If you are of a certain age, you are, no doubt, familiar with avatar creation in gaming. Even if you aren’t familiar, the definition of avatar is an icon or figure representing a particular person. But, have you ever thought of your avatar as a marketing tool? This is how you can reach your target market – create a customer avatar.
In marketing, a client avatar or buyer persona, is an individual that represents the average customer of your business. It’s important to know who your customers are. If you’re not sure what your ideal customer looks like, or if you haven’t thought about them yet, don’t worry! We’ve got you covered on how to reach your target market with creating a customer avatar.
Understanding your client’s wants and needs can help you provide them with a service that they’ll be more than satisfied. It’s one of the most important marketing skills one can have.
A customer avatar is a visual representation of the person that you are trying to help. It’s important for marketers, life coaches, business coaches, therapists, and other professionals to understand this concept in order to create content with which their target audience can relate.
Clients are more likely to buy your product or service if you understand their needs, wants, desires, and pain points. Imagine meeting with a potential customer for the first time. You want to connect with them on an emotional level, so they feel understood.
Take some time now to think about your target audience and what they might want from your products, services, and content. What are their challenges? How do they spend their free time? What is their age? What’s their income level? These questions will help you create an effective client avatar who will be able to connect with others just like him or her.
The more detailed your understanding of your target market becomes, the easier it’ll be for you to communicate with them and get what you need from them. What do these people like? What are their interests? Where do they hang out online? What kind does this audience typically buy from other companies? What do you have in common? How can you help them achieve their goals?
It helps us better understand what might be on their mind when deciding whether they should purchase our goods or services. Answers to these help to create a buyer persona.
So how do we go about creating one of these avatars? If we can answer these questions about our clients and put ourselves in their shoes, we’ll have an edge over our competition.
Are you looking for ways to improve your marketing? Are you trying to figure out what kind of clients you want? Download this customer avatar workbook from my friends at Digital Marketer on how to create and identify your ideal clients with a customer avatar!
A good marketing campaign promotes an awesome product to the right people on the right platform, at the right time. Many businesses (especially digital startups) face this problem because they take vague or even educated guesses as to their target markets, platform, and timing. An ethical marketer will evaluate the results of the “guess” and optimize their campaigns accordingly.
Marketing campaigns are the lifeblood of any business, but how do you know if your marketing campaign is successful?
In marketing, especially digital marketing, performance can be difficult to evaluate. Fortunately, there has been recent progress made among researchers who study this area: they now have metrics like conversion rates available, so we’ll never need to guess again when assessing which strategies work best for our company’s needs. After all, numbers tell stories…literally.
How can creating a customer avatar be used in a great marketing campaign?
How can we communicate with our target market in a more natural, efficient way on Google? Many business coaches and therapists who want to get more clients struggle with marketing these kinds of topics. A customer avatar can be used to represent a brand and give it personality. This helps potential clients relate to the avatar and want to engage with them to get more information about the product or service being offered. It also helps to create more personalized advertising efforts in order to focus our digital marketing and save money as opposed to broad targeting which can cost much more.
Your avatars act as the lens to market your product, services, and content. Depending on the company’s branding or market strategy, client avatars are made so they can launch successful campaigns with high effectiveness. It’s possible you’ll have more than one buyer persona for your marketing if you have a specific niche.
There might be some avatars in your mind for coaches struggling with their career or coaching business owners. As a therapist, you may have a vision of an ideal client – the one you always love to help, who always comes on time, and pays your fees.
Uses for customer avatars
One of the most important purposes using customer avatars is to market to your potential customers. Knowing what your target market wants can be an asset for product development because it makes it more effective and it allows you to create products that are more appealing.
Your target market is the people you intend to sell your product to. To determine who they are, it’s important for a business owner or an entrepreneur to know what his/her customers want and how they behave.
The customer encounter can be improved in many areas with client avatars. They can be useful because they allow the user to visualize themselves using your product. They also make it easier for them to understand how they can use your services, especially if you’re introducing something new.
Who needs a customer avatar?
The future of marketing is personal. You might be asking yourself, “Who needs customer avatars?” Well, if your answer isn’t already, “I do,” then consider the benefits to be derived from this new trend in business. To better understand what makes each individual person tick in the marketplace, we need to know very specifically who we want to serve.
Small and medium businesses should invest time in creating customer avatars to maximize their marketing budget. Using a client avatar, they can target the business’ ideal customer instantly.
Business owners who had wasted time and money without ever having decent returns for their capital will also benefit vastly from the detailed client avatar. Not everyone can be your customer. You should ensure that you know who your ideal client is so that you can laser focus your marketing efforts.
To make this easier, imagine yourself as your ideal client and create your own customer profile online. Start a new profile on your computer and begin browsing and searching for solutions to your ideal customer’s problems. You can use this as another marketing tool to help you grow your business or engage with potential clients through social media platforms such Facebook ads and Instagram stories. Search and engage with Google and watch for targeted ads that are reaching out to your avatar.
Why is knowing your customer avatar important?
Many coaches and therapists dread sales opportunities and do not fully understand who they can make offers to. The better you know your customers, the more you can target their needs. It is also important because it helps businesses understand the type of person they are targeting. This will allow them to better target their marketing efforts, which can lead to increased sales and financial success. When you know your clients’ needs, your chances of launching more profitable campaigns becomes greater.
