Who do you work with again?
If you thought the words ‘anyone’ or ‘everyone’ at any point in your answer, you’ve fallen down the biggest pit in branding. And it’s a pit that’s absolutely filled to the brim with good intentions.
Who you work with is important to your brand identity. But business owners struggle to define it. Even veteran business owners often struggle with this, responding in generic terms or broken cliches.
Thing is, knowing who you serve is vital to your brand. If you can’t describe who it’s for, it becomes difficult to define and impossible to grow.
So, if knowing who we do want to work with is so difficult, why don’t we flip the script and look at who we DON’T want to work with? Then use that as a blueprint to find the people we’re after.
You’ve seen client avatars before, but here’s something new to try.
This is your Dark Client Avatar.
Understanding the Dark Client Avatar
Light and shadow are commonly used tropes in storytelling (especially across the sci-fi/fantasy genre – see Metroid Prime 2 and World of Warcraft for two of my favourite depictions). Their interaction is easy to understand – opposing forces locked in a constant battle, yet inextricably linked. It’s hard to have one without the other. That balance creates a curious interplay, where one naturally informs the other.
This is where the Dark Client Avatar comes in. It’s the foil to your positive customer identity. What DON’T you want in a customer, or who is not well served by your offering?
It’s worth noting that the Dark Client Avatar isn’t some evil, malign influence. It’s just a clear indication of who you are not in a position to help. But defining them helps narrow your field of vision to those you DO want to help.
Why identifying your Dark Client Avatar is crucial
A Dark Client Avatar helps in three primary ways: it clarifies your ideal clients, creates boundaries for your business, and solidifies brand values and integrity. These are beneficial both to your decision-making process and your bottom line. It’s easier to grow if you have a clear focus on who to work with and target with your messaging.
As mentioned above, clarifying your ideal clients is one of the best things you can do for your brand. Knowing exactly who you serve will bring a range of benefits that we’ll explore below.
Beyond this, it also helps define your boundaries. Small business owners, and especially freelancers, are often taken advantage of in their desire to be seen as helpful. This feels like a natural thing to do; who wants to work with someone unhelpful, right? But in reality, poor boundaries lead to resentment and the breakdown of client relationships. To help people, you need to have the energy and desire. You can’t have these if you’re constantly letting people take advantage of you.
A Dark Client Avatar helps avoid this by showing traits you won’t tolerate. It’s the lines in the sand where you feel comfortable saying no and standing firm.
This is also where brand values and integrity come in. Your brand values form a list of behaviours you look for in others, and that others should expect from you. The Dark Avatar is the personification of actions and beliefs that your brand won’t tolerate. It becomes a figure you can recognise and use to determine if a potential client is a bad fit.
Benefits of Defining the Dark Client Avatar
Like anything in branding, defining the Dark Avatar has many benefits for your wider business. Here are three of the most immediate
Clarity in Marketing Message
Brand Clarity is one of my three ‘Big C’s of branding. Being clear helps quickly attract the right attention and signals to your audience that you know how to solve their problems. A Dark Avatar lets you further refine this message, tailoring your language and content AWAY from people who won’t receive it well to focus on those who will.
Anything you do in the name of clarity works to attract the right audience. Understanding the wrong audience creates areas your message should avoid. Your message lands better with ideal clients when refined. They’ll feel like you know them, and that your message is more personally aligned with their needs. This is a powerful way to build trust quickly.
Improved Customer Experience
Customers who don’t fit your business are not a bonus; they’re a hazard. Contrary to what you may believe, you CANNOT keep everyone happy. Focusing on making your ideal client ecstatic is much better for your brand. These people become die-hard fans, and their loyalty creates increased retention and is prime ground for excellent referrals.
This improvement of client relationships becomes the blueprint for gaining more good clients. Reduced conflict and dissatisfaction also means less time putting out fires, and more time focused on serving and earning.
It’s important to remember that there are two outcomes if you ignore your Dark Avatar and take on a poorly-fitting client. Firstly, they are never likely to be happy with your efforts. This will lead to poor service and negative reviews, affecting your reputation
Secondly (and possibly worse), you WILL do a good job, but it’ll be painful and stressful for you and your team. A client who is a bad fit, but is happy with the job, can lead to them bringing you more clients who are not what you want. While ‘more clients’ sounds good, this is a recipe for burnout and stress, and will absolutely lead to clients you can’t please and bad reviews.
It’s better to prevent this before the rot can set in. Learn to politely decline people you know you aren’t positioned to help.
Enhanced company culture
Internally, defining your Dark Client Avatar helps you align team values with client expectations. Managing expectations is a crucial job of your brand. Showing what clients can expect, early results in fewer misunderstandings and greater trust. It also works the other way around, allowing you to authentically define your values in a way that matches what your clients expect. This streamlines sales and onboarding, as new clients will feel connected to you faster.
