Why should you care about your client avatar

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Client-Avatar

Client avatar, customer persona, or ideal customer – there are many ways to call the concept that has crossed your mind at some point in your entrepreneurial journey. Personas have been around for some time and people have different ideas of how they should be created and used.

But one thing is for sure, the client avatar is a stone that needs to be in the foundation of your business from the very beginning. If you did not do it – now might be the next best time.

What is a client avatar

A client avatar is a semi-fictional description of your ideal buyer. It’s based on data, interviews, and some educated guesses. It’s essentially a representation of your ideal buyer presented in a way that sounds like it’s talking about a specific person. 

This description comes in handy when you or your team markets the product or service to your niche. And the less fictional the description is – the better chance that the message you put on the market will resonate with your target audience. To create messages that resonate with your ideal clients, you’ll need to understand the ins and outs of their mind. You want to know their fears, pains, struggles or desires. As well know the things they have in mind when they go to bed and those that keep them awake at night. 

Many entrepreneurs manage to skip properly defining who they are serving and most of the time this results in chaos. It might seem that you know your clients but when you start putting it on “paper” you’ll very quickly realize that there’s room for improvement. 

Why is the client avatar important to your business

When you don’t define specifically who you help and what can you help them with – your business will market to everyone and this is always a bad idea. For a start, as basic as it may sound, you don’t want to spend your company’s resources (be it time, marketing budget) in the wrong place (platforms, events, etc) or on content produced in a way that does not speak to your client’s personality. 

More than that, when you know your clients better than they do, you’ll be able to leverage this knowledge to enlighten and win them over from the first time your message reaches them. You’ll be able to trigger emotions on a much deeper level.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

And you can get proficient on a specific topic if you solve a specific problem rather than help everyone with everything. 

Pro tip: Avoid helping everyone with everything. 

Even if you already created your client avatar a while ago, there’s a big chance that the behavior of oneself has changed or evolved. 2020 proved to us again that nothing stays the same. The solution is to always listen to the feedback, adapt. Right now would be a good moment to review and update your work.

How to create your avatar

If you’ve never done this before, it should take you a few hours at the very least and ideally a few days. But that is not all. You’ll be coming back to this over and over as you grow your business and get to know the client better and better. This is not an exercise you want to rush through. 

Before getting into the questions that need answers, there are a few pitfalls to avoid. 

The first one is of course skipping this step altogether: “I don’t have time for thinking and writing too much. I’ll go develop my strategy, market my service, work on my website…“. This type of thinking will cost you time and money in the long run. Or, in a worst-case scenario, you’ll be heading for losses from the very beginning.

Another important point is not getting into enough details. Don’t be lazy answering questions superficially. Take time to research your market and then make your best-educated guesses.

Prepare a list of relevant questions

Think of a list of relevant questions and write them down. Here are a few ideas to get you started: 

  • What is your ideal client’s biggest problem?
  • What is their routine? 
  • Where are they getting stuck?
  • When they get up in the morning what are they thinking about?
  • What stops them from achieving their dreams?

After you’ve answered in the document, grab your phone or go online (at least for now) and talk to people. Conduct interviews with prospects or existing clients. For better results focus on the ones you liked to work with the most. Use your list so that the time spent on interviews will be as efficient as possible for both parties.

You’ll be surprised at how open are people to offering you help in advancing your business. Go ask and see for yourself.

Now compare your answers to the answers from the interviews and see where your message, product or service needs improvement. With this exercise, you will discover quite a few useful ideas for your next campaign, blog post or video. 

Get help

As easy as it sounds, it will take time and effort. But, I assure you that it is time well invested. 

If you resonate with the steps above but struggle to complete the work or if you need more step-by-step guidance go ahead and book a call with me using this link. We’ll talk about you, your business, your services. It is not a sales call as you will be speaking with me, not a sales rep. This call will result in some quick action items needed to take you to the next level.

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