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?
Your 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 affiliate 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 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
- where they live
- their education
- 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.
Just a Shadow
Right now your ideal Avatar may be just a shadow, no form or structure. Your Avatar hasn’t taken shape just yet. That person is just a fog in your mind.
Your job is to define and build your Avatar. Make them a “real” person. Someone who you would like to be around, someone who you would enjoy, someone who would trust you and purchase your products or business opportunity. Someone who would follow you everywhere.
Remember, this is YOUR Avatar! Your Avatar belongs to no other than yourself.
So to begin with, If you want to create a well defined Customer Avatar you must give it specific attributes
For example, your customer Avatar is an individual with a specific…
- Name
- Age
- Family situation
- Number of children (if they have children)
- Demographics and characteristics that make them who they are
- What are some of their issues (need more money, too many bills, goes not like job, …..)
- Desires, what do they want?
Also, you might use certain aspects of your own situation to round out your Avatar’s profile.
Specifically, some 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 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.
For example, your product is a weight loss program, you can solve their issues “pain” by providing a product and help to solve their weight loss issue. You’ve solved their “pain” by providing a product and help.
Another example: Your Avatar would like to make some additional money to pay off bills. You have an affiliate program in which they can become a member and learn how to make money with an affiliate marketing. You’ve solve their “pain” by showing them how to make money by promoting the affiliate program.
The idea here is to find a “pain” and solve that “pain.”
How Do I Define My Customer Avatar?
If you want to 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.
If you are targeting people who need to or want to loose weight, that dictates who you want to attract.
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.
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 your Avatar in mind!
