104: Niching Down Your Ideal Customer Can Improve Your Visibility

Identifying your ideal customer is not a one and done. It's something we need to be tweaking and getting clearer about in our business on a regular basis. Today, I want you to gain some more clarity on who this person is and how you gain visibility in the online space. Come listen.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Hey y'all, welcome back to the Launch a Box podcast. I'm having a great day today and I can't wait to share another great episode with you, but I wanna give a quick shout out to someone that gave me just a great review here on the podcast. And I want you to know that your reviews help me stay on the charts. So if you haven't had an opportunity to give me a quick review, just grab your phone, hit review, give me a little review. I would appreciate it so much. But Cooper1234567891011 left this review. Love the username, by the way. But it said, just starting out with my subscription idea and so glad that I found you. I love the ideas and the best practices. I'm at the point where I don't know what I don't know, and this podcast has given me information I haven't even thought about. So thank you for that. I am glad. I'm going to give you some more thought-provoking content today. We're talking about niching down your ideal customer can improve your visibility. Now that seems technical. We're going to break it down in really simple language, and I want you to think about, even if you've already started your business, I want you to think about your ideal customer. And I'm going to challenge you a little bit today in your thinking about niching down, because it's going to help so, so much in the things that we're going to continue to do to grow our businesses. But this month inside Launch Your Box, We have been talking about SEO all month. We've been doing trainings on SEO. We've been talking about the tech side of SEO. We've been having a lot of conversations about it and how it can help you grow your subscription box business. If you're not a part of Launch Your Box and you wanna join us and catch all that information, just head over to launchyourbox.com. You'll see it right there on that page. You can join us. But when we talk about SEO, it's really about improving your visibility. And it goes hand in hand with knowing who your ideal customer is. And so we're gonna just drill down on your ideal customer today. The more that we can niche down, the better we can be at messaging, at copy, at SEO. I'm gonna help you understand why that's really, really important for your business. A couple weeks ago on a Facebook Live, I was giving you 10 truth bombs that I want you to focus on in your business, and I'm gonna bring one of those up right now because we're gonna focus on them inside Luncherbox all year, but I want to bring one of those up today because I want you to understand it fully. One of the truth bombs that I laid on everyone a few weeks ago was 20% of your customer base generates 80% of your revenue. Okay, let me repeat that. 20% of your customer base generates 80% of your revenue. Stop trying to please everyone. Stop it. What if we just got clear on who that 20% were and we focused all of our efforts on them? What if we did that in our business? There are so many things that we could just get rid of that we're spending a lot of time doing that aren't producing any results. We could stop worrying about being more general and get specific on who we're for. We could really hone in to who our customer is and deliver high-quality description boxes, high-quality content, and serve them in a way that we couldn't before because we were trying to go too broad. 20% of your customer base generates 80% of your revenue. I just want you to think about that, and I want you to think about how many times you go out of your way to do one thing for somebody or do one thing for a couple people and how much time, effort, and energy that takes. And what does that take away from that 20% that generates the 80% of the revenue? You're taking away your focus every time you try to please somebody that maybe isn't your ideal customer. So I wanna dig in a little bit and I want to refresh. If you already feel like you know who your ideal customer is, I want you just to listen. I want you to refresh your thinking on this. If you're brand new to business and you wanna get started, This is one of the first pieces that I want you to understand about your business because it's really important and it will drive everything else you do in your business. So I wanna talk about how to identify your ideal customer. You can't really skip this step in your business and expect to grow. Okay, maybe you've been struggling to grow. It could be because you're too broad or you haven't clearly identified who this person is, but it's the way that we audience build. That's number one important, but it's also the way that we continue to provide value and content and curation for our subscription box subscribers. So you gotta know who you wanna attract. For me, I always think about like if I was walking in somewhere and I could say hey to the woman in the grocery store and we just got each other, that's the person that I wanna attract to my business. And so that's what we have to figure out. Who is the person? If you've been in business for any length of time, you probably have an idea of who your ideal customer is. For me, that person walked into my store. I got to know them. I identified who that person was, and ultimately I continued to buy product for that person because I had established a business. I could see who that person was, but how much did I really know about them? And if you're just getting started, it's even harder because you might not even have an idea of who your ideal customer is yet. So I want you to think about who is it that you want to serve? Okay. We have to love what we do because you're gonna have a lot of hard days. You're gonna struggle through a lot of