In the B2B solar system, clients are the sun; everything revolves around them.

Over the last decade, ‘client focus’ and ‘client understanding’ have been some of the most popular buzzwords used by professional service firms.

To compete in this hyper-competitive landscape, you must know as much as possible about your target client audience, from their demographics and interests, right up to the mega trends that impact their industry. Knowing and understanding your client audience is a crucial part of marketing which enables you to run tailored campaigns that will better attract and engage the right kind of prospective clients.

In today’s digital age, there’s an abundance of client data at your fingertips, which can make it difficult to know what to focus on and where to start.

Here are some starter questions you should be asking yourself:

1. What action do you want your target audience to take?

There are typically two reasons why we communicate with others: to get them to feel something or do something. So, be clear on what you want from your target audience. Of course, it will likely be that you want them to buy your services, but try to drill down further into exactly which service, for how long, how they should purchase it, and by when. Be specific.

2. Which demographic group will most likely complete that action?

The key here is to focus on the words “most likely”. A target audience needs to be specific. For instance, if a family law firm provides divorce and mediation services, their audience isn’t just ‘divorcing couples’; age, location, etc. all come into play as well.

3. What is their need?

Clients won’t buy your services for no reason; your service needs to meet a need of theirs. Define what issues your potential clients may be having, what they might be looking to achieve or what they can avoid by using your services. In the accounting industry, for example, a client may simply need their business to be profitable, so their need is to ensure their outgoings are less than their incomings.

4. What is their challenge in fulfilling that need?

Ask yourself, what’s stopping your client fulfilling their need on their own – or with another company? Their Challenge could be external (an industry issue or trend) or internal (lack of resource or skilled workers), regardless, identifying this challenge will inform how you can showcase why your services will help them overcome that challenge.

5. Which platforms can you reach them on?

Social media is great, but simply Tweeting about your services or content won’t do much good if your audience isn’t on Twitter. Investigate which platforms and channels your audience uses and start focusing on them. Knowing what social groups they subscribe to, or e-magazines they read, for example, is valuable knowledge when trying to reach them.

These questions are the tip of the iceberg when getting to know your audience. Once these are clearly defined, you can supercharge the impact of your marketing campaigns, by tailoring content to their needs and promoting it on the channels that best reach them.

At JTN, we’re helping firms like yours better understand their target client audience to ensure they sign right fit clients. If you want to see similar results, get in touch, one of the senior team will be happy to discuss your firm’s needs over the phone.