Here we go.

It’s the same mistake all over again!

Now, this is happening quite often. We as marketers and business owners focus so much on the products or services that need to be sold rather than focusing on whom we are selling it to and whom do we want to sell it to.

You could be having the best of the best products or services available, but if you are trying to sell those to the wrong people or the wrong person then you are never going to reach the sales target that you want to achieve.

So now, how do we change these? how can we get better at understanding our so-called ‘Ideal Customers’

The answer is Customer avatar, Which is also called a marketing persona or a buyer persona. All these are the terms that are interchangeably used to describe the imaginary, generalized expressions of the buyer personas who are most likely to buy from you.

A thorough understanding of your customer avatar is important to the success of your marketing, sales, product development, and service delivery. “You can’t hit a target which you haven’t set,” I’m sure you’ve probably heard this before. This specifically highlights the value of having a well-defined customer avatar.

Now, before we start discussing how to create an Ideal Customer avatar in 7 easy steps? Let us first understand 

What is a customer avatar? 

A customer profile or customer avatar is a collection of all the information you collect on each of your customers in one place. Naturally, each individual should have their customer profile, based on their qualities and contacts with your company.

 

How does customer avatar help in business?

Consider each of your consumers as an individual. Assume you have a client named ABC. She’s a twenty-something who works in marketing in XYZ place. She mostly interacts with your brand on her prized iPhone. 

She occasionally visits your website, opens your emails, and shares your social media content, but she has never visited one of your physical locations. Wouldn’t it be great if you could compile all of this data into one easily accessible location? 

Customer avatars enable you to gain a complete picture of your users, engage with them in meaningful ways, and keep them coming back for more. They can assist you in forming a full picture of your users so that you may better serve their demands. And it is through this process that average entrepreneurs become outstanding ones.

 

7 easy steps to create an ideal customer avatar:

 

Find the Sources of Information for your customer avatar

This portion of the Customer Avatar Worksheet is important in defining your customer avatar’s “location.”

This kind of data can help you in determining the best areas to promote your avatar online. Getting the correct message in front of the right person at the right moment is the essence of marketing. This can assist you to figure out where you can advertise, and how to communicate with them in their own language.

Use the “but no one else would” method to fill in this section. You may fill the blanks this way:

• [CONFERENCE] would be attended by my ideal consumer, but no one else would.
• No one else, but my ideal consumer, would read [BOOK].
• No one else, but my ideal customer, would subscribe to [MAGAZINE].

Are you able to understand the bigger picture here?

The goal is to identify niche books, blogs, conferences, gurus, and other resources that will only attract your ideal customer and keep them hooked.

If we talk about cricket, for example, you wouldn’t want Sachin Tendulkar or a Virat Kohli to be your guru. Cricketers and maximum fans around the world are familiar with Sachin Tendulkar or Virat Kohli for that matter.

Instead, choose a more niche cricketer like Smriti Mandhana. The average non-cricketer won’t know who she is, but your customer avatar would certainly know who she is and what she is good at.

When trying to gain more traffic from ad networks like Facebook, you can target your audience in a better way by focusing on one particular interest while getting rid of less-than-ideal possibilities.

 

Make a list of their demographic data

Using demographic data to create a consumer avatar can be extremely beneficial. This section includes all the standard information, such as the person’s age, gender, marital status, income, work title, and so on.

The below section is especially helpful when selecting targeting options in ad platforms such as Facebook.

• Gender and age (if they’re relevant to your product)
• The highest level of schooling attained
• Occupation and earnings
• Family relationships
• Residence or place of business

The issues and pain point your target consumer is facing are some of the most important pieces of information you would want to gather. Knowing the difficulties your demographic experiencing, can help you narrow or extend your concept of the perfect customer, whether it’s fear of losing consumers, difficulty to adapt to new technology, or scaling the business.

The next important thing is utilizing the demographic data you’ve gathered, designing a customer avatar to define your ideal customer. Giving them a name, age, gender, occupation, and income is part of this (for themselves or their business).

It’s also a good idea to establish your customer’s history. You can do this by providing them with a brief background on themselves, such as where they grew up, their goals, or what drives them in their profession. You might also offer them a quote, something they say or think that they can relate to.

 

Focus on the challenges and pain points in your customer’s life

Now when we talk about starting a new business, the first thing that we need to focus on is the challenges that our potential customers are going through and their pain points. You need to ask yourself the question that, what are the struggles they are going through and how is my product or a particular service going to serve their purpose?

Is my product good enough to solve their problem? If not, then how can I improve the quality of my product/service? Along with these questions, you also need to analyze and understand their pain points.

 

 

Try and understand the goals and values of your ideal customer

Every customer has a specific purpose and goal in mind, which is based on their beliefs, fears, preferences, and dislikes. Each of us has a personal and professional goal. As a company, you aim to make money by improving the lives of your customers. Your customers, on the other hand, desire services that satisfy their needs at a reasonable price.

Now when you must establish your clients’ goals rather than your own it indeed helps you achieve your own goal as well. So, ask yourself the following questions to help you get started:

• What are the desires of your ideal customer?
• Is your ideal customer working on a tight budget or deadline?
• What are the requirements of your ideal customer?