challenges. And so we have to love what we do and we have to be able to understand who our customer is. And so for a lot of us, our ideal customer is us. It's okay if it's not you, but you're gonna be further along if it is you. So we're gonna start with 4 different ways that we can break down who, how to identify our ideal customer. So the first one is just who this is. This is basics. Is it a male or female? How old are they? Are they single, married, divorced, widowed? Like what does their life status look like? Do they have children? Do they have grandchildren? What is their income level? I want you to think about all those, and it might not be as clear as you think it needs to be, but when you start to think about this person, I want you to ask those questions. Okay, my ideal customer is female. They are typically 35 to 55, and I say that because you have to have kind of an established income to purchase a higher-end box. And not that my box is $100 or anything, but this is not something that they need. This is something extra, and it is not cheap. Okay? So for me, that person's a little bit more established in their life and in their career. They could be single, married, divorced, widowed. That doesn't matter in my subscription box. They could be any of those. They probably have children. So for me, this is probably someone that has children or grandchildren. And I say that because my ideal customer typically doesn't do a lot for themselves. And so they treat themselves to my box. I know that they probably have children or grandchildren and their income level, it has to be kind of an established income level to be able to afford my box. So when we start to think about those, that's just kind of the basics. Of who this person is starting to be. And once you've nailed down those basics, we're going to get a little bit more specific. So I told you my ideal customer is female, so it's a woman. Yours could be a teen, yours could be a young adult, yours could be in her 20s. So think about what type of woman. You can't just say I'm for all women. It's too broad. Okay. So I just told you, I think that my female ideal customer is probably a mom, and she's probably a busy mom and doesn't have time to do a lot for herself. She might be a career-oriented person. She might work outside of the home. So that, that's the type of person that I want to attract. If you think about just the term busy mom, I want you to take it further. Like, what kind of busy mom is she? A busy mom of toddlers? Is she a busy mom of teenagers? Is she a busy mom who's a teacher? All moms are busy, right? But get specific about who she is. Who is your ideal customer? I want you to think about those basic level things you probably already thought about, but let's take it to that next step. And go a little deeper with that person. The next thing I want you to think about is geographically, where does this customer live? Okay, the benefit of a subscription box or having an e-commerce business is that your subscribers could live anywhere that you're willing to ship to. So they could live all over the country. But let's think about your ideal customer and where that person lives and what that means. Okay, they have different habits, they have different buying habits, they live in different climates. Do they live in heavily populated areas? What resources or other stores do they have access to? So those are the things that I wanna think about as I'm curating my boxes for the year, because I have clothing in them, different colors of things like if I had You know, a huge portion of my clientele lived in New York. Everything that I'm putting in my subscription box better be black, right? If I'm in, you know, beachy areas, it's more light colors. So I want you to think about that when you're kind of honing down to where your customer lives. For me, my ideal customer is probably Southern, and it doesn't mean that I don't have customers or subscribers in every state of the US, because I do. But if you looked at my top 20% of my customers, they all live in a southern state. And that is huge, because instead of me trying to curate a box for anyone in the US at any time, I focus my efforts on the southern busy mom. And what they would like. Because what someone that lives in Alabama loves might be different than what someone that lives in Michigan. They might actually have the same taste. Cool, they're— they— that Michigan person is perfect for me. But I don't want to try to be for everyone because it's going to be bland and it's going to be generalized and it's not going to be the specific niche that I wanna target. I won't be able to talk to everyone in the way that I would want to. So geographically, that's kind of the next thing is like, where do most of your customers live? And you might not know this because you might have launched yet, and that's okay. You're gonna start to figure it out. So it means you can be a little bit general in the beginning, and when you start to see who is subscribing, you can niche down further. And see where these pockets of people are that are your subscribers. Where's the biggest section of the country that your subscribers live in? And that's kind of where you want to focus. Now, the next thing that I want you to think about is their interests. So we talk about the basics, like just general basic things. We've talked about geographically, where do they live? I want you to think about what their their interests are. As you get to know them, I want you to dig into things that interest them, that light them up. And social media is a great place to research and find this information. If you go into your social media accounts and you look at your 10 best customers— so say you're selling stuff, maybe you don't have a subscription box, maybe you have a subscription box— but I want you to look at your 10 best customers and what could you learn about those 10 people. You could pull out a spreadsheet. You could pull out a piece of paper and a pen, and