Written by: Sachin Parmar
Do you know what a customer avatar is and if so, have you created customer avatars for your business? If you responded ‘no’ to either of these questions, then you’re missing a trick that could take your business from mediocre to a raging success. Read on to find out more.
Sachin Parmar, Co-founder and Creative Director from evokeu, London’s leading boutique digital marketing and branding agency, discusses the importance of a customer avatar, how to create one and how they can transform your business.
A customer avatar or buyer persona is a detailed description of your ideal customer. Like a character in a book, to create a customer avatar you need to consider every area of their personality. You need to think carefully about how they act and how this might influence the product or service they’d like, as well as how they’d approach sourcing a business to meet their needs.
Some key questions that are worth asking when building your customer avatar, include:
How old are they? – in terms of social media, younger audiences are more present on TikTok and Instagram, whereas older generations tend to sway towards Facebook. This might dictate which channel you decide to dedicate time to promoting.
Whereabouts do they live? Do they tend to reside in a rural location or within a town or city? – if you own a physical store, restaurant or office that relies on footfall, then you need to think about where your dream customers are located. If they live in the countryside, perhaps an online business would be more beneficial.
What are they interested in? – consider what’s important to your customer when creating your product or service, as it’ll guide which areas to focus on. For instance, would your ideal customer want a product or service that is sustainable and friendly to the planet, or are they money conscious and looking for the cheapest product on the market?
Once you’ve established a fully formed persona, this will dictate the business-critical decisions that you make, from the design of your packaging and the look of your website, to the marketing channels that you choose. If you’re still sitting on the fence about investing resource into customer avatar creation, then here’s the three main ways it could revolutionise your business.
Supports a killer marketing strategy
Without knowing who you’re directing your marketing towards, you’re entering the market blind. Although a scattergun approach might secure a few wins, it won’t be an effective way to lock in multiple and consistent sales. Working with an audience in mind will refine your efforts and steer the direction of your plans. If you know how to attract your customers, then you’re increasing your chances of a prospect engaging with your social posts or clicking through to your website. Work smarter not harder.
Narrows the focus of your sales team
In addition to stronger marketing, using a customer avatar will support who your sales team targets, as well as the means of communication that they use. For cold leads, are they reaching out to them over the phone or doing door-to-door sales, and for warm leads that organically approach your business, are they speaking to this audience in an informal chatty way or are they opting for ‘sir and madam’ throughout the conversation.
Makes your advertising budget go further
When you’re advertising your business in a way that your ultimate customer would like and in the places that they visit, then you’ll be spending your time and money where it matters. This might even mean that you can spend less on advertising, whilst still getting the same, if not better results. The more you grow your presence in the right areas, the more your business will be spoken about amongst the right audiences. Like a match made in heaven, your ideal customers will then start seeking you out, rather than the other way round.
Building customer avatars can be a complex task, but worry not as there are experts on hand to help. The skilled team at evokeu can support with creating the personas of your prospective customers, along with crafting a marketing strategy that will speak to them and get you the results that your business needs.
If you’d like to find out more about Sachin and evokeu, please visit here. You can also follow Sachin on LinkedIn, where he frequently posts business advice and inspiring content.
About the author:
Sachin Parmar is the Co-founder and Creative Director of boutique digital marketing and branding agency, evokeu. With decades of design experience, Sachin has a keen eye for detail and a drive to create consistently superior results. Sachin and his expert team work with big and small brands across many sectors to help clients capture customer attention and create growth. Evokeu also has a vertical brand called Graphic Kitchen, which specialises in the hospitality sector.
