This article is the third of my 5-part series in which I show you how to monetize your own unique skills or knowledge to create a profitable online business.
Using a 4-step framework, I show you how to:
- uncover a profitable niche and validate your business idea
- attract your ideal customers
- create your irresistible offer
- successfully launch your business
If you haven’t checked out the first two articles of the series, you can find them here:
- How to Start a Skill- or Knowledge-Based Online Business
- How To Find a Profitable Niche and Validate Your Business Idea
Assuming you’re all caught up, let’s talk about attracting your ideal customer.
You can learn more by watching this video or reading below.
(This post contains affiliate links, which means—at zero cost to you—I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Thank you for your support!)
Attracting Your Ideal Customer
Your amazing product or service is going to go completely unnoticed unless we can find a way to tap directly into your target market to reach your ideal customer.
In this article you’ll learn:
- how to find your ideal customer through content marketing
- the exact content strategy I used to build a 6-figure business
- things to consider when choosing a platform
- why you need an email list
- creating a “content funnel”
- tips for creating a basic website
I know that you might be tempted to go full steam ahead into creating your offer after validating your idea in the previous step of the framework. I don’t blame you! You’re likely very excited by this point and impatient to get the ball rolling.
However, it’s very important that you finish building a solid foundation for your product or service. Tapping directly into your target market to attract your ideal customer is a big part of that foundation.
Finding Your Ideal Customer Through Content Marketing
If you’re just getting started, you likely don’t have a big budget to spend on advertising in order to get the word out about your new business. That’s okay! What you can start doing is positioning yourself as a trusted authority in your space. Doing this will help ensure that, once your offer IS ready, you’ll have direct contact with the very people who will be most interested in buying it.
How do you do this? Through content marketing.
Simply put, content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing information such as articles, videos, podcasts, and other media.
Content marketing will:
- increase your business’s expertise
- help promote brand awareness
- remind consumers that, when they’re ready to buy, you’re the business they should come to first
Content marketing is the BEST free marketing strategy for anyone with a skill- or knowledge-based online business. It can be much more effective than paid advertising because it gives you the opportunity to build a relationship and add tremendous value to your ideal customers long before you ever ask for a sale.
My Content Marketing Strategy
For my own digital course, Low-Content Profits Academy, I started creating and sharing free content on my YouTube channel months before ever asking for a sale. As I released more videos, my subscriber list grew.
Once I was ready to launch my offer, I knew that a lot of the people who subscribed to my channel would definitely be interested in my course because they were interested in low-content publishing. Additionally, they were already familiar with me and with the quality of the content I create, so that sale was easy!
As a result, I was able to have an $80,000 launch without spending any money on advertising. To this day, I still haven’t spent any money on advertising.
Things to Consider When Choosing a Platform
If the thought of being on camera terrifies you, don’t worry. You don’t need to start a YouTube channel to start to create a connection with your ideal customer. There are other platforms, such as:
- a blog
- a podcast
- social media channels such as TikTok or Instagram
Choose a platform that makes the most sense for you and your business; one that you’re comfortable with and you’re more likely to stick to. Once you decide on a platform, start creating regular valuable, free content related to your business idea.
One note of advice: only focus on one platform, especially when you’re getting started. If you try to do too much you’re likely to spread yourself too thin, which may cause less than optimal results. I post my videos to my blog but I don’t create separate content for it.
Why You Need an Email List
Your valuable free content is what’s going to attract your ideal customers, but you need a way to retain your growing audience and continue building your relationship with them. That’s where an email list comes in.
An email list will be the most important tool in your marketing tool belt. Building an email list is an absolute MUST, as it’s the best way to get the word out to qualified leads once your offer is ready.
So how do you convert the consumers of your free content into subscribers to your email list?
The best way is to offer your audience a freebie, AKA a lead magnet. A lead magnet could be something as simple as:
- a 1-page PDF cheat sheet on a relevant topic
- a free guide
- a video
- an audio file
Your freebie should be whatever you think would add value to your audience members’ lives and would entice them to agree to subscribe to your email list to receive it. Don’t just ask your audience if they want to subscribe to your newsletter. This just isn’t enticing enough. Give them some real value.
Creating a Content Funnel
A “content funnel” is the path that potential customers go through when considering a purchase. To start your ideal customer on this path, you can offer your lead magnet (freebie) at the end of all your content (i.e., blog posts, YouTube videos, in the show notes of your podcast, etc.).
Your freebie should be housed on a landing page that you’ve connected to your email marketing provider. When your potential customers sign up for your freebie, they will be automatically signed up for your email list.
Don’t let the size of your email list concern you. Everyone starts somewhere! You’re going to grow this list slowly over time. A small list shouldn’t stop you from taking action and launching your offer. Your email list is a marathon, not a sprint. Just be sure to get it started early.
Tips for Creating A Basic Website
If you’ve decided to use a blog as your method for sharing content, this step of “creating a basic website” may need to happen before creating your email list. Regardless, you should set up a website because this is where your ideal customers will learn more about you and what you have to offer.
Don’t fall into the trap of spending days or weeks crafting the perfect site. The fact is that almost no one is going to see your website in the beginning. You won’t start getting any significant traffic to your site until you have an audience.
Spending money on a web design, professional photos, or fancy plugins will only cost you time and money. As I mentioned in this first video of this series, How to Start a Skill- or Knowledge-Based Online Business, I created my site by myself in a couple of hours using WordPress. I used photos of myself from my wedding day because I didn’t have any professional photographs.
Since then, I’ve added some more professional photos and a few other things but, overall, I’ve built a 6-figure business using a very simple website.
Here are some tips for creating your website:
- spend a couple hours looking for a clean and simple looking WordPress theme
- find a clean and simple image, either of yourself or use a nice stock image that is relevant to your industry
- have a bold one-liner stating exactly what you do front and center on the site
- include a bold call-to-action underneath your one-liner that links directly to your freebie
- don’t add a novel’s worth of text; just keep it simple
- if you want to add a brief “About Me” page, go for it, but don’t try to fill it with information that no one is going to read
And, of course, you should link to your preferred content marketing method. If that’s a blog or a podcast, your main menu should include “Blog” or “Podcast.” In my case I have a blog in which each post links to my YouTube channel.
Your Ideal Customer Is On The Way!
Now that you’ve learned:
- how to find your ideal customer through content marketing
- the exact content strategy I used to build a 6-figure business
- what consider when choosing a platform
- why you need an email list
- how to create a “content funnel”
- tips for creating a basic website
you now have the basics for attracting your ideal customer. Congratulations! This was a very important step, because once you’ve created your irresistible offer, you’ll have a group of qualified leads who will very likely be interested in purchasing your product or service.
Next, it’s time to start working on your offer. Join me in my next article, where you will create your irresistible offer—one that your ideal customer will be so drawn to, they won’t be able to refuse!
If you’re enjoying this series so far and you’ve decided that now is the time to create your own skill- or knowledge-based online business, download my brand new free guide, The 4-Step “No Time to Waste” Online Business StartUp Blueprint. In it, you’ll find everything I talked about today, as well as what I cover in this entire series, in written form, so you can reference it whenever and wherever you want.
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