How I Use "Ideal Customers" To Sell

The person you're talking to is all that matters.

If you’re creating content online, the person you’re talking to is all that matters. 

Whether you’re looking to educate someone or entertain them, their feedback is the only thing that defines whether you’re providing value or not. 

I can’t stress this enough: it’s not about you. You could be the most amazing horror writer — if you’re talking to romance readers, they’ll think you’re disgusting. 

The most important question you should ask yourself with every piece of content, with every product you develop and every service you offer is this: who is this for? 

If you ignore this, you’ll suffer. 

Not just in business, you’ll suffer in life. 

Wrong audience equals rejection. 

If you fall in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same way — rejection. If you interview for jobs that don’t match your skills or experience — rejection. 

If you pitch your offers to people who don’t find value in them, you’ll feel like you’re worthless; like this online business game wasn’t made for you. 

And you’ll probably give up too soon. 

Instead of giving up, all you have to do is zoom in on the people you’re talking to. But how do you know who they are? 

The big mistake solopreneurs make when they start is they confuse category with ideal customer. 

In my content, I talk to solopreneurs, so it’s easy to say that that’s my audience, but it isn’t. 

“Solopreneurs” is too broad of an audience to be effective in the context of selling. 

(And as you should know by now, everything is selling.) 

Instead, I view solopreneurship as a category, subcategory of entrepreneurship. 

Why categories should be broad. 

The category of solopreneurship gives me huge creative freedom. 

I could write about sales, marketing, productivity, writing, finances, personal growth. I could discuss trends in work, AI, or the crazy Super Bowl ad of Kanye West. 

The reason I chose this category was because I love solopreneurs. They’re the people I want to serve.

But when I think about my ideal customer, I go way deeper. 

Identifying your ideal customer. 

When I know my audience is made of “solopreneurs”, I can use that as a starting point. 

Do you have your starting point? Good! 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself every time you write a story, build a product or launch a service to go deeper into your ideal customer’s head. 

Development categories. 

How far along is the person you’re talking to? 

Are they aspiring to do what you share? Have they started? Maybe they’ve already achieved success but have a specific problem?

In my head, my audience is made of 3 groups of solopreneurs: aspiring, beginners and advanced. 

Let me give you an example with other categories. 

• If you’re writing about health, you have people who want to get healthier but have no idea how to go about it; people who have started to adopt some good habits but still need a lot of support; and people who live healthy lives but have a specific issue (for example, needs more variety in healthy recipes or wonders how to choose a forward-thinking doctor)

• If you’re writing about writing, you have people who want to write but have barely written since school; people who are writing but don’t know how to monetize it; and people who are monetizing it but want to earn more. 

What would be the development categories for your audience? 

Interest categories. 

What are their specific interests? 

Solopreneurs could be involved in any industry and sell offers of various pricing points. 

To make things easier, I’ve put my audience in 3 “interest” categories: content creators (mostly writers) who are looking to make money through posting content online; product developers — people who want to develop and sell products; service providers — solopreneurs who offer services. 

One person could be all three things, however, at any given moment, they’re usually focused on one of these categories. 

As they’re reading my content or buying my product at a specific moment in time, they still fall within one of those groups, and not in all 3 at the same time. 

Let’s apply this to the examples above: 

• If you’re writing about health, maybe you have people interested in healthy food; people interested in natural cures; people interested in mental health and so many more. Note: you don’t need to serve everyone. It’s okay to choose up to 3–4 groups of people and focus on them. 

• If you’re writing about writing, maybe you have people who want to write fiction; people who want to write online + non-fiction books; people who want to be copywriters. 

Problems or desires. 

What are their specific problems or desires? 

People who are aspiring to become solopreneurs don’t have problems. They’re not deep enough in the process yet to have problems. They have desires, and they need a map to get there. 

People who have already started working on their dreams have faced problems. They need specific solutions to these problems. 

Anytime you write or create a product, consider whether your ideal customer has a desire or a problem, and what that is. The more specific you could be, the better. 

You have multiple ideal customer avatars. Now what? 

As a result of this exercise, you should have a list of ideal customer avatars falling into certain categories. 

That’s the list you’ll work with for at least a year. 

With each: 

• Piece of content 

• Product 

• PDF guide 

• Funny story 

• Service offer…

…you create, think about the one ideal customer this is for. Narrow it down & build it for them. 

The more content, products and services you create, the more you’ll be able to test different avatars on how responsive they are to your work. 

Don’t rush into choosing one specific avatar to work with. In fact, I’d never narrow my business to just one type of solopreneur, although I’m beginning to get who are the most responsive people to my work. 

Knowing this gives me the following advantage: I can focus on that responsive group for a while, gain traction and use that traction to expand into other groups. 

Once I become a Substack bestseller or gain a certain amount of followers on Medium, this gives me the credibility to talk to (and sell to) more avatars. 

If you rush into choosing your avatar based on what you think would work best, you’ll probably make an error, hit a wall in your growth and risk giving up. 

That’s why it’s essential to give yourself time and find your ideal avatar by building intentionally. 

For everything you do, think about your audience.

Let me know if this sounds familiar. 

You see an article with a headline “5 surprising ways to stand out online”. If it’s “surprising” it’s clearly targeted at advanced users, no? It means they already know the unsurprising ways to stand out. 

Once you click on it, it’s filled with the most boring “stand out” advice ever — and most of it isn’t even effective anymore because the writer has found old information online. 

That’s not to say beginners won’t click to see the surprising ways to stand out, but if your headline is targeted at advanced users, your piece should be targeted at advanced users, and then your sales pitch should be targeted at advanced users. 

If not, people feel cheated and instead of clicking the follow button, they roll their eyes and click the X. 

Examples of how I use ideal customer awareness to sell. 

Example 1: My post “10X the value of your writing” was aimed at advanced users. They know how to write already; they struggle with being perceived as a high-value writer. Advanced users need more personal attention to grow. That’s why I used this post to sell my limited-time coaching call offer. 

Here’s the result: 

Example 2: My post “Here’s the problem” was aimed at aspiring/beginning solopreneurs who still struggle to choose what type of a solopreneur they want to be. I figured beginners need clarity more than anything else, so I sold my paid subscription by paywalling my Solopreneur Assessment. It shows you what type of solo business to build based on what type of person you are. 

Here’s the result: 

What else can you do to make your sales pitch super-converting? 

This month in Smarter Solopreneurs is all about sales. 

With the holiday season coming, if you know how to sell your offers, you may well change your life in just a few months. 

To help you do it, I’ve scheduled a Sell Anything Webinar that’ll happen on 26th of September, 1pm on the East Coast; 6pm in UK.

You’ll learn: 

• The step-by-step process of selling (anything) effectively 

• How to develop offers that drive people crazy 

• Even more tricks on finding your audience 

The live session and a replay will be available for paid subs only. To get your invitation for the event, consider becoming a paid subscriber for just $6.90 per month.