[91] Figuring Out Who Your Target Customer Is (And Why)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Bootstrapped Web. Brian, we're up to number 90 right now.
Brian Casel:Episode 90.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Getting close to triple digits. As always, I'm Jordan.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Cool. Nice to talk with you again.
Brian Casel:Yep. Good to be back. And, let's get right into the the topic today. What are we talking about?
Jordan Gal:We did an update episode previously and and this time let's get into the topic. You brought this up. The topic is finding your target market and obviously there's a lot that goes with that. Are you bringing up for a specific reason like you've been asked about it recently or or just been on your mind?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I mentioned last week I did a, a live workshop and I did I I took a lot of questions there and I also had like a pre workshop survey. And this question kind of came up again and again, you know, because that that workshop was all about building up your email list and how to attract people to your email list. And a big part of that is to figure out, well, who do you want to attract to your email list? You it's not just about power and numbers.
Brian Casel:Right? Like, it would be great if we could just go anywhere and just get a thousand or 5,000 or 10,000 people to join the list. But if those 10,000 people have have no chance of ever becoming your customer, then then what's the point? So it's it's all about first, before you even do the work of creating content and putting together campaigns to attract people, you have to figure out who exactly are those people that you want to attract. And that's that these are, like, very fundamental questions in any any sort of business, any sort of product.
Brian Casel:So I mean, I I was asked that question a number of times throughout the workshop yesterday, or, you know, our last week's workshop, talking about email list growth. But it's also something that I've seen come up quite a bit in in my work in Audience Ops. Because, you know, when we work with clients on Audience Ops, what essentially what we're doing is we're helping them build their audience. We're we're writing blog posts and we're writing their email courses and whatnot. And so we do a number of research interviews in the beginning, and we're learning as you know, the the writers and and me and and project managers.
Brian Casel:We're all learning as much as we can about the client's business and who they're trying to attract as their target customer. And across all of our clients, you know, most of them are very successful with this, and and the more successful ones happen to be the ones who have a very clear, focused idea or a focused concept of who exactly their target customer is. And we've had other clients, and I've just seen other people in the past who who are still serving everyone and everyone within a space or even people outside their immediate industry. When you're in that boat and you don't really have a clear idea of who your target customer is, it's it's really an uphill battle. It's hard to create content.
Brian Casel:It's hard to create any sort of marketing campaign when you don't know who you're targeting.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I can sympathize with that. I think as a business, Cardhook is on its way to finding the perfect type of customer. We're still in the phase of, you know, we just have a whole range of customers coming to us. We're not at the point where we can confidently say, you know what?
Jordan Gal:We are just going to turn these people away for this reason. So for us, it's almost like it's this like we're on a search. Like we're we're looking for these data points that point in the right direction that say, no. This is exactly the type of customer that you should go after. I I sympathize with it.
Jordan Gal:It's easy to say in theory to niche down and only focus on one, but in in practice it ends up being hard. But if you don't ever make the tough choice to to repel most of the market and attract a specific part of the market, then then it makes everything harder.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I think it's the more fundamental question well, you know, before I really get into that idea, I do wanna call attention to a previous episode of ours, where I spoke with my friend Philip Morgan. I forgot what number that that was, maybe in the seventies somewhere, where he and I were really talking about positioning. And that and and this really overlaps this topic, which, you know, there there is, you know, the idea of getting over that fear of turning customers away because they're not the target customer for your business.
Brian Casel:And that's not exactly what I'm talking about here. It's really a more fundamental question of like, well, who am I going to actively go and seek out? Because you still might attract customers who are a little bit off that point or off the the target customer profile and they still might be a fit and that's fine. But who are you going to actively get yourself in front of and get your offer in front of and and and create content that attracts this exact type of customer? So I guess the question that I'd that I'd pose to you, Jordan, is like when you first came up with the idea for CartHook, what led you into that idea?
