In Part 1 we mapped the customer journey — the path from stranger to loyal buyer. But there’s a question we have to answer before we touch a single marketing tactic: who exactly are we guiding along that path?
It sounds obvious, yet it’s the step most business owners skip — and it’s why so much marketing money gets wasted. If you’re talking to “everyone,” you’re really talking to no one. So let’s fix that foundation: knowing your customer.
📢 This is Part 2 of my “Get Customers Online” series. A 10-part, plain-English guide to digital marketing for business owners. You can see every part of the series here — bookmark it and follow along.
Why “everyone” is the wrong answer
When I ask a business owner “who’s your customer?”, the most common answer is “anyone who needs what I sell.” I understand the instinct — you don’t want to turn business away. But here’s the trap: marketing aimed at everyone is bland, generic, and forgettable. Marketing aimed at a specific person is sharp, relatable, and persuasive.
When you know exactly who you’re talking to, everything downstream gets easier and cheaper: your ads reach the right people, your website speaks their language, your content answers their real questions, and your offers actually land. Targeting isn’t about excluding people — it’s about being magnetic to the right ones.
Build a simple customer profile
You don’t need a 30-page market-research report. You need a clear, honest picture of your ideal customer — sometimes called a “customer persona.” Answer these questions about the person you most want to serve:
- Who are they? Age, location, job, income, family — the basics that shape their world.
- What problem are they trying to solve? The actual pain that makes them look for something like you.
- What do they care about? Price? Speed? Quality? Trust? Convenience? Status?
- What’s holding them back? Their fears, doubts, and objections about buying.
- Where do they hang out? Google? Instagram? LinkedIn? Local Facebook groups? This tells you where to market.
Write the answers down as if you’re describing one real person. Give them a name if it helps. “Busy Sarah, 38, runs a clinic, hates wasting time, lives on her phone” is infinitely more useful than “women aged 25–55.”
Where to find the real answers
The best part: you don’t have to guess. The information is usually right in front of you:
- Talk to your existing customers. Ask why they chose you and what almost stopped them. Gold lives in those answers.
- Read your reviews — yours and your competitors’. People tell you exactly what they value and what frustrates them.
- Check the questions you get asked over and over by email or phone. Each one is a marketing message waiting to happen.
- Look at your analytics (we’ll cover these in Part 9) to see who’s actually visiting and buying.
⚠️ Don’t invent your customer from your imagination. It’s tempting to describe the customer you wish you had, or to assume everyone thinks like you. Base your profile on real conversations and real data instead. The market doesn’t care about our assumptions — and the gap between “who I think buys” and “who actually buys” is where budgets go to die.
Speak to one person, reach many
Once you have a clear profile, use it as a filter for every marketing decision. Before you publish a post, run an ad, or write a page, ask: “Would this resonate with Busy Sarah?” If yes, go. If not, rework it. That single habit will sharpen everything you do.
And don’t worry — speaking directly to your ideal customer doesn’t repel everyone else. It just makes the right people feel like you get them. That feeling is what turns a browser into a buyer.
🚀 Your action this week: Write a one-paragraph profile of your single best type of customer — who they are, the problem they have, what they care about, and what holds them back. Pin it above your desk. Every marketing decision from here on gets measured against that person.
What’s next in the series
Now that you know who you’re talking to, it’s time to help them find you. In Part 3, I’ll break down SEO — how to get found on Google when your ideal customer searches for what you offer. Follow the full series here.
Struggling to define — or reach — your ideal customer? Getting that targeting right is where every campaign I run begins. See how I can help — or just reach out and say hi.
