It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day hustle of running your business, but sometimes you need to step back and make sure you’re reaching the right people. You can find out by asking yourself some simple questions…
Are you attracting the right customers? Of all the leads you receive, how many are a bad fit or fizzle out? Are you constantly pushing your audience to fit into a certain box that works for you?
If you feel like your ideal client is a faraway dream rather than a real set of individuals waiting to find you, then you need to create a customer avatar.
Let’s talk about customer avatars.
What Is A Customer Avatar?
You’ve heard of avatars referred to in games. They’re normally fictional characters with customisable traits that represent someone or something. But did you know, you can hold that same image in your mind when understanding customer avatars?
In marketing, we assign particular traits and behaviours to this imaginary avatar, building a person who represents your ideal customer. The kind of customer who seeks you out, needs your specific brand of help and loves the way you do things.
Your customer avatar has the exact pain points, struggles, objections and desires as the customer you want walking through your metaphorical doors tomorrow.
Why You Should Know Your Customer Avatar Inside Out…
If you don’t know who you’re selling to, you’re missing out on huge business opportunities. This is where your customer avatar comes in handy. You can simplify your marketing efforts by fine-tuning who it is you’re marketing to.
Instead of throwing your marketing out at a mostly random audience, or an audience that’s completely wrong for you, get specific.
Create a clear picture of what your perfect customer is buying, struggling with, where they’re spending their time and what they want from you. When you know who your customer is and where to find them, you can sell to them anytime because they’re waiting for you, instead of sending out broad marketing messages that might only attract varied levels of interest.
How Do You Market To Your Dream Customer?
Because so many businesses and even large corporations struggle to create and prioritise a clear buyer persona, you’re instantly putting yourself in a stronger position.
How can you put this new super tool to use in your marketing?
Take your customer avatar and put it against your current marketing and brand messaging. You’ll be able to see the mistakes and misses you’ve been making, and refine your content to target your specific niche of people who want exactly what you offer.
Know Their Objections & Pain Points
Bear in mind that you should have more than one customer avatar if you have more than one ideal customer. If you offer different services or products, you need a clearly defined avatar for each of those. That way, you can be sure your marketing targets the right people for every option.
But where to start? Well, start where it hurts.
Your customer’s objections and pain points are key in creating the type of marketing that will overcome the reasons they’d say no and press upon the reasons they’d say yes. This way, you’re ready for those questions and concerns, and you can more swiftly get your potential customers to commit to being your new customers.
Where To Market…
So you know your customer avatar, right down to their likes and dislikes. Next, you need to know where they are. This doesn’t just mean where they live – though that can be useful if your customers need to be in a specific locale.
Finding out where your target market hangs out depends on several factors…
- How old are they (are they in the 21-35 category, or more like 45-60)?
- Where would you find them online most of the time (social media, forums, blogs, YouTube)?
- How often are they online or in your location (do they log onto TikTok for 4 hours or visit your location weekly)?
- Have they tried similar products to yours before (have they tried a free version of a competitor or bought from someone similar to you)?
- What do they do when they’re online or local (do they use LinkedIn for messaging, news or video)?
Once you put together those answers, you’ll have better clarity on where to direct your marketing efforts. And, even better, once you start marketing, you have even more info to go on…
- Email open rates
- Time spent on certain pages of your website
- Clicks on videos
- Comments on blogs
- Reactions and shares on social media
With all of this highly specific information on hand, you can define and refine your customer avatar based on who is already buying and loving your work.
Can You Define Your Anti-Target Market?
At this point, you’re ready to flip this method on its head and benefit from the dark side of your customer avatar – your anti-target market.
This is the category of people who are absolutely not interested in what you’re doing and would probably cause you more trouble than it would be worth.
For example, if your ideal customer is a high-achieving entrepreneur with an interest in independent learning, your anti-customer would be an unmotivated executive who doesn’t see value in gaining new knowledge.
Use this to make sure you’re not attracting or wasting your time on the wrong customer.
Your Customer Avatar Matters…
Without a customer avatar, your marketing team might as well be using a bazooka to shoot a fly in the dark. You can throw money at inaccurate marketing with unclear and broadly relatable content, but you won’t get the return that you’re looking for.
So, it could be time to reassess your buyer persona. Don’t fixate on a broad spectrum of clientele; instead, focus on the one you WANT to attract. Take some time to think about who should be on your list, and who shouldn’t…
