A Customer Journey of transformation
Marketing, like life, is a journey. I want you to think about the journey you take your ideal clients on.
What is the journey of transformation that you deliver?
How do you make a difference in people's lives with what you do?
What problem do you solve?
When defining the ideal client, these are critical questions that we must ask.
I call this the prison to paradise transformation. And if you imagine for a second your ideal client, where they start before they've worked with you. This is before and after, contrast, polarity, light and darkness, heaven, and hell.
What is the prison state that your ideal clients are in right now? And then what is the paradise state after they've been working with you after they've consumed your product or services?
The Prison State of Your Ideal Client
The prison state is where your ideal client is when they reach out to work with you. The point that they need your products and services.
The vital thing to remember is to take you out of the equation for a moment. Take you, take your products, and your services out of the equation. We'll come back to them in a second, for now, put them to one side, get out of the way, because, remember, this isn't about you. This is about the people that you serve. Focus on the people that you serve and begin to create a picture of the prison state that they're in before they use your product or service.
- What does that prison state look like?
- What do they see in the world?
- What things are they exposed to?
What things are coming across their feeds on social? What do they read in the news? What do they see in the world around them, with their peers, their competitors? How they look at life in general?
What does life sound like for them? What are they hearing? What do they hear in podcasts, from experts and gurus in the field? What do they hear from their loved ones, from their siblings, from their children, from their partners?
What what does life look and sound like in the prison state?
The final and arguably most important one is what life feels like for them.
Now, this is perhaps the most important because we are driven by our emotional state of being. We wish either to move towards a desired state of pleasure or to move away from something that pains and troubles us. Something that we feel is not right or is missing or inadequate in us or in our situation somehow.
Think about that.
More money… Moving towards pleasure with more money, moving away from the pain of lack of scarcity, of not having enough.
These are driving your ideal clients, and more importantly, what are the emotions around that drive?
Is it frustration? Is it a lack of clarity, or is it overwhelm? Is it confusion? Is it fear?
What is the emotion that exists in that prison state?
I coach online entrepreneurs. And often, people come to me because they are overwhelmed. They have a lack of clarity. Marketing is such a big field. I've been in marketing for years, and it confuses the hell out of me at times. People coming into the world of online marketing see this massive mountain that seems impossible to climb. And they have this fear of not being good enough, of not knowing enough, of not knowing how to piece all of these things together.
That brings frustration. It puts a load on people's shoulders and makes the whole thing of building an online business frustrating.
It makes the idea of really fulfilling their purpose and changing lives, which they want to do, feel impossible. It makes it feel like treading through mud, hardly able to move, scarcely able to walk. There are frustration and anxiety that go with that—fear of not fulfilling your potential.
So can you see in that example how we painted a picture of the prison state for people who come to me for online business coaching?
What is that state for you, for your clients? What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like?
That's the prison state.
The Paradise State of Your Ideal Client
Once we've outlined the prison state, we go to the polar opposite, and we look at paradise. Paradise is the antithesis of the prison state.
Paradise is where your clients are after they've consumed your product, your services, your coaching, or your consulting. Their life is transformed.
This is marketing - transforming people's lives!
Marketing is solving people's problems in real and meaningful ways.
This is how we change the world with marketing. We change people's lives. We transform them. So what does that paradise state look like for your clients?
As your ideal client, what do I see now that I've had a transformation in my life? What does the viewpoint look like now? Paint a vivid picture of these things. What do I hear, what are people saying? How do I feel?
How does this paradise state feel compared and contrasted with the prison state? If I was overwhelmed, what does it feel like to have total and ultimate clarity? If I was confused, what does it feel like to know exactly where I'm going? What does it feel like to be able to breathe again?
What is the euphoria of paradise after I've consumed your product or service? Paint a picture of this, map it out.
Here's a link to a worksheet to help you map out Prison to Paradise for your business.
Once you've mapped out paradise, we look at the journey…
Customer Journey - From Prison To Paradise
We've looked at the prison state, and we've looked at the paradise state. The piece in the middle is your process. This is how you deliver your transformation. This is really wonderful because it's this process, it's this piece in the middle that drives everything you do. Your goal, your mission, your purpose is to get people from one side to the other, from prison to paradise, from pain to pleasure, from misery and anxiety and fear to euphoria and nirvana.
How do you deliver that transformation? I want you to imagine your ideal client is on one side of a fast-flowing riverbank, the water is rushing, and they are in prison on one side of the bank. You are in paradise on the other. Now, if they get into that water, it's a fast-flowing rapid. It's going to suck them away, and they're going to never return.
So your mission is to ask yourself: What are the big rocks that I need to place in the water for them to pass from prison to paradise safely? Not pebbles, not sand, not little bit little bits that don't really matter, what are only the critical steps?
Getting them from one side to the other, those critical steps are your process. Only the essential steps matter here.
Lay down the big rocks in your process.
For example, in my coaching, somebody comes overwhelmed, confused, filled with anxiety about marketing.
My process, my big rocks in the river are: Let's look where you are right now. Let's assess, let's reflect, let's do some inner work to connect with our why and purpose.
Nietzsche said: "He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how."
So in the storms of life, when we connect to our purpose, we can carry on. Our why gives us the strength, the fortitude, the resilience to keep going in the face of adversity.
Once we've assessed where you are right now, we then paint a picture of where you want to be, where you want to get to. What's the dream goal? What's the paradise state? Right?
What's the dream outcome for you? And once we have a clear picture of that, and we are doing, as Stephen Covey says: "Starting with the end in mind." The rest of it becomes easy because what we do, our next rock is, what are the steps we need to take to get you to that paradise state?
And then, finally, together, my clients and I will implement the steps. The journey of transformation, from prison to paradise, is complete.
This process forms the stepping stones that take the client from prison to paradise. What are those steps for you? What is your process? What are the critical things that you would do with your client?
Let's imagine that for a second that I'm an ideal client for you. I present in a prison state of anxiety, overwhelm, and frustration.
I'm in front of you right now. What do you do with me? What are the steps that you take me through to get me from prison to paradise?
This isn't about you. This isn't about how wonderful you are and all of your experience and all of those things. Forget that part. Service is about the person in front of you that needs what it is that you can give. That needs to feel and experience the joy that you can bring to their lives.
That's service. That's impact. That's meaning. That's significance.
That's why we're all here to help make our lives better, make the lives of our loved ones better, and make the lives of the people and the world around us better.
If not that, why do you do what you do? Why get up in the morning? It's to deliver meaning in our lives and in the lives of others. That's why we do this.
Mapping Out Your Customer Journey and Process
How do you deliver meaning and significance, how do you transform the lives of your clients?
What is the prison to paradise journey, the process that you take people to get them from prison to paradise?
Map out the process using the Prison To Paradise Worksheet.
Once you've mapped these things out, all the other pieces start to fall into place. The process becomes your value ladder, your offerings, your services, your suite of transformational journeys (products and services).
It's the same transformation. But we offer it in part. We offer pieces, we offer portions of the journey. We provide a further, faster, more in-depth version of the same journey.
The vehicle by which you deliver the transformation is your product, service, program, and process. And that can be all or any manner of things. That's the exciting part about all of this. What is that prison to paradise transformation for you, for your ideal clients? Map that out. Then you can use that process as the basis of your content strategy.
Everything that you do hinges around delivering transformation. Take the big rocks, use those as content pieces, use those as lead magnets, as blog posts, videos, free courses, etc.
Suppose you deliver that transformation in part like this. In that case, your ideal clients get a sense and a feel for how you provide that transformation.
And they want more… They want to go further, faster, deeper. That's the power of this approach to your marketing.
