blog article “How to Find Clients Online” I gave you an overview of what it takes to go on this venture. I mentioned the 5 key elements to any successful branding effort and your blog that you just need to become an online authority. In an earlier blog post I explained why also a Small Business needs Personal Branding.

In this article the focus will be on the first key element which is knowing your ideal customer inside out, doing all efforts to serve their needs.

A good question to ask is: “How can you get customers via your blog or website?”

I am not a computer or internet genius, I am far away from that and I have done a lot of mistakes in my beginning. But I have learned some important lessons along the way on – How to find clients online – and most importantly I have corrected my mistakes, took the lessons on board and put my new knowledge into practice.

One of the lessons I have learned is, that you need a clear picture of your potential customers. Otherwise you can’t serve them well.

Most business owners, entrepreneurs or network marketers have rather a vague idea about their target customers, but they have not studied them in detail and they don’t really understand them knowing their real needs and worries.

How can you help someone in specific areas if you don’t know much about them and how they tick? It’s not possible.

I have spent many hours thinking and researching about my ideal target customers. In marketing language this is called a “buyer persona”.  I really tried to understand them, understand what their biggest needs and concerns are. What information they are looking for? Which messages or content will resonate with them and what not?

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation or profile of your ideal customer. By creating your own buyer personas, you will gain the ability to tailor your marketing efforts and connect with your target audience to meet their needs and solve their problems. When creating your buyer persona (s), you are considering customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.

All these information about my ideal customers I take into account when I am writing blog posts or create any other piece of content. I try to create useful resources to help them with what they are really worried about and in which areas they are looking for help.

I am not always getting it right but often enough I do and I can see this on the following I am getting in the different communications channels.

Along the way I have learned what people are searching for on the web when they are looking for my services.

I have found that there are two types of searches. When people have a problem which they intend to solve they are looking mainly for useful information and when they can’t find what they are looking for, they are looking for services that they can buy.

It would be nice if everyone would be looking for help but the majority of people are searching for information in the first place. This is where a lot of blogs from businesses and network marketers are going wrong. All they do is trying to sell.

From my own experience I know that the much smaller number of people is searching for somebody to help them – they are ready to buy. The bigger number of people is looking for information only. If you want to be successful on the web you need to provide content to attract and engage with your audience who are looking for valuable information – delivering the information your ideal target customer is looking for.

You have to catch them early on their buyer journey with your blog posts and other resources. This will establish you as an authority in your field of expertise and you can position yourself as the person to go to when they are looking for help and are ready to buy.

For this purpose you need to continuously research what your target audience is looking for and of course you need to get those researchers to your blog or website – you need to get web traffic.

There are different ways to get traffic to your site – from paying for it through pay-per-click with Google AdWords to the different Social Media channels.
All these various possibilities and strategies involve a lot of work. The best is that you focus on one or two strategies and master them. I get most of my traffic via Social Media, especially Facebook and I recently started also with Instagram. Once you know what you are doing, a lot of it can also be automated.

I have also learned along the way that getting people to my blog is not enough. Most visitors won’t be ready to buy when they first visit my site. Therefore I need a way of keeping in touch with them and keep them in my circles.

Some people use social media for this purpose like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter to interact more directly with their potential customers. Others use the good old email.

Personally, I use all of the above mentioned communication channels. I believe in diversity and like to meet my audience where they feel well.

It’s crucial to create the right impression with your blog or website. Your site needs to get across to potential clients who you are and what you do before they will decide to work with you.

I still see blogs and Facebook Pages without or an incomplete About Page, or just a vague description of the company and its mission.

Today, people want to know more about who they will be dealing with. People like to see behind the scenes and get suspicious or even turn away

from businesses that don’t play with open cards and share detailed information about them.

Blogs and website must look professional. It’s not necessary to have all kinds of flashy animations all over the place. Take my blog as an example – I have a fairly simple design.

Potential clients judge your professionalism based on what they see on your site. If its difficult to use and navigate and full of errors and things which don’t work; they assume that this will be the same with your work.

I learned as well that you must have control of your blog or website. This does not mean that you have to do all yourself. But it does mean that you need to understand what’s going on.

If you outsource the development of your site and/or to optimize it to get more traffic (SEO), you still must be able to judge if the people who are doing these jobs for you do a good job.

You must understand the basics of how to succeed online to make sure that whoever is involved in your site is doing the right things to help you to find more clients online.