Who Is Your Ideal Guest?
Who do you want to stay at your property?
Who will love what you are offering?
Who will tell their friends and family about your property?
Who will give you fantastic reviews?
Who can afford to stay there?
Where can you find these people?
Have you narrowed down the answers to the above questions?
Are you attracting the types of guests that you want to stay at your property?
And equally as important,
Are you repelling the guests you don’t want?
Is your property kid-proof?
In this post, I talk about the importance of defining your ideal guest for your hotel, motel, Airbnb (b&b), and holiday rental.
I want to share my recent journey with you.
1. Who is your ideal customer?
Spire NZ was accepted into The Distiller Incubator program, run by Startup Dunedin in January this year.
A business incubator helps nurture new businesses by providing support and mentoring.
By far the best thing I’ve got out of this experience (to date) is meeting other like-minded people at all different stages of their business journeys.
One of those people I connected with is Rhys Jeffery, (business owner and business writer of Hakune blog). In our catch-up, Rhys asked some insightful questions about my business that I really didn’t have good answers for (at the time).
But on reflection, this is CRITICAL to my company’s success.
Rhys asked me “Who is your ideal customer?”.
My answer was, ..”err… um.. someone who wants to buy my product!?”
A pretty vague answer, don’t you think!
He responded along the lines of – well, if you don’t know who your ideal customer is, how are you going to find them?
And he was completely spot on!
I’ve been throwing spaghetti at the wall with my marketing tactics and hoping that some of it will stick!
I’ve been emailing everyone, from Clark Gayford (who responded) to Aaron Smith (who didn’t) offering samples left right, and center, in the hope someone will love our shampoo bars and soaps and buy them or love them and share an Instagram post about my biz.
I’ve been sending samples to all and sundry hotels and accommodation providers in NZ, with very mixed results.
2. Hope is not a strategy
From this exercise I’ve also learned that hope is NOT a good sales strategy!
So I started thinking about who do I actually want to sell to?
Who will want to buy my products?
Who will love them?
Who will become raving fans and tell everyone they know about me and Spire NZ?
Who lives and embodies the values that I and my business strive towards?
Who can afford to buy my products? And even more important, who is willing to pay for them?
3. My ideal customer
My answer is still a work in progress, but so far I believe that my ideal customers:
Own or manage higher-end properties in NZ,
They are moving towards becoming more environmentally friendly in all areas of their business,
They care about being sustainable and want to share this with their guests,
They want to create an amazing experience for their guests,
And they charge their guests higher than average rates for this elevated experience.
As you can see, this starts to narrow the field for me – so now I can start looking in the right places for these customers – I can tailor my products, website, and marketing materials to attract these people.
I can start looking for their ‘watering holes’, i.e. where they congregate, and where they get their information from.
With this new narrowed idea of my ideal customer, I have been contacting people whose properties fit into this category.
And I can report from my early findings that this a MUCH better strategy!!
In the last two weeks I made more in sales, than I have since I began business in November last year. [Thanks Rhys!!]
If you try to appeal to everyone,
you will end up appealing to no one!
4. Have you articulated who your ideal guest is?
Everything becomes more defined when you know who you are trying to attract (and, just as important, who you want to repel!).
Whether its families, couples, professionals, backpackers, eco focused travelers, travelers with pets, travelers with disabilities etc - All aspects of your listings, amenities, styling, and management can be tailored to attract the types of people you want to stay at your property.
It may just take a few small tweaks to attract your ideal guests, or perhaps a complete rethink!
Next week I am going to dive into - How to attract your ideal guests