Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Without them, you don’t have a business. For your business to exist and ultimately grow, you need to attract new customers while retaining the ones you have.

Customers today are looking for companies that understand them, that have been where they’ve been, and who they trust can truly help them solve their problems, even turn their lives around. 

But In our increasingly busy and complicated world, this is becoming harder for businesses to show, especially for small- and medium-sized businesses that do not have the resources larger companies do. 

So, what’s the best way to create marketing that provides what your potential and current customers are looking for? 

One tried and true place to start is by developing a customer avatar. 

What’s a customer avatar?

A customer avatar is a detailed profile of your ideal customer. It’s a roadmap that helps you better understand who you are trying to attract, which will help you create better marketing content and be more effective in attracting and connecting new and current customers. 

So, what are the basics of customer avatar creation?

Name Your Ideal Client

This is the first and most basic step in developing your customer avatar. By giving your ideal customer avatar a name, you’re creating someone in your mind you can connect with and speak to. You are moving from an abstract idea of your perfect customer to envisioning a living, breathing person. 

You’ll be better able to empathize with your ideal customer’s pain points, which will result in marketing content that is better at connecting with, attracting, and retaining the attention of the customers you need to grow your business. 

Detail their Demographics…

Next, detail who your ideal customer is in terms of their gender, age, occupation, income, education, where they live, marital status, and whether or not they have kids. You want to be detailed with this step, so no ranges. 

Remember your goal here is to create an avatar that will represent a segment of your population. So, if you make a female avatar, this avatar may represent all or parts of your female market. If you make your avatar a high school student, then maybe this avatar will represent your younger audience. 

If you have multiple target audiences, you will have to create different avatars. Once you create your first one, the others will be easier. 

 …Then their Psychographics

Now you want to get an idea of how your ideal customer avatar thinks. Many purchasing decisions are based on emotion. 

Consider the impulse aisle at the grocery store. I think we’ve all purchased a candy bar or magazine that we did not “need,” but at that moment, it was too much to pass up. 

You want to do the same with your marketing efforts, and that requires you to understand how your audience thinks.

Outline factors like personality traits, lifestyle, social status, hobbies, interests, opinions, and attitudes. This might be difficult at first, so give yourself some time to think about how these factors apply to you and people you know. Then use some real life examples of customers you currently work with or have worked with in the past. 

Build a Narrative

After you understand who your ideal customer is and how they think, build a narrative around their life and what may drive them to seek your products or services. The narrative might be simple or complex.

For example, if you are a fast food restaurant the narrative is pretty straightforward. However, for a real estate agent or lawyer, the narrative might be a little more complex because you are factoring in different needs and desires. 

The key here is to focus on your ideal customer’s pain points. What are they experiencing? How is it affecting their life? What would it mean to have these pain points resolved? 

Outline an Interaction

As you build the narrative, consider what an interaction would look like. This is part of creating a customer experience that truly draws people to you. You want to envision what would finally bring your avatar to call you, or visit your office, or make a purchase. 

Think about anything that might go wrong and how you mitigate those things from happening. What type of objections or reservations might they have? Imagine the buying process going well and then consider how you can make the one-time customer a repeat one. 

Repeat this Process

We alluded to this above, but chances are, you serve different types of customers. You may need to consider developing different avatars have different purchasing motivations and demographics. The same goes for psychographics. 

Understanding who you are speaking to with your marketing messaging helps you become a more efficient and effective marketer. By creating one or more customer avatars, you are envisioning the potential customers who are most likely to make a purchase. Your marketing content and overall marketing efforts will have a greater impact and deliver better results.