Knowing your Customer Avatar — Internship Program by Deepak Kanakaraju

The first session of Digital Marketing Internship by Deepak Kanakaraju opened a plethora of learning which I am sure would help me in shaping up my future in the field of Digital Marketing. I was eagerly waiting for the second session to unlearn whatever I had in the past and learn new and existing concepts of Digital Marketing. As Deepak said, “Unlearn what you know to learn new things”. This is perfectly applicable to a person who is eager to gain knowledge and wants to grow in his professional life.

THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE: LEARN > DO > TEACH

Deepak shared his way of learning new things that has helped him to grow as a professional. Whenever we learn new things, it is all stored in our mind and is unclear. Whatever you have learned, when you do it, the information gets organised. For Deepak when he teaches new things to the students, he understands things in a better way. This is called the Golden Triangle. So, whatever we have learnt as an Intern, it is better to put that across in writing. We may not be able to put that 100% perfectly but that will help us to do better and improve over a period.

Mistakes are going to help you in future. Their values are going to be realized in future. There is no perfect way to do anything new.

Marketing is having good conversations. In the previous class, we learnt about Digital Marketing which is marketing in digital form. If you can communicate with people, you are a better marketer. So, a better communicator is a better marketer. To be a better marketer once should be able to communicate one to one. Then only, you will be able to communicate in a group of people or an audience which is the quality of a good public speaker.

When we communicate with a close friend or our loved ones, we are going to have a good conversation with them. We do not hide anything from them.

HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN A BETTER WAY?

Being authentic is the best way to communicate better. During the conversation, Deepak mentioned about his article on becoming a better public speaker. He further added that we develop personas. We have different personas at the office, at home and at social gatherings. We communicate differently in different places. People are tired of fake people. They want to communicate with real people, they want to talk with people who they are.

WHO BECOMES A BETTER MARKETER?

People with more life experiences are better marketers. Deepak shared that he always writes his blog referring to his own life experiences which helps him to connect with his audience. So, travelling more and that too alone helps you to discover yourself, discover things, gain knowledge about new things around you. One should overcome his/her fears and learn new languages, new skills to become a better marketer.

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?

We can communicate in a better way with our school friends, college friends and in a fluent manner. The reason is we know them very well. But if we want to communicate with our customers then firstly, we must understand who our audience is? Deepak shared a quote — “If everyone is your audience, then no one is your audience”. Once must carve his niche and talk to the people. One must figure out who is the exact persona or the audience you have for the niche. We are talking to a bunch of people or the audience and crystalizing them to a single person is customer avatars.

DEFINING YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER

This is the most important thing before we get into marketing stuff is to define your target customers. To define your customers, you need to learn about the demographics and psychographics of your target audience.

Demographics is age, the location where they belong to etc. and Psychographics is knowing about their interests, fears, their likes and dislikes. Once you learn demographics and Psychographics, you will be able to decide who is your audience and you will be able to communicate better to them.

One should be communicating with people in a group as if you are addressing a single person at a time. Each person should feel that you are talking directly to him/her. Email / Messaging is the best way to communicate in this manner rather than communicating through Social Media.

When you define the customer avatar you will be able to join the conversations that the customer already has in his/her mind about their needs. As a better market, we just need to join that conversation rather than creating new conversation to increase the probabilities of higher conversions.

Our communication should be such that the customer is forced to read the content by just reading the headlines. The content written in the sentences be interesting enough to lead them to read through the entire content.

Some important things to keep in mind while communicating with the customer avatar is:

• Addressing people by their first name helps to connect with them

• The language should be such that we are communicating as a friend

• Join the conversations which are already going in their mind

• Email Marketing is the best and powerful way to communicate

• When you meet your customer in person, he should have a feeling that he already knows you

• You should interact, have a conversation through call and use surveys to know your customer well and build the content around their interests. Interactions get you to know people better.

The concept ‘Focus on the Centre and not on the border’ — the target audience falls in the centre and an as we move towards the periphery it changes.

Deepak conducted a Customer Avatar Survey live and shared the process of analyzing and defining the customer avatars for your niche. The survey form included age range, location, devices, operating systems, education, likes, don’t like etc.

He even showed a live demo of how to select your customers based on the customer avatar survey received and how to have conversations with them.

Deepak also stated that learning new things is always awkward. Awkwardness is an indicator of learning.
Whenever we try to learn something new, we always feel awkward. Because it is challenging what you already know and creates new beliefs and ways of thinking. To become a better marketer, we need to learn new things, come out of our comfort zone. To learn new things, we need to unlearn the old and learn the new.

Deepak shared a linked to a google form for Customer Avatar Survey. I had shared with a few people and got responses from 10 people. Below is the brief analysis and outcome of the survey.

MY CUSTOMER AVATAR

CONCLUSION

After going through the above customer avatar exercise, I have learnt the importance of understanding your customers, how important is to know about the demographics and psychographics. This session from Deepak has boosted my confidence and I am quite confident to create effective communication to meet the needs of my customers. Look forward to learning more digital marketing concepts.