I think maybe having one ideal customer might be a useful a place to start. But probably it isn't a good idea to invest a lot of time in tailoring experiences/services/products to that ideal customer until you have actual customers.
Because without a lot of relevant experience, the ideal customers in your imagination don't correspond to actual ideal customers in the real world:
+ People do what they do for a lot of reasons. Some walk tightropes, others wear belts and suspenders.
+ People view money in a lot of different ways. $1000 is unrealistic for many people and pocket change for others. $10/year is great for people who don't care if you stay in business and a red flag for people who do care.
+ In general we tend to imagine people are similar to us (mostly because it is easier that way). But selling to people who are not like you is what selling to strangers consists of.
The customer seemed ideal in every way; they really needed the product, they were willing to be beta users while the product was going from prototype to real deal, and they were paying for the privilege.
Unfortunately, this customer had a ton of other internal issues. Rather than being forced to fix their internal issues in response to using the new product, they insisted the product conform to their broken processes.
In the end, the product wasn't a great fit for other customers without a ton of additional work. Now that I type this out, I realize two other companies I've worked at fell into the same or similar trap.
Don’t make a product for others. Make one for yourself that you can dogfood. If you can’t do that, you’re on shaky ground.
The author's use of "communicate with them authentically" where I'd expect "persuade them", seems to be building on:
https://www.reifyworks.com/writing/2020-11-04-what-is-a-valu...
Where they write:
> When someone asks me what makes good marketing, and I’m in the mood to boil it down, I usually say something like “Good marketing is authentic.” What I mean by that is that good marketing is genuine, it derives its essential principles from a core that is pure and has a real purpose. This might sound counterintuitive if you’re someone who generally believes that marketing is phony and can’t be trusted. Well, as marketers, we can tell you – sometimes it is phony. But also, like anything else, most marketing isn’t great, and can be improved. How to improve it? That’s right, make it more genuine.
By focusing on only one persona, you might focus on one that for reasons NOT covered in this questionnaire does not work out.
Practical example from us at AirGradient. Initially, we had a strong focus on selling air quality monitoring to schools.
Our strategy would have ticked all boxes in this article but selling to schools turned out to be extremely difficult. In our case, the problem was that decision makers are often not the people benefiting from the solution. Another reason for that persona being very difficult was that air quality is not a core competency of a school.
So I actually think that you should have a relatively broad approach because often the customer that you will be successful with you actually might not know when you start.
However, I also think selecting that single persona too early will hamper you more than messy building will.
So its a balance. You have to do a wider search in the beginning, which will involve a few too many demo builds but once you find that single persona that feels like it can lead to big growth you stick to it.