You also need to make sure that you identify and stick to the values that your consumer base holds. Selling a gaming device to someone who isn’t interested in gaming and stuff ain’t gonna give a good look to your company.

You’ll need to turn to your demographic study to help you figure out what your customers want. Once you’ve got that, you may start asking yourself important questions like:

• What are the objectives that your consumers have in mind?
• What are the personal and professional values and commitments of your potential clients?
• Do your customers have any beliefs or aspirations that they consider to be deal-breakers?
• What procedures and methods will your customers take to ensure that their values get along with their objectives?

You can attach this data to the customer avatars you’ve already started to round out once you have this combination of goals and values in mind.

The goals and values of your ideal customer would look something like this.

 

List down the objections and the role of your ideal customer

Now think about the potential reasons as to why your customer avatar might not choose to buy your product or opt for a service.

Let us consider that you are providing online course training to educate people who are new to startup businesses and want to excel in that. Below are some of the possible objections you need to understand and address along with the role of your ideal customer:

 

Know and understand your industry

One important factor to think about is how good is your brand as compared to others in the industry. You should be aware of how your clients perceive your brand and how other businesses are competing for their attention. 

This should give you a solid picture of the kinds of customers you’d like to recruit and keep. Understanding your sector also helps in the development of your brand identity.

You must discover a strategy to differentiate your goods and services if you want to stand out. However, you don’t want to disclose any changes that will annoy your customers. 

You can copy your competitor’s effective approaches for introducing and educating customers about a new product or feature if you know which marketing strategies your customers currently respond to.

 

Customer avatars should be analyzed and iterated

A customer avatar is an important tool for expanding your business. If you are selling a product or service that doesn’t match the actual wants of any possible clients, then you are taking a huge risk.

Alternatively, you may find yourself marketing to prospects in a way that does not correspond to their understanding of the issue. So, Your goal should rather be to operate following your customer avatar.

To go with all these, below are some of the most important questions that you can ask yourself to analyze and iterate the customer avatars time and again. (we have already discussed a few of them earlier but to get more insights into those topics, continue reading)

Where do my potential clients get their answers from?

When our potential clients do their research work, they would try to explore sources like google, youtube, Reddit, or other sources through which they get the answers for their queries. 

So, keeping this in mind you can frame a simple answer for your reference like ‘When XYZ wants to find an answer for a query, the first place he/she would explore is YouTube on his/her android phone.

Where do they hang out the most?

When considering a place to hang out, one needs to consider both online and offline places.

Online places can be anything and everything like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc where your potential customer would love to spend time. Similarly, consider online places like the park, a cricket field, or a badminton court which will make it easy to frame a question.

Answers could be like ‘This XYZ person hangs out with his family twice a week at this particular park’.

‘He/She spends his time more often than not on Instagram and can be seen engaging with posts that are related to ABC topic’.

What are their main challenges and problems in life?

When you think about your potential customer, you need to try and understand the real frustration and problems that are running deep inside him. Highlight those points, frame a question for yourself, and then find an answer to it.

Deeper you try and understand your potential customer and frame questions, the better it is for you in terms of the overall outcome.

The answers could be anything and everything just like: ‘He has this fear of losing out on people who are very close to him/her’.

‘He/she is regularly hitting the gym for the past 4 months as he/she wants to lose 20 kilos in total by the end of the year 2022’.

What are the dreams and desires that they want to fulfill?

Understanding the needs and desires of your potential customer helps you in building a better practical picture in his/her mind keeping your products and services in mind.

When you know their real inner desires, it becomes easy to connect with them and bridge that gap using your products and services.

What are their biggest fears in life?

What are your dream client’s biggest fears?

This is the question for which you need to find answers. The answers can be very deep, but at the end of this question, you would become so powerful that you would be in a position to analyze and understand your potential customer’s weakness which can work in your favor big time.

What does my potential client’s day look like?

You must be in a position to try and know what a typical day would look like. From the time they wake up from bed to the time they go and sleep in the night. 

At what time in the day, do they spend most of their time on social media? At what time would they be busy and wouldn’t respond to anyone?

These are some of the questions that you need to find answers to, which would eventually help you to understand your customer and connect with them.

What usually makes them happy?

The relationship between you and your customer isn’t all about money and services. There is a lot to it than you just think. Your clients are as emotional as you are. So, you need to make sure that you keep your potential clients happy with the kind of services you offer.

You as a businessman need to know the pain points and touchpoints which becomes easy to add the essence of that surprise element and bring a smile on their face.

After gathering all this information draw your customer avatar here:

Conclusion:

You can target better customers in your sales and marketing activities by establishing detailed customer avatars, which can reduce customer churn and lead to happier consumers in the long run. 

The more information you have in your profile, the more value you can get out of it, making your marketing, sales, and service experiences for your consumers more effective and beneficial.

We hope that this article has helped you to get an insight as to what a customer avatar should look like and how it can be created.

Please drop your comments and share your insights as to how valuable this article was in building your customer avatar.

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