4 Good Reasons To Start Copywriting for Your Ideal Client Avatar (And Stop Writing for Yourself!)

Last week, Anita Baldwin of Get Savvy Club, a social media expert and mentor I really admire, did a LinkedIn post headed, “What do you think is the MOST important thing to do to be successful at marketing using social media?” 

There are several very valid potential answers. But, the one I want to hone in on right now was my answer to Anita’s question – Talk to your people and not to yourself! Which is exactly what you will be doing if you’ve not identified who you want to be talking to. 

Taking a deep dive in to who these people are, and what their lives look like, is #Copywriting101, reaching far beyond content creation purely for social media marketing.  

‘Buying personas’ or ‘ideal client avatars’ are a longstanding marketing fundamental to help you identify and deeply understand your target customer segments. As a result, your knowledge and understanding enables you to speak directly to them, meeting them exactly where they are.

What are ‘buyer personas’ or ‘ideal client avatars’? 

They’re ‘imaginary people’ possessing all the characteristics and traits of your ideal customers.

By imagining buying personas as real people, you build a greater understanding of who precisely these people are, in terms of their appearance, age, address, gender, likes and dislikes, interests and pastimes. This enhanced knowledge of your ideal customers results in greater empathy towards your target market, equipping you to target your social media messages to suit.

What are the 4 key benefits of understanding how your ideal customer interacts on social media? 

These four factors should be at the very heart of your social media strategy, enhancing your success by –  

1)    Informing the most befitting topics and themes for you to develop for optimal engagement with your ideal customers.

2)    Reflecting which platforms your ideal customers are using most, for you to allocate your time and efforts on accordingly.

3)    Indicating the relevant tone of voice for you to use to be in step with your ideal customers.

4)    Suggesting that times you should post your content for maximum reach and interaction when your ideal customers are online.

Why is it a good idea to assign a photo to each persona? 

It is a good idea to assign a photo to actually give each category of ideal customer a human face. Giving each persona a name further affirms their existence as real people.

Names are often used too, in addition to photos, that further amplify each persona, such as Mandy Mates, if an ideal customer is a young 18-25 year old single woman, or Molly Manager, if an ideal customer is a busy career-oriented professional woman.  

This helps you to really hone in on who you are talking to and engaging with.

What are the kinds of conversations you can bring in to the social media mix? 

The kinds of conversations you can bring in to the social media mix cover a broad spectrum, but should always be relevant to your buying personas, and what makes your buying personas tick. 

Original creative content in a relevant and consistent tone of voice humanises you, as a business, in the psyche of your customers.  

In this manner, you can create content relating to annual calendar dates, such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s & Father’s Day, Freshers’ Week, Halloween, Independence Day, plus national awareness days, weeks and months.  

Besides these more predictable calendar associations, meaningful engagement can be achieved by bringing what’s going on in the here and now in to the social media mix, such as popular culture and topical affairs. 

A great example of this sort of social media success was the way that some companies harnessed the popularity of HBO’s blockbusting Game Of Thrones series. Everybody wanted a piece of Game Of Thrones. When companies pinpointed relevant associations with their products, and executed them well on social media, they engendered high engagement by showing themselves to be in touch. 

Red Bull did so to great effect, sharing its ‘Jon Snowboard’ clip before the start of Season Six. It followed the cliff hanger at the close of Season Five that left fans guessing whether one of the best loved leading characters was dead or alive. The clip featured the last breaths of Jon, who suddenly dusted himself off, downed a Red Bull, and snowboarded away down the mountain.

Ok, so we aren’t all Breakers of Chains, or Mothers of Dragons. And we can’t all hang our hats on every National Sky Blue Pink Day or Give A Dog A Bone Week going. But I’ve hopefully provided a few useful pointers and prompts to help you talk directly to your dream client instead of the wall?

Any questions or feedback whatsoever, my contact details are in my profile, and, of course, my DM box is always open.