Especially at the beginning of their journey, many jewelry designers and stores are so excited to share their products with the world that they fail to identify their “dream” customer.

You’re probably thinking: but wouldn’t choosing a dream customer and only marketing to him/her limit my sales? Identifying your ideal customer has a number of advantages:

• You can target your marketing in a specific way and, as a result, tailor your brand’s message.
• Your rate of interactions with fun, enthusiastic, and excited customers will be much higher.
• The “ideal” customers you attract will be much more likely to become brand evangelists and tell others about your brand.
• Focusing on attracting your ideal customer will lead to a higher rate of conversion, and you’ll waste less time with fantasy shoppers who aren’t serious about buying from you.
• Your jewelry will become synonymous with a certain group of people and will be more identifiable in the marketplace.

Look at it this way: you wouldn’t spend years in medical school to become a doctor simply to graduate with a medical degree and announce to everyone, “Hey, everyone, I’m a doctor now!” With that approach, you’d be hard pressed to find new patients. On the other hand, if you specialize in dermatology, patients with a specific need for skin care will look for you.

Now, perhaps it’s time for me to be more specific.

Choosing your ideal customer is one thing. But if your target market is high-school girls who don’t have any disposable income, and you’re selling jewelry outside of their price point, you might want to change “ideal” customer to “qualified” customer. Who would you love to service who can actually afford your products?

When I first started working as a sales associate for the largest jewelry retailer in the country, I used to get annoyed when the store manager (and our monthly quotas) required us to push credit on our customers. After a few months with the company and, in hindsight, I can see why qualifying the customer as soon as you possibly can is the ultimate sales/marketing strategy.

If you know what the customer can comfortably afford and how he/she can afford it, then you can help them find the perfect piece of jewelry and really sell it to your customer in a genuine, thoughtful way. If not, the customer will not likely approach you with a budget strapped to his/her forehead. Online, the budget guessing game is even more of an issue.

If you don’t offer credit or don’t have a way to financially qualify your customers, you need to tell your brand’s story in such a way that hints at your price points, even if the customer never sees your prices.

Not only do you need to speak in your ideal customer’s language and use imagery that appeals to your ideal customer, but you also need to communicate a message that the customer’s wallet will understand. Think of some of your favorite jewelry brands and their price points – in what ways do they hint at affordability or luxury?

In what ways can you better tailor your brand’s message to not only pre-qualify your customers but also attract better customers?

Featured photo by Sarah Reid