Foundation · Pillar 3 — Customer
Purpose: Build a research-grounded portrait of your ideal customer’s observable reality, underlying drives, and future state — in writing, in one place. Every downstream step reads from this, so fill it in before you write a single HOOK, GIFT, or SELL page.
When to run it / Inputs: Once, when building the initial Foundation Blueprint; revisit it when you add a product category, expand to a meaningfully different segment, or when marketing performance suggests the avatar has drifted. Reads from your completed Company worksheet (what you offer and why) and your Market worksheet (competitors, trends, the channel landscape). Have your primary research to hand: interview notes, review extracts, forum observations. Build one grid per distinct segment — never a composite that describes nobody.
| 1. Identity & Context | 2. Pain Points & Fears | 3. Goals & Aspirations | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. OBSERVABLE REALITY (Evidence — cite it) | A1: Identity & Context: (Age, location, income, role; platforms and tools used; sources they trust) ________________________________________________________________ | A2: Stated Pains: (Frustrations they voice openly — in their exact words, not yours) ________________________________________________________________ | A3: Stated Goals: (Explicit goals, desired efficiencies, results they are actively pursuing) ________________________________________________________________ |
| B. UNDERLYING DRIVES (Inference — calibrated, labelled) | B1: Self-Perception & Current State: (How they see themselves; values; the mood this problem puts them in) ________________________________________________ | B2: Core Emotions & Fears: (The fears beneath the stated pains — what keeps them awake. Name precisely) ________________________________________________ | B3: Core Needs & Desired Feelings: (Dominant Robbins needs — Certainty / Growth / Significance — and the feeling they’re after) ________________________________________________ |
| C. FUTURE STATE (Projection — consequences & aspiration) | C1: Watering Holes & Behaviour: (Specific groups, forums, podcasters, networks; how they act there — where to place the HOOK) ________________________________________________ | C2: Cost of Inaction: (The negative trajectory if the pains go unsolved — honest stakes, not catastrophe) ________________________________________________ | C3: Vision of Success: (The transformed state — practical outcomes and the felt experience of arriving) ________________________________________________ |
Worksheet Instructions:
- Work Row A first — and cite it. Identity, the pains they state openly, the goals they name. You should be able to point at a review, a forum post, or an interview line for most of what you write here. Use their words, not yours.
- Move to Row B — inference, labelled. These cells are conclusions, not facts: the self-image beneath the behaviour, the fears beneath the pains, the core needs beneath the goals. Mark any cell you are unsure of so you can return as evidence grows. For B3, name what they want to feel, not what they want to have or do.
- Project Row C. Where they gather, what inaction costs them, the success they are moving toward. The specific watering hole beats the category every time.
- Check it reads down and across. B2 fears should follow from A2 pains; C3 vision should build on B3 needs. If the cells sit in isolation rather than talking to each other, revisit the weakest one.
- Write a one-paragraph portrait. A human summary you can read aloud before writing any piece of marketing — the working reference you will reach for daily.
Feeds: → your Alignment worksheet (where Company, Market, and Customer converge into the Foundation Blueprint), and every ATTRACT and CONVERT step that follows — HOOK draws on A2/B2, GIFT on A3/B3, NURTURE on B2/C2, SELL on B2/C3.
Source: 1.3-customers.md · AI prompt: prompts/Customer.md · Procedure: the Customer SOP in 1.3-customers.md