Ask most business owners who their ideal customer is and you’ll hear some version of: “Anyone who needs what we do and has a budget.”
I often wince at this answer as it sounds reasonable, but in the long term is completely wrong. When you try to appeal to everyone, you resonate with no one and your marketing becomes generic.
This ripples out to your messaging which sits in the middle, trying not to offend anyone, which means it excites nobody and worse, you waste time and money chasing leads that were never going to be a good fit. Late payers. Scope creepers. The ones who need constant hand-holding but baulk at paying for your expertise.
There’s a better way and it starts with getting honest about who you actually want to work with and more importantly, who you don’t.
The ‘Best-5’ Audit: Start With What’s Already Working
It’s not about guess work. Look at your existing client list and identify your top five clients. Not the biggest spenders necessarily, but the ones who are profitable and genuinely pleasant to work with.
You know the ones: they pay on time, respect your expertise, communicate clearly, and don’t treat every invoice like a negotiation. Working with them doesn’t feel like a battle – it feels like collaboration.
Now ask yourself, what’s the common thread?
It might be industry (all manufacturing, all professional services). It might be size (turnover between £2-10 million). It might be geography (all within 50 miles). It might be mindset (they see you as a partner, not a supplier).
Write down what connects them. This isn’t about creating a fancy marketing persona with a made-up name and hobbies, but looking at commercial patterns. If four out of five of your best clients are in the same sector, that’s not coincidence, that’s a signal. If they’re all businesses that have been trading for 5-10 years, that tells you something about their maturity and stability.
Pay attention to what’s working as this can lead to opportunity.
You don’t need to understand the technical details of how tracking works. You need to understand the commercial reality: are we spending money wisely, and is it bringing customers through the door?
What if you don’t have five great clients yet? Maybe you’re still early in business, or perhaps you’ve been taking anyone who’ll pay. In that case, flip the exercise. Look at your competitors or businesses you admire in your sector. Who are they working with? What kind of clients are they showcasing in case studies or testimonials?
Better still, think about the kind of work that energises you. Which projects made you think “I wish all my clients were like this”? Even if you’ve only had one or two, that’s your starting point.
And here’s where it gets really useful: sometimes the fastest way to figure out your ideal customer is to get crystal clear about who definitely isn’t.
The Trigger Event: It’s About ‘When,’ Not Just ‘Who’
A common part of audience targeting that businesses often get wrong is putting so much focus on demographics (company size, job title, industry) but ignoring the actual trigger that makes someone ready to buy.
People don’t wake up and randomly decide they need your service. Something happens that creates urgency.
For a live-in care provider, it’s often a hospital discharge. The family has 72 hours to figure out how Mum gets the support she needs at home.
For a business consultant, it might be a failed audit, a key person leaving, or hitting a growth ceiling they can’t break through alone.
For a design agency, it’s a rebrand sparked by entering a new market, losing a pitch because their materials looked dated, or a competitor’s launch making them realise they’ve fallen behind.
What happened in the 48 hours before your best clients contacted you? This is the insight most businesses never uncover, but it’s gold. When you understand the trigger, you can show up in the right place at the right time with the right message.
You stop marketing to a vague “target audience” and start speaking directly to people experiencing the exact situation that makes them need you right now.
The Anti-Customer: Knowing Who You Don’t Want
Defining your ideal customer is only half the job. You also need to define who you don’t want to work with.
We’re not trying to be elitist or difficult, but simply ensuring you protect your time, your margins, and your team’s sanity. Every hour you spend on a bad-fit client is an hour you can’t spend on a great one. Every discounted project for someone who’ll never be happy eats into the profit you could’ve made from a client who values what you do.
Think about the clients who drain you. The ones where you see their name in your inbox and feel your shoulders tense.
Maybe it’s the regular bench marker who asks for quotes, picks your brain for free advice, then disappears or the micromanager who needs three revisions on every email because they can’t make a decision.
Write down what makes them wrong for you and be specific. When you know who’s not a fit, you can politely decline opportunities that would’ve wasted everyone’s time.
The Commercial Connection: How This Lowers Your Costs
Targeting the right audience has a huge financial payoff, dramatically reducing how much you spend to acquire each new customer.
When you know exactly who you’re targeting and what trigger makes them ready to buy, your marketing becomes surgical instead of scattershot.
You stop paying for ads shown to people who’ll never need you or writing generic content that tries to appeal to everyone. You stop wasting your sales team’s time on enquiries from people who were never going to be the right fit.
Instead, you focus your budget on reaching the specific people who are most likely to become great clients. Your message speaks directly to their situation and your marketing shows up where they’re looking for help.
The result? Lower customer acquisition costs, higher conversion rates, and clients who are genuinely glad they found you.
Stop Spraying and Praying
Most small business marketing operates on the “spray and pray” model, where you message everywhere, hope something sticks, but wonder why the phone isn’t ringing with quality leads. This is time consuming, expensive and it doesn’t work.
The businesses that grow sustainably aren’t marketing to everyone. They’re the ones who’ve figured out their Goldilocks customer. Not too big, not too small, but just right.
They know who they serve best and understand what triggers the need for their service, focusing their energy on being brilliant for the right people instead of adequate for anyone with a budget.
This doesn’t mean turning away business you can handle. It means being strategic about where you invest your marketing time and money. When someone enquires who’s clearly outside your sweet spot, you can still help them, but you’re not building your entire marketing strategy around attracting more people like them.
Your Next Step
Bring up your client list today and identify your top five. Look for the pattern. If every new client looked like these five, what would need to change about your marketing?
That’s your roadmap. Not to exclude people, but to become known as the obvious choice for the customers who are perfect for what you do.
Because when you’re the Goldilocks option for the right people, you don’t have to convince anyone. They’re already convinced, but they just needed to find you.
Getting clear on who you serve is the foundation of marketing that works. For more practical approaches to growing your business without the fluff, explore our marketing insights or get in touch to discuss how we can help you focus your marketing where it matters most.
