How to Get Started With Customer Avatars

Do you know who your ideal customer is? If you're a business owner, this question should be a top priority. Creating a customer profile or avatar can help you understand who your perfect customer or client is. By knowing their habits, interests, challenges, aspirations, and more, you can be much more effective in marketing to them.

Even if your product or service is for everyone, you still need to know who you're talking to. Without identifying key buyer personas, targeting your marketing becomes challenging, and you'll likely end up using a scattergun technique and hoping something sticks. To get started, think about your existing customers or clients. Who do you want more versions of?

Here are some questions to ask when creating a customer avatar, but you may think of others relevant to your business:

1. Gender
2. Age
3. Location
4. Education
5. Income
6. Occupation
7. Interests
8. Motivations
9. Challenges
10. Why do they buy your products?
11. Shopping habits

By having a detailed customer avatar, you can target your marketing much more efficiently. You'll be able to talk to your customers in a language they understand, using platforms that they frequent, and address the specific issues or beliefs they have.

Before you go any further, make sure to get all stakeholders in your business to sign off on your customer avatars. Are they accurate reflections of your company's target audience? Do other members of your team agree with your buyer persona? If not, you need to find out why.

Some extra help with those Customer Avatar questions

1. Gender - Consider who makes the purchasing decisions, even if your product is aimed at both sexes or a specific gender.
2. Age - Your product or service might be for a particular age group, but it may not necessarily be bought by them. For instance, children's products.
3. Location - Targeting a particular region or regions will make your marketing activities more effective. For example, Waitrose has stores across much of the country, but their marketing is not targeted at all areas of the UK since their stores are located in specific areas.
4. Education - Understanding your customers' intellect will help you communicate with them effectively. Determine whether they want statistics and models to make a buying decision, or if this will make your product or service appear inaccessible to them.
5. Income - How much money someone has will obviously influence their buying habits. In a B2B environment, the size of your client companies and their turnover will be part of your customer avatar.
6. Occupation - For B2C businesses, understanding what your customers do can help inform your marketing. For B2B companies, you need to identify the person who will engage with your business, not necessarily the Managing Director.
7. Interests - Interests are useful because they help you communicate better with your customers. Consider everything from hobbies and leisure activities to what they watch on TV, what they like to eat, and what music they listen to.
8. Motivations - Understanding what drives your target customer, their values and goals will help you align your offering with their aspirations.
9. Challenges - Identify the challenges your customers face, especially if you provide a solution to a particular issue. These can range from significant problems such as financial issues to seemingly more minor problems like finding the time to shop.
10. Why do they buy your products? - Determine why customers buy your product or service. Cost, quality, resell value, functionality, flexibility, convenience, localism, customer service, aftercare, brand awareness, and other factors can all come into this.
11. Shopping habits - Determine what other products or services your ideal customer buys. Consider whether they are a Waitrose shopper or an Aldi regular, what kind of car they drive, where they go on holiday, and how often they have moved house in the last 10 years

You don't have to answer every question with great details, but if you can picture your avatars when creating your marketing and sales messages, they will be better messages. Create your content with them in mind, and this task becomes easier and your efforts more effective.