Describing Your Typical Client Without Inventing Them
Profiles with made-up names, ages and hobbies serve no purpose. What you need comes from real conversations.
Ideal-customer profiles with invented names, ages and pastimes are an exercise that feels organised and changes no decision. What you actually need is simpler to collect and far more uncomfortable to look at.
The four things that matter
- The words they use to describe the problem, before knowing a solution exists.
- What they've already tried and why it didn't work.
- Who else has to agree before they decide.
- What stops them at the last moment, when they'd be ready to say yes.
Where this information lives
In conversations that already happened: enquiries received, repeated questions, rejected quotes. This is data you already have and almost nobody rereads. Ten conversations revisited with these four questions in mind beat any invented profile.
Words matter more than categories
If the client calls it "advertising" and you call it "an acquisition campaign", using your term in your content means not being found. A useful description reports their words, not yours.
How many types to keep
One main one and at most a second. Beyond that you end up writing content that tries to speak to everyone and convinces nobody.
You don't imagine your typical client: you extract them from the conversations you've already had and never reread.
Sources and Further Reading
Official documentation and guidelines cited or useful for going deeper.