Having a target market is good, but knowing everything about a person within that target market is one hundred times better. When you have a better understanding of who your ideal customer is, it impacts almost every aspect of your business including marketing, sales, customer support and product development.
This is where a customer avatar comes in.
What Is A Customer Avatar
A customer avatar is a detailed description of the ideal customer you’d like your business to attract. It’s not a real specific person; it is a composite of characteristics of many real people.
Once you have a well-developed customer avatar, you’ll know what your ideal customers look like, their profession, hobbies, values, fears, frustrations, aspirations, and in fact almost everything about them. Then you can use this data to deliver effective marketing campaigns and generate more high-quality leads for your business.
Why Do You Need a Customer Avatar
If you haven’t developed a customer avatar profile, here are some of the reasons why you should get started.
- Easier to write your marketing messages
In order to sell something, you need to enter the conversation that your customers are having inside their heads. With a customer avatar, your marketing becomes so much easier to write. It gives you the insights necessary to produce content that resonates with your ideal customer, increasing their engagement with your business.
- Lower your advertising cost
In addition to helping you produce great content, a clearly defined customer avatar helps you identify which platform to advertise on and the demographics you should target. As a result, your marketing budget will be well spent and you can get a better ROI on the ads you run.
- Know which social media platform to use
A customer avatar gives you a clear understanding of which social media platforms your market is spending time on. With this in mind, you’ll know where your business should be active and the type of social media content you need to create.
- Deliver quality products or services
Knowing your ideal customer avatar means you’re now able to anticipate your market’s wants, needs, behaviors, and concerns. You can then use this information to deliver and develop better products or services for your customers.
Now that you know the benefits of developing a customer avatar, it’s time to take action.
How to Create A Customer Avatar
If you already have an established business, look through all of your current customers and ask yourself…
- Who has spent the most money with me?
- Who has been the easiest to deal with?
- Who was the easiest to sell to?
- Who has referred other clients to you?
Once you have some names written down, start listing their demographic and psychographic traits. Demographic traits are your avatar’s gender, age, family status, location, profession, income and hobbies. Meanwhile, psychographic traits are their values, beliefs, aspirations, fears, frustrations, personality and dreams.
Here are other questions to ask that will help you learn more about your customer avatar:
- Who is your ideal customer or avatar?
- What do they say they want exactly?
- What do they secretly want? (unfulfilled ambition or desire)
- What is stopping them from getting what they want?
- What is their biggest problem(s)?
- What frustrated them or cause them pain?
- What are their fears or what keeps them awake at night?
- What have they tried before that hasn’t worked?
- What do they want no one to know about them?
- Finish this sentence for your avatar: “If I could just…”
- Finish this sentence for your avatar: “I know that I am successful when…”
- What are your avatar’s favourite things to spend money on?
- What groups or associations does your avatar belong to?
- What seminars or events do they attend?
- What websites, blogs, forums do they visit/use?
- What social media platforms do they use?
- What magazines or e-newsletters do they subscribe to?
Next, give your avatar a full identity including a name, age, profession and family background. Then find a stock photo online that best represents what your avatar looks like. Although a customer avatar is not a real person, this step is important to humanize the profile and give you a face to remember.
Finally, using the demographic and psychographic traits you’ve listed, write a one-page document that describes your avatar.
Depending on your business, you can have more than one avatar. What matters most is being specific when developing your customer avatar. The more details you have, the better.
Here’s an example of a customer avatar profile we’ve come up with based on the steps above:
Mary is a 38-year-old mother of 3. It’s not easy for her to live life on her own terms anymore, especially when she’s tied up most of the time between working full time and juggling the kids who are growing up fast. Mary feels like life is lacking the meaning she desperately craves. And when she tries to figure out a way to start, it just seems so overwhelming.
She wishes there was someone that had been through this challenge before and knew exactly how she felt and could even show her that everything is going to be fine. Mary works as a school teacher and struggles to live life the way she’d like it, while also lacking the self-belief and fear that she’s not good enough. It’s a frustrating place to be and Mary really doesn’t know what to do.
Now though Mary is determined to no longer play small, and is searching to find that one thing that will change her life forever.
Final Thoughts
If you try and appeal to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one. By creating a customer avatar, you’ll be able to focus your marketing efforts and tailor your messaging to the right people instead of targeting anyone that stumbles upon your business.
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