Making Your Business A Brand: Creating Your Ideal Customer Avatar
Laying the foundation for any thriving business begins with a strong foundation. Taking the time to build your personal brand is a great way to set yourself apart from competitors and understand your brand’s value proposition. Just as you may have decided your brand’s core purpose, you should also begin thinking about who your target audience is!
Your target audience is an essential tool in creating focused, relevant marketing and building your brand following. Using your target audience as a reference point, you’ll want to explore creating your ideal customer avatar! We’ll help break down what this means and provide five easy steps to create your avatar successfully.
What is an Avatar?
Your customer avatar is a detailed profile of a fictional character depicting your target audience. Imagine creating one perfect person to market your business to, someone who is in need of your products or services. Your avatar should have identified wants, needs, and pain points based on research and data from your industry.
Creating an avatar can be an essential part of your marketing strategy as it offers insight into your ideal customer's wants, who they are, where they spend time, and how your products or services can help solve their problems.
How To Create An Avatar
Step 1: Recognize Values & Goals
Start by thinking about potential goals and values your avatar shares that your business can help them achieve. For example, if your brand sells candles, you may help someone with relaxation and anxiety relief. If your business offers house cleaning services, you may help your customer avatar reduce stress by staying organised. Identifying goals for your avatar will help influence the kind of content your brand creates and start speaking the language of your audience.
Step 2: Identify their Information Sources
To solidify your brand’s marketing strategy, you’ll want to identify where your avatar spends most of their time in order to express your message on the right platforms and locations. Think about the books or magazines your avatar might be reading, what kind of events interest them, who their role models are, and more!
Step 3: Create their Demographic Information
Create a detailed profile of your avatar with information specific to them. The information should include their name, age, gender, marital status, occupation, income, education, where they live, whether or not they have children, and more. This will help you develop a deeper understanding of your target audience and customise your marketing strategy to their lifestyle.
Step 4: List their Struggles & Pain Points
Once you bring your avatar to life through their demographic profile, you’ll want to assess their current challenges, pain points, and fears. These should be pain points and challenges your brand can help them overcome. For example, if your business offers daycare services, your avatar may struggle to balance work and family life. This is a problem you can solve and implement into your marketing through copywriting and strategy (ads in schools, community centres, parenting blogs, etc.).
Step 5: Recognize Your Avatar’s Objections
To create a well-rounded marketing strategy, you’ll want to ask yourself why your ideal customer wouldn’t want to work with you. Identifying doubts or potential hurdles to engaging with your brand will help you anticipate objections and incorporate them into your marketing strategy. For example, if your avatar wouldn't want to use your daycare business because of high costs, using buzz words like 'affordable' in your marketing will help you stay one step ahead of them.
Next Steps to Take
Creating your avatar gives you someone to talk to when completing any marketing or selling. You’re able to imagine speaking to this person directly, making products, or providing services to help solve this person’s issues and make their life easier. Now that you have the resources to create your avatar, you can use the information to attract your audience through your marketing.
Creating an avatar means speaking directly to your audience and connecting with their needs. Start speaking their language and center your brand awareness around their interests, pain points, and more. Remember, if you try to reach everyone, you’ll end up reaching no one! The more specific you become, the more solidified, effective, and targeted your marketing will be.
If you’re a business owner looking for help with branding details while you take a hands-off approach, our team at Daly Media can help with that!
Our services allow you more time to focus on your business while our marketing professionals confidently apply your personal branding to thoughtfully created content, including your own brand avatar. Get in touch with us to learn about our services, process, expertise, and more!
