While we would love to be everything to everyone, when it comes to business it is important to narrow it down to serve a core group of people. This aids in targeting your marketing, differentiating yourself and being able to create products of interest.
When working on a product, service or marketing it is key to identify your ideal customer, often referred to as your avatar. Think of your avatar as one person, the individual who is THE perfect customer for you.
Get to Know Your Avatar
Imagine you have the opportunity to meet your avatar for coffee. Picture them as your ideal client. As you sit down to coffee with them, see yourself collecting detailed information about them. Here are some question you can explore about your avatar:
- Is it a man or woman?
- How old is he/she?
- Where do they live?
- Do they have a family, pets?
- What are their hobbies and interests?
- What do they read, watch, listen to?
- Where do they hang out?
- What website and social media do they visit regularly?
Using the Details of Your Avatar
The details you create in defining your avatar become a tool in your business. As you work your product or service, whether it be defining it further or marketing it, your avatar becomes the person you are creating for.
Let’s Pretend
Let’s pretend your product is sports themed birthday cakes. First, by narrowing your product down to a theme cake versus just birthday cakes, you have created a niche market for yourself. Many bakeries, and people bake birthday cakes, but how many specialize in sports themed birthday cakes? This is the first step in creating a target market. Now, define your perfect avatar.
As your perfect avatar walks into the coffee house you find she is a woman, and you discover even more. She’s a mom, who has a daughter who is 12 years old. She lives in the suburbs, and she spends many of her afternoons and weekends watching her daughter’s soccer games. She is busy balancing all her family responsibilities, getting her daughter to and from practice and games, while she also works part-time during the day, she is constantly on the go. She loves to be the house where the kids gather, and where she can entertain their parents. She has very little time to be on the internet, but does spend time while sitting at the field looking at Facebook, and websites like 10 Minute Meals, Good Parenting and Hay House.
We could go further, but let’s stop there. You have learned a lot about your ideal avatar.
Speaking to One Person
In collecting data about your avatar you now have a person in mind to target. With all the marketing you do you want to imagine you are speaking to this one person.
Remember, she represents your ideal client. Yes, there may be some differences with your other clients, and you may even have more than one avatar but when you choose to market wide, you lose the opportunity for your avatar to hear their need, and their story in your message.
In my next blog, I’ll share with you How to capture your avatar’s attention through telling a story.
Share with me, who is your perfect avatar?