Welcome to the Customer Avatar deep-dive
So first of all, youâve probably heard a lot about a Customer Avatar. You might have even done some exercises in the past.
The problem there is, I donât want to stress you out with thinking about your Customer Avatar.
At the end, whatâs important is that you already know to whom you can sell your product to and to whom you can be helpful with your product to. To actually provide a solution which helps them overcome a problem or get to a point where they want to be.
The first thing I want to talk about is the demographics, because a lot of people are stressing out that itâs important to figure out how old their prospects are and so on.
Donât get me wrong, itâs important, however, itâs not as important as you might think.
You need it to get into the right direction, for example, you want to sell baby clothes, of course you need to go to parents, and you donât really want to go to single people.
If you want to sell a weight loss course to older women, of course you need to market it to older women, and you donât want to do it to everyone.
However, this should only be used to give you a rough overview and direction.
Sometimes, it makes a difference if your target audience is made up of males or females, but sometimes it doesnât.
Thatâs the important part.
If you sell something involving pregnancy, of course your target audience needs to be female and you wonât market to males.
But thereâs also specific products that both males and females can use.
Sometimes it makes a difference, and sometimes it doesnât.
The same thing applies to age. Sometimes it makes a difference, sometimes it doesnât.
For instance, if you sell dog training, typically age doesnât matter. In the end, youâre talking to dog owners. However, if youâre selling life coaching, thereâs a difference when youâre selling to 20-25 year olds that are straight from college, compared to 50 year olds, that are at a completely different stage in their lives.
So in conclusion, demographics is important but donât stress too much about them, because there's usually something else that should take more importance. What should I focus on instead?
Awareness.
You should focus on where your customer avatars awareness level is at.
Levels of Awareness
Your website is the top of the funnel. You need to be generating visitors and leads into your funnel if you want to create successful marketing campaigns. You've created a landing page for your shopping center ⌠but it's not doing that great. It's not converting as well as you would hope it would. This could be because of the level of awareness your customer has about purchasing a home. Let's examine the five levels of buying awareness, and when they occur.
1) Completely Unaware - No awareness of the problem, or the need for a solution.
Typically, these people arenât the type of people you want to market to because they need a lot of explaining.
2) Problem Aware - Awareness only of the problem.
- There are people who are problem aware, but they arenât aware of what the solution to their problem may be. For instance, if they know they have back problems, however, they never thought about a solution to try to solve it.
- Typically in the funnel, we are building for prospects who are at least problem aware. The lower you are on the awareness level, the longer your funnel will be.
3) Solution Aware - Awareness of the problem and the various solutions available.
- These people are aware of their problem, and the various solutions available. For example, with our back example. A possible solution could be a chiropractic as a solution to their pain problem. The important part here is to differentiate and get people to the solution awareness stage.
- Get your prospect to start thinking about what your particular chiropractic differentiate from others and what does it look like? Get them to know your product. What would it be like? A weekly massage? An online coaching / training helping people get rid of their back problems?
4) Product Aware - Awareness of the problem and the type of solution they want.
- You now go to a stage where people are product aware and know what solutions are available that I can buy to help me solve my problem.
5) Most Aware - Awareness of what you offer and how it meets their needs.
- Then there's prospects who are pretty much aware of everything. If you have prospects on this level, they are pretty much basing everything on prize. This is also the level that the traditional consumer market is at. They understand everything about their standard shampoos or standard toothpaste. They know the price points and so on.
Once you understand which level of people youâre going after, you can tailor your funnel to match the customer avatar awareness level.
Typically in the beginning, when you talk about the problem to get people in, you talk about the problem, and show them, without talking about the solution, that thereâs a way out of their problem.
We can take a look at an agency funnel. At the beginning, weâre targeting people who have a problem acquiring customers. We donât really talk about funnels. There may be some entry points where we do, but thatâs more for people who already know that funnels will be their solution.
We also only target people who are at least problem aware. The biggest mistake that you can make there is already talk about your solution. People have never heard about your solution. However, if people already know that funnels are a solution, then you can talk about funnels and explain what your funnel does differently.
