15 April
If I ask what is your target audience? What will be your answer?
By target audience, I don’t mean the universe but a specific audience segment. I mean to say the type of people you want to sell to.
Most of the marketers make this biggest mistake of forgetting who they are targeting and that leads to undefined marketing sales, unattended revenue goals.
For targeting the right audience, you need to select the right marketing technique and drive awareness. Define who they are. And how will you do that?
In this blog, we will discuss the right way to target your audience for your product.
CUSTOMER AVATAR
The blog will cover the following
- What is a customer avatar?
- Why is it necessary for your business?
- Who needs it?
- How Customer Avatar can assist in Developing product and Marketing Strategy?
- A step-by-step guide to creating a customer Avatar
What is a Customer Avatar?
A customer avatar is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customers that are created based on market research and real data.
While creating a customer avatar also known as a buyer persona, consider including demographics, behavior, motivations, fears, and frustrations, desires/wants, key purchasing drivers, (Before and after stage) and good v/s evil, etc.
The customer avatar is also known as the buyer’s persona/customer profile/ideal client profile/marketing persona. Here‘s what a customer avatar is-
- An essential part of your marketing strategy
- A semi-fictional character with desires, pains, and needs
- A detailed profile of a single person depicting your targeted audience
You could have the greatest product on the earth but if you don’t know who your audience is you are never going to hit the desired sales number.
Detailed research on a single customer helps in gaining tremendous insight into your customer behavior and helps you determine the right strategy and areas to invest time in. Furthermore, it helps in attracting the most qualified leads for your business.
Who needs it?
Everyone. Yes, every single organization, online business firms, entrepreneurs, etc. needs to have it. Regardless of the business, customer Avatar is a critical asset to define and target the right audience.
Why is Customer Avatar necessary for the business?
It is true that creating a customer avatar for your product is an exhaustive exercise, but once you know the importance of it, you will love to integrate it as an integral part of your marketing strategy.
Here’s how a fictional representation can improve your marketing efforts and help you achieve the targeted revenue!
1. Narrows down your marketing practices
There is no fun in spending dollars on marketing and getting a handful of leads. A customer Avatar helps in knowing the buyer from a wider lens. It helps in understanding the challenges the buyer is facing, what would be the possible objections to buying the product, how your product befits the demand.
By having a clear blueprint of the customer avatar, you can decide the right mode of marketing, for example, the right channels of marketing, right marketing platforms, and create a personalized need-focused campaign. What will be the result if you do that? You know the answer already!
2. Helps you know the target audience
Many businesses run marketing campaigns without actually targeting the right one. It is essential for you to understand “everyone” is not your target audience. You need to understand the need first:
- who is going to buy your product/services?
- segment these people into differently based on the desires and frustrations,
- and provide one single solution.
Remember, while creating a customer avatar, you need to consider a single problem, a single solution with a single product.
3. Ensures a smooth and targeted Customer Journey
When a customer interacts with a brand online, the brand leverages the best marketing practices to develop the relationship. This series of engaging with the prospect at every stage in the sales generation process is known as the customer journey.
Customer avatar improves targeting at each stage of the journey with personalized messaging. You have the customer avatar; you can decide how you can excite the visitor into becoming a potential customer.
4. Improves personalization efforts
According to research, 89% of the customers prefer to engage with the brand with which they could relate with.
How do you launch a personalized marketing strategy or a landing page when you are not familiar with what the customer wants answers to?
A customer avatar helps you provide a personalized solution that addresses their needs and is the perfect solution to their frustration.
5. Grants you benefit over competitors
What happens if you know something that your competitors don’t?
Yes, you can utilize the opportunity and grab the customer. And how will this happen? By creating a customer avatar. A customer avatar helps in developing a detailed insight by narrowing down the segments.
You have to reach the core as to why is he struggling with a particular problem, what challenges he is facing on the way and how your product will help him improve his status. It helps you take a customer from a frustrating state to a happy state.
How Customer Avatar can assist in Developing product and Marketing Strategy
A detailed study of your ideal customer helps in streamlining your business at every level. It helps the marketers gain an edge over competitors and invest focused efforts. Here is how a customer Avatar assists in marketing strategy:
1. Product Development strategy
By having a complete understanding of a customer, their needs, objections, and goals, you will be able to redefine your product development strategy. A strategy, personalized to the audience. It will make the process more targeted and relevant.
