- I got this question on LinkedIn the other day.
This guy's been sending emails, he's getting no response,
he just started his agency, and his question is,
"Who's my ideal client?
"How do I identify my ideal client?"
Today, I want to go through three ways to do that.
First, let's talk a little bit about what we're doing.
The reason you want to identify
the ideal client in your business is,
once you find that ideal client that works for you,
you're going to get a lot more revenue,
you're going to make them a lot more happy,
and you're going to get a lot more referrals.
So it all comes together.
For x27, our ideal client is agencies,
and we found that through a few steps.
So number one is look at your case studies.
This is something we've talked about a lot
in previous videos, but when x27 first started,
we had just come off a project
at the agency I was working at
where we had built a website for a major non-profit,
so my initial try at cold email to find customers
was this email to non-profits,
and I'll throw the email up right now, here it is.
So that's the simplest way to find your ideal client.
Who did you work with in the past
that you made the most money on,
and who did you deliver the most value for,
than using that and stretching it out
to become your ideal client.
The second way to find your ideal client
is to think about the opportunity.
Who has money?
And then trying to work backwards from there.
So identifying your customer first,
and then coming up with a problem to solve second.
This is what I originally did when I got into business,
I realized there was a lot of money
being raised in Silicon Valley and New York,
so I pitched a bunch of software as a service companies
to try to get a job in either of those markets,
and went where the opportunity was,
realized that all businesses need to make more money,
meaning marketing, so pitched myself
as a marketing person to these companies,
and that cold emailing got me a job
two weeks after I moved to New York City.
So for you, finding your ideal client
could be thinking about who has the money.
For instance, if you're in India,
like this guy was who reached out,
maybe the opportunity's not in India,
maybe the opportunity's in the United States,
and actually one of the things we talked about was
he was already going towards the US
but only going towards New York,
where I was pushing him
to look at some of these other cities in the United States.
Lots of companies are out of Dallas, Raleigh,
Boston, Chicago, like, there's all these other cities
in the United States, St. Louis is another good one,
where there's opportunity
and they're not filled with competition.
And then the final way
to find your ideal client is passion.
What companies do you want to be working with?
What sort of work do you want to be doing?
And the reason why I made this number three
instead of one or two is,
a lot of people have a hard time
deciding what their passion is.
I know for me, I had a hard time
for a very long time, until I realized,
if you make a commitment to something,
let's say your passion is food,
so you want to sell to restaurants.
Even though I've said a million times
don't sell to restaurants,
that's your passion, you want to sell there.
If you're hesitating at all, the thing that helps me is
even though this is your choice right now,
that doesn't mean you're going to be selling
to restaurants in six years.
It doesn't even mean you're going to be selling
to restaurants in 30 days,
it's just something to test.
The way to test these markets,
and we might go more in depth in another video,
let me know down in the comments,
but it's picking like four or five,
and then sending cold emails to each one
over the course of, let's say, two weeks each,
to figure out which of the markets that you want to go after
are most receptive to your pitch, and then going that way.
So even if you're super passionate
about restaurants right now,
you might find out, and based on my experience,
you probably will find out,
that they don't want to buy from you,
and so you'll be forced to go into another one.
The reason why I started working in agencies
was because I was watching the show Mad Men
and really liked what they were doing.
I had a passion for agency work,
and I also wanted to work with global brands,
like Power Rangers, or Tyson,
or something where people could see or mention the brand,
and then I could see the billboard and be like,
"Hey, that's our client."
I wanted that feeling, and I got it.
That's passion.
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Thanks.