How to get really clear about your ideal customer

In this post, i’m going to help you to get really clear about your ideal customer.

If you’ve seen my five question videos, then you’ll know that the first step is to align your business strategy with your marketing strategy, and the first step of that is to understand and to really define your perfect or your ideal customer.

It’s really important. So in this post, we’re going to discover not just how important, but how easy it is to do it. You may have heard what we’re gonna talk about described as building your ideal avatar. Creating your avatar means to design or draw or create a specification from one person who is your ideal customer, and we’re going to go into that. But let’s talk about the purpose.

The purpose of doing that is because when we communicate one to one we’re way more effective than if we just think we’re talking to a group of random people. It’s far more effective if we get really laser sharp on who we’re talking to. Now, it doesn’t mean that we exclude everybody outside of your target customer, your avatar. It just means it makes our communication clearer when we have a really defined avatar. To create an avatar is really simple. We’ve just got to look at either our existing customers or the people that have the issue that we want to solve.

I’m sure you can write down now the names of at least five people who have benefited from your solution. Or, if you’re a new start, you can look at five people that you know would benefit from your solution. So go ahead and just write down those five people. Real people; write their names down. Then, for each of those people were gonna write some more information, some of it is going to seem appropriate. Some of it not. But actually, it’s all really relevant.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. When we talk about your five people, I want to know which supermarket they would shop at. So would it be aldi or lidl, or would it be waitrose or sainsbury’s? And if they were now flying away on holiday, what airline would they choose? So again, is it gonna be ryanair or easyjet? Or would they want to be in british airways or virgin?

And now you may know this or you may know you might have to use some imagination, but what car would they drive? So just think about the brand that they would be driving in. So is it a ford or a vauxhall? Is it a mercedes? Is it a ferrari? And when they go out for dinner, do they go to the fast food places such as your mcdonald’s or burger king? Or are these guys more fine dining?

Now all of that stuff may seem really inappropriate for what you do, but we’re building up a picture of the kind of places, the kind of brands that your ideal customer associates with? Why’s this really important? Well, when it comes to marketing, we need to appear to be like or similar to the places where they’re already comfortable. I’ll talk about this right at the end when we pull everything together.

But now something more specific. What is the common pain that they all have that you’re going to solve? So just think about those people again on what’s their absolute pain? Not ‘what is the product’. So think about your five people again and get really graphic about what is the pain that you solve or you intend to solve. So in just a short space of time, you’ve already collected lots of really valuable information that’s gonna make your marketing way more effective, your communications way more effective and efficient in what you do.

All we’ve done is just described the people who either will, or already do, get a massive benefit from the solution we provide in taking away their pain. Then we’ve decided or looked at what things they have in common. Once we do that, we start to build up an avatar. You can go ahead now and give your avatar name.

You know it might be Bob, or it might be Sarah. It really doesn’t matter. But call your avatar. Because in future communications, we need to be communicating to that one single avatar.

Okay, final tip. So why do we do this? Why is it important? Well, whenever we’re talking to somebody, we want to be familiar to them. We want to build report with them. And when we do that online, we do it by being similar to the things they already experience. Imagine now, if somebody is used to using the Mercedes website and the Emirates website and their on the social media pages of the big luxury brands on our communications talked to them a completely different level, more like the Mcdonald’s and the Burger Kings or the Lidl and the Aldi. Now, it’s not a competition as to which one you’re in. It’s a competition to make sure you’re in the right one.

You need to talk to your target audience in the way they’re already being spoken to. That brings about familiarity, and that’s what’s important. So being more accurate in your avatar means you can be more accurately speak to your avatar. Remember, your job as a marketer is to stand out from the competition, but blend in with the things that your avatar your ideal customer is already engaging with.

It can be tough to design your ideal avatar. If you would like to work with me on this, just use the form below to get in touch.