DEFINE YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER

So how do you define your perfect client?  Each product or service you provide has a specific customer that will buy it.  While you’ve spent time understanding your product and all of its benefits, do you really know who you are marketing to?  Do you have a clear picture of your customer that defines his likes and dislikes, challenges, and pains?  Taking the time to understand who your customer is with some amount of detail will help you market more effectively and with better results.

One method of developing a detailed customer profile is to create a Customer Avatar.  Creating an avatar helps you to narrow down your audience in marketing your product or service.  An avatar is a fictitious character that represents your ideal customer. It answers real questions about your customers such as “where are they hanging out and what are their challenges?”  It provides a point of reference to answer questions as you develop your marketing platforms to maximize exposure with advertisements that speak to your customers.

A customer avatar is developed from real experience with your customer base together with market research information and statistics.  To begin defining your customer avatar, consider each category below and list traits that describe your customer.  You may have more than one avatar if you have several products or services or one female and one male avatar.

1. Demographic Traits of your customer. Examples include gender, age, education level, occupation, income, religion, average family size. This demonstrates “who” they are.
2. Psychographic traits are based on how your customer lives. Look at their values, attitudes, aspirations, hobbies, habits, and spending habits.  This might explain “Why” they buy.
3. Create a Profile. Build a one-page summary of your customer avatar as you would any other customer.  Give your customer a name and grab a stock photo for a picture.
4. Write a Story. This helps you have an understanding about your customer that is very personal. How is their life before your product or service? What are they feeling?  Are they looking for something? What are they hoping to accomplish?  How did they find your product or service? How did they hear about you? How do they feel now that they have purchased your product?

As with any marketing effort, you’ll need some time to put this together.  Make the time. Do the research.  This is going to help you discover that your advertising can be more specific.  We always talk about “target market”.  This process will get you there. 

“You can’t hit a target you haven’t set!”