Do you feel like building your customer avatar is one of those branding tasks you can put on the backburner? The truth is, having a solid (and VERY specific) idea of your ideal client is one of the best investments you can make in your overall marketing strategy. And here’s the best part, it can be fun!
That’s right. We said it. FUN.
Building your customer avatar is, in many ways, a creative exercise. You can even think of it as getting to know a character from your favorite movie, video game, or book.
Your customer has monsters to defeat. Can you name what that monster is? They have life challenges to overcome. Do you know what those life challenges are, whether or not they are directly related to your brand at first glance? They might have battle wounds to heal. What are those wounds and pain points?
Then comes the most important question: how does your brand help them tackle all of these things and win at the game of life? How does it help make their strengths even stronger and their weaknesses less weak?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, your marketing will fall flat. It’s that simple.
Getting as specific as you can about who they are and what their problems are can help them connect with your brand. The better you know your customer avatar or ideal client, the better you can connect with them and:
- Develop better products or services
- Target your paid advertising and PPC campaigns
- Write website, social media, email, and other content marketing campaigns that connect
- Create an overall superior customer experience
But building your customer avatar doesn’t have to be an arduous chore full of statistics, charts, and figures. We all love a good statistic. But if you are just getting started creating your customer avatar, it can be a bit intimidating. You have to start somewhere.
Here are a few ways to re-think creating your customer avatar, the fun way.
Demure librarian or neon rockstar? What is your customer’s personality?
People come in all different shapes and sizes in just about every way.
Would your customer avatar be wearing polka-dots or a business suit? Might they drive a Ferrari or a Prius? Is their idea of a good book the latest murder mystery thriller, or a vintage classic by Jane Austen?
Knowing a bit about your customer’s personality can help you better serve them, and can help you get specific in essential branding decisions. For example, think about your branding style guide. You will want to make sure your brand’s tone is in alignment with your customer’s voice. Perfect grammar will hardly work on a more casual audience. On the other hand, slang terminology might not go over so well with the more buttoned-up, entrepreneurial set.
There are other considerations as well. Does your customer hang out on Facebook or Snapchat? Do they listen to podcasts on their morning jog? Would they rather get stung by a jellyfish than read a lengthy paragraph in your brilliantly written email marketing campaign?
Not all questions matter to all brands. Choose the questions you think might best need answering to help guide you on the path to building your customer avatar. Sure, thinking about what magazines your customer might have on their nightstand might seem silly. Pondering on what they might have had for breakfast this morning might seem like overkill. But depending on your brand, knowing these kinds of details can not only be fun to think about–but they can also help you develop an understanding of your customer that will convey itself in all of your communications. And when a customer feels like you know them, they are more likely to trust you.
What are your customer’s main weaknesses and strengths?
When you are thinking about your customer avatar, it can be fun to think about it in terms of character strengths and weaknesses. Would you say they are a bit vain? Your sales pitches might be best served to give them a bit of an ego boost or a sense of exclusivity. Impatient? You’d better make sure your marketing doesn’t waste their time. Knowing your customer avatar’s weaknesses can help you identify their potential objections to your brand.
But let’s not be all negative here! What about your customer’s strengths? How do they excel? Are they generous, committed, creative, or fun? Perhaps they are active in the community, or they have a vibrant personality.
The point here is to keep asking questions. Have fun with it. Once you have an idea of what your ideal customer might consider their main strengths and weaknesses, you’ll have a natural sense of what to say to them.
How does your brand solve your customer’s problems?
Building a customer avatar is all about understanding your clients so that you can better serve them. It’s time to think about their pain points. What do they worry about? Are they focused on winning at a business game? Do they struggle financially? Are they busy parents or young single adults exhausted by the dating game?
Once you have a list of pain points your customer might struggle with, you can figure out how your brand helps them solve their problem. How do you help them win at the game of life, achieve their dreams, and overcome their struggles?
Does your product or service help them save time? Money? Does it help them be better parents, have greater peace of mind, or stay organized? Think of these attributes as power-ups you add to their arsenal—the supplies they have on hand to help them out in their day-to-day life.
Building Your Customer Avatar Should Be Fun
By now, you should be in the mind of your customer, and if you are having enough fun with this, you might have all sorts of creative juices flowing. You might have even thought of a clever twist to the services you offer, a feature you can add to a future product, or even a new way to market your brand in a way that truly connects.
That is the beauty of building a customer avatar. When you know it, you can develop marketing messages that deeply resonate with the people you want to do business with most! Imagine how your life would change if every single day you had the pleasure of serving only your very favorite customers! It can happen! It starts with building out your customer avatar.
Feeling a wee bit out of your league and really wishing you could just have someone create your avatars for you? You’re in luck! Our marketing team lives and breathes all of this stuff and our CEO has dedicated the last 27 years of her life to it! (If that ain’t commitment, we don’t know what is!) If you run a company that’s generating a minimum of $500,000 in annual revenues, we’d love to jump on a call with you to learn more about what you do and help you knock down some of the roadblocks that are getting in your way. Consider this your invitation to schedule a complimentary consultation now.
