So we have a price and a concept for marketing, what we need is customers that are in line with what business we are in.
We want our dream customer – someone who will appreciate and use our product or service. Someone who is already energetically connected to what we are offering. We want to scratch an itch that is already there though we probably have never met most of our customers before.
Steve Jobs did this by anticipating what our society would want for communicating and then creating his product with impeccable beauty. Charlotte Smith talks about how farmers can think about their dream customer in her book Marketing From The Heart.
Think of the two or three customers that you have now that you love and that you love interacting with.
If you are starting a business, think of the qualities of people you know that you want to share your creative output with and would be willing to buy them. Then imagine one customer who has specific feelings, values, beliefs, and personal reasons to seek you out. This dream customer is a compilation of the attributes of the folks you have imagined. Write a description of this person and be as specific as possible.
With this dream customer in mind, marketing becomes easy, natural, fun, and rewarding as well as the knowledge that you are providing a service that people are grateful for. You will feel at home because you have someone specific in mind whose wants and needs you understand. The customer who shows up will also feel at home because you have them in mind in everything you do. Your customers are an extension of the Law of Attraction which we talked about earlier – what you focus on is what you get.
Another approach to thinking about your customer is to explore what motivates happy spending.
Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton researched the science of happier spending across the world. Their resultant book, Happy Money, is fascinating both as a guide to our own use of resources and also what a potential happy and repeat customer is looking for in their spending. Here are their main points that are relevant to your dream customer.
Money that is spent happily buys experiences rather than stuff. On the top of the list are experiences that are unique, with other people, provide stories for retelling, and reflect who you are. Making an experience a treat adds to its specialness, even if that means doing our favorite things less frequently. This fits in with your offering a service rather than a product. How does their experience with you add to happy spending?
Buying time gives us a sense of affluence.
Dunn and Norton suggest changing everyday expenditures into decisions about time expenditures, “How will this purchase change the way I use my time?” Interestingly, paying now and consuming later adds to the deliciousness of an expenditure by adding the enjoyment of thinking about it rather than the pain of paying when it is over. How does your business save time for your customer?
Lastly, they found that investing in others gives a much longer dividend for most people than spending another dollar on themselves. Is there any way that your business invests in others?
Being concerned with climate change is an investment in future generations. Is anything that you are doing investing in others in a more direct way that would be meaningful for your dream customer?
Happy Money by Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton 2013
Farm Marketing from the Heart by Charlotte Smith 2017 60 great pages
Note: The above ‘Dream Customer’ guidelines should not be confused with those of narcissistic behavior/tendencies.