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Lesson Info

Find Your Ideal Customer

Your ideal customer is always asking, what's in it for me? And Your Ideal Customer isn't something that I put into this presentation, it is something I really dive into in Copywriting for Crafters. But the idea of Your Ideal Customer is a fictional profile of a person that has the same tastes and the same interests, and there's a lot of questions that go along with that. In the purchase materials I included a workbook that will help you work out that ideal customer for yourself, and I've discussed it before, so I didn't want to take up too much of our time here today. When I say Your Ideal Customer I mean a fictional profile that matches your brand, matches your taste, matches your style point and wants to hear that message that you keep sending. They are gonna be the perfect receptor for the brand message that you're sending. And I will say this again, but there is as much to know about your ideal customer as there is your best friend or your spouse. There is always more to know, ther...

e is always more to love and respect, there is always more to be careful of as you learn their personality, just like you would any good friendship. The ideal customer is something that will evolve with you over time, and I feel very fortunate after five years of working with ideal customers that I get them, that we know each other and that there's a mutual respect that we both get a lot of, we both get a lot out of that relationship. So your ideal customer is always asking, what's in it for me? And more so in the very beginning when you're just getting to know each other, they want to know, what's in it for me? And they don't really want to know very much about you, and I'm not trying to offend anybody, but they don't. They're more focused on them, themselves, as we all are. When we go shopping we're shopping for ourselves. We're not trying to do any sellers any favors, we're not trying to buy a product because somebody's listed it online, we are shopping for ourselves and that's where you meet your buyer, so it's really important, please. I'm wondering if all of that, like, inward-facing copywriting that's happening is because as makers we're told that people wanna know your story, they wanna know about you, they wanna know your process, and I feel like that's where a lot of that is coming from. Absolutely. And I contribute to one of those. I wrote a blog post that is one of my most popular, it's called Five Etsy Myths That Are Ruining Your Business. Yeah. That's one of them, that the customer really is there invested in you. And that's not true because the customer doesn't even know you yet, they haven't even met you yet. And I think that gives us a false sense of, you know, self-centerness, self-importance, and that's not there, and just as you know, you've gone shopping, you're not coming to say, I would love to know more about this seller before I buy this product. You're thinking about your own needs and you're thinking about what's in it for me. But it's definitely I think a myth that has perpetuated because of the Etsy marketplace, absolutely. Do you think that that language and that type of copywriting does live, I mean can live in your About Me section? Of course. It belongs there, by all means. Because if you think about the momentum of that relationship and you think about why the buyer starts to go to About Me, it's because they fall in love. They're thinking you're everything, you're a perfect match. I'm in love with the aesthetic, I'm in love with the styling, I'm in love with your price point, and I wanna spend a lot of time with you. And then they're coming to learn a little bit more about you. And the About Me is right there to capture that and help currency for that relationship to grow stronger, and also for them to connect with you offline - I'm sorry, off Etsy, in a way, 'cause they're gonna start looking for your social media accounts and things like that. But yeah, you know, I think, if Etsy was a brand, so this is why I think that myth took off. If Etsy was a brand, it is a brand. Etsy's three adjectives are like handmade, authentic, makers, so we're getting a lot of advice off Etsy, and they're telling us, you know, they're gonna tell us what any business would tell us - build the brand. So they're saying, tell the maker's story. It's because for Etsy and Etsy's business, it's all about the maker's story. But for your business and your product listing it's not the best choice. And I think that's important to separate the two. So, that ideal customer is asking, what's in it for me? That's how we go shopping. We're really thinking about ourselves the whole time. And everything we are going to work on throughout this session, not just what we worked on today, but also in the market, your Etsy Shop To Sold Out Success, and Advertising Your Creative Business, it's serving to answer that question, what's in it for me? From the buyer's perspective. So our marketing is gonna be also very focused in how we're serving the customer. We're going to stay there. And with everything you're building, I like to just keep asking myself, or sharing online or posting or whatever, "What's in it for them?" when I post this. 'Cause sometimes people get a little bit caught up and they just start posting or they feel like they wanna say something, so they'll say anything and they keep saying things that aren't really relevant or consistent to the brand message. So it's a good rule of thumb to kind of question, if I post this what's in it for them, what are they gonna get out of it? And sometimes it is about you, especially on social media. Sometimes you're giving them a piece of your personality, and people enjoy that. And so, yeah, that can be sprinkled in, absolutely. So not to say that your social media starts going strictly by the book, strictly the brand message, sprinkle in more about you, because if they're paying that much attention on social media they definitely want to know more about you. And but try to have that kind of in the back of your mind. Try to have a good reason for every share that you make, every offer that you give, or any request that you make, make sure it's something that is going, that there's something in it for them. And I really like my emails to have purpose like that. I don't like to email my customers unless I have a very strong answer to what's in it for them whenever I send this out. Again, we're gonna talk about emails and things like that in Market Your Etsy Shop To Sold Out Success. The