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Customers often aren’t able to tell you their real problem. They may say “I want you to fix my sink.” But what they mean is “return my calls, let me book an appointment when it’s convenient for me, and leave my kitchen spotless.” Patrick McFadden is a small business marketing consultant, speaker, and founder of Indispensable Marketing. Patrick takes a holistic content marketing approach to help businesses get hired by their ideal clients. If you aren’t sure who your ideal clients are, Patrick shows us a simple process that will uncover them.

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Episode Summary

The problem with most marketing today is we don’t talk enough about the real problems we solve for our customers. For example, if you are in the home services space, you might think the kitchen remodel or unclogging the drain is the reason someone hired you. Whereas often you are hired to provide a great experience while you complete the job. Things like answering their questions, leaving the work area clean, or how friendly your staff was throughout the process impact the customer experience. 

In our businesses, when the phone rings, we get excited when there is a potential customer on the other end asking about our products or services. But the truth is not everyone we talk to is someone we want to do business with, some customers pay late, others may disrespect your staff, or maybe they just value the lowest price and you value doing quality work. These mismatches not only cause frustration but can often lead to bad reviews. Whereas when you work with the right customers, they love the service you provide, and that in turn generates positive reviews and referrals. 

To help you determine who your ideal customers are, look at your customer base and sort them by profitability and referability. Who are those profitable customers that have a network of other people they can refer to you? Once you have that list, pick up the phone and call those customers and ask them about why they chose to do business with you. Then build your website and marketing campaigns around the insights your best customers provided you. All of which will help you attract more customers that resemble your ideal customer profile. 

For a new business, that doesn’t have a customer database, the biggest resource I share to help them build their ideal customer profile is to go to the review page of their competitors. Make notes of what people are complaining about and then go build your business model around addressing those issues. As you begin to acquire more customers you can decide if those are the right customers for you and repeat the process as needed. 

The way we practice and prescribe marketing is based on a holistic content marketing approach. We include everything along the customer journey to ensure at each touchpoint we are reinforcing the messaging we want a customer to see. That means going way past just the ad copy or website content and into areas like your customer intake forms or proposals. The overarching goal is to make your business the obvious choice when a prospect is trying to decide if they want to do business with you. 

Resources Shared

• Indispensable Marketing
• Thryv
• Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days by Jay Conrad Levinson
• 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller
  

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