what is a customer avatar?

A customer avatar is a detailed description of your ideal customer—the customer who wants and loves your product. The client avatar (person method) describes the target audience. You will use the client’s avatar when creating training sessions and programs and writing sales texts. 

A clear understanding of who and why you offer your product increases the likelihood that it will hit the target. And accordingly, it will perform two most important tasks:

• Help a person solve a problem
• It helps you unobtrusively close the sale 

Why is Customer Avatar Creation Important?

To define a fictional person as a customer avatar may seem a waste of time and energy. It makes no sense to do so? You probably have plenty of demographic information in your marketing department. However, this data cannot be considered conclusive.

You lose out on growth opportunities when you do not fully understand who you want to sell. In addition, customers or clients don’t have unified views of what they buy, say, or do on their websites and social media. Because of this, you don’t create personalized brand messages and experiences but adopt a spray and pray approach.

In digital marketing, broad targeting is a significant mistake that leads businesses to try to attract everyone and end up attracting no one. Furthermore, speaking everyone’s language will lead to fewer connections. In other words, even if you know who may be interested in your product, you still do not know your ideal customer.

Here’s where customer avatars come into play. A better understanding of your customers will help you launch more profitable and targeted campaigns. Ensure you aren’t wasting your time and money on the wrong people when selling. You can sell to the right people whenever you find them.

In marketing emails, a single customer avatar helps you improve your targeting, narrow your marketing practices, and improve your personalization efforts. Knowing who your customers are and who you do not expect to buy from you can improve your business from top to bottom. Taking a quick look at a negative avatar and the type of client that we don’t want as a customer will help us create our customer avatars.

What Is A Negative Avatar? 

You can use a negative avatar to present people who are unsuitable as customers. In addition to creating positive avatars, it is also advantageous to create negative avatars. It can be easier to narrow down your audience if you know who you don’t want to sell to.

To create a negative avatar, consider the customer who was a nightmare to work with. It’s the one you could not wait to get rid of that ain’t fun. Then, list everything that leads to an unsuccessful client relationship. It is not about identifying a customer’s personality traits but determining why that person was not a good fit for your business.

How to Create Your Customer Avatar

Creating your first customer avatar takes a lot of time and effort. To create a compelling avatar, you need to base it on data, not guesswork, and ensure you have covered all the bases. But it’ll all be worth it. In addition, the process is divided into steps for ease of understanding.

1. DO YOUR RESEARCH 

To determine your ideal customer, you must conduct extensive market research. First, it’s good news if they’re already your customer. Then, you can use their information in a survey and ask them additional questions to gain a deeper understanding of their responses. Also, you can ask them to fill out a form or conduct an interview to gather data.

It’s okay if your perfect customer hasn’t found you yet. In other words, you need to conduct secondary research, such as looking at third-party reports, reading Q&A sites, or reviewing social media mentions. This kind of external information benefits businesses just starting with limited first-party data.

2. Name Your Customer Avatar

Once you have done the research, Identify your customer avatar by giving it a name. Let’s take the case of Agency Alpha, whose CEO is Alan. By making your avatar easy to reference, you’ll be able to maintain consistency within teams.

For Example, You’re a Sales & Marketing Coach, helping Salespersons, marketers, and entrepreneurs to increase sales with your strategies and techniques.

What kind of customers will you be targeting?

Salespersons, Marketers, and Entrepreneurs interested in your services may be among them. In this case, you’ll have three customer avatars. You can name the Salesperson interested in your Service as Salesperson Chris or a marketer with “Marketer Chris” or Entrepreneurs with “Entrepreneur Chris.” Likewise, you can create more customer avatars.

3. Identify Customer Avatar Demographics

Once you have researched and Named the Avatar, list all the characteristics and traits your customers share.
It would be best to determine demographics based on age, gender, income, kids, habits, hobbies, job status, location, religion, race, and anything relevant to your business. In addition, businesses and coaches need to understand consumer demographics to determine how to market to them and anticipate their needs in the future.
Psychographics helps you understand why your customers buy your products, while demographics help you identify them. In contrast, Psychographics allows you to understand your target audience’s interests, values, and beliefs. Then, to refine your findings, get inside your customers’ heads.

To understand demographics, you need to know the following few things about your target audience.

• Gender
• Age
• Place of residence
• Family status
• Income level
• Education
• Profession/Job Title
• Interests
• Marital Status
• Children
• Social Media Presence

4. Identify Customer Avatar Needs, Dreams, And Goals

The first step towards understanding customer needs is identifying their dreams and goals. Which big dream has the person been pursuing? You can learn a lot about a person by asking this question.

Consider their short- and long-term goals for a moment. In what ways do your ideal customers want to succeed? For example, is their goal to increase revenue? Is it their goal to connect with industry influencers?

To identify their goals, ask yourself relevant questions like these.

• What does your client want in general (what is important to him, what are his life values)
• Why does the client need your product, what pain, need does he want to solve with it
• What do you want to change in your life?
• How does the client try to solve his problem?
• What results did this solution lead to
• What is your client afraid of (fears, worries, doubts, beliefs)
• What does he want to prevent?
• Behavioral Characteristics of your client
• Where does your customer spend time online?
• What resources does he have?
• What social networks do you prefer?
• How does a person make buying decisions? Emotionally or logically?
• Decision criteria: product uniqueness, design, price, warranty, post-purchase service, delivery (speed/availability), ease of use, VIP service, assortment, brand, geography, etc.
• Attitude towards your offer (product, course)
• Level of customer awareness about you and your product
• What objections does your customer have (how does he explain to himself why he won’t buy your product now)
• What emotions does your product evoke in the client, with what is it associated
• Customer expectations from your offer (what results in he expects)
• What is the ultimate goal when choosing among various offers (which is necessary to him!) 

Identify the values and goals that are relevant to your offer. Next, create a list of problems you can solve with your business. Finally, ask your existing customers for feedback. You can also identify your target audience goals using forms, keyword research, or listening to your customers on social media.

5. How can You help?

Once you gather your customer’s needs, Goals, and dreams and understand their pain points, it is time to see how you can help them.

What frustrations can you solve with your products or services? What can you do to help them achieve their goals? Can you provide them with something that they enjoy and want?
When the offer, messaging, and timing are right, there is nothing wrong here.

Final Thoughts 

With today’s complex marketing landscape, it’s hard to stand out. The most effective way to communicate with your clients or customers is by creating an avatar for them. Make sure your avatars don’t reflect your opinions and assumptions. Instead, use customer data and market research. I hope this article helps you a lot to understand what is a customer avatar and how to create it. Don’t forget to share it with friends, if you like it. Thanks