you could start to write some things down. But I want you to see who do they follow aside from you. Who do they follow on social media? Jot a few things down. Um, where do they hang out? So what groups have they joined? Who are they hanging out with? And I want you to look for common interests among these 10 people. And you can use that information to engage and connect with more potential subscribers. All right. So I want you to do some research. Now, if you're brand new and you don't have your top 10 customers, I want you to take a look at people that follow you and engage with your content. So the people that maybe are your best engagers or your best followers on your social media page. Kind of dig into their social media pages. If they're not private, you can kind of see things. You can always look at their about info, just get a feel for who this person is, where they hang out, what they're interested in. Okay, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. So that's number 3. These are like 4 ways to kind of help you identify and niche down for your ideal customer. So number 4, is what are their challenges and pain points. You've got to determine their challenges and their pain points of that ideal customer, because identifying these right away will help you curate an amazing box and a great experience for your subscribers. So the question that you need to answer is, does my product or box solve the challenges and pain points of my ideal customer? And you might feel like me. I, I felt like this for, I wanna say, like the first year that I had my subscription box. I just felt like, well, my box doesn't solve problems. It's just fun. It's just cute and fun and trendy, and it doesn't really solve anyone's problems. Like, it's not like a gluten-free subscription box that solves the problem of people being able to find gluten-free products. It's not, you know, something like that. Okay. But what I realized was that it does solve problems because people were telling me things that I didn't realize were their pain points. And one of those was, I'm so grateful that I can get a subscription box in a size 3X because there weren't many subscription boxes that people could get clothing in larger sizes. And so with my t-shirt club, I go from small to 3X. So that was a pain point for a big chunk of my subscribers. I have 2X and 3X sizing that really they couldn't find other places. So that was a pain point that I saw right away emerge with just some feedback that I was getting, like, thank you so much for carrying 3X, I always have problems finding things to wear. Pain point number 1. Pain point number 2 came from more comments, and it was like, oh my gosh, I love how you create a subscription box and put everything together. I never know what to wear with my items. So sometimes a subscription box would have like a t-shirt and maybe a cardigan and a pair of earrings or a bracelet or a bag, and it all went together. I carefully picked out the pieces that went together for them, so they didn't have to figure it out. They weren't trendy. They weren't keeping up on the styles. They didn't know how to put stuff together. They just got it, and they loved how everything went together. And that was a pain point that I didn't realize people had, because in my mind I do that so easily. That's why I'm good at curating my subscription box. But I didn't realize that that was a challenge for women to be able to pick out stuff that paired well with each other to go together. And so what they do is they don't shop because they don't know what to get or how to wear it together. So that was a pain point I was solving as well. Another pain point that emerged from just comments that I was receiving on social media and email was the ability to get products that weren't near them. Okay, so I saw really quickly when I started to grow that I was growing in smaller towns, and I thought it was weird because I'm from probably a medium-sized town. I'm a couple hours away from Dallas, which is huge, and so I'm, I'm a couple hours away from that, but there are these tiny little towns near me, and they've been following me. They probably came to my brick and mortar store when they came to town, because that's what we say in the South. We'd go to town to go get our groceries or to go shop or go to Walmart, whatever. So they probably swung by my store and that's how they got to know me and they were becoming subscribers. And then I would see little pockets of subscribers in these small towns because one person from that town subscribed. And if you're from a small town, like I'm from a small town in the Texas Panhandle, like you just know everybody, right? Like everybody knows everybody. Like, oh, that's cute. Where'd you get that? Oh, I got it from here. I'm a subscriber. You can get one of these boxes every single month. They didn't have stores like that in those small towns. And so I saw this emerge of a lot of small towns having these pockets of subscribers everywhere, and I thought it was very interesting. It was a pain point. They didn't have the resources in the stores that larger towns have. We can go anywhere and buy anything most of the time, especially if you live in a city like Dallas or a metropolitan area. You could just go get what you want whenever you want it. I was creating this convenience of all those things that I talked about— curating pieces that went together, having sizes small to 3X, and I was just going to deliver it to you. You didn't have to go into town to get it. You didn't have to go shop somewhere if you didn't want to. And so these were pain points that kind of emerged for me when I thought, I don't really solve anyone's problem, but I actually did. And it actually came from comments and feedback that I got from my subscribers. So I want you to think about And as I was learning that, I started to lean into that messaging. Okay, so now I want to make sure when I'm on social media, I tell them regularly that you can get this