Knowing your customer avatar is important because it shows the way in which they want to be treated.
A business may be looking for something specific when catering their products or services, but an effective marketing campaign should consider what customers actually need and expect out of certain offerings—even if you don’t see those needs on paper.
How to create a customer avatar: Use a customer avatar template
Identify demographic data
Demographic information is important data for therapists, coaches, and business owners in general to understand how to market to potential clients and plan for emerging consumer demands. Get inside your customers’ heads to refine your conclusions.
The more specific information you know about your targeted consumers the more chances you have for the conversation. Big data and artificial intelligence continue to widen the applications of demographics to marketing and business strategy.
Make a customer avatar for identifying ideal customers using your demographic. You may also want to define your clients background like what you grew up in, their aspirations and their interests.
Some things to think about when looking at demographics:
- Determine your avatar’s age – Age is an important factor to consider when determining what type of avatar, you should use for marketing purposes. For example, if you are targeting people who are over the age of 40, consider using an avatar that reflects the appearance of an older person.
- Determine your avatar’s gender – If you are marketing to men or women only, it’s best not to create a mixed avatar. However, if you are trying to reach both genders, creating a single avatar may be best.
- Determine your avatar’s personality – What are their personality traits? Once you’ve determined these, create a description of your avatar to use in marketing messages.
- Determine your avatar’s lifestyle – Use this information to give your avatar dimension and make it relatable to the people you are trying to reach.
- Determine your avatar’s income level – You definitely don’t want to advertise something that is too expensive to people who cannot afford your services.
Start brainstorming this information and adding it to this customer avatar worksheet.
Challenges and pain points
Next, you’ll want to brainstorm about challenges, difficulties, and pain points in your customers’ lives. This is one of the best things you can do for your customers.
Consider what makes them happy. Envision how your clients’ lives will look when they have a solution – your solution!
This information can help stimulate ideas for products or services that can help solve your avatar’s problems. It can also help you write copy and ad creative that talks through their pain points and encourages them to take action.
When trying to create a customer avatar you must keep a watch over your audience’s difficulties. Instead of asking for a response from a customer’s frustration tell them to speak up. Collect customer feedback via surveys and email them regularly. Asking your customer is a great way to make a problem statement which your practice wants to solve.
Identify goals, values and fears.
All customers have goals in mind which reflects values underlying each client’s dislikes despite fears or hesitations. You have a solution in products and/or services to improve consumer’s lives. Your clients want a service that addresses their needs and meets their requirements. Once you have this combination of goals and values you can apply the data to those avatars you have already completed.
Further market research
What does every ideal customer strive for? Do companies aspire to increase their revenues? Are they aiming at gaining influence in a given sector? Make a few good questions about your goal.
Give yourself a list of values and goals that fit what you offer. Ask for feedback from your existing clients or using forms, keyword research or listening to your customers on social media is other effective ways to define what will meet your objectives.
Pay attention to what questions potential customers ask on different websites including Facebook for example to get ideas about what type of questions they are asked.
Negative avatars
When you create customer avatar for marketing purposes, you must not neglect the negative avatar.
A negative avatar is a kind of avatar who does not have your product/service and definitely doesn’t share any interest with your company.
For example, if you are creating avatar for marketing purposes for bicycle related products, you must prepare avatar of people who don’t have a bike or not interested with riding a bicycle. After that, think about what makes him/her feel not interested and try to solve these problems with your products/service.
Here the key is to not focus on personally identifiable traits on how the person were difficult to work with but instead on the reasons for why they were not a good fit for your product or service.
Having a negative avatar makes it easy for people to see who you want to serve. Imagine one client who is your nightmare customer. Make a list of things that make him/her a horrible client.
Going deeper — The Why Question
When asked a question your customer should always have to ask a ‘Why’ question for a deeper understanding of what they want to know. Tell me the reason your client avatar would rather not buy your products / services.
As you build your clients’ avatars think about how they would benefit from you. Imagine you and your avatar collaborate on exploring your product or service. Thinking this way will help you have better solutions in the long run.
Think about what your customer was thinking before signing out (leaving your website) or while purchasing your products/services. What were these people seeking?
Multiple buyer personas
Most organizations will have at least one perfect customer, but many may have several. The easiest way for a customer profile is to address them one at a time.
Start with the “low hanging fruit” that can bring maximum profits to your business. However, you might realize that your business is too big, and you need to expand your offering in order to really develop your niche and position yourself to deliver your best on that market.
Conclusion
The customer avatar should be integral to your marketing. It provides a foundation for targeting and is a good way for everyone to understand who you want to attract. Marketing campaigns that understand the specifics of the target market will typically take less money and work more quickly.
Take the time to understand those who you want to use your services and those who do not. Discover what can make them change their mind and let you succeed in your marketing campaigns.
Avatar creation is a powerful tool to help you better understand your target market, communicate with them in their language, and ultimately drive more sales. It’s not just an exercise for fun or something that only marketers need to do.
Every business owner should take the time to create an avatar of their own customer because it helps make marketing campaigns successful faster. Think about what type of customers you want to attract by asking the kinds of questions that were discussed earlier.
Avatar creation is meant to translate into business success so you can create and use targeted marketing materials. So, take avatar creation seriously and remember that it’s not just about creating an avatar for your own use – think of how much more successful businesses become when they create avatars than the ones who don’t.
Now go ahead and design your ideal client!