Affiliate Marketing And Your Ideal Customer
How To Create Your Customer Avatar To Attract Your Ideal Customer
Ask any successful marketer out there and they’ll say you must have a clearly defined Customer Avatar.
But the problem is…
Most affiliate marketers don’t even know what a Customer Avatar is or how to clearly define one.
In fact, the 2 questions I get most often in regards to Target Market and Customer Avatar are:
- “How do I define my Customer Avatar?”
- “Is my Customer Avatar the same as my target audience?”
In this article I’m going to dive into both of those questions as well as give you 12 questions that you must utilize in order to create your own Customer Avatar.
Sound good?
As you read this article you will discover:
- What Is A Customer Avatar?
- How Do I Define My Customer Avatar?
- 12 Questions To Ask To Create Your Customer Avatar
- Customer Avatar: The Big Picture
- Final Thoughts
- Related Resources
Introduction: Customer Avatar…Attract The Ideal Customer To You
One of the many challenges that ALL marketers face is how to attract the ideal customer to their offer.
Most marketers will spend considerable amounts of money on paid traffic and then wonder why they’re not getting that many conversions.
You can have a great sales funnel and a fantastic offer but if you’re not getting the right people into your sales funnel then you have a huge problem.
Additionally, the strategy of creating more and more content to attract your target market to your offer or funnel isn’t the answer either.
Creating lots of content (i.e. blogging for the sake of blogging) without a specific Customer Avatar in mind is a huge waste of time.
Furthermore, creating content without first creating a Customer Avatar could do more damage than good to the overall perception of your brand.
If you don’t have a Customer Avatar who you’re specifically marketing to you’ll end up wasting countless advertising dollars and enormous amounts of your own time, effort and energy.
Which is exactly why you need a clearly defined Customer Avatar!
But let’s first answer the question….
What Is A Customer Avatar?
A Customer Avatar is simply a detailed profile of your target audience.
Imagine for a second that you’re a writing a screenplay for a movie and you need to create the main character.
You would give that character…
- a name
- an age
- specific interests
- a specific job with a specific amount of time commuting to and from work
- a spouse
- kids
- etc.
It’s very likely that you’d take actual characteristics from different people you know and weave them into the characteristics of your new character.
The same idea applies to creating your Customer Avatar.
- Name
- Age
- Family situation
- Amount of children (if they have children)
- Demographics and characteristics that make them who they are
Also, you might use certain aspects of your own situation to round out your Avatar’s profile.
Specifically, some affiliate marketers use certain aspects of their former self to help create their Avatar.
Meaning, what was life like for you BEFORE you started using your product and/or got involved with your business venture.
By all means, feel free to leverage your own situation and the “pains” or challenges that you’ve dealt with to help create the details of your own Customer Avatar.
Finally, one critical element of your Customer Avatar is that they must have the “pain” that is associated with the solution that your offer provides.
If you leave the pain(s) out of your Customer Avatar’s description then you won’t be able to speak to your avatar effectively when promoting your affiliate offer.
Without a doubt, your product or service must provide a solution to a specific problem.
Additionally, your content and marketing needs to uncover and amplify that specific “pain”.
So it only makes sense that when creating your Customer Avatar he/she must suffer from the “pain” that your product or service promises to fix.
Here is an example of a “pain” your Customer Avatar might have:
Your affiliate offer is “Weight Loss.” Before you begin, however “Weight Loss” is way too broad of a subject.
While most affiliate marketers think that weight loss is for everyone, which is way to broad of a target audience, weight loss needs to be better defined.
“Weight Loss” for women is better. “Weight Lost for women over 40 is even better,” or Weight Loss for teenagers,” is also better defined, or “Weight Loss for men.”
You now have a product to offer, your first step is to define who needs or wants what you have to offer….Let go with “Weight Loss for men over 50.”
Now define the “pain” men over 50 have with weight loss. Most men will tell you that after 50, they have trouble controlling their weight.
Go into the pain associated with men over 50 and provide a solution. The solution, of course is your affiliate products.
How Do I Define My Customer Avatar?
If you want, hone in on your target audience and make them feel like you’re speaking directly to them, you must define your Customer Avatar’s characteristics with great detail and precision.
Remember this:
- If you try to attract everyone you’ll end up attracting nobody
- If you try to speak to everybody you’ll end up speaking to nobody
Your Customer Avatar allows you to hone your marketing message so it appeals to a “specific someone rather than a “generic everyone”.
A well defined Avatar allows you to connect on an emotional level with your target audience.
However, in order to connect on an emotional level with your audience, you’ll need to get to the bottom of their irrational fears and deepest desires.
And in order to do that, you’ll need to ask yourself the following 12 questions.
12 Questions To Define Your Customer Avatar
In order to properly define your Customer Avatar you will need to ask yourself the following questions:
- Where does my avatar hang out?
- What websites do they go to?
- What do they read?
- What do they watch on tv?
- What do they do in their free time?
- What are their goals?
- Who are their heroes?
- Who are their enemies?
- Who do the want to please?
- Who are they responsible for?
- Who might they let down or fail?
- What keeps them up at night?
But here’s the deal… don’t stop with just thinking about these questions.
Actually write out the answers and keep them handy.
(My Customer Avatar “Steve” is saved in an Evernote doc that I can reference easily and whenever I need some inspiration)
Customer Avatar: The Big Picture
Your Avatar dictates your targeting.
Therefore, you should think long and hard about your avatar and understand that this is not something to be taken lightly.
In fact, your Avatar is who you’re writing to.
It took me several weeks to define my customer avatar. I must have wrote 15 different profiles in those weeks until I was satisfied with the results. Even then, I still change a few things every once in a while.
So whether you’re writing a broadcast email to send to your email list…
… or you’re creating a piece of content to post on your blog or Facebook Fan page…
All of your content needs to be written with you Avatar in mind!
Final Thoughts On Your Customer Avatar
So in conclusion, one of the main concepts you should be thinking about is…
“What is the motivation of my Avatar?”
From a content creation standpoint, you need to have more focused content derived around your Customer Avatar’s needs, desires, and motivation.
Then from time to time you should take a mental audit and ask yourself…
- Is my customer avatar defined well enough?
- Is my content specific enough based on the pains of my Avatar?
Remember: the avatar dictates the messaging…
… and once you have your Customer Avatar dialed in – you’re 80% of the way there with your marketing.
For Related Resources Go To:
Now That You Have A Clear Idea On How To Create A Well Defined Customer Avatar It’s Time To Get Traffic To Your Offer!
Here’s to your success,
About the Author
Bill
Bill Fletcher is a long time marketer and coach. My goal is to help anyone who is interested in building a business through a systematic approach to success. Affiliate Marketing 100 will guide you with the help of some of the best articles and coaching program available anywhere. We train you in all categories of business building and success management.
