Most ideal client advice focuses on demographics and coffee orders. The element that actually builds connection is emotion, and here’s how to use it.
Early in my first year of business (circa 2017), I was listening to a podcast interview about building a buyer persona. The person being interviewed walked through her ideal client profile and included details like her favorite coffee order, what she typically wears, what time she wakes up, where she goes out to eat.
My immediate reaction was, “Okay, but who cares? What does a fictional person’s coffee order have to do with whether someone hires me?”
The whole exercise felt off. It was trying to portray this connection to a real person but it was all focused on material things – nothing that was personal enough to actually matter. I’ve since learned that reaction was pointing at something real.
Most ideal client advice focuses on the wrong things. Demographics, lifestyle details, surface-level characteristics. These aren’t useless, but they’re not what creates connection. From my experience, what actually creates connection in your marketing, in your conversations, and in the way the right people recognize themselves in your work, is emotion.
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Why emotion is the missing piece
Research from Harvard Business Review found that within a year of launching products and messaging to maximize emotional connection, a leading household cleaner turned market share losses into double-digit growth. And when a nationwide apparel retailer reoriented its merchandising and customer experience to its most emotionally connected customer segments, same-store sales growth accelerated more than threefold.
While the numbers are impressive, it’s not just about increasing profit (hello, people-first business advocate here). The more important reason to integrate emotion-focused language is because of what it means for the people you’re trying to serve., or are currently serving.
Think about the last conversation you had where you expressed something you were genuinely feeling. There’s a significant difference between someone brushing past it and someone actually acknowledging it. One leaves you feeling invisible. The other makes you feel seen.
That’s what’s at stake in your marketing – when you understand the emotions your ideal client is moving through, from the frustration to the self-doubt, to the specific type of hope, you’re able to meet them where they are. Not where you assume they are, and not where it would be convenient for them to be. But where they actually are.
The shift in how you think about your messaging
Most service-based business owners default to describing what they offer in terms of what’s included, what the process looks like, or what someone will walk away with. You want people to understand what they’re getting, so you focus on the tangibles.
The problem is that people don’t make decisions based on solely on deliverables. Remember, businesses solve problems and those problems have real emotional consequences. Which is why individuals usually make purchases based on whether they believe that purchase will solve their problem, and then, change how they feel.
The reframe worth practicing is moving from “this is what you’ll get” to “I see how you feel right now, and here’s where this work can take you.”
I want to pause on something – this is not about manipulating your audience. Instead, think about it like an acknowledgement that your ideal client is coming to you with an emotional reality, not just a logical problem to solve.
Two examples of this done well: Michelle Mazur‘s positioning around going from overlooked to in-demand, and Jenny Blake‘s framing of moving from friction to flow. Neither of those is describing a deliverable. Both are describing an emotional before and after that the right person immediately recognizes in themselves.
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How to identify the emotional language that actually fits
The most direct way to get this right is to ask the people who’ve already worked with you. They have the language – you just need to collect it.
Here are a few questions worth building into client conversations or a simple follow-up after a project wraps:
- What did it feel like before you reached out?
- What feeling surprised you most during or after our work together?
- If you were describing where you started versus where you are now, how would you put that into words?
You’re not necessarily listening for polished testimonial language, but the words someone reaches for when they’re answering honestly and openly. That’s the language that will resonate with the next person in the same situation, because it came directly from someone who was already there.
If you’re earlier in your business and don’t have a deep client history to draw from, start with a working hypothesis based on what you observe in conversations, and update it as you gather more information. The goal isn’t a perfect emotional profile on day one. It’s paying closer attention to what people are actually feeling and letting that inform how you talk about your work.
Putting it into your marketing
Once you have the emotional language… well then it’s time to actually use it. In your website copy, in how you describe your services, in your content, in the way you open sales conversations. Call out the feelings your ideal client is either currently experiencing or hoping to move toward. Show them you understand where they are and where they want to go.
Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart is a genuinely useful resource. It catalogs 87 emotions with clear definitions, which makes it easier to name what you’re observing in your clients with more precision than words like “stressed” or “frustrated” may allow. The more specifically you can name the emotional experience, the more accurately your language will land.
Happy branding!
All my best,
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