Brian Casel:I mean, I I assume it it had something to do with your past working in an ecommerce business. So you started something in the ecommerce space. I mean, I think this question of finding your target customer really has a lot to do for the founder to figure out who are they best equipped to serve, know, when you're starting to think of that initial idea for a business.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It it did come out of, a scratch your own itch situation where I I was running an an ecommerce company and wanted to use a tool like this to to increase revenue. Where that led me and led the company was to start off with a general idea of of someone like like Jordan used to be when he was running his ecommerce business. So selling physical products on a hosted ecommerce platform and doing a certain level of revenue, but not too much. Somewhere in the $25,000
Brian Casel:to $100,000
Jordan Gal:a month range. As we got deeper in, what we realized was that for us, it's like a psychological relationship. So it's not so much exactly what they sell and on what platform. It's more about their mentality in their business. So, yes, the the there are common themes.
Jordan Gal:Ecommerce, usually physical products being sold, but we find people or great customers whether they're doing $10,000 a month or $200,000 a month because they have the same mentality. And that is, I want to grow and I'm willing to try different tools and different techniques that will help me get one notch up toward the next level and one more notch up and one more notch up. So it's almost like we've we've had to look for people who are aggressive, ambitious in in that way, and then as long as they have the the the base common themes of using a hosted ecommerce platform that we can integrate with easily, selling physical products, and then the the more important one we found is, like, trying to grow. Right? So
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think that's so important. The way that you put it put it there is, like, you know, taking it to that next level of, like, okay. You know that you're targeting ecommerce stores, store owners, and you know that you're targeting businesses of a certain dollar amount size. Or in some some people might be serving like a certain company size in terms of like head count or or something like that.
Brian Casel:But then what it really comes down to to take this to the next level is to get into their mindset. What what kind of mindset do they have? And I mean, I've the same thing with audience apps. Know, I I knew that starting out, we we would be attracting customers who care about content marketing. But over time, I realized it's at least for the done for you service in Audience Ops, it's really about attracting those business owners who are ready to delegate that task.
Brian Casel:And they're in that mindset of, okay, I'm either gonna hire someone full time for this, or I'm gonna do it myself. But I've I've run up against this wall where I just don't have the time. I'm the founder. My team doesn't have the time to do that this anymore. They have to be focusing on the product, or I have to be focusing on the product.
Brian Casel:It's time to get somebody in or some service in for this. And that's definitely, you know, a shift in mindset, especially at our at our price point. You know, because there are a lot of because now that we're selling plugins for doing content marketing, like our content upgrades plugin, that is targeted at a different target customer. I mean, really, it's there it's it's still all in the same audience. It's still people doing content marketing, people using WordPress blogs, people mostly running online, software businesses and whatnot.
Brian Casel:But the customers of the plugin are probably do it yourselfers. They're they wanna use the plugin and create their own content and and get it out there. Whereas people who who'd be interested in becoming clients of Audience Ops are really more in the mindset of, okay. I know I know how important this is. I'm I'm already on board with content marketing, or I've seen how successful it is.
Brian Casel:But I know that I I can't be the one doing it, and I have to delegate it to someone.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's the same audience, but but two different target markets or the like, all the copy can't be the same, the offer can't be the same, the price points can't be the same. Yeah. It's it's challenging. What what we look for, we look for similarities and characteristics.
Jordan Gal:And as we're growing now, we're trying to identify patterns in you know, we're not just saying who is our perfect market. We're also letting the market speak to us and say, these are the people who are most interested and most willing to pay. So it kind of goes both ways. So now when we look across our our best customers, the ones that pay the most and are getting the most value out of it, looking across them gives us a a lot of indication of what the right market, what the right target looks like. And then we look down at our trials, the people who are just getting started, and I identify early on and say, that's very similar to this other type of customer.
Jordan Gal:Instead of letting them go through the trial, I'm going to call them and try to get into a phone conversation and into a relationship with them because they are very similar to these other higher end customers that we want more of. That's what we're trying to get toward, the ideal of, okay, let's learn who are the people getting the most value and paying the most, and then be able to identify. And then the next step after that will be now let us target them specifically before they even reach out to us or start creating content specifically for them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I see so we got a couple of leads come in to our website every week for, you know, requesting consultations to become an audience ops client. And I'd say right now they're about fifty fifty. Right?
Brian Casel:Like 50% of them, clearly they're it's not necessarily that they that they can't become a client or they or they won't become a client, but I can tell that that their industry or their business is a little bit off from our ideal type of audience that's like right in our wheelhouse. You know, for example, if they're like a consumer goods, ecommerce store or, you know, we had one recently that was like a chiropractic office or something, you know, looking for marketing services. We're right now, we're not in a in a phase where we can really best serve that type of client. But then the other 50% of our leads are right there. So, like, we just had one come through that that's, they make, like, project management software.
