How to create your ideal customer’s avatar

When you know your ideal customer, everything changes. The products and services you offer, pricing, marketing strategy, value proposition, your ads and even the advertising channels.

The goal of creating your ideal customer’s avatar is to zoom in on all the attributes that will help you to address their needs. No single business can address these needs or solve all the problems for everyone, nor will everyone be interested in your products or services. The conditions in the market dictates that the levels of competition are very high for many industries, therefore you must be as clear as possible about who’s need you want to address. Not that you can’t sell to anyone else, of course not, but doing this exercise helps you to focus your message and your budget on those who are most likely to become your ideal customers.

When you’re laser focused on your ideal customers, it gives you an amount of clarity unlike you’ve experience before. You can ignore the noise in the market about everyone else. This will earn you better returns on your marketing investment as you are no longer shooting in the dark to find your customers.

The advertising technology tools are going to change. And we will have more tools than we’ve ever had before to reach customers. But humans will always have needs and wants. Understanding what those are, and how you can address them will continue for generations to come. Get to know the right set of humans who will benefit significantly from your products and services as well as pay you the most for it.

Here are some questions we’ve learned along the way that helps to define your ideal customers.

  1. Where does your ideal customers hangout and spend most of their time?

There are twenty-four hours in the day and if you block out a third of that for sleep, how are the rest of the day spent? Be specific and detailed about where offline or online your ideal customer spends this time. Saying they spend time on Instagram for example, is very general. But saying they spend time on Instagram looking at the latest fashion trends is more specific.

Don’t just say your ideal customers watch TV a lot, say what genre is their favorite and the time of their favorite shows.

They walk their dogs in the morning before work.

Look for values and actionable habits that tells you exactly what they do when they do it. Identify the where, why, how and when. This is important information for you to determine the copy of your message, its tone and where you will advertise it.

  1. Where do they go for information?

What’s their go-to space to find what they need? Is it Google? YouTube? Newspaper? Books? Specific groups? Document your answers in simple sentences to help you with clarity. “John goes to his iPhone, pull up google search on safari app whenever he is curious about something”.

  1. What are their biggest pain and frustration?

The products and services your business provide are like pain killers or gain creators. Try to understand the pain points and difficulties that affects your ideal customers. This is perhaps the most important question you can answer. Talk to Your selected Few about this. Take them out for lunch or coffee and listen to their challenges. You will be amazed at the results. When you put yourself in the position or shoes of your ideal customers, it allows you to learn more about them and create products and services to better address their specific pain points and challenges.

These are some examples of your ideal customer’s pain and frustration:

  • “I need to prepare my body for my wedding. I need to lose weight”
  • “I want to start my own business and wish someone could guide me on what to do”
  • “I wish there was someone who could help me market my products and services”
  • “I just migrated and need to connect with more people in my city”

The frustrations and pains of your ideal customers are paramount to the products and services you offer. Your offering must be large enough to solve the problem of your ideal customer so much so that they will pay you whatever you’re asking to solve it for them.

Why is this important? You are planning to advertise to these ideal customers in any way shape or form, your ad copy is directly related to the emotions that your ideal customers express through their frustrations. For every pain or challenge your ideal customers experience, they evoke certain emotions like sadness, fear, anger, hope, desire, regret, remorse or worried. These are possible motivation for your ideal customers and can drive them into action if guided properly by your offerings. By speaking to exactly what they are feeling, you connect with them on an emotional level. This is part of why we tell stories. Stories tend to bring out certain emotions in others.

When your ideal customer can connect on an emotion level, like viewing or reading a testimonial or review of your products or services, you can bet that they are more likely to do business with you. They see themselves in the other person who has experienced your services.

  1. What are the dreams, hopes and desires of your ideal customers?

Everyone wants to get to a certain place in their life where they are satisfied. Your ideal customers are always seeking more. Knowing what these desires and hopes are of your ideal customers, makes it easier to paint a picture of what the result after using your products and services. When you can show your ideal customers what the benefits and results of experiencing your products and services are like, it becomes easier to write copy for your landing pages, website, ads, digital assets and anything else you use to sell more. Here are some examples of copy written to speak to your ideal customer’s desires:

Customer desire copy Your copy speaking to their desires
“I need a vacation somewhere warm and tired of cold.” Enjoy the warmth of paradise surrounded by beautiful tropics and beaches
“I need to prepare my body for my wedding.I need to lose weight.” Our weight loss program is specially designed to get that body you desire guaranteed
“I want to generate 20% more leads for my business.” Our lead generation system is guaranteed to create a lead flow of up to 50% more for your business
  1. What does your ideal customer’s deepest fear?