If people are product aware stage, they understand different accelerator programs which brings them from âI don't have a funnelâ to âI have a funnel that will generate me customersâ.
This is all really important.
Also, in terms of funnel content, the content that youâre producing within the emails, but also out of the emails, like videos and blog posts. What kind of content do you have on your website and social media?
Thereâs a big difference between problem aware and solution aware. If youâre nurturing prospects, you should also consider product aware, where you compare your product to other products, and show that you are on top.
The awareness level of your prospects is the first thing that you need to focus on.
Psychographics
The second thing that is really important to focus on is Psychographics.
Itâs really important that you get into the head of your ideal prospect.
Thereâs a huge difference between what they want, and what they need.
An example of this can be seen in the fitness industry.
People want to lose weight, however, what they donât want is another fitness program, eating less, doing exercise. But thatâs what they need. Because in order to lose weight, you need to either eat less, exercise more, basically burn more calories than you take in.
If you just sell what they need, youâd be going out and saying âHey, I have this new fitness program for you, come get it!â Typically people donât respond well this way. If youâre selling a new way to lose weight, thatâs what they actually want.
Itâs important to reflect on your current way of doing things, and asking yourself if you are selling the solution which is what they need, but youâre not selling what they want.
So what you want to do is, you want to sell to their desires.
- What does he/she desire most in life/business?
- What are their goals?
- What are their values?
- What do they want to achieve?
You want to bundle their problem, and the desire they have, and you want to put your solution in the middle.
Therefore, itâs crucial you understand the real problem/pain point that they have.
You may already have it clear, but itâs not uncommon where you think people have some problem, but in reality, thereâs a completely different problem or pain point.
For example, people think the main problem for losing weight for most people, is knowing what to eat. However, a lot of people already know that, their real pain point is that they donât have the motivation to go through the system with the method youâre providing them.
Thatâs why itâs crucial that you understand the real problems and pain points that they have.
Ask yourself whatâs my prospects most urgent problem regarding the solution Iâm offering or the problem they want to solve.
Whatâs really driving them crazy? Whatâs the reason they should solve this problem?
If they could wave a magic wand, what would they want more than anything else in this area?
You need to think a few steps ahead of your prospect. Itâs not that they just want to lose weight. They feel that they need to lose weight in order to get a girlfriend/boyfriend.
Really understand what their desire is. You market to the right pain point and right desire, and you will have no problems selling.
Another question you can ask yourself is what is your prospect trying to avoid?
The reason why you ask all these questions is because once you have nailed this down, combined with the feedback of people youâre already selling to, all the copy you need to write will be much more on point and really speaking to people.
Really try to understand your prospect inside out.
- What are they seeing?
- What are they hearing?
- What are they saying?
- What are they thinking?
- What are they doing?
- What are they feeling?
You need develop empathy for your prospects and for your buyers.
Get to know them. Talk to them. Understand them. Get into their shoes, and donât try to talk about you and your product. Talk about them. Of course you and your product will help them, but talk about what theyâre doing now, and where they want to go to, and what will be different after using your product? And therefor, you need to understand your prospect inside out.
Itâs not only on the higher level with what theyâre seeing, like in the fitness industry, always seeing these gymshark influencers. How do they feel about that? They probably feel ashamed. So if youâre the next gymshark influencer, posting about your looks, without thinking that your audience may hate themselves, then youâre missing out on a huge opportunity, because if you really understand how theyâre feeling with all the other marketing, you can differentiate. This is why itâs so important to develop empathy.
Also think about how they feel they look for the kind of product youâre selling. Are they angry? Are they overwhelmed? Are they excited? Because this all differentiates the whole marketing message that you need to put out.
How do they feel about your industry? In the digital marketing space for example, thereâs a huge thing of distrust going on. People donât trust anyone, because they think âitâs just another guruâ or âitâs just another person making money teaching others how to make moneyâ.
So if you donât have that in your mind, it could be that people wonât buy from you, even if they think this is the right solution.