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Contributed article | October 2021

Your clients are the backbone of your business. After all, without them, you wouldn’t be a business at all!

That’s why it’s so important to make sure that your client is considered in everything that you do. From operations to human resources to your marketing, your client needs to be front and center.

With all of the moving parts that come with running a business, however, clients can certainly get lost in the mix. (It happens to the best of us!) If you’re wanting to make sure your client gets the attention they deserve, it’s time to solidify who your ideal client is and create an Ideal Client Avatar to keep your marketing efforts both streamlined and effective.

What Is An Ideal Client?

Your ideal client is the person whose problem your business solves. But beyond that, your ideal client is the person that you want to work with—over and over again! Heck, you’d take 100 of these clients because they probably remind you of why you started your business in the first place.

As a pet sitter or dog walker, it can be really tempting to declare your ideal client as a pet owner in your service area and call it a day. But the truth about your ideal client is that they are meant to be a really specific subset of people.

Think about it. The pet owners within your service area are likely from different backgrounds, are different ages, are at different income levels, have different careers, etc.

You want to find your ‘sweet spot’. Who is the type of person you want to work with every single day, over and over again? Who fuels you up?

Not sure who your perfect, dreamy client is? That can certainly be tough to figure out. Let’s walk through creating your Ideal Client Avatar together!

How To Create Your Ideal Client Avatar

Just like a mannequin in a department store helps us determine whether or not an outfit is our cup of tea, your Ideal Client Avatar serves as a handy reference.

When creating your Ideal Client Avatar you want to think about a variety of things: demographics, interests, frustrations, fears, goals, values, etc. The more you know about your ideal client, the better (and we’ll get into that shortly).

Compile all of your ideal client’s information into a document and keep it somewhere so that you can easily reference it. But don’t stop there. It can help to also visualize your person. You can find a random photo of someone online or even draw a photo of what your ideal client looks like. Then, you can keep that photo near your desk so every time you sit down to write your marketing content, you know precisely who you’re speaking to.

Marketing To Your Ideal Client

Building your Ideal Client Avatar isn’t just a fun, cathartic business exercise. It’s also a valuable tool for marketing your business.

If you have some ideal clients on your pet-sitting roster right now, congratulations! But let’s not stop there. Marketing is an ongoing thing. To bring in new clients and keep up consistent income, it’s important to continuously market your business.

But thankfully, with an Ideal Client Avatar set in stone, all of your marketing tasks have gotten a whole lot easier! Whenever you’re writing a social-media post, drafting an email, or creating any other marketing content for your pet-sitting business, refer to that Ideal Client Avatar. Think about who your ideal client is and what makes them choose you. What’s the problem they have that you solve? What sets you apart in their eyes? Use that information to your advantage!

Learning Facts & Figures About Your Ideal Client

Dreaming up your ideal client is totally great, but sometimes you just want to look at some facts and figures. After all, they don’t lie.

Existing Clients Can Be Ideal Clients

First, you want to take your existing client management system and grab as much information from it as you can. Weed out the non-ideal clients from the ideal clients, and only focus on those ideal people. If you’re using a system like Time To Pet, for example, you may be able to generate some reports that can really help you here. If you’re managing clients manually, maybe with spreadsheets or good old paper and pen, you can certainly still gather information you need (it may just take you a little longer).

When looking at your ideal clients, you can look at details like demographics to really confirm that they are your ideal person. But you can dive deeper and look at other information that you have on file. Things like where they found you or other local business or services they use can be really helpful. You can also look at how frequently they book you. What can you deduce from how often they need pet care? Anything interesting there?

No information is too much information when it comes to your ideal client. Everything that you learn about them can help you tailor your marketing and customer service efforts so that you bring in more awesome clients.

Your Website Analytics

If you have a website for your pet-sitting business, make sure that it is set up with Google Analytics. Google Analytics tracks and reports all website traffic. You can learn things like where people are located when they visit your website, how they access your site (whether via a mobile device, desktop computer, etc.), and even, how they traverse your site. Google Analytics tells you what pages people visit, where they go next, and how long they spend on particular pages.

Social-Media Insights

No matter what social-media platforms you use, you’re bound to have some analytics or insights to peruse through. Looking at your analytics regularly is a great way to understand who is following you and what kind of content is performing well. Once you have an idea of what content does well with your audience, you can continue to create similar content—a great way to ‘give the people what they want’ and make your life so much easier when it comes to marketing your pet-sitting business. Don’t fix what isn’t broken!

Customer Surveys

Conducting customer surveys has been a business practice for many, many years—and for good reason! Surveys are a great opportunity to hear directly from your ideal client.

Surveys come in all different forms. You can conduct a survey over the phone or in-person. You can also hop on a video chat with an ideal client, and survey them there.

The most common option is an online survey. Online surveys are easy for your ideal client to access and fill out. They’re also very straightforward and less prone to the effects of things like facial reactions or tone of voice—things that can certainly affect the results of an in-person, phone, or video chat survey.

Those results are what you’re after, so when creating your surveys, you want to make sure that questions are crystal clear, unbiased, and not leading in any way. You also want to make sure that you’re not assuming anything about your ideal client. You want to give them the opportunity to tell you the information.

Zeroing in on your ideal client and creating your Ideal Client Avatar is a must-do business practice. It gives you a deeper understanding of who you’re serving and why you do what you do in the first place. It also gives you some useful information and a handy reference that you can use over and over again to streamline your entire marketing strategy. And who doesn’t love a streamlined system!?

Have you figured out who your ideal client is? Share their details in the comments!