This post is part of a series where I’m sharing my experience taking Nathalie Lussier’s 30 Day List Building Challenge again in 2016, plus giving you tips, tricks and lessons I learned from using it to jumpstart list-building in 2015. You can sign up for Nathalie’s Challenge any time here.
Imagine if you could look at a week of internet browsing history and Google search history of your ideal customer. It's no wonder that Google makes gajillions of dollars – that information is a goldmine for marketers. And guess what? You're a marketer!
But until WikiLeaks starts releasing every last shred of data on women solopreneurs, I'm going to have to figure it out myself… Dang it!
So Day 4 is all about how to find your ideal customer online, and it starts with asking yourself some very basic questions:
What blogs does your ideal customer read?
What kinds of magazines would they like to read?
Who are the people they follow on Periscope?
Who are they following on Facebook?
Who are they following on Twitter?
What kinds of websites do they look at?
When I first started this challenge a year ago, I had no idea how to answer these questions. They certainly weren't hanging out on websites where nerds like me talk about WordPress. Hmm…. where do people that want to build a website fast and cheap so that can start online business hang out online… They could be anywhere, doing anything, how the hell would I know? It's way too broad of an audience, and I just couldn't figure it out.
So I back-tracked through my own path to how I got the idea to start my own online business. It started with reading Chalene Johnson's book, Push, where I determined that in order to meet my fitness and financial goals, I would need to have more control over my time, and to do that, I would have to quit my job, and to do that, I would need to start my own business.
I can even trace it back to listening to Oprah Radio when I had XM radio in my car and being inspired to do something different. That's where I heard of Marie Forleo for the first time. I looked up her website, got on her mailing list and it wasn't til months later that I realized she helped people to build businesses online. I never did sign up for B-School, but I wonder if I had done that a few years ago where I would be now…
I bet your ideal client is a lot like you. If you're a health coach, you probably have websites that you LOVE. You probably have Facebook groups that you hang out in, or pages that you like.
I did some stalker-y things like checking out Chalene Johnson's Facebook page and see who else her followers are following and liking those pages and joining those groups, and joining the suggested groups.
Who does Marie Forleo follow on Twitter? Who do her followers follow? That's the investigation I had to do to figure out how to find you guys!!
Think about where you were getting information online to become an expert in your field. Think about what people search for when they have the problem you solve. Search for that thing, and check out those websites, sign up for those mailing lists.
If you already have a website and already have some analytics running, it's a great time to look at where people are coming from to find your site. You can see in Google Analytics what site that person was on before they came to your site.
These are important things to know because as we move through the 30 Day List Building challenge that is how you are going to formulate what you can start offering for free and where you can go to promote yourself to attract customers.
So get out a pen and paper and make a big giant list! Then hang onto it, you'll need it later!!