Knowing who you won’t work with (and sticking to it) also fosters a more positive work environment. If a team knows that they’re going to work with a certain kind of person, they tend to be more relaxed as there are unlikely to be nasty surprises. This goes double for solo business owners; if you know you’re only working with great people, your work is going to reflect this and be more enjoyable, too.
Basically, a positive work environment reflects positively on your brand.
How to Identify Your Dark Client Avatar
Once you’re aware of a Dark Avatar, you need to know how to use it to your advantage. This starts with identifying it. If you can define it, you can learn from it.
The good news is that much of your Dark Avatar can be uncovered from your past experiences.
Analysing previous ‘red flag’ clients is a crucial first step. We’ve all had them: clients for whom NOTHING is good enough. Look back at the interactions with these clients, and you’ll notice red flags that were ignored or glossed over.
These are important indicators of something wrong, so it’s vital to understand them and become aware of them. Perhaps a client insisted on not signing a contract, or kept asking you to make hundreds of tiny changes that were beyond the project scope. Whatever it is, there is a reason the relationship didn’t work.
It’s important to be truthful here, as understanding the difference between a ‘bad’ client and a situation where you fell short requires humility and honesty.
Next, define these negative traits and behaviours. It becomes easier to avoid them if you can easily describe them. Listing specific characteristics that represent your Dark Avatar helps ensure you can see them coming.
This also leads to creating a persona for them, much like you would for your ideal clients. This is a fictional character that embodies your Dark Avatar for clarity, but it ISN’T a caricature. It’s about reason understanding, not cartoon villainy. Look at them as real people with needs, wants, desires and fears, and understand why these don’t fit with your ideal client template.
A defined, clear identity for the people you WON’T work with helps you narrow down who you will.
Implementing your Dark Avatar into your brand strategy
All this discovery leads to one place. Implementation. If you don’t use this data, you can’t benefit from it.
Three key areas in your business can benefit from knowledge of a Dark Client Avatar. Branding and marketing are the most obvious, but they are also useful for your onboarding process.
The Dark Avatar in Branding
Firstly, the Dark Avatar helps you make choices around your branding. Knowing what attracts the Dark Avatar means you can make conscious efforts to repel them. If your idea of a terrible client is boring and stuffy, your brand should be the opposite of that. If you want to avoid clients with a small budget, make your branding premium (and even indicate price directly).
A pool of things you don’t want for your brand helps you quickly narrow down areas you do want to explore, making your branding process significantly easier. Remember, boundless creativity can often be difficult to work with as it offers too much choice. Working in a narrower area can provide you with more creative freedom.
The Dark Avatar in Marketing
Moving into your marketing, knowing the Dark Avatar helps both shift and cement your message. Adjusting your content and language will shift who it appeals to. Knowing who you don’t want it to appeal to leaves it more appealing to those you do. Again, working with the idea that the Dark Avatar is someone you don’t want, this definition provides a framework of words, phrases and tone to avoid in your marketing.
Additionally, your choice of tone and language can reflect the boundaries you’re putting up. Being clear about who your marketing isn’t for helps avoid generic language and terms that might not engage your ideal clients. These boundaries help keep you passionate and engaged in your brand, making it a more pleasant experience for everyone!
Client Onboarding Processes
Setting boundaries and expectations also helps deter unsuitable clients. Laid out expectations for both you AND your clients in your onboarding, highlights red flags and provides an early off-ramp.
This has many advantages. Firstly, you waste less time, both for you and the potential client. You see red flags at an earlier stage and can politely decline requests. It also means you have a system to deal with good clients, making the process tighter and more professional. This leaves happier clients who are more likely to review and provide referrals.
As with any part of your branding, it’s vital to review regularly. Your audience evolves, and so does your Dark Avatar. Keeping on top of who you don’t want to work with, as more information becomes available, is imperative to ensuring your brand stays strong.
Conclusion – What you can learn from the dark side
From initial contact to asking for reviews and recommendations, working with the right people is important. Bad clients are not only impossible to please, but they also drain your energy for your other clients. This creates a cycle of negative interactions that seriously harms your brand.
And this damage can be hard to undo.
That’s why it’s so important to define who you WON’T work with. Not only does it provide a clearer idea of who you do want, but it also helps you erect barriers to entry. These barriers are vital to deterring unsuitable clients. One poorly fitting client can do untold damage and will often bring more with them. Making your brand repellent to them helps save all parties from negative interactions and poor work.
Knowing your Dark Avatar means knowing your ideal clients better. This helps you connect with them more authentically, while keeping unsuitable clients away.
Where there is light, there is also shadow.
Knowing what lurks in the darkness can help you keep it at bay.
Defining behaviour you won’t stand for is part of the Brand Adventurer journey. If you need help uncovering the Dark Client Avatar, or where your values lie, click here to see how I can help you decipher these mysteries.