We all have some kind of worries and in many cases, these keep us up at knight. The same is true for your ideal customers. What do they worry about so much that they don’t sleep, they often don’t tell anyone about?

When there’s a comprehensive understanding of these fears, you’re best able to create your ideal customer avatar. This is just as necessary as their desires and hopes. As most personal development coaches say most of us are motivated by our pain and fears. We use those to achieve the gains we seek in our lives. Your ideal customers are the same way.

Responding to the fears of your ideal customers in your ad copy is crucial to not only get their attention but to also move them away from whatever it is they fear, using your solution.

Insurance companies are very good at pointing out fears in customers. They do more of this than sharing the benefits.

  1. How does your ideal customers communicate today?

You want to certainly communicate with your audience where they already are. Do they use Email, Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Live, Snail Mail or Events? Avoid making the mistake of getting them to move to the channel you prefer. Remember who is important here. Go where they are comfortable and communicate to them how they prefer to be reached.

  1. What’s the language, phrase or vernacular your ideal customers use?

There is already a language and form your ideal customers use to communicate their hopes and dreams or pain or fears. The goal is to document these terminologies and use them to communicate to your ideal customers. Research and use specific comments from Reddit, Facebook Groups, Quora or YouTube and note their word responses. When you share the same point of view and language as your ideal customers, you will notice that you being to attract more of them. You will know this when they tell you they felt you were talking to them. That appeal moment is crucial.

  1. What does a day in the life of your ideal customer look like?

6:30 am – Susan is up at the sound of her alarm.

6:45 am – Reads her daily devotional and affirmation.

7:00 am – Wash face, brush teeth, fix hair.

7:15 am – Head to kitchen to brew coffee and make breakfast.

7:30 am – Check the news, social media updates on Facebook, Instagram while in kitchen.

7:45 am – Prepare to head out for work.

8:00 am – Stuck in traffic, listening to favorite music.

8:45 am – Arrive at the office.

9:15 am – Checking emails and notifications for her day.

10: 30 am – Works on her daily task.

12:30 pm – Steps out for lunch, check her favorite apps Facebook, Instagram, fashion blogs.

1:30 pm – Works on her daily task or reports for submission and listening to her favorite pop songs from Bruno Mars.

4.30 pm – Prepare to leave office on time to beat the traffic.

5:30 pm – Heads home in traffic, listening to her favorite music and stop by the store to grab a few items.

7:00 pm – Browsing the internet to order shoes for her upcoming event.

Understanding what life looks like daily for your ideal customers, is a great way to use personalized messaging ideas for your marketing. You can also get ideas of what time of day to share specific messages and what channels you should be using to do so. We all want to capture our ideal customer’s attention and get them to respond to our messaging. However, if you don’t have a sense of what they do daily, that could create a lot of misses.

Keep in mind as well that people can have a certain mood at the beginning of their week and a totally different attitude at the end of the same week.

  1. What are the things that makes your ideal customers happy?

Today more than ever, customers are responding very emotional to brands and those they do business with. Customers want to feel good about the decisions they make daily when they interact with your products and services. Do you make them feel better, happier, relieved? Identify areas where you can deliver exceptional value to evoke happy emotions for your ideal customers and use them. Inserting these activities is a part of their journey and can create long lasting relationships with your ideal customers.

In summary

Now that you’ve answered these questions for your ideal customer, prepare a summary of your answers and keep refining it until it works for you. If you have various products and services targeting different audiences, consider answering these questions for each target audience.

Here is an example of a summary from the 30-year-old professional above.

Susan enjoys listening to her favorite Latin music while on the go and checking social media for anything new and interesting in fashion, events or food during breakfast or lunch time on her iPhone. When she’s in research mode her first place to check is Google, look at customer reviews and compare prices. Her dream is to pursue her own business in fashion where she will enjoy expressing herself. She doesn’t have any children or husband, so she is open to dating but is no rush to make those decision. Her focus is on her career and getting her business started soon.

At MI Group we help startups, entrepreneurs, small and medium size businesses to create their ideal customer’s avatars in order to grow their business. If you need help on how to create your ideal customer avatar, signup for a free 30 minute consultation session.