HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER AVATAR

One of the top ways to succeed in the online world is to identify your ideal customer avatar. Trying to sell to everyone is a sure-fire way to experience major setbacks. Figuring out who your ideal customer or client is isn’t as bad as it may seem. Once you identify your ideal customer and develop a story around who this individual is, you will know exactly how and where to market yourself.

Demographics and Why They Matter

Knowing your customer’s demographics can have a huge impact on your marketing efforts. Customer demographics include age, gender, race, income, education, employment status, location, children, and homeownership.

When trying to find the demographics for a specific audience, you can use multiple resources such as:

Bureau of Labor Statistics — Includes demographic categories like age, gender, ethnic origin, and race.

Tax Records — You can access tax records by searching for the term, “tax assessor’s office” in the county that you need to research. Obtaining this data is like gold when it comes to tax exemptions, mortgage information, and length of residency.

Social Security Fact Sheet — This is where you can access high-level data regarding individuals in a variety of demographic categories.

Census Bureau Data — A website that is free and has a wealth of information.

You may be wondering why consumer demographics even matter with an online business.

Prior to the Internet and social media marketers used to target certain geographical areas and send flyers based on the demographics they knew. For example, many used to target specific subdivisions or find people who had a registered small business so they could sell business services.

Today is different.

It’s different because while demographic tools are still within reach, there is more potential — especially when you add in interests and behaviors to the demographic profile. For example, once you have your demographics, you can go on Facebook and create an ad. While creating your ad, you can target your audience — including various interests and behaviors to focus in on your ideal customer base. With Facebook, there are multiple options to choose from, including gender, age, location, interests, and much more. For example, if you sell supplements, you can target people with specific interests to your product and identify those who are into health and wellness.

Give Your Avatar a Name and Personalize Him/Her

To really bring this concept home you can grab an actual human avatar online or even build one yourself, humanizing your ideal customer so you have someone in mind when creating your messaging. Just search “marketing avatar builders” on Google. Give your avatar a name. Make it as realistic as you can and even “become” your avatar as you go through the process. Think about what the avatar might feel, what they may like and what they may not like. Try not to skip any details and focus on critical aspects of the avatar’s life such as their likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, and their lifestyle.

When creating your avatar, considering the following questions:

How old is your avatar?

Male or female?

How many children, if any?

Marital status?

Career or employment status?

Working environment?

What’s the community atmosphere that they live in?

Do they belong to any clubs or organizations?

Do they have pets (if relevant to the product)?

How does he/she spend their time?

Are they into healthy eating? Overeating? What other lifestyle factors?

Any pain points, anxiety, or fears?

What to Do With Your Avatar Characteristics

Now that you have identified the basics of your avatar, you should come up with ways your product or service can help improve aspects of their lives. Does your product save your avatar time? Does the product or service help your avatar improve their mindset? Think of how your avatar can lead a more positive life without worries, how can you help address his or her concerns. If you run specific campaigns for your business, creating multiple avatars may be beneficial to your marketing efforts.

Once you have all of your avatar information, you will be able to create high performing marketing campaigns and build your business around a targeted audience. With that supplement example in mind again, if it was meant to give individuals more energy — you could target both genders between a specific age range (maybe 21–40 or something similar) and even working moms, athletes, and you can keep thinking even more outside the box and position your marketing so it will attract the proper audience.

Having a customer avatar can literally make or break your marketing efforts. If you need any help with your avatar or other marketing-related questions, please reach out to us via our online form, email, or give us a call at 720–819–6733.