EPISODE 122 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: AVATARS: THE SECRET TO BETTER MESSAGING

Sonya:

One of my idols, Seth Godin, once said,
“When you speak to everyone, you speak to no-one”.

And nowhere is this clearer to me than in the marketing world.

Try and speak to everyone and your message comes across as weak, generic, and I hate to say it - a little bit desperate.

So, how do you avoid becoming the pick-me of your industry?
For starters, you stop trying to please everybody, and you speak directly to your customer avatars.

In this episode I’ll take you through:

- What a customer avatar actually IS, 

- Why getting granular about your customer avatar, matters,
- How you create an EFFECTIVE customer avatar, and

- The things you need to consider beyond age, gender and income when creating a customer avatar.

My team has created a free workbook to go with this episode, so check out the show notes and my socials for the download link. 

Let’s get stuck in!

(INTRO)

Business coaches often say “begin with the end in mind” 

- and you absolutely should…

BUT, you can save a LOT of trial and error if you begin with your customer avatar in mind, too.

In the context of today’s podcast, Avatars aren’t the blue characters in a James Cameron film.

Avatars are detailed descriptions of the customers and clients who purchase your product or service. 

They give you a clear image of who you’re talking to when you’re marketing your business.

It’s important to stress here: your Avatar isn’t your ‘ideal customer’ - they’re the people who have a proven track record of purchasing your product or service.

This is an important distinction to make, because when it comes to business, repeat and retainer customers are what keep you afloat when times are tough. 

If you can lock those customers in, either through contracts or through good old brand loyalty, you have a fairly solid baseline from which to make business decisions.

It makes SENSE, then, to identify who those people are, their motivations and challenges, and to develop offers and products that will benefit those people DIRECTLY. 

Be aspirational, sure. You can even include an ideal customer avatar in this exercise…

But don’t discount the importance of the people who are actually bringing in revenue.

What’s interesting to me about this concept of avatars, is that when my team and I speak with clients about getting clear on their avatars, we’re met with a LOT of resistance. 

Do any of these excuses sound familiar?

“We have lots of different clients”
“I don’t want to alienate anyone”

And my personal favourite… “we’re for everyone, not just one specific demographic”.

(Pause for effect. Maybe even look at the camera with ‘that face’ lol)

I get it.

A lot of business owners think that, by casting a wide net, you’ll catch more fish.

The irony is, the more you try to appeal to everyone, the less appealing your message becomes to ANYONE.

When you cast a wide net, two things will happen:

1) You’ll do… OK. You’ll be one of many in your industry. You won’t cop any hate because you’re not controversial, but you probably won’t have any die-hard fans, either.

OR

2) The decision of who you’re FOR will be taken out of your hands. 

The best example I can think of for that second point is… OnlyFans.
I know - Sonya talking about OnlyFans?!
I can’t believe it either. 

Here’s the thing: when OnlyFans launched, it wasn’t designed specifically for adult entertainers and “risque” content creators.

It was launched as a subscription-based platform for ALL video creators.

OnlyFans was INTENDED to be a cross between YouTube and Patreon, where subscribers would pay for lessons, tutorials and exclusive content.

But because their messaging wasn’t specific, the platform took on a life of its own.

A life that has made the creators many, many millions of dollars, but a life of its own, nonetheless! 

Narrowing a target market to a specific customer avatars makes it much easier to align your message - so your marketing sends the right message to the right person at the right time.

And if you still need convincing?

Avatars save you money, time and frustration when it comes to creating a clear marketing strategy that CONVERTS. 

Note that throughout this episode I’ve been saying customer avatars. PLURAL.

We’re not locking you into ONE avatar and ONE message, here.

What we’re doing is basically looking at who buys from you, diving DEEP into their psychology and their buying habits, and getting to know them a little better so we can SERVE them better.

Think of your business as the world from Super Mario Kart, and your client avatars as the characters in the game.

There are a number of players to choose from, each with unique strengths, and you get to choose which player you deploy, depending on the challenges you’re going to face at your current level.

It’s the same in marketing.

One of your characters might be an impulse shopper who’s easily swayed by persuasive copy and a decent discount.

That person isn’t going to buy from you every month, but you can predict that they’ll take you up on special offers on Black Friday or End of Financial Year. 

And that’s FINE. Two or three times a year, you tailor an offer and messaging to that person. 

What you DON’T do, is assume that person is going to buy what you’re selling every time you run a promotion, and increase the frequency of your special offers.

This cheapens your brand, as we talked about last month, and it’s not sustainable.

When creating avatars, we go deep.
We don’t make assumptions or categorise people into vague groups.
We look at the data, because data never lies. 

In fact, I don’t believe that we CREATE avatars, we UNCOVER them.

If you’ve been in business a few years, you’ll probably know what I mean.
You’ve probably had a client or two in mind as I’ve been talking.

And that person?
They may not be who you set out to serve.

When I started my business, I was building websites for family friends and the people they referred me to.

Five years later, I have a team who
- build websites (so I don’t have to),
- manage organic social media clients,
- design beautiful branding and visual materials, and
- create and deploy paid ads strategy
… and we do it mostly for professional service businesses.

I started small, and scaled up - and I did so because my ACTUAL clients required more from me than I was offering.

On the flip side: my Naturopath, Vesna (who was on this podcast, back in November 2021), niched DOWN to serve women suffering from burnout.

Within that niche, she has at least two clear avatars:
- exhausted stay-at-home Mums, and
- also-exhausted, career-focussed women (who may or may not have children).

And let me tell you, Vesna is absolutely CRUSHING it.

For both of us, our client avatars were discovered through doing the actual work of our businesses.

BUT, for me at least, it wasn’t until I sat down and investigated - BEYOND the basics of age, gender and location - that I got clear on my avatars.

