Have you ever wondered what is a customer avatar?

Don’t worry, this blog will be an answer to your question!

This blog deals with the Concept, Research, and Creation of a Customer Avatar or Buyer’s Persona.

It continues further on the topic discussed in one of my blogs, which addressed the real meaning of Digital Marketing. You can read it here.

When we create a marketing plan, the biggest question is whom are we selling to? So the emphasis is on the following:
Why are we selling?
and
to Whom are we selling?

As we know marketing is a game of perception. We want the attention of the market on the product we are marketing.

So for any marketing to be successful it is essential to have a pretty clear clarity of the intended audience.

I will be explaining the following concepts in the blog:

What is a Customer Avatar?

A great marketing campaign promotes an amazing product to the right people, on the right platform, at the right time.

Can you see the emphasis on the word “RIGHT“?

Who is the right person to sell to?

According to me, a customer avatar is an outline of a customer who is a loyal, recurring buyer and is your greatest referrer.

Being specific and going narrow is one of the key aspects of a successful marketing campaign.

Hence this is where the customer avatar comes into play.

Although avatar is a term used for a fictional person.

In marketing, a customer avatar is an outline of a REAL PERSON whose problems can be solved by your product.

This person is the real representative of your target audience.

Moreover creating your customer avatar is a data-driven approach. To sum up, the customer avatar focuses on the pain points of one person.

In addition deriving the avatar being data-driven, leaves very little to chances and assumptions.

The concept of Buyer’s persona aka customer avatar has various applications from marketing to product development to content delivery.

Until you understand your customer – genuinely and deeply – you cannot hope to serve them.

Who needs a Customer Avatar?

Well, the right question to ask would be – who doesn’t need a customer avatar?

Every business out there needs a customer avatar.

Furthermore, it is essential for every business to maximize its efforts put into marketing and product-building activities.

Hence an avatar becomes important to target the right set of audiences.

In addition, businesses that are struggling to get a good ROI should focus on developing a detailed customer avatar.

What does a consumer avatar consists?

To successfully create a customer avatar, it is crucial to understand your customer in depth.

For example, let’s take a look at this particular customer avatar example which lacks detail and effectiveness.

Our ideal customer uses our product to gain control of their finances. They want to be better at saving, so our tool is useful for helping them gain control of their income and expenses.

As you can read, the avatar is too broad. It feels more like a mission statement.

Your customer avatar should be detailed. It is the story of a real person out there.

In contrast to the above example, let’s take a look at the below customer avatar example.

Akshay is a 28-year-old software engineer from Pune. He spends about 4 hours a week reading blog posts and following links on Instagram.

Akshay makes between 6-8 LPA, yet feels like he doesn’t really have a good grasp on his finance and wants increase his savings.

Akshay spent 4 years working for a large agency in town. He is interested in learning about personal finance as well as his programming skills.

One of his concerns is inadequate financial literacy, and feeling a sense of control over how things are going with his current income.

He is thinking that this could be the course that helps him to gain the needed control over his finances, giving him the confidence without financial fears.

Looking at both the examples, you can understand what kind of detail is required. A customer avatar must have the following:

• Who is the customer?
• What are customer’s goals and ambitions?
• What are the painpoints customer is facing in achieving the goals?

The data can be further categorized as:

• Demographic Information
  • Name
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Relationship status
• Psychographic Information
  • Goals
  • Aspiration
  • Challenges
  • Values
  • Interests
  • Lifestyle

How to create a customer avatar?

The customer avatar creation can be defined into 3 stages:

1. Recognize the customer.
2. Understanding the customer.
3. Manifesting the customer.

Stage 1 – Recognize the customer.

You have decided to create a customer avatar. Now, what is the first and foremost thing to do?
Recognize your ideal customer…!

Before jumping onto the ideal customer, the right question to ask is – have I defined my niche?

Narrowing down on the niche is important than identifying the ideal customer.
For example, I want to provide digital marketing services to 1000 people. The domain is far too broad!

Now take a look at this example – I want to provide local SEO service to 1000 business owners!
As a rule, narrowing down on the niche helps eliminate the noise and focus on the right set of people.

Similarly to narrowing down on the ideal person tremendously helps you.

To understand your customer better, you should make use of public surveys. Your survey questions should contain both the kind of questions — Demographic and Psychographic.

You can refer to the sample customer avatar questions here.

While preparing the survey form, make sure you do the following:

• Limit the questions between 15–25.
• Start with simple demographic questions before psychographic questions.
• Dont ask leading questions.
• Make use of open-ended questions.
• Ask questions that reveal his aspirations/challenges and stage in life-cycle as a buyer .
• It is also a good idea to reward the survey taker. But make sure to thank them as well.

Stage 2 – Understanding the customer.

Once the survey is complete, it is time to analyze the data. While analyzing the data it is important to summarize the major features displayed in the survey.

Generally, these features will help you identify a common pattern among the group. In addition, you can broadly classify the results into various categories.

You can even make a list of the most common traits of a buyer in a market segment. Now you can use these traits as questions. Ask the audience how much they relate themselves to the traits.

Consequently based on the feedback, make a list of people who responded with anything ranging from 95% – 100 %. These are the ones who come closest to being your ideal buyers.

Stage 3 – Manifesting the customer

You have reached the final stage of the process. The data and answers collected must have given you a somewhat clear picture of your ideal buyer. Now, all that you require is a visual representation of the buyer.

Therefore it is important to put a face to the ideal persona. Going through the entire process gives you a pretty good of your potential customer.

Consequently, you don’t have to hunt the entire market. You have pinpointed the exact target like a homing missile.
Thus reducing not only the efforts but also the resource consumption.

Key Takeaways

A Customer Avatar, well-researched, is often the crucial determinant of the marketing campaign’s success.

It not only gives us clarity of purpose by answering key questions like — ‘who are we marketing to?’ ‘why are we marketing ?’ and ‘what are we going to market ?’.

It leaves no scope for assumption and chance. Thus giving us the clarity of purpose and allowing us to be authentic in our communication, which is elemental in building a trusted relationship with our customers.

Thank you for the time you invested in reading this article in its entirety. It keeps me grounded and focused on delivering value to you as my reader.

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