The Customer Avatar & Why It’s Important

The Customer Avatar is a detailed profile of who your business is selling to. From time to time you get so focused on what you’re selling that you forget to think about who you’re selling it to. Knowing and applying your Customer Avatar profile will keep you focused on providing the most relevant and useful content in front of who really matters….YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Knowing how to build and identify your Customer Avatar is one of the few skills that can be applied to every marketing discipline. Whether it’s Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Creative Production, Social Media Marketing, Copywriting, Analytics…the list goes on, your Customer Avatar will aid you in your overall digital marketing efforts and in the end, save your time and money. For example:

• Content Marketing: Knowing your avatar helps you decide what blog posts, videos, podcasts, social media campaigns you should create to attract more leads and customers.
• Paid Traffic: Knowing your avatar helps you discover which ad platforms you should buy traffic from and what targeting options you should use.
• Content Creation: Knowing your avatar will help you create a product that your customer NEEDS.
• Copywriting: Knowing your avatar helps you describe your offers in a way that speaks to your avatar’s problems and compels them to want to buy.
• Email Marketing: Knowing your avatar helps you get more open rates and better conversion rates on your emails…and can even be used to segment specific email marketing campaigns to different customer avatars.

When you get clear on the characteristics of the person who is going to buy your products and services, it’s a lot easier to find and present them with a message that moves them to action.

There are 5 major components to a Customer Avatar:

• Goals and Values
• Sources of Information
• Demographic Information
• Challenges and Pain Points
• Building Multiple Avatars

In some cases, you’ll need to survey your existing customers to figure out who your Customer Avatar is. In other cases, you’ll already be intimately familiar with the characteristics of your ideal customer. Let’s look at each section of the Customer Avatar.

Goals and Values

The best way to get started with your Customer Avatar is to think about the goals and values that are important to your ideal customer. Make a note of the goals and values that are relevant to the products and services you offer. For example, If you’re a local restaurant you know one of your customer avatars is interested in “finding a delicious lunch at a decent price”

You could draft an email to this avatar promoting our Lunch Specials with the subject line: Check Out Our Fast & Affordable Lunch Specials.

Sources of Information

This section of the Customer Avatar is critical to determining the “where” of your customer avatar.

• Where do they hang out (both online and in person)?
• What materials do they read?
• What do they follow?
• What/Who are they loyal to?

This information can help you determine the best places to advertise online to your avatar. Use the “but no one else would” trick. You’ll complete sentences like these:

• My ideal customer would read (insert book), but no one else would.
• My ideal customer would subscribe to (insert magazine), but no one else would.
• My ideal customer would attend (insert concert), but no one else would.

The idea is to find the niche books, magazines, blogs, conferences, influencers, etc. that ONLY your ideal customer would be attracted to. For example, if you are a local golf course—you wouldn’t want to assign Tiger Woods as an influencer. Tiger is someone golfers are familiar with… however, so is everyone else. Instead, choose a more niche golfer like Rory McElroy. The average non-golfer won’t know who he is—but your customer avatar will.

When buying traffic from ad platforms like Facebook, you’ll often be able to better target your audience by focusing on these niche interests, while excluding less-than-ideal prospects.

Demographic Information

Applying demographic information can really help bring your Customer Avatar to life. The demographic section includes all the usual facts—like the person’s age, gender, marital status, income, job title, and so on. We find that filling in a “Quote” field is one of our favorite parts of this section. Giving your avatar a quote can be particularly helpful to get inside the head of your customer. This section can also be useful when choosing targeting options in ad platforms, like Facebook and Google. Demographics can also help when you’re writing content, emails, or sales copy.

Try this: pretend your avatar is sitting across the table from you. Write the words that you would say to them in a normal conversation. You’ll find that demographic information like age, gender, and location will give your persona a look and feel that helps you talk to them more persuasively.

Challenges and Pain Points

This information can help you in several ways. For one thing, it can help spur ideas for new products or services that can help solve your avatar’s problems. It can also help you write copy and ad creative that speaks to their pain points, compelling them to take action.

For example, you’re a local gym that is promoting memberships for your Early Risers Cardio Class we want to hit on pain points such as…

Losing energy throughout the day? Does your body need a pick me up? Sign up for our Early Risers Cardio Class to get your heart pumping for energy that lasts throughout your entire day.

Copy like this will get a response from this avatar because it talks directly about the challenges he or she is facing.

Build Multiple Avatars

Start by building a single avatar, but don’t stop there. Your business almost certainly has more than one ideal buyer. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll start churning out multiple avatars representing the different segments of your market. Any lucrative market segment with a distinct set of goals, information sources, pain points, etc. is deserving of a customer avatar.

In Conclusion

Knowing how to build your Customer Avatar is one of the few skills that can be applied to every digital marketing channel. Whether it’s Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Creative Production, Social Media Marketing, or Blog Writing your Customer Avatar will aid you in your overall digital marketing efforts and in the end, save your time and money.

If you need help building your Customer Avatar or applying your Customer Avatar to any of your digital marketing campaigns please send us an email at dotzeromedia@gmail.com or call us at 970-401-3044.

Thanks For Reading.

DZM