The Surprising Reason Your “Ideal” Clients Aren’t Your Best Customers

For years I focused on creating my “ideal” client profile from templates.

Facebook used to give us amazing demographic and psychographic information for free.

What kind of car do they drive?

Are they married? Single? Divorced? Children?

What is the value of their home?

What is their annual income?

Where do they like to shop?

Where do they like to vacation?

Hobbies?

Religion?

We even came up with a fictitious name and a stock photo for our “ideal” client.

Coach Carla is a successful 40-something executive coach, mother of two, and married to her high school sweetheart. Carla lives in an upscale neighborhood, drives a BMW X7 SUV and loves to travel.

Our marketing was based on these “ideal” client personas.

We built a fictitious buyer’s journey that would lead Carla to become our client.

There’s a big problem with this approach.

We know the demographic and psychographic details about “fictitious” Carla but we don’t know what problems she’s having.