up to size 3X. People need to see that. My new customers, they need to see that. I need to make sure that I'm talking about the size 3X in my sales page on my website, because if somebody is searching for a size specific thing, they're going to find me because I carry their size. Okay, so though that's how you use your ideal customer's information to really get in front of more people. These were pain points I was solving. And so I want you to think about that. If you could niche down, not be for all people, understand geographically where people live and what their interests might be And then you really understand their pain points. You're just talking to this person that's gonna find you easier and faster, and they're gonna just fall in love with what you do because it's for them. It's not for everyone, it's for them. And so that's what I want you to think about. And if you're sitting here listening right now and you've been in business and you, you have your ideal customer figured out, I want you to consider who your top customers are and what makes them different than your other customers. And are there similarities in your top customers that you could lean into further to attract more people like them? So I want you to do that now. And also, I want to talk a little bit about how you can bring this ideal customer into your world. The goal is traffic to your website, right? Traffic to your website, convert them to being a subscriber, retaining them. Traffic, conversions, attention. Those are the 3 buckets that we, we need to operate our business by. So how do we get them to come to our website? Okay, that's our traffic. We got to get them to get to know us. We have to make sure that they understand that we can solve their pain points and that we are like them. Like, they're like BFFs. Like, we're hanging out together, we're going having margaritas together, chips and queso afternoon. Yes, I'm there. That's the customer that we want. So the goal would be to hang out in common Facebook groups, maybe offering advice, engaging in conversation. You'll be seen as a resource and people will look further into what you do. Now, the key point there is you gotta put your business in your about section. There's so many people that don't do that. And I'm like, why don't you do that? If you're gonna have conversations with people on social media, they have to know where you're coming from. They have to know how to find you. They have to know what you're selling if you want them to come into your world. And it could just be as simple as you engaging in a Facebook conversation— me about monograms— and I dropped some knowledge that they had not heard about, or I shared something, or I shared a picture of something, and then now they're going to my About section looking to see what I do, and bam! They found my website, and bam, they found my Instagram page, and now they're in my world. That's how we get our ideal customer to hang out with us. Okay, we need to speak their language in all of our posts and videos and emails. I've told y'all the story about how I was afraid to say y'all on a Facebook Live for a long time, almost embarrassed by it now because I just say y'all like it's another word, but I thought it made me sound unprofessional and I was worried about that. So I was very proper on a Facebook Live or any video that I did. And I realized that number one, that wasn't who I was and that wasn't who I was trying to attract either. So once I released myself of that burden, I was just speaking their language like, hey y'all, what are we wearing today? And I started to talk to them as if they were my friends in my emails, in my posts, in my videos. And when you connect with who they are and how they feel, they will be attracted to you. So are you speaking their language? And then the other thing, you know, we talked about those interests— what Facebook groups are they in, what other pages do they like? We can target other interests on our social media ads. So we can say, oh, my customers also like this, Let me target those customers too, and you're gonna get more of that same person. Finally, and this is probably the most important way that you can bring traffic to your site, is that you've gotta serve before you sell. Okay? Such an important part of building this know, like, and trust factor. You have to create value before you start asking for a commitment for them. To become a subscriber. Like, you're asking for a commitment. Like, it's not even a first date that you're asking for. You're asking for a relationship. It's not like, hey, do you want to go have coffee with me? No. Hey, I want your credit card and I'm going to charge it every single month. Okay, we're skipping our first date. We're just in a full-fledged relationship when they become a subscriber. So we have to figure out how they can get to know us so it doesn't feel like a blind date. Okay, it's a weird analogy, but that's what I'm going with today. So I want you to think about ways that you can bring in your ideal customer into your world, and that's serving. And that could be video content, it could be blog content, it could be opt-ins, it could be posts that are helpful to your audience. How do we serve them before we ask them to be in a relationship with I want you to think about those things because if we can niche down and really, really identify our ideal customer better than we are today, we're gonna improve our visibility. And if we can improve our visibility, we can create great SEO keywords, add 'em to our site, our messaging, our copy, everything. We'll have more people attracted to what we're doing. Will be able to serve them in a better way. And just like I talked about in the beginning, you're going to reap the benefit of that because 20% of your customer base generates 80% of your revenue. Focus on that 20% and stop trying to be for everyone. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launch launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.