Why having an ideal customer avatar is so important

It’s a given in business that all customers are not created equal. You can’t please everyone, and as you build your business you will notice that some people will buy from you, but even more won’t. The last thing you want to do is spend all your time focusing on those people who are never going to buy from you!

If you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll end up appealing to no one, so it’s essential to target the right people. Your ideal customer avatar helps you do that. It will inform all the major decisions you’ll make, so it’s important to get it right.

As I mentioned in a previous post, defining your ideal audience is going to be the thinnest slice of your market that you can focus on.

In this post, we’re going to look in more detail at what your customer avatar needs for you to create it as accurately as possible.

2 Types of Data for Your Ideal Customer Avatar

There are two types of data that you need to create your ideal customer avatar – demographic and psychographic.

Demographic information tells you who your ideal buyer is. It includes information like age, geographic location, language, marital status, earnings, family, education level, and lifestyle.

You might not think this is important, but it forms the basis of your research and is particularly important for identifying trends.

Psychographic information gives you a look at your buyer’s behavior, values, aspirations, and attitudes. Pay attention especially to their buying behavior, such as how they make purchases, how much money they spend, how they feel about spending money.

Another thing that should be included in your customer avatar is the problems your customers are facing. Pay attention to and challenges or issues they may be facing. Creating products that solve your customers problems or address their issues is one way to turn them into loyal customers.

Pay attention to the data

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when creating your ideal customer avatar is to assume that you know everything there is to know about your customers.

Your avatar needs to be based on objective feedback from the market, along with what you yourself know. I’m not going to tell you not to trust your intuition because, no doubt, you will have a gut feeling about who your target market is.

Much of what you already know will be informed by the products and services you offer, the problems they solve, and whether your audience actually wants them.

As you discover more about your audience, there will be some surprises along the way. If you rely only on your assumptions, you might miss some amazing opportunities.

Where To Find the Data for Your Avatar

There are several different ways you can find data to create your ideal customer avatar.

One of the best ways to gather knowledge is through direct interaction with your current audience. Listen to their conversations. Ask questions and start conversations. Run polls and surveys. Reach out to people and create opportunities for you to learn about them.

Indirect methods are also important. There are some things people won’t tell you, but you can learn through their behavior. Look at website metrics, social media activity, buying behavior, and how they interact with competitors.

Some of the tools you can use to gather data are:

Surveys – Post a survey on social media to test a theory or ask a question.

Contests – Gather data by holding a contest that gathers information about your target audience’s habits.  

Split Testing – Create graphics or titles for your goods or services and test which get more traction.

Forced Choice Testing – Create a dynamic where one of two choices must be made and see which gets the most attention.

Observation – Pay close attention to your surroundings and see what behaviors your customers have in common.

Final Thoughts

Once you have collected your data, and build your ideal customer avatar, you need to put it to work for you.

As I said at the beginning of this post, your customer avatar is essential because it crafts your marketing message and informs your marketing decisions. Your message needs to speak directly to your audience and to do that, you need to know them well.

It’s also an essential tool for creating your marketing materials. With the recent changes to ad targeting, the detailed targeting of the past is no longer possible. But you’ll still need to know how to choose the groups of people you want to see your content.

Even so, knowing your audience and having an ideal customer avatar allows you to create content that shows you understand who your audience is and the problems they face.

This is what makes having an ideal customer avatar worth its weight in gold, and an essential tool for your success.