When you are launching a business before you get down to the basics such as writing content for your website, creating an auto responder series and investing in marketing you need to come up with a customer avatar. This is essentially a person that is created from the figment of your imagination that best represents your customer base. It is important to create this avatar before writing any content, because from time to time you might need to incorporate the avatar into your content so that your audience has someone to connect with.
Why the Customer Avatar Is Important
Before going further you have to understand why the customer avatar is important, and that is because it allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level. The customer avatar will not represent the entirety of your customer base, but it will represent a very significant portion. When writing your content you will need to relate to this avatar by introducing this personality and explain what the problems of the avatar are. For example, let’s say you are in the fitness niche that is aimed at helping the older generation keep their weight down. So what you would do is create an avatar that is 50 to 60 years old, has the hobbies of what most people in that age group have, golf being one of them, and introduce problems that most people of that age group have to increase the strength of the emotional connection. Such as what you can do to pass the time when you enter retirement, or how to deal with grandchildren.
When creating content you can use this avatar as a way to quickly relate to your audience, and as a result, they will be better engaged with your content. For more information on creating different types of content check out our other blog called “Types of Digital Content”.
What the Customer Avatar Is Made Up Of
When creating your customer avatar you need to consider things such as the age of the avatar, what its hobbies and interests are, what they look like, how much they have to spend, whether they are male or female, what their occupation is, and anything else that will improve the clarity of the image of your customer avatar.
Once you have the avatar figured out you will need to get a professionally made graphics picture that represents you avatar as best as possible. This can be used in your marketing e-mails and website content so that your audience can see what the visual representation of the avatar is.
How to Figure Out a Customer Avatar
One of the main problems that a lot of businesses have when launching their business is figuring out that their average customers looks like. However, it doesn’t have to be that difficult, all you need to do is a little bit of research and you will very quickly come up with an accurate customer avatar. What you shouldn’t do is guesstimate what your avatar looks like without doing any research. This is because your preconceptions and understanding of your demographics might not be as accurate as you would have assumed.
One great method of understanding your demographics is getting as many visitors as you can to fill out a survey. This might be difficult because people in general hate filling out surveys; however, if you offer them something in return for filling out the survey then you can get their attention and get them to complete all of the answers. Coming up with a survey and a freebie might be an investment in time and money that you feel as if you don’t have the patience for. However, look at it from this point of view, the information that you get at the end of it will be vital for creating a great customer avatar, and that in turn can be utilized in order to engage your potential customers, and in turn that will increase your chances of selling something to them. So, making an investment into your customer avatar will have a positive effect on your bottom line.
Know the Problems Of Your Customer Avatar
Only by understating what problems your customer avatar has can you begin to efficiently market to your customers. For example, let’s say you are marketing weight loss products, but are doing it from the angle of “lose weight in order to get a six-pack”. This angle will not work very well if in fact most of your audience are women in their mid-30’s, what would work well is the following approach: “lose weight to fit into your tighter jean size”. In both cases you are selling the same product, but if you come from the correct angle you will be able to hook the customer emotionally and that will increase your chances of making a sale significantly.
When a customer is looking to get a problem solved, what they really value is when they come across sympathy, and an understating voice. If you can be that understanding sympathetic voice that then you will get the attention of your potential customers right away and in turn have a better chance of selling then what you are offering. But in order to be that voice you must create a customer avatar as accurately as possible with relation to your demographics. Having an accurate avatar will increase your chances of keeping your prospects all the way until the end of your sales funnel.
As time goes on your understating of your demographics will increase, you demographics might even change, and as a result, you will need to change the customer avatar in response, the important thing is that you must be in touch with what your average customer looks like. If you found the information in this article useful and would like more of the same then you can download our “Small Business Digital Marketing Checklist”. It is full of useful information that any online business owner should read in order to improve their marketing knowledge.