And you can, too!

Here’s the HOW of creating your avatars.

Firstly, you don’t get to decide how many avatars you want to have.

For now, we’re going to relinquish control and let the avatars come to us, rather than trying to organise them into boxes.

Virgos, stay with me, I know this will be challenging for you but I promise it’ll be worth it!

To make this process a little easier, we’ve created a workbook for you to use to identify your avatars. The link for that is in the show notes and I’ll link it up on my socials for you, too.

For every avatar, you’re going to want to start with the basics:
Age, gender and location.

If you have a physical premises, this will be easy for you. You see the people coming in the door every day.

If you’re an ecommerce business, you may need to pull up your buyer data.

Really take the time to think about your actual customers.

If you sell kid’s toys, sure - some kids are buying your products with their pocket money. Some parents are buying, too.

In reality though, it’s probably Grandma, Aunties and close female friends of Mum who are making more of a difference to your bottom line. They’re buying for baby showers, birthdays and Christmas presents.

Knowing this, you’re going to market your products differently.


Once you have the basics down, move on to what I call the ‘snob variables’: Level of education, income and profession.

These things all influence how a buyer processes information, when and why they purchase a product or service, and the things that matter to them most when considering an offer.

Example:
A $200 t-shirt means something very different to a uni student than it does to a millionaire.

To the uni student it’s a status symbol, tied up in ego and self worth, that they made a conscious decision to purchase. They may have saved up for it or made the purchase through a buy-now-pay-later provider.

To the millionaire, it’s a well made basic that they wear on weekends, something that they probably don’t give much thought to. The cost of the t-shirt is less than what they make in an hour, and paying for it is a neutral experience.

Once the snob variables are locked in, we move onto the personality variable: What do they enjoy? What are their interests and hobbies?

When you know what people like, you can tailor your language, your visuals, and even the audio you use on Reels and TikToks to connect with them.

For example: If someone is a die-hard Friends fan, there are literally hundreds of memes, one-liners and audio grabs you can implement in your marketing.

When used effectively, those people will feel seen and understood.

As we discussed in my episode about the lessons we can learn from the Barbie Movie, when people connect with a brand on an emotional level, they’re more inclined to buy - particularly if there’s an element of nostalgia involved.

(If you missed that episode, it’s Episode 121- Barbie: a Masterclass in Marketing. It’s a quick one, and worth a listen)

And finally, the psychology variable.
This is the big one.

You’re going to look at what buyer behaviour - what motivates them to buy? What problem are they struggling with - that you can solve?

What do they value most?

Think broadly, first.
Consider things like cost, quality, convenience, functionality and customer service.

Then, go deeper:
Do they hold strong moral or ethical beliefs?
Are they staunch supporters of shopping locally?
Are status symbols such as logos important to them? 

Knowing what matters to your avatars means you can tailor not only your marketing to their preferences, but your business practices as well.

If your most important avatar values customer service, you may want to call to confirm appointments, instead of sending an automated text.

On the other hand, if your most important avatar is busy and values convenience, a text reminder that they can reply YES to is going to be the preferable method.

And if recognition is important to them? Featuring their fresh head of foils on your stories is going to do more to solidify your relationship than a discount ever could. 

Do you see how it’s not a one-size-fits all thing?
And that there are seasons and reasons for selling certain offers in a certain way?

It’s important to note here, that as a business owner, you may not be the best person to identify your own avatars.

Your admin person, the team that go into people’s homes and the marketing team who collate all your user-generated content are all going to have valuable insights, too. 

And if you’re really stuck, here are three ways you can look to your regular customers for more information!

1. Feedback:
What aspects of your business do people mention in those glowing five star Google reviews? If you have negative reviews, where did you fall short?
What do people comment on, most?

2. Results:
Which offers sold really well in the last 12 months? Which ones underperformed? Who were those offers speaking to… or NOT speaking to?

3. ASK THEM:
People love giving their opinion, so if you can survey your clients, you should!
And if you can do it anonymously, even better - people are often WAY more honest when they’re not able to be identified.

Finally, don’t treat this as a one-and-done exercise.

The thing with customer avatars is that they aren’t ever really set in stone, even if you work in a specific niche or with a specific product.

Case in point:
Bunnings sells plumbing piping and attachments to… you guessed it, plumbers.
That avatar is solid. It covers all the factors I mentioned earlier, and it makes sense.

So imagine their surprise, earlier this year, when one specific plumbing attachment started flying off their shelves. 

The driving force behind these sales?

A TIKTOK showing how this SPECIFIC pipe attachment could act as a CAR CUP HOLDER for larger drink bottles - like the Frank Green ones I mentioned a few episodes back. 

They couldn’t have predicted that!
And they would have had to think really creatively to CREATE the situation that birthed that avatar.

But just like panning for gold, you never know when a precious gem will reveal itself.

All you can do is decide where that avatar sits within your cast of Mario Kart characters, and how often you want to work with them.

For Bunnings? They’re going to take notice of the opportunistic buyer who jumps on novel trends, but they’re not going to redirect their marketing budget to KEEP that buyer amused. They know where their bread is buttered, and they’re going to stay the course.

And that’s exactly what avatars can help you do in your business - identify the demographics, traits, motivations and behaviours that make a real difference to your bottom line.

Start speaking to those people directly, and see what happens when you do.
I’d love to hear what happens.

—

So there you have it!
There’s a lot in this episode, but we do have a free workbook to help you work through identifying your client avatars. I’ll link it up in the show notes and on socials for you.

If you want to discuss this episode, or any of the Boom Your Biz episodes, head on over to the Boom Your Biz Facebook Group to connect with other like-minded business owners. Just search Boom Your Biz on Facebook.

Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss an episode, and let me know what topics you want to hear more on!