How To Turn Your Target Market Into An ‘Ideal Customer’ Avatar

Creating a customer avatar can be a total game changer for your marketing and sales.

No doubt about that, I’ve seen amazing improvements time and time again after going through the process to target an ‘ideal customer’.

This is especially important if you’re in a B2B industry because, for some reason, everyone seems to think you talk to a ‘business’ as if they’re a boring object that loves impersonal textbook speak…..but just remember, there are REAL people in that business, and it’s them you’re trying to convince to buy. 

Why you need a customer avatar for marketing success

Almost overnight your marketing can go from bland and boring to highly engaging and conversion-friendly, just by knowing exactly who you’re talking to and why they actually care about what you have to say.

Before I get into exactly how to create a customer avatar of your ideal customer, let’s quickly go over why you need one, for those of you still not convinced.

The process of creating an avatar helps you define a niche target market.

It even goes a step further and identifies the typical person in your niche market that you REALLY want to reach with your message.

This is your Ideal Customer.

Once you have your Ideal Customer profiled in an avatar format, all your marketing becomes easier:

• You can tailor your brand style to appeal to them.
• You can write blogs about the things you know they care about.
• You can create targeted audiences for your advertising.
• Your sales messaging becomes much more simple because you know them and you know their problems, so you can explain how you can help them to solve those problems.

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Here’s a real life example of how quickly you can turn it around. Earlier this year, a client started coaching with me who had been spending over $1 per like on her Facebook campaign.

She didn’t have an ideal customer because her business had broad appeal. First thing we did was dive straight into her targeting strategy and identify her ideal customer. She created a customer avatar and then changed her messaging, imagery and target audience for her ads.

In just 3 days her cost dropped by 80% per like, and she had a relevance score of 9! She went from thinking Facebook Ads didn’t work for her, to thinking they were the best thing ever!

Got a broad market? You can (and should) create a customer avatar

Many business owners struggle with their marketing because they have a broad range of potential buyers. They find it hard to narrow down to a target ideal customer because they don’t want to miss out on anyone in the other segments.

Sound familiar?

It’s very normal to think about all the possible buyers, after all, you want to sell lots and grow a successful business, right?

But imagine how great it would be if you could sell to the BEST customers every time.

The customers who totally get you, love your brand and get max value from what you offer. The ones that recommend you to others (so you don’t need to do as much marketing).

When you try to appeal to too many different types of people your messaging will become generic and inevitably you’ll focus on features of your service, rather than the specific problem your customer is wishing to solve – which is basically marketing suicide!

To put it bluntly, nobody cares about what you do until they think you can solve a problem they have. So you need to start talking about them and their problem before you mention the services you want to sell.

This is why you should start with a single ideal customer to begin with.

Yes, even for a B2B business. Work out who your ideal business client is and WHO in that business is the buyer. 

Build your customer avatar to learn about them and how to best engage them. Then structure your  messaging to talk to them about how you can solve their problem.

You’ll attract 80% of the ones you really want, and 20% will be others.

Right, convinced now? Let’s get onto creating your avatar.

Step 1. Choose your Ideal Customer to base your avatar on

If you’re already operating your business you probably have a good idea who your ideal customer is. You’ve tried and tested the market you operate in and experienced a range of different clients.

Your ideal customer is the one you wish you could have 1000 times over!

The one that is easy to manage, loves your service and gets a lot of value from what you offer. They also pay on time and know they are getting a lot of value for the price they pay.

If your business is new, you’re going to have to make an educated guess about this to begin with, and review in 6 months time to see if you were right.

Choose the one you think you can help most. The one your business exists for, at its core.

If you find this challenging, then just ask yourself who you most want as a customer?

Step 2. Profile your Ideal Customer

I like to go through a fairly detailed process to profile my ideal customer before creating my avatar. This is so I can deep dive into their goals, needs and buying triggers.

I work out what perceptions they already have, what objections they likely have and what experiences they are likely to have had in the past that will influence how they feel about my service.

It’s also super important to work out what type of customer they are on the awareness scale – from Oblivious to Educated – do they know about their problem and do they know about the solutions available on the market? This tells you how to approach your marketing and sales pitch.

I also identify their personality type so I know how to talk their language, whether to talk details, stats and facts, or talk high level strategy and future vision.

You can use my own customer avatar worksheet with 35 questions covering the 5 key profile areas. Download it (free) here:

Step 3. Build your customer avatar

After you have your ideal customer profiled, you can start on your avatar.

Give them a name and a photo so they become a real person. Then write a short story about them so you can put all your information together into a person and get to know them.

It doesn’t need to be long, one page is a good length and you can pin them up on your wall so you can look at them when you go to write your next email campaign or Facebook post.

My free customer avatar worksheet (grab it below) comes with all the questions you need to ask to get a good profile of your ideal customer. 

That’s it, it’s one of the most simple parts of your marketing strategy but it can be a total game changer for your results.

Once you have your customer avatar, you can base all your campaigns to target them, and build your processes to service them best.