How to Create Your Ideal Customer Profile in 3 Simple Steps - Worksheet Attached

When I started my project Startup Differentials (where I help SaaS founders find gaps in their business), I was focusing on everyone.

Even broke founders who didn’t care about marketing.

That meant I was…

• Tiring myself of clients who didn’t matter
• Not giving my all to clients who mattered and would also make me money

That’s when I decided — I needed to boil down who I was helping and ignore the rest.

So I spent hours reading books, checked out some blogs, got some AI help, and wrote my ideal customer profile.

Not only does it help you understand who you should focus on, it also helps your marketing copy, messaging and makes your customer feels like you know them. Because you do!

And in this blog, I’m gonna help you write one in 3 simple steps.

This one is for founders who have their SaaS apps, and for entrepreneurs who have a service-based business.

Let’s start!

This is a basic rundown.

Step 1 — Knowing the buyer worksheet

Step 2 — Describing them

Step 3 — The Mandatory Checks

Final — Bringing it all together

Step 1 — Knowing the Buyer Worksheet

This worksheet is based on a book called “Buyer’s Persona” by Adele Revella. You should read it if you have time!

It’s divided into 9 segments, and filling it will make you understand why you’re starting your business and what will make people buy it.

To make this interesting for you, I’ll fill it for a new niche, let’s say ..

Fitness program (since it is pretty broad if you start teaching how to be fit to everyone)

You’re a 35 year old guy, who recently built muscle and can teach people how to do the same.

This would have been a pretty long post if I had pasted the entire worksheet, so I’ve pasted it in an image.

You can however get yourself the google doc (linked at the end) and fill it up without having to copy the questions.

The first 4 sections of the questionnaire in how to understand your buyer more

The next 5 sections of questionnaire in how to understand your buyer more

Now let’s fill it for our example business.

The questionnaire filled for a founder who wants to sell his fitness program

The questionnaire filled for founder who wants to sell his fitness program.

I’ve filled half of it but you get the point.

If you read through it, you’ll understand

• Your own story made you write why would someone search for your service
• While writing an answer for “top priorities while looking for a solution to this problem” If I didn’t do this exercise, my top priority would have been to make my service have everything, all content and resources.
  But when I wrote the answer, I thought…deep down we all want to complete a fitness regime FOR ONCE.
• You can understand what will affect the buying decisions of your audience
• You can understand what they will think and weigh BEFORE clicking the buy button
• You can understand why they MIGHT not click the buy button

And this is just HALF of it.

So, fill out this questionnaire before you start building a landing page, your app, or your fitness program.

Step 2 — Describe them

Now we’re gonna describe our ideal customer. And this is not from a business perspective.

You’re not going to describe a customer as “interested in fitness”

Because he wasn’t. He’s just recently interested.

We’re gonna paint a picture of our customer as HOW THEY ARE, and not HOW WE WANT THEM TO BE.

We’ll do it in 3+1 steps.

Part 1 — ASL, just describing their demographics
Part 2 — Monetary habits. We need paying clients.
Part 3 — Likes/Dislikes. This is to make our pitch relatable to them.
Part 4 — Additional Questions

Part 1 — ASL

Let’s describe who they are, what they do, who they live with.

ASL of your ideal customer

Part 2 — Their Money Habits

Let’s be real. You’re here because you want to make money with your business.

So, the money talk should happen before you even start. As I said — You can’t sell to broke clients.

Money Habits of your ideal customer

Part 3 — Their Likes/Dislikes

Now we’ll understand what they like, dislike, what they are passionate about.

Think about how they spend their day and you’ll get ideas for marketing. Forexample, a lot of those dads are soccer dads. So, “Be healthy to play soccer with your kids” would be a good way to use their passions.

Likes and Dislikes of your ideal customer

Part 4 — Additional Questions to paint a picture of their life

You can skip this if you want, but these are more questions about how they live their life.

Reminder again — You can get this whole questionnaire in a google doc at the end of this article.

Till this point, we know

• Why we are building the business, and what would our customers expect from us?
• Who is our customer and what he eats, breathes, and makes

Now for the crucial step.

You want to have an IDEAL CUSTOMER, meaning a customer that

• knows they need you
• has money to pay you
• listens to you
• can do what’s required to get results

And most entrepreneurs completely miss out on these.

I did too — I wanted developers who hated marketing to listen to me when I told them to fix their landing page.

They just wanted to add more features :P

And hence, our next step — The Mandatory Checks.

Step 3 — The Mandatory Checks

Here are some mandatory questions you need to ask yourself before you nail down on the profile.

Mandatory check to get your ideal client

Once you have a YES for most of these, you’re golden.

Now let’s come to the final step

Bringing it together

Woah, this is long right?

And might be boring.

But if you do this now, it’ll save you hours of meh effort and money down the line.

So, now let's bring it all together.

The first 3 steps will be used in a marketing copy.

• It’ll be used in the offer building.
• It’ll be used when you’ll talk to your customers.
• It’s to make you think from their perspective and not yours.

But you can’t take this checklist around.

So to give you a FEEL of who your customer is, let’s fill this template up.

My ideal customer is a [AGE] year old [SEX] living in [LOCATION] with [FAMILY STATUS]. They work as a [OCCUPATION] with a [WORK SCHEDULE]. Recently, they experienced [TRIGGER EVENT], which made them realize [REALIZATION]. This has led them to search for a solution that can [DESIRED OUTCOME]. They are [LEVEL OF READINESS] to make changes in their [ASPECT OF LIFE], and are willing to invest [TIME/MONEY/EFFORT] to achieve their goals. Their main concerns are [PAIN POINTS], but they are motivated by [MOTIVATION]

For our example —

Ideal Customer Profile for our example

You can use chatgpt as well to get this filled up. Just paste your examples, and the template and it’ll give it to you.

And voila, you have it here.

You don’t have to worry about 20 year olds who want to get ripped because your focus is on dads who’re doing it for their family.

Use this to create a great copy, message, and offer that’ll sell.

Hope you found this helpful!

If you want the whole google doc with this worksheet, you can click here.

This will take you to my project — Startup Differentials. You can sign up and you’ll get it in your inbox.

In Startup Differentials, I help founders find gaps in their SaaS. Reasons to why they can’t hit $1000 MRR, or why their customers are leaving, or how to be better than their competitors.

If you’d like this analysis, I have 2 spots open. You can reply “Startup” here and we’ll start. Or you can reply to the email as well!

Cheers,

Arunima