ARE YOU TRYING TO BE EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE?
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW WHAT SOLUTIONS YOUR CLIENTS NEED?
Whether your business provides services or sells products, you need to know WHO you will be selling those products or services to, i.e. who your clients are. You may spend thousands of dollars on advertising and marketing campaigns to attract clients, but guess what, you may be reaching out to the wrong cluster of people with a message that is too broad or not providing the needed solution, and therefore you may not be getting the needed number of leads and actual sales.
Just remember the last time you purchased an item or service, how did you choose 
them? You probably needed some type of solution so you looked for specific products or services or you were trying to find answers based on the “symptoms” or wants you had.
Before you start marketing your products or services you need to identify who’s most likely to buy them – your potential customers (also, ideal client or target audience). That group of people may be based on demographic criteria (e.g. Age, gender), certain behaviors or psychographic segmentation (e.g. lifestyle, values, occasion) and problems they’re having that they need solutions to. The better you know who these potential clients are, the better of you are when it comes to marketing and attracting paid clients (or customers). These people keep your business alive and help it grow further. When you’re not sure where to start, just think who would benefit from and who are using similar your products/services.
Let me give you an example. If your product is sports clothing for adults, who would be your potential customers? If you say males or females, the targeting segments would be to broad. If you say they’re people who exercise, you’re getting there. You can narrow down your audience further and be more specific: those who go to a gym, participate in a certain sport, or those who exercise on their own outside of a gym. But there might also be another possible customer. How about stay at home moms, especially moms who have small children? Yes, I know, this might be an unexpected turn, but think this way – you need people who would wear the clothing you sell and a good percentage of these moms do wear comfortable sports clothes. Moreover, your marketing message will be different for the stay at home moms vs working women who go to a gym, right? So the more you narrow down the cluster, the better results you will achieve because you’ll be speaking to specific people and providing specific solutions for them. I hope it makes sense. 🙂
Try to be as specific as you can about who your potential clients are so you can learn more things about them such as what they like, what problems they have/ solutions need, how you can help them, where they tend to hang out in large numbers, and so you craft a message and effectively target them. If you’re not specific about who you’re going to sell to, you will be wasting your energy, time, and money.
So who is your ideal client?