YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR: GROW BY WORKING WITH THE RIGHT CUSTOMERS!

One of the first questions I ask my clients during a marketing intensive is… who do you serve? Who is your customer avatar?

Customer avatars are a common marketing term, also known as target persona, target customer, ideal customer profile, and many other names us marketers create to say one simple thing. Who do you serve? Understanding this one key thing will help accelerate everything else you do, from customer acquisition, sales, product creation and fulfillment, etc.

Many early startups run into a huge problem, and the goal of this blog post is to help you avoid making the same mistakes. Newsflash: you cannot serve everyone, everywhere, all the time. You will end up serving no one, nowhere, never.

“IF YOU TRY TO SERVE EVERYONE, YOU SERVE NO-ONE”.

In this post, I will give you a few key areas you must define in order to properly serve your market effectively. Before we get into that, you’re probably thinking about who your target customer is right now. You may have a few different ideas on who that person actually is…? or you may be trying to figure that out.

THE FOUNDATION OF ANY BUSINESS – WHO YOU SERVE.

If you’ve created a mission for your company to do x in y time, it’s likely solving some sort of problem for the world, or your local community. As you start to thinking about that problem here are three key questions you can ask yourself to test if your business idea is viable.

1. Do You Like Them?

This is an often missed piece of the equation. We serve people we don’t actually like in an industry outside of something we’ve ever wanted to do… and end up 5 years later still struggling because we hate our lives, businesses, and just don’t really care.

Most businesses start out with a passion for the customer, A deep caring and a WHY that is strong enough to get them through the hard times. You need a strong why and to actually care about your customers. To like them and to want to help them.

2. Can You Help Them?

More than wanting to help them, you need to actually have the ability or skills to help them with the thing that would solve the core problems they have.

Not too long ago I came across a social post in a group of marketing agency owners. The guy had a lead generation and ad agency and couldn’t figure out why his customers weren’t buying.

‘Every customer I talk to has more business than they can handle and can’t seem to fill the work they have.’

This persons customer avatar needed recruiting and management to build teams, and backend systems for fulfillment, not more leads. He had a poor product-market fit and was reaching the wrong people with the wrong message.

3. Can They Pay For Your Help?

This is a BIG one. One of my favorite authors and thought leaders, Alex Hormozi, has a quote that says

“SERVE RICH PEOPLE, THEY PAY BETTER”

And it’s totally true.

You can provide the same exact service to a company doing 1MM and a company doing 10MM and the one doing 10MM will get 10x more value from you doing the same thing you do for the 1MM guy.

Not that there is anything wrong with working with the 1MM guy, it’s simply that he is not going to have the ability to pay as much as the 10MM guy and the amount of value he gets from what you do is not going to be as high.

You might have a purpose or a mission to help people in some capacity, whether in coaching or services or consulting, but if your customers can’t foot the bill, you won’t be able to get paid, and if you don’t have money, you can’t serve them at the highest level. It’s a dreadful cycle.

DEFINING YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR

Ok.. now that we’ve covered that. Lets dive in. By the end of this post, you should have a much clearer and documented view of who your customer is. If you want you can DOWNLOAD OUR CUSTOMER AVATAR WORKSHEET HERE to follow along.

Demographics

Who exactly is your ideal client? What is their demographic makeup?

This is where most people stop but it’s important to know. It’s going to include things such as age range, Gender, Job Role, Income Level, Location, Family, Fitness Level. Different things become important depending on how you serve them but generally.. who are they?

Deeper Demographic Detail

Let’s take it one step further. There will be a huge audience that fits your demographic. Let’s specify your ideal clients with a description of their current status.

As it relates to what you do, what is their level of expertise? (Beginner vs. pro?)

What do they spend the majority of their time on?

What keeps them up at night right now (related or not related to what you do.)

Desires And Values?

What do they really want in life? What are their core desires, not just as it relates to your offer or what you do, but for their life as a whole? What do they really want and value?

Could be things such as financial freedom, health, wealth, great relationships, peaceful life.

You can also include reverse desires which will get to the root of their pains. Take something they want and look at what they don’t want.

Don’t want to live paycheck to paycheck Don’t want to be embarrassed taking their shirt off Don’t want to be divorced Don’t want to be stressed all the time.

CREATE THE GAP

The gap is another common phrase used in marketing and it refers to the distance between where they are now (less desirable before state) and where they want to go (more desirable after state).

We will write another blog post on a copywriting framework we use in XTRACT COACHING called the PROBLEM POSSIBLITY framework but for now…. Lets get to the nuts and bolds.

Define The Problem

What are their deep rooted challenges and pains they are dealing with? Not just in their business, but how it affects their life as a whole. Describe from their point of view. You can finish the following sentences to get a good idea and get the creative juices flowing.

They wish…

They Fear…

They Feel…

They don’t have…

They Can’t….

Therefore…

Show The Solution/Result

What does the world look like for your audience after their problem has been solved? What is this more desirable after state? How can I paint a clear picture of a promised land on the other side of the pit they are in?

Here are some more finishers:

They have…

They are free of…

They feel…

They can…

Therefore…

They have…

Finding the gap is the core of almost any marketing campaign, sales strategy, sales letter, or anything else relating to your customer. If you do nothing else from this post and from this avatar worksheet. I recommend doing that.

WHERE DO THEY HANG OUT?

A great final question which could make your life much easier is asking ‘where do they hang out’ or ‘what has their attention’. If you want to run an advertising campaign, you need to be able to identify and target your ideal customers. You need to be where they are so you can tell them about your stuff.

Areas Of Influence

Each niche has a unique sphere of influence. Books they read, influencers they follow, conferences they attend.

What authors do they read? Podcasts do they listen to? Speakers have their attention?

What are their favorite books or magazines?

Another question I ask quite often (power question) is… are there other industries that serve the same customers you do with a different type of solution? Who are they (hint: second avatar). This can act as an easy button if you can find a way to leverage other peoples audiences to gain attention.

SALES INFORMATION

Finally, depending on what your product is, you’ll want to make sure you document your sales information so you can get these questions out of the way early.

If you’ve ever heard the old ‘I’ve got to talk to my wife about that’ it means you didn’t ask that early enough.

Who makes the buying decisions?

What objections will they have?

What is the cost of inaction? (what happens if they don’t do anything?)

If these questions aren’t asked early, and sprinkled into your social media posts, sales content, and videos, you’re missing a huge opportunity for growth!

CONCLUSION!

Without understanding who your customer is, what they want, why they want it, and where they hang out, you’re going to be throwing all kinds of crap against the wall hoping that some of it will stick.

Of course, some of it will stick, and that’s why we see so many struggling businesses. Identifying and going all in on who you serve and making sure that:

1. You like working with them
2. You can help them
3. They can and will pay for your help

You’ll make your life a lot easier, and be able to serve them better too.

To make this easier, we created a really cool customer avatar worksheet. You can get instant access to it inside of our CIRCLE COMMUNITY. It’s free.

See you on the inside.