When you start your personal styling, colour or image consulting business, one question decides more of your success than any wardrobe formula or colour chart ever will: who, exactly, are you talking to?. That way, you can communicate more easily with that client in language that speaks directly to their desires and needs. What I see frequently is a generic message which focuses on ‘looking better’, but what language you use with the graduate is irrelevant to the executive.
Knowing the identity of your ideal client is the secret to messaging that lands, increasing demand and desire for what you offer.
Before we start, what is an ideal client? It’s the person that you’d love to be working with all day, every day, the one who lights your fire, floats your boat and makes you happy that you decided to become self-employed as a personal stylist.
There is no one kind or “right” ideal client, and they are likely to change, just as you do during your lifetime. But you have to start somewhere, so figuring yours out (if you haven’t, inside my Image Business Development Training is a sequence of questions to help you define yours).
Knowing precisely who your ideal client is means you can speak to their exact desires and fears, in their language, about the thing they actually lie awake worrying about. That’s the secret to messaging that lands, and it’s a bigger lever for demand than a better logo, a lower price or one more Instagram tip about capsule wardrobes.
Why this isn’t just a nice marketing exercise
There’s real science behind why this works, not just business folklore.
Harvard Business School’s Gerald Zaltman has spent his career studying how people actually make buying decisions, and his research points the same direction again and again: most of what drives a purchase happens below conscious awareness, driven by emotion and association rather than a tidy list of features.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio found something similar from the opposite direction. He studied patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the brain region that processes emotion. Their logic and memory were intact, but they became strikingly poor decision-makers, unable to weigh up even simple choices efficiently. Take away the feeling, and the thinking falls apart with it. Turns out we don’t decide with our heads and feel with our hearts. We do both, at once (inside our heads), and the feeling usually gets there first.
This is why anyone who is willing to pay you isn’t your ideal client. Each of us has particular emotional needs. For example, someone who has lots of time, doesn’t care too much about time, but someone who is time poor, if you can save them time, they will be happy to pay for this.
What your ideal client is really buying
Every client type in your world is buying something more specific than “a stylish outfit.” Here’s how that plays out for personal stylists, colour and image consultants, with the kind of messaging each one actually responds to.
Time-poor executives buy back their time. They don’t want ten options; they want the right one, and they want it fast. Time is their currency, as it’s limited. They have the money, so they will buy services that give them time back. This is your “wardrobe in a day” client, or the person who wants a capsule built once and doesn’t need to think about it again until the next season. Speak to the hours you’re handing back, not the outfits: “Get dressed in ninety seconds, every single morning, without a single decision.” They don’t want a 3-hour shopping trip when 2 hours will get them what they need.
Entrepreneurs buy freedom. They’re already making a hundred decisions before breakfast. What they want from you is one less thing to think about, so their image supports the business they’re building instead of competing for headspace with it. Position yourself as removing a task from their plate, not adding a project to it. They want to know that the outfit they put on will work, won’t distract them from their day, and will support what they are doing and give them the confidence they want to feel.
Busy mothers buy convenience. They want simple, versatile outfits that wash and wear (no dry cleaning and lots of ironing); they want fast and easy and definitely practical (particularly when their kids are under school age, all that getting up and down off the floor, those little banana hands leaving stains behind), but still stylish. They don’t want to have to accessorise to make an outfit work (not convenient and gets in the way of little hands).
Beginners buy simplicity. Someone who has never had a colour consultation doesn’t want to hear about the complexity of how you do one. They want relief from guessing. “No more standing in a changing room wondering if this is a mistake” beats any explanation of your methodology. Help them create outfits from what they already own, take photos, and make it easy to get dressed stylishly every day. Examples of simple outfits from regular garments that many people own are attractive to them and will make them want to follow and save.
Career climbers buy proximity. They want to look like they already belong at the next level, not the one they’re currently at. What they want is to hear that you can help them “dress for the room you’re walking into next, not the one you’re standing in now.” They understand that they need to invest in their image (use “investment,” not “cost,” in your language).
High achievers buy status. They’ve already proven themselves. What they want from you is a look that keeps pace with what they’ve built. Talk in terms of polish, precision and presence. They want to be seen as instantly credible and for people to know without talking that they are successful and deserve respect.
Luxury buyers buy exclusivity. Bespoke language matters here far more than it does for other clients. Invitation-only language, considered pacing, and offers that feel considered rather than off-the-shelf all do quiet work here. And they don’t want it cheap (they like paying the big bucks).
And everyone, underneath all of that, buys on emotion. Every one of the client types above is really the same client wearing a different hat: someone who wants to feel a specific way, and is looking to you to help them get there. Sell the feeling first. The feature list comes after, to justify the decision they’ve already made emotionally.
Putting it into practice
You don’t need a twelve-page marketing plan to use any of this. Start smaller.
Pick one client type from the list above, the one you already enjoy working with most.
Give them a name, give them an identity, and then when you’re creating any content, imagine you’re talking directly to them.
Write down the exact sentence they’d use to describe their problem, in their words, not yours. Then write your next piece of content, your next Instagram caption or your next email, speaking only to that person. Notice how much easier it is to write when you’re not trying to please everyone in the room. Write down a list of emotions of how they feel when frustrated and how they want to feel ideally . Use this language in your communication.
Knowing your ideal client isn’t a soft skill you get around to eventually. It’s the difference between “please pick me” and a business people seek out by name.
If finding your ideal client is the part of running a personal stylist business that feels hardest, that’s exactly what AOPI’s Image Business Development module is built for: niching, branding, USP, pricing and marketing strategy, plus the ongoing mentoring that keeps going long after the course ends. Details here.