2. Content Marketing
A customer avatar helps in uncovering the pain points that the specific person is encountering at the moment. It will allow the content creators to create content that solves their problems and engage.
Customers are seeking solutions to their problems, if you get successful in creating a belief by solving the queries, it will groom up the brand-customer relationship.
3. Paid marketing
If you are running ads, then you might have targeted specific demography. The question is can you optimize your time and money to full potential? The answer is a YES! A detailed understanding of your customer profile will help you in targeting them precisely and help you hone your creativity.
4. User experience
When you know who your targeted customer is and what he will love to see more of, you can eventually improve the user experience. You can create an impactful first impression from the first interaction to the final purchase. A perfect user experience leads to repeated referrals and purchases.
A step-by-step guide to creating a customer Avatar
1. Focus on one problem that your business is trying to solve
This is the most important exercise to know your customers better. Focus on a single problem that you are trying to solve and identify the persons having the same problem. If you have a customer base, then identify the problems they are facing the frustrations and create a customer avatar.
2. Review the customer journey map
A customer journey map is a route that a prospect must pass through for you to achieve a goal. You do not directly need the customer journey map to define your customer avatar, but simply thinking about the stages that a visitor will pass through, and given the demographics, you will be able to design a personalized journey.
3. Do your research
Engage in the detailed research of your ideal customer. The best part is there can be your existing customer. You can utilize the data as a reference and send them a survey asking a few questions.
In opposition to this, if you have recently started your business and seeking customers, you will need to do secondary research, for example – visiting forums your ideal customers visit, social media conversations, Questions and answers sites, and other third-party resources.
4. Engage with customers and prospects
Apart from gaining useful insights from the data, spend time with your customers. Customer interviews are a potential way to pen down realistic and valuable information that raw data can’t show.
5. Fill out an avatar worksheet
Once the research is complete, let’s move to fill up the details in the avatar worksheet. You just need to put the information; you have collected in the avatar worksheet. Begin by giving your persona a name and then conclude-
Demographics
For creating demographics, you can take the below points into consideration:
- How old are they?
- What’s their gender?
- What’s their marital status?
- Where are they located?
- What’s their occupation?
- What’s their job title?
- How much do they make each year?
- What level of education have they completed?
- What’s a quote they would say? What’s a statement that reflects the way they speak?
- What books do they read?
- What webinars, workshops, or events they attend?
- What brands do they follow?
Fears and frustrations
- What is it that doesn’t let them sleep?
- What are they want to achieve but finding it challenging too?
- What problems they are seeking solutions to today?
- What current processes they use and why they are ineffective?
- What challenges they are experiencing?
- What pain points do they wish to avoid?
*Note: you can relate fears and frustrations in terms of health, wealth, and relationships too, apart from the problems he is facing professionally.
Wants and Aspirations
- What are the goals they want to achieve?
- What values are important to your ideal customer?
Key Purchase drivers
- What can be the reasons for buying the product?
- Does the product/services you are offering fulfill what he needs?
- What features of your product do you think is a solution to his problem
- What are the features that differentiate you from competitors or a homegrown process?
- How does your solution fit into their short and long-term goals?
Before and After Stage
The before and after stage reflects the state of the ideal customer. It is a reflection of pre-purchase and post-purchase emotions.
- What is his state before purchasing the product?
- How he feels after purchasing the product?
*Note: Before and after the stage is exclusively product-based
Good Vs Evil
These are the contrary thoughts that the customer faces.
- Good: satisfactory and confident mindset
- Evil: consumed with self-criticism and fear of opinions
Takeaways
A customer Avatar can be defined as a fictional or semi-fictional representation character of your ideal target audience (specific segment).
It helps you know who exactly you are targeting
Help you improve messaging and become more personalized
You may have more than one avatar for a single product depending on the needs of the targeted audience
Be specific about the story of your avatar.
Use customer avatar to explore different business avenues
Many businesses neglect the importance of knowing deeply who their targeted audience is. Is your content and marketing department familiar with what a customer profile is and why it is beneficial to the business? If not, then this blog will surely help you target the right audience with a detailed understanding of customer avatars.
We’ve created a customer profile template that you can download and begin creating your customer avatar NOW!
Don’t forget to share this blog if you liked it, and share your feedback!