Brian Casel:They're a SaaS. And, you know, a lead like that, like, I'm responding to them within twenty minutes of them filling out that form, you know, because that's right in our wheelhouse, you know, serving software SaaS companies. Like, I know that that I need to get on the phone with this person because they're a perfect fit. Now that I've done a lot of these sales calls already, I know that the message that that I have to say about Audience Ops and the value proposition, I know is going to resonate with someone in that position. Whereas some of the other leads that I like, I can tell just by the looking at the person's website whether or not that that sales call is really going to gel and then whether or not that'll really, you know, turn into a client.
Jordan Gal:Right. The the bells start to go off earlier on in the process instead of waiting to say, oh, these guys are really getting value out of it. Now you're identifying someone filling out the the consultation form and saying, wait a minute. Everyone get out of my way. This one's this one's all mine because I think it's really likely to become a great customer.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. We do things like when anyone has recovered $500 in their abandoned cart campaign, I I get notification. And it says it's it says, heads up Jordan, this this email address has recovered $500. And I know, okay, that just got escalated to my my happy pile, my happy list where I'm like, okay, I'm keeping an eye on them.
Jordan Gal:If I see anything that I can recommend to them to make changes, I'm gonna go out of my way because, you know, that's automatically someone who is many times more likely to become a paying customer than someone who has not recovered $500.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. But, know, kinda taking this a step back, and getting back to some of the questions that I've been hearing, especially last week on the webinar about building your email list, I feel like a lot of people out there get so caught up in the numbers game or get so caught up in like, oh, gotta grow an email list of 2,000 or 5,000 people, or I've got to launch my first product, but I just don't know what what that product should be. But all I know is I gotta launch a product. You know, I I do think that you need to step back and figure out who you personally are are best equipped or or based on your experience and your your your knowledge of a certain space that would just make, you know, the the best sense for you to go after.
Brian Casel:I mean, one of the reasons why I decided to exit Restaurant Engine was because that that target customer, even though it was very well defined and it was, you know, easy to market that product to that customer, it just wasn't a a fit with me personally. Like, I don't have any connection to the restaurant industry. And that was one of the reasons why I I exited that, and then I got into a business like Audience Ops where it's I'm talking to other online business founders, you know. It just makes more sense. So I I guess, you know, the the first question that I think everyone should be asking themselves when they're in that phase of of looking to to launch a business or get into a productized business or or leave their job and and go out on their own, just really think about who, you know, who capital w, who who do you wanna serve?
Brian Casel:And I think you can do that by figuring out, what the problem is that you know how to solve and and, like, a solution that that you believe in, that you've that you've seen before, and then figure out who has that problem, who experiences it more than anybody else, and who who sees that as a very expensive problem that they're willing to pay to have solved.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I like that approach very much where you can't lie to yourself. You're you're you're gonna get bored if you go for something that you're completely uninterested just for the money. And and normally, I I wouldn't say something like that, but I really think it's it's true. I think you're just much more likely to have a successful business if you do go after something that you know a lot about and care about.
Jordan Gal:That's not to say you should go about something super, you know, super niche that has nothing to do. I mean, we're still talking about the b to b space. Yeah. But what what you said there on a problem that people suffer from and are willing to pay money to solve, I think that's really all it takes. And I like the saying that people use, what is it, fall in love with the problem and not the solution.
Jordan Gal:Right? It's it's like I mean, I'll tell you from from personal experience, we are living in the cart abandonment email ecommerce checkout space. And just being there, we have seen so many different opportunities because we're obsessed with that problem. Cart abandonment is is that's our solution right now, but there are other things to do around the problem of abandonment in an ecommerce checkout. And if you just go toward a problem and help people solve it, all these other things start to show themselves.
Jordan Gal:So then you can you can see, you know, we've had people ask us like, you do an exit intent pop up? I'm like, you know what? No. Because there are a bunch of other solutions and people aren't willing to pay that much money for them. Not usually.
Jordan Gal:So you can start to uncover all these different problems, all these different opportunities within the same problem space, but then you need to identify this one right here. This one makes money for people or saves money for people and for the right type of people that are willing to pay for it.
