Have You Identified Your Ideal Client?

When you first start a business, you're looking for as many clients that you can. As your business grows, you'll need to start looking for additional staff to keep up with client demand. Eventually, you will notice that the growth becomes flat so justification for additional staffing needs to be made, or that your fulfillment timeline has grown. The latter is a dangerous milestone, as a waning customer experience can create a new plethora of issues. At this point, marketing to find your ideal client becomes the goal.

The ideal client isn't a definition that you, the business owner, can typically create. The ideal client type can be found in your data. In this example, we will delve into the industry of automotive accessory (modification) and protection (tint/paint protection film) installation.

Automotive Accessory Clients

Many smaller automotive accessory and tint/PPF install shops start in a similar fashion: the owner became a hub for friends and their social community as the garage installer for this group. Eventually, the hobbyist installer realizes that it can be converted into a business. At first, the business will grow as word of mouth and social media presence increase. The business's community consists of friends of clients, and social friends of clients. At some point, the simple word of mouth business will begin to slow, so new methods of client acquisition will need to be looked at.

Being in the automotive industry, you would hope some basic data is collected about the performed services (date of service, vehicle make/model, new/older vehicle, type of installation performed, location of the client, how they heard about your business, etc). Using this information, you can determine if there are patterns existing in your client-base and find your ideal client. This way, if you know your services to appeal to a specific group, your marketing time and be used wisely and effectively.

Data Collection

Collecting data seems like a strenuous task. However, a simple spreadsheet should be created for weekly, if not daily, updates. Much of the information you collect will not be client-specific, as you only need broad points of information to determine who your ideal client is. If clients do ask why you're asking for such information, just let them know it's for comparing which markets you're exceling in, and where there is room for improvement.

In addition, photos and videos should be taken of your installations and best practices. Via SNS (social network services aka social media), this will show potential clients the value your business provides. Some specific ideas will be noted in the "Specific Example" section below.

Data Analysis

Once the data is available, some analysis is needed to find any particular trends relating to when a client was booked, what make/model of vehicle was serviced, client location, referral source, et al. can be found. As more and more data is collected, your data model will become more reliable and prevalent to creating your ideal client profile.

Although internal client data is important, you will also need to look into data concerning the industry in your local service area. The simplest way is to see what your local competitors are doing. This will give insight into specific problems they are not able to solve and offer you another avenue to pursue if you are confident in your business's ability to fill this niche.

Creating your Ideal Client Profile

Once the trends in your client data are found, you will be able to create your ideal client profile. It is rough to explain the full process of this, but it will be detailed below, in the "Specific Example" section.

Marketing Plan

Once the Ideal Client Profile is found, you can create a marketing plan to attract more potential clients. If your analysis yielded that your main client-base consists of new Tesla models seeking paint protection film with 70% of your customers driving from within a 30 mile radius of your shop, you can brand yourself as a Tesla specialist. Your SNS posting should aim to engage these owners by showing your quality of work, best practices, and certain processes that make your business uniquely qualified to serve them.

Specific Example

One of my previous client's is in the tint/ppf business. His shop typically consists of 2-3 installers, including himself. His ideal goal is to be able to manage incoming quote requests while the 2 employees strictly work on installations. To realize this, he would need to generate enough business to keep both employees as busy as possible to maximize his net profit.

Unfortunately, he did not collect data on the type of work that has been completed, however, his social media did give a decent idea of the work and client type he's found in the past few years. I gathered as much data as I could from the SNS posts to find patterns. We found that roughly 25% of his business came from high-end clientele ($150k+ MSRP vehicles), while 25% came in from mid-level clientele (vehicle MSRP range of $65k to $130k vehicles), and the remaining 50% were from Tesla. Of course other vehicles are included in this range, but there was not enough pertinent information to reach a conclusion on the success of marketing to those clients. Our final strategy landed on aiming for 20% of posts regarding high and mid-level vehicle types each, with 50% focusing on the Tesla market and the remaining 10% focusing on other vehicle types that are serviced.

In addition, our external data review seems to have found issues with self-installation (ppf installation seems easy until you reach a strange curvature in body lines, and also film cut marks). This points to some self-installers, or competitors, not providing quality work.

With the internal and external factors now analyzed, we chose to market high shop's pride in completing installations without strange 'lifting' (where film adhesive did not properly adhere due to poor application) and cut mark issues. We also engaged in showing more Tesla installations, along with high-end installations. This was to garner more interest from Tesla owners, with the latter posts to display the trust that high-end vehicle owners have with the business.

Aside from that data, our collected data on SNS engagement also showed that particular video types were better received than others. This also led to occasional playful posts following current SNS trends to garner a more general audience. This helped build brand recognition amongst SNS followers. Although this doesn't guarantee additional business, it does open up a diverse SNS follower type that may provide additional word of mouth marketing. We also found that posts pertaining to "this week's sale" received the least engagement. In general, people do not like being sold to.

Many begin their business SNS journey with their own personality and style. This can be greatly successful for personal usage, but using data to focus your SNS strategy can help grow your business with your ideal client type.

Need help on figuring out who your business's ideal client is? Schedule a web meeting so we can discuss your business's unique situation and how to remanage your data analysis process for streamlined client acquisition.