How to create a customer avatar for your business

Our assignment in our networking group, A Leg Up, is to create a customer avatar. Some of you may know what this is, but I'm sure many of you don't. And even if you do, hopefully you'll get some useful information on how to create one for yourself.

From Digital Marketer:

“To market a product or service properly, the first thing you must do is get clear on WHO your ideal customer is, where they are hanging out, what their challenges are…”

So, a customer avatar helps you identify your ideal customer.

We’ll get into the how-to in just a second, first understand that a customer avatar is…The Swiss Army Knife of Marketing

Digital Marketer then goes on to give a detailed example of an avatar that they created. We'll come back and look at it a bit later, but first some ideas from Infusionsoft (including a downloadable template):

Having a deep understanding of a clearly defined customer avatar will help you:

• Determine what social platforms they are spending their time on so you know where your business should be present and active.
• Be more effective in your advertising. Your marketing dollars will be well spent when you know where to advertise and who to target to maximize your exposure.
• Better connect with your avatar with your copy because you will have an understanding of their pains, pleasures, desires, and wants.
• Deliver and develop better products/services because you are able to anticipate your markets’ needs, behaviors, and concerns.

Creating your avatar

So, having a clearly defined customer avatar is important; the question is, "How do I create one?" The good news is, that creating a customer avatar is not difficult to create if you ask the right questions.

"What are the right questions?" you ask. You are in for some tremendous value because I have created a complete template to help you create your own customer avatar. This template makes it easy to compile all of your information, knowledge, experience, and research into one beautiful and presentable format. 

Download your customer avatar template now and begin the journey of successful marketing, sales, product development, and delivery of services that will knock the socks off your perfect customers.

Multiple avatars

By now you might be thinking, "What if I have more than one avatar?" Having multiple avatars is perfectly fine. In fact, most businesses will have more than one ideal customer, especially if they offer more than one product/service. The best way to define your avatars is to tackle them one at a time. I would suggest that you start with the market that brings the most profit to your business (good idea, right?). Through this process, you may even find yourself realizing that your business is too broad and that you tighten up your product/service offering so that you can really develop your niche and position yourself to deliver your best to that market.

Here's one that I hadn't heard of before:

Negative avatars 

Creating a negative avatar can be as beneficial as creating your customer avatar. A negative avatar is a generalized representation of the persona that you don't want as a customer. Having an understanding of who you don't want to serve as a customer can sometimes make it easier to know who you do want to serve as a customer. If you decide that you'd like to start here I would suggest that you think of that one customer that was a total nightmare for you to work with and document all of the things that made the relationship unsuccessful. The key here is to focus not on personal characteristics of why the individual was not easy to work with, but rather on the reasons why they didn't make a good fit for your product or service (such as pricing was too much, the probability of increased churn, or that they were not properly equipped to be successful long-term).

I did download the template and it looks pretty useful, although I haven't tried working with it yet. Now back to Digital Marketing...here's a recent avatar they created:

There are 5 major components for this avatar:

1. Goals and Values
2. Sources of Information 
3. Demographic Information 
4. Challenges and Pain Points
5. Objections and Role in Purchase Process 

Personally, I think I like this template better, but again I haven't tried it out yet. I'll play around with both and let you know what I decide and I suggest you do the same thing and post in the comments which one you liked best.

Use the Customer Avatar Worksheets below (there are male and female versions) to get clear on your ideal customer.

• Download the Female Avatar Worksheet
• Download the Male Avatar Worksheet

 So, take some time and build your avatar...your business will thank you for it!

Interesting days

Today - Unique Names Day, Dentist’s Day, Frozen Food Day and White Chocolate Cheesecake Day

Tomorrow - Cereal Day, Crown Roast of Pork Day and Be Heard Day

Next Tuesday - Ken Day, Earmuffs Day, Organize Your Home Office Day, Open An Umbrella Indoors Day, Coconut Torte Day, Smart & Sexy Day and Jewel Day

April 6 - Tartan Day, Army Day, Caramel Popcorn Day, Plan Your Epitaph Day, New Beer’s Eve and Walk to Work Day. I probably won't do this...according to Siri it would  take me 23 hours and 11 minutes to walk to work!