In last weekend’s newsletter I wrote:
Their ideal customer is one with money and momentum.
Since then I can’t get it out of my head, and it cropped up in a talk with an agency I work with this week as well.
Momentum is such a good filter for good clients. People who already started, and got stuck, are so much better than people who won’t even try to tackle the problem themselves.
Here’s why I think it is, illustrated with the impostor’s enemy, he Dunning-Kruger effect curve:
It’s unfair to say that someone "never started" if they got in touch for you to help, after all, that’s a step.
But those people are at, or on their way to the peak. They’re ignorant. Ignorant of what really lies between them and expertise.
They think they know it all because they never got to the first hurdle.
The best clients are the ones in the dip. They’ve hit a hurdle, they’re at low confidence, and they’re going to value you more.
A-list copywriter Chris Haddad talked about this with his dating offers. He talks about how people who are ready to spend money to have someone else solve their problem are poften at a very low ebb, without much confidence in their own ability, but the pain that they need to get it fixed.
This is exactly what the "cultured" dip looks like.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the aim is not to exploit people in this curve, but to help them out of it, knowing that they’re more realistic about how much work it might be than they were at the ignorant peak.
We’re targeting them because of their experience, not their vulnerability. Big difference.
The analogy of a "dip" starts to run out because these people have done something.
They’ve set up their first ad, go the first prototype of a product made, spoken to a prospect. It doesn’t matter what they did, just that they did something.
They’ve got out of the stands and into the arena, and there’s no going back.
There’s one other huge advantage to targeting people with momentum.
They’re really easy to find.
You may have heard the saying "success leaves clues". Well even failure leaves a trace.
In online marketing, that means there are ads in Facebook’s library. There are websites you can find. There’s software they’ve signed up to and there’s posts on social. If you work in fitness or other areas your clues will be different, but they’re there.
None of these exist for the man in the audience.
Momentum takes all the guesswork out of who you’re targeting.
