While the first thing that comes to mind with the term ‘avatar’ is tall blue creatures depicted by James Cameron, an avatar simply means a form or representation of a person. A customer avatar is a representation of an ideal customer that you want to purchase your business’s service or product.
A customer avatar is a detailed profile of a fictional character that depicts your business audience. It is an essential part of any marketing strategy and is ideally an extensive outline based on research and statistics. It is highly recommended that a customer avatar is factually based as opposed to a vague description based on assumptions. Put simply, a customer avatar is a fictional character with the same demands, pain spots and desires as the target consumer.
A commonly unknown fact is that there may be multiple avatars when thinking of your target audience. However, it is better to narrow down options because it will be difficult to serve everyone without the advantage of a huge budget.
How To Create Your Custom Avatar
Step 1: Prepare Questions
There are various questions to be considered when building a customer avatar. Asking questions drives an in-depth search for knowledge, to see beyond the obvious answers, and to discover something new. These questions will help identify characteristics that will constitute a customer avatar for your business. Key questions to ask include:
- WHO the ideal customer of your business is
- WHERE they’re hanging out online
- WHAT their challenges are
Step 2: Identify Demographics
This includes listing every single characteristic and trait the target audience shares. Identifying people based on their age, income, gender, hobbies, location etc. will help identify the interests of the targeted consumers.
Step 3: Identify Goals and Objectives
This step must not be confused with the goals and objectives of the business. This step instead focuses on what the ideal customers are trying to achieve. For example, are they looking to increase business revenue or are they trying to connect with influencers in a particular industry?
Step 4: Identify Challenges
As is the case with all planning processes, the negatives along with the positives are to be considered in conjunction with each other. Now that you know what the customers wish to achieve, possible hurdles or roadblocks that have been preventing them from achieving the goals can be identified. An understanding of the frustration of customers will enable your business to market your product or service as a solution to their problems.
Step 5: Identify Potential Objections
Finally, potential reasons why the customer avatar may not choose to buy your business’s product or service can be considered. For example, with the promotion of the marketing course previously mentioned, consumers may be concerned with the amount of time team members will be occupied to gain the certification. To address this concern, the subject line of the email could be altered as a ‘1-day content marketing course for teams.’
Once the above information has been collected and identified, it will be easier to have a clear focus on who exactly to market to. The customer avatar will start to take form and will provide an in-depth understanding of the ideal client for your business.
Why Is Knowing Your Customer Avatar Important?
When advertising a product or service, it is good to know whom your business is trying to sell to. Many businesses miss out on growth possibilities because they do not properly comprehend who they wish to sell to. They lack a clear picture of what their consumers are buying, discussing, and their activity on their websites and social media. As a result, they adopt a broad approach instead of targeting and creating personalised brand messages and experiences.
One of the most common digital marketing blunders is broad targeting, which leads to businesses attempting to appeal to everyone and failing to attract an audience as a result. A detailed customer avatar will enable your business to target its marketing much more effectively. Instead of addressing ‘anyone’, you will be able to address ‘someone’. It will enable your business to speak with its target audience in a language they understand, on platforms they use, and their specific concerns or views can be addressed.
An accurate customer avatar gives the opportunity to be more specific with marketing messages and allows an improvement in a variety of areas including:
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Product Development
- Paid Advertising
- User Experience
Having a solid customer avatar helps create custom marketing messages to suit the interests of your target audience. It can also elucidate who to avoid at all costs and this will save time and money.
