Do You Really Know Them?
Often times small businesses and nonprofit organizations get so focused on WHAT they’re promoting that they forget to think about WHO they’re promoting to. This is can be kiss of death for a marketing campaign, and sometimes even the entire organization.
You could have the greatest product or service on earth, but if your messages aren’t reaching the right audience . . . what’s the point? That’s why understanding your ideal customer avatar (AKA buyer persona) is so important.
Before you begin the lengthly, and sometimes costly, process of strategizing a marketing or awareness campaign, start by getting to know
WHO your ideal customer is
WHERE they hang out online, and
WHAT challenges they are face.
Why Are Customer Avatars So Important?
Knowing how to identify your customer is a skill that applies to every marketing discipline. From content marketing to branding. . . it covers them all! Here’s how they come into play with all of your stratagies
Content Marketing: Knowing your avatar helps you decide what blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc. 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
Product 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 avatars
Any part of the marketing and sales process that “touches” the customer (which is pretty much EVERYTHING) will improve when you get clear on your customer avatar. 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.
Don’t Stop at Just One
Start by building a single avatar—but don’t stop there. Your business almost certainly has more than one ideal target audience. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll start churning out multiple avatars representing all the different segments of your market. Any segment with a distinct set of goals, information sources, pain points, etc. is deserving of a customer avatar. Give each avatar a name, be creative and most importantly, be flexible to make changes to your fictious customers. As your business or organization grows, your audiences will change and grow as well.
To help get you started identifying your ideal customers, we’ve created a Customer Avatar Worksheet (that you can download for FREE), to document everything about the people who you’re really trying to reach.