ideal customer has a buying thermometer. And this is a really interesting point too that I think we don't think about very often, but everything that you do is either warming them up to the sale or cooling them off. So in a product listing it's something that I think is very important in copywriting, as you're leading them through it, remember, you're joining them in their mind, in their mental dressing room. You are either warming them to the sale by helping them, enhancing their vision, telling them the benefits, or you're cooling them off and turning them off and saying, "You aren't for me after all." So they have a buying thermometer, and you wanna also be careful. Answering "what's in it for me?" keeps that buying thermometer hot, keeps their temperature warm. Regardless of whether you're building a storefront or you're building a marketing campaign, the customer wants to know things like, what will this product add to my life? That's something very general that they're thinking, like, when I bring this home what am I going to bring it home? What's it gonna look like when I'm wearing it? What's it gonna look like when I hang it on my wall? Those type of things. How will it feel? They're thinking of, especially online, they get to start thinking the textures, they want to kind of know, you know, the weight, the quality of it all. And how will I benefit from this purchase? And just to go - oh wait - "how will I benefit from this purchase?" means, a lot of times we're looking for a solution when we go shopping online. So if I'm shopping jewelry, I'm not typically just shopping jewelry, I'm looking for a piece to enhance something that I'm gonna wear. And so the question becomes, if I buy that, is it gonna go into my pile of unused, unworn things that don't really match my taste and style, 'cause I like shiny things and I bring it home without really questioning it. Or is it gonna be a new beloved piece in my closet? Is it really gonna be used and worn? And they're always thinking that too. Am I bringing home the answer? You know, am I gonna bring home something that's gonna add to my quality of life and really matter? And of course they're thinking things like, how big is it, can they get a sense of scale? They probably want safety pins. (laughs) In the picture is where you can - no. (laughs) Nobody knows how big a shirt is or what it's gonna look like on them unless there's a safety pin laying beside of it. Just a joke. But (laughs) But make sure that the photograph is giving them a good sense of scale. Make sure the listing in the Product Features is giving them a good idea of how big it is or how heavy it is or those important factors of the listing. And always remember that they're imagining it. When you're talking to them in the product listing, you're talking to them at a place where they are imagining bringing it home and putting it to use. So you wanna give them a good reason to do that. You wanna help them do that. More importantly, and as I said before, the number one thing, is this going to deliver the results that I'm looking for? Or will I be stuck with the same challenge? The example that always comes to my mind when I think about delivering results or getting stuck with a challenge is when I'm trying to decorate a wall in my home and I'm trying to art together. For me there's no better place to search for art or look or shop for art than Etsy. I love it for the art and the artists that are on there and all of the different creative options that I have. However, I have bought photographs from Etsy photographers, and then they come home and they're floating on my wall, because I didn't size it right and, you know, and then they turn into a wasted pile somewhere that I don't know what to do with, and you gotta be really careful. So I love when sellers, like we had said before, show mock-ups of that product. Show me really how big on a wall, 'cause I need to know is it gonna be floating and make no sense, is it gonna cost me a lot more problems 'cause now I have to find things to match around it, which is a lot of work if you've ever done that type of thing. Or is it gonna solve it and really give me a beautiful wall that people are gonna admire, that I'm gonna enjoy looking at every day? And that's what the customer wants from you. ...came out and (mumbles) says, "How do you define your ideal customer when you haven't really sold many items? Do you think of them as someone you know and you'd like them to buy or simply some fictional character?" And you have a workbook, right, that is for purchase, (mumbles) about guiding people through these questions they can ask themselves and pinpointing their ideal customer. Yeah, I sure do. And at first it starts out as a fictional character. It absolutely does. Before you get a lot of customers it's always gonna start out as a fictional profile that you're gonna build out over time. And the workbook that I've placed with the purchase of this class really helps with that because it's gonna help you build it online. And then as you get actual customers you'll find that your actual customers give you things to smile about or that you'll have an interaction with a customer that you are so proud of it, 'cause you think, "That's what my customers are like?" And then when you're doing that those are notes for your ideal customer because you want to always be finding more people like them. But it does start out as guesswork in the beginning, and you're just kind of thinking, I have a product, and you know your product better than anybody. Who is looking for this product, and what are they like? And you go through the basic set of questions. And you know, we've always, advertising and marketing started out as a very demographic-based thing. Old advertising, old marketing was about, how old are you? You know, they did those age brackets - 18 to 24, 25 to 34 - it used to be very demographic. Where do you live? You're either married or you're not married, and that's how we were advertised to, we were a mass market. That has evolved greatly so that now it's more about intra-space because we use things like Facebook and we tell it the TV shows we like and we tell it, you know, that we have children at this school or that we went to this college. We tell Facebook and things like that so much that demographic-based marketing is outdated. And so when you're building your ideal customer you start to more think about interests and where am I going to touch them? And I'm gonna show you how that plays out beautifully for your marketing campaign in Market Your Etsy Shop.