What is an Ideal client?
An ideal client is the perfect fit for your products or services, not only in terms of their needs and desires but also in terms of their values, behaviours, and preferences. They will value your products or services, return to buy them over and over and may even refer you to their family, friends and colleagues.
There is no one profile for an ideal client, they will be unique for every business.
How do you identify your ideal client?
You may have heard marketers talking about “personas”. When building your customer personas the first place to start is a review of your current client base. Pick out the customers that you would love to have more of. What are their characteristics? Do they fit a particular demographic profile – age, sex, geographical area, single, with partner / married, parents of young children, business owner, work in a corporate, etc? The more information you have, the better the “persona” you can build of them.
Then think about the problem you are solving for them. Why do they come to you rather than a competitor? Understanding this will really help you build your marketing so that it shows the problem you are solving to the audience that wants it solved.
Why only work with an Ideal client?
If you aren’t working with your ideal client, it’s not hard to tell! They are the ones that don’t value what you are doing, don’t share your values, suck up your time, expect something for nothing, complain, are rude, that your team don’t like working with and aren’t loyal.
When your ideal client feels understood and valued, they are likely to become loyal customers and advocates for your brand.
The danger of not working out who you should be appealing to is that you end up attracting more of the clients that you don’t want which gives you less time to service the ones that you do.
Focusing on your ideal client allows you to charge premium prices for your products or services because you are delivering precisely what they want and need. Pricing is the biggest factor in determining your profitability, so having a customer base who are willing to pay a bit extra will boost your profits.
Connecting with your ideal client
Having the “persona” will help you identify their characteristics and from there you can start to build content and messaging which will appeal to them.
Be authentic in your messaging and show you understand their needs and how you can help.
Focus on providing value to them, whether through informative content, exceptional customer service, or innovative solutions to their problems. Once you have worked out where they spend time, you can start to engage with them using channels, such as social media, email newsletters, networking and community events.
A successful businessman once told me that marketing is story telling – so find your audience and start to tell them the story of how their lives will be improved by using your product or service.
What does the Ideal client look like for One Accounting?
First of all you’ll be a business owner. We do prepare personal tax returns, but only as part of a package of services for business owners.
You’ll be running a limited company and looking to grow.
You’ll see working with your accountant as a partnership. You’ll recognise that we can play a significant role in helping you to grow your business profitably. From our side, we recognise that we have to prove our worth to you and earn your trust.
You’re organised and don’t like last minute panics! We want to make sure accounts and tax are filed in plenty of time to meet deadlines and to give you clarity on what you need to pay. But we need your help to do that.
We’re in it for the long haul and we hope you are too. If you have gone through 3 accountants in the last 4 years, you might have been unlucky with your choices. Or perhaps it’s time for some internal reflection – are you the problem!
We don’t take on one off transactional jobs e.g. you need one set of accounts for the bank or you need a mortgage reference signed or a tax return prepared. We work best when we get to understand your business and work with you over an extended period of time. It’s not unusual for us to be working with clients that have been with us for 10 + years.
We understand that you can be busy running your business and you can’t always respond to us immediately, but we also don’t want to chase you 10 times for that bit of information we need to finish your accounts! That just eats up our time and stops us from doing productive work that can help you more.
We are transparent with our pricing. We set a fixed price at the start of the year for our services. If anything comes up during the year that is out with that original plan, we will raise a change request so that you know there will be an extra charge for the additional work. We’ll agree that with you, so there aren’t any surprise billings. In return, we request that you pay by monthly direct debit and that you don’t fall behind with payments.
It’s also good if we like each other. You’ll be sharing some of your most personal financial information with us, so trust goes without saying, but it’s great to work with people that we would be happy to join for a coffee or go for a drink with. At the end of the day neither of us should be dreading that next meeting!
Our purpose
“To provide valuable business information to passionate business owners, using our tech-savvy team so that you can make informed decisions and achieve your goals”
Often, new clients come to us because they have uncertainty over how their business is performing financially. They know the sales number and can see how much cash is in the bank, but they don’t feel in control and don’t have any visibility about what their tax payments are likely to be. In short, they don’t have the information they need to make decisions.
Does that resonate with you? Are you dithering over hiring that new team member, because you’re not sure if you can afford it? Are you sitting up at night worried about cash flow? Is the thought of that new contract filling you with fear as much as excitement because you’re not sure how you’ll fund it? Should you believe your friend who said her accountant told her to buy a car before the year end because it would save her some tax?
Our job is to take away that uncertainty and worry and move you to a position where you have knowledge and control. Once you have the information to make better decisions, that’s when your business can really start to fly and ultimately provide you with the life you want, rather than feeling like a shackle round your ankle.
Like what you hear?
If we sound like the type of people you would like to work with, get in touch and let’s see if we can work together.