Brian Casel:You you kinda talked about how you you learned more and more about your target customer over time. I mean, like, what kind of things have you been doing to or how do you see your target customers changing over time or maybe your your view of them?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The the the way that it presents itself, the problem, is we we get we're getting more and more trials every day. And so now that that appears to be less of a problem, but you don't really care about how many trials you get. You care about how many paying customers you have and how much how much you're making from it. So now our problem now isn't getting more trials, it's getting higher quality trials.
Jordan Gal:So now we're starting to zero in and zero in and zero in into how do we attract higher end people. So so once once you identify that as like, we need higher quality people that have more volume because when they have more volume in orders, we end up recovering more money for them and that's that's that's the whole circle that we're trying to achieve.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So And and, you know, again, like, it's so easy for everyone to kinda look at the surface level, How do I convert more free trials into customers? Or how do I grow revenue for my company? You can look at onboarding and those kind of things are important. And email sequences and how to AB test subject lines on those things.
Brian Casel:You can optimize that stuff to your heart's content. But really, at the end of the day, I think the thing that's really going to move the needle is getting the right people into the top of your funnel. And getting higher like you said, higher quality free trialers, that's what's really gonna impact the conversion rate of those free trials turning into customers. Because they're if you if you figure out who your target customer is, they're more likely than than anyone else to get the the value that that you're doing this for.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right now, we could get more customers immediately by just lowering our prices. Because the people who don't convert at our $99 a month lowest tier would convert at a lower tier, but that that's that doesn't make sense for the business. So instead of instead of trying to convert more to paid, we are trying to get higher quality. And so and then then you start to see that as the problem, and then you see what levers can you pull.
Jordan Gal:We find that higher quality people wanna do a demo first, so maybe we shouldn't allow people to sign up. Maybe we should force people to request a demo of the product in order to see it and be able to sign up, and maybe that will cut out a lot of the smaller merchants and attract more of the higher end. Maybe that's one thing. Another possibility is let's add the credit card as a requirement during the sign up process, and people who are not as confident in their business or in their growth or the stage they're in will be less likely. So all these different levers that now we can say, okay, which lever should we pull first to see if that leads into our goal of higher quality merchants signing up.
Brian Casel:You already know your audience and and, you know, I'm speaking for myself now. Like, I know that that we're speaking to people who are interested in in taking action on content marketing, whether that's doing it themselves or having someone else do it. And for the done for you service that we offer at Audience Ops, I'm thinking about more ways of how can we get in in front of those that segment of the audience who is in that mindset of ready to delegate it, ready to outsource it. You know, I'm I'm starting to think of things like, well, what we've been doing with our blog is, like, really trying to angle it at founders and business minded folks. It's not so much how to do the mechanics of content marketing yourself.
Brian Casel:It's more about how to get a return on investment from it and why it works. But then I'm thinking about trying to get myself out to more conferences and try to land more speaking opportunities to talk more about content marketing strategy that sort of thing. Because I have found that that's been successful for bringing in clients and just contacts who refer other clients to Audience Apps. So trying to think of ways to I think that's a good channel to get in front of that target audience. I'm just thinking of other ways.
Brian Casel:Maybe a podcast. Just, you know, anything to once I have that idea of who the target customer is, which I think I'm I'm getting a pretty a pretty good idea of that now, just figuring out the right channels to to try to occupy.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And then that that should lead into a better and better idea of the right customer avatar that that represents your ideal customer, and then you can start to look to that avatar to that representation of, you know, a fictional person that you could start to say, would would this person care about the mechanics of how to set this up, or would they care about the strategy of why it's good for your business? And and that that that starts to help you make a decision, and starts to get your positioning in line with what you're actually trying to accomplish, who you're trying to attract.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Definitely.
Jordan Gal:Cool, man. Well, I think I think we call it a day there. It's two it's two thirteen. I'm late for my strategy time. So it's it's time to go.
Brian Casel:Uh-oh. Better better cut it off right away. Cool, man. Yeah. Good, good episode.
Brian Casel:And, we'll we'll be back next week.
Jordan Gal:Sounds good, man. Always a pleasure.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, man.
![[91] Figuring Out Who Your Target Customer Is (And Why)](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)