Who Loves you Best? Finding Clarity on Your Target Market and Customer Avatar.
The full process of starting a business can be overwhelming. As budding business owners, we give much of our attention to our product or service. But unfortunately, we are focusing on what we are selling and forget to consider who we are selling to. A common but often-expensive mistake.
Here is Joe, and he not only loves lemonade but makes excellent lemonade. He wants to share it with the world. He is a believer in his product. He uses only the finest ingredients and has spent hundreds of hours perfecting his product. He sets up shop and discovers what many other business owners discover:
Truth #1:
Not everyone will be our customers. Not everyone will love us. Not everyone will find our product or service helpful. Not everyone will want to or be able to pay our price.
Once we come to terms with that truth, we must Discover who our target customer is, and that targeted niche needs to be large enough to support our business model.
It Begins and ends with the Customer
Truth #2
If you spend your limited marketing dollars, marketing to the wrong person is a costly waste of energy and money.
That truth is why understanding your customer avatar, also known as your buyer persona, enables you to get a better picture of your best customer.
We have created a Customer Avatar Worksheet (that you can download for FREE), to help you document the critical characteristics of your unique customer avatar.
Before you can sell a product or offer a service effectively, you need to understand…
- Who is your ideal customer?
- Where do they get their information?
- What specific challenges do they face?
Good questions, but where do you begin?
We will start with the WHY first and then move to the HOW.
Who will love your service or product most?
Truth #3
A customer avatar gives you clarity.
It makes it easier to write content, a marketing message, converse with new customers. It is easier to talk to “a potential customer with a name and a specific need.” A customer avatar gives a name and a personality to your best customer. It is easier to create content that is meaningful to your target market. You no longer create content that does not speak to your customer avatar. Creating a customer avatar takes “you” out of the equation. Often, we know our craft, but not our buying audience. As a result, we sometimes make assumptions about who our best customer is and why. Creating a customer avatar allows us to test that assumption. A well-thought-out customer avatar lets us get into your best customer’s “heart and mind.”
Truth #4: A customer avatar saves you time.
A customer avatar saves you time.
A well-researched customer avatar saves you time finding new clients. In the beginning, we often then believe “everyone is our potential customer.” We are told to be everywhere on every social media platform, join as many networking events as possible, and go on. Unfortunately, many business owners are extremely busy and extremely poor. A focused customer avatar not only helps you determine where your ideal clients are and, even more importantly, where they are not. Part of the process of creating a customer avatar includes understanding their frustrations, problems, joys, and loves.
Truth #5:A customer avatar saves you money.
A customer avatar saves you money.
Once you have created a good customer avatar, you only spend money on the social media platforms that your best customer spends time on. The other social media platforms mean nothing to you. You may have to learn about unfamiliar platforms because your target market plays on them. You only join networking groups that contain your customer avatar or work with the same customer avatar.
How do you go about finding your perfect customer? Some businesses have never thought about that question. We often assume if our product or service is excellent, the customer will automatically come. However, if you don’t understand your best customer, your marketing strategy will have no focus or direction.
If you are already in business and have some clients or customers, take some time to think about them. Who do you currently serve that you would like to see more versions of?
Truth #6
Your marketing message might be pitch-perfect, but if you are talking to the wrong person, it will fall on deaf ears.
It is like throwing corn seeds on cement—a waste of time and effort.
This is why you start with understanding the best customer first and then create your marketing message.
Download our customer avatar worksheet to identify your ideal customer, push their pain points, and gain points to get them to choose you over your competition.
This worksheet will…
- Tailor the perfect message to your ideal customer’s secret pains, most significant objections, and deepest desires.
- Reveal the key characteristics that determine why your customer will buy (or why they aren’t.
- Enable you to write compelling copies for your website, emails, and paid ads quickly & easily.
- Drive all of your advertising decisions without any hesitation because you know exactly what to say & where.
