Hi Reader,
Recently, I mentioned the term “Perfect Audience Profile” in a coaching session, which sparked a lot of curiosity among the session participants:
- What is a Perfect Audience Profile?
- How do I determine my Perfect Audience Profile?
- Once I have it, how do I use it?
These are crucial questions, especially for budding entrepreneurs. Let’s explore this further.
Your Perfect Audience Profile (PAP) represents the individuals who will derive the most benefit from your content, ideas, products, and services. They are the ones who will truly need and appreciate what you have to offer.
Knowing your PAP can make the difference between creating content and products that are celebrated or ones that fall flat.
Your PAP may include traits like:
- Age
- Location
- Challenges
- Goals
- Income level
- And much more
Think of your perfect audience as a character or persona. Your task is to understand this persona—who they are, what they want, what they need, and what obstacles they face.
Visualizing an actual person will help you bring your PAP to life, allowing you to focus on assisting that specific individual.
To give you a starting point for your own PAP, let’s create one together.
Start with Hypotheses
Begin by understanding two key aspects of your PAP:
- What are their challenges?
- What are their goals?
There’s no set formula for these answers. You need to engage with people you believe you can help.
Most importantly, listen to what they have to say. People enjoy discussing their issues, and this can work to your advantage.
If you’re hesitant about starting conversations, begin with a few hypotheses.
For instance, let’s say you’re a freelance graphic designer aiming to shift to offering online design courses.
For this scenario, consider one likely challenge: your ideal client is someone who struggles to find time for in-person design classes, making them more inclined to enrol in online courses.
Expanding on this, hypothesize a goal: your ideal client wants to enhance their design skills efficiently and flexibly from home.
Now you have two hypotheses about your PAP:
- Challenge: Lack of time for in-person classes
- Goal: Efficient and flexible skill enhancement from home
Create Content Tailored to Challenge & Goal
With these hypotheses, you can create content that will attract those sharing this particular challenge and goal.
You might start by sharing valuable insights on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or others.
Here are some example themes you could explore:
- “Design on Your Schedule: Tips for Learning Design Flexibly and Efficiently”
- “Master Design Tools: Quick Tricks to Enhance Your Skills from Home”
- “Set Up Your Home Design Studio: Affordable Tips for a Professional Workspace”
Additionally, consider creating a few short eBooks that delve deeper into addressing your PAP’s challenges and align with their goals:
- “Home Design Hacks: Time-Saving Techniques for Busy Creatives”
- “Quick Design Recipes: Efficient Projects for Aspiring Designers”
- “The 15-Minute Design Session: Effective Practices for Maximum Skill Growth”
As people engage with your content, you’ll gain insights into whether your hypotheses are correct. You can always refine and experiment to discover what truly resonates.
Iterate and Optimize Over Time
By publishing high-quality, focused content for 3-6 months, you’re likely to build a small but ideal audience.
Once you have an audience, delving deeper into their characteristics becomes easier.
Consider offering a free 15-minute consultation to gather information that will help you refine your PAP over time.
Engaging with potential customers is invaluable.
Here are additional characteristics to consider:
- What is their age?
- What is their profession?
- What is their primary design goal?
- What is their budget?
Everyone will have different answers, but you’re looking for the common trends, not the exceptions.
For example, our next layer might be “What is your primary design goal?”
You could conduct a survey on social media or ask people in real-life conversations.
With a simple survey, you can now add a new layer to your PAP.
- Challenge: Lack of time for in-person classes
- Goal: Efficient and flexible skill enhancement from home
- Primary outcome: Mastering design software
With this new layer, refine your content, eBooks, newsletters, etc., to focus on mastering design software as the primary goal.
Perhaps your eBooks now reflect this updated layer:
- “Software Mastery: Time-Saving Techniques for Busy Designers”
- “Quick Design Recipes: Efficient Software Projects for Aspiring Designers”
- “The 15-Minute Design Session: Effective Practices for Software Mastery”
By integrating software mastery into the content, you’ve crafted even more specific material that speaks directly to your PAP. Repeat this process to uncover more characteristics.
The aim is to balance specificity with market size. Enough people to serve, yet specific enough to stand out.
If you succeed, you’ll create content that deeply resonates with the exact audience you desire for your business.
And guess what? Perfect followers become the best customers.
→ Today’s action step: Start by hypothesizing two characteristics of your perfect audience—their challenges and goals—and create 2-3 pieces of content that address them.
That’s all for today.
Catch you next week!
Best,
Tristan
