What is a Customer Avatar?

When you’re in charge or running a business, you’re always looking for ways to attract “new” everything – customers, subscribers, maybe even old customers. What’s the way to do it? Connecting with them on an emotional, deep level.

The problem here is, some people are pretty uncomfortable with getting emotional with strangers. But this is the exact remedy for getting new customers to flock to your business – and the way to do this is to create your customer avatar.

Coming up with your customer’s avatar means you will address everything from their desires to their fears. And without this information your overall marketing campaign isn’t going to get the job done. In fact, it’s going to be straight up ineffective.

To put that in perspective, that means the content on your website will be ineffective. The copy in your emails isn’t going to have a purpose. So all of your hard work is going to be pointless.

Leo Burnett said it best:

“If you can’t turn yourself into your customer you probably shouldn’t be in the ad writing business at all.”

One of the biggest mistakes people make wen it comes to their customers is assuming they’re steps ahead of everyone – they understand their customers and know exactly what they want.

But that’s wrong. And that’s where your customer avatar comes into play.

A customer avatar isn’t a certain person; rather, it’s a collection of qualities from several people. But you’ll give your customer avatar a name, a picture and various other characteristics.

When you create your avatar, keep your target market in mind. You should create it based around who you want as your customers and who is going to continue buying from you.

But avoid this pitfall: Making it too general and broad. When you avatar isn’t focused, it doesn’t speak to your customers. You want to make it seem like you’ve read their mind and focused on all their feelings – their fear, their desire, what frustrates them, what makes them tick.

Once you go through this process, you’ll be able to create all of your copy based around these results.

So what kind of information do you want to include in your customer avatar? Gather facts and info by watching and listening the customers you already serve. During this time, really look for where their emotions and values are, what types of technology they use, certain phrases or keywords they respond to, their demographics, and their environments.

List all of the common traits you have of your ideal customer. Then, bundle all of these up into one person. Put a face to the name and give the person everything from a name and age to occupation.

Try to exercise creating an avatar with your team. Think about your company and what services you offer. Then ask everyone to create their own avatar. For example, if you’re a travel agent looking to gain more customers, consider how you could play on people’s emotions.

You might create an avatar named Aubrey. Aubrey is a 20-something woman with a full-time job. She works more than 40 hours a week and has racked up tons of vacation days. She really wants to take advantage of this time and she could use the break – but she’s overwhelmed by the idea of picking just one place to travel. How can you ease her concerns? What can you offer that no other agency can?

Give this a try in your office today. It doesn’t matter if you just opened your doors or have been in business for years. Either way, every business in the world can benefit from coming up with their own customer avatar. Like we said, be specific and focused, allowing you to establish that level of trust every business-owner wants with its customers.

All of this can be a little overwhelming, especially if you don’t have the time or resources to diagnose who your customer avatar is. Frictionless helps you figure out your ideal customer. From here, we’ll assist you in creating content that speaks directly to your ideal customer, making it enjoyable and easy for you to connect with new and old customers.