By reading this article, you will be able to use client avatars to step into the minds of your target audience. Knowing how your target market thinks is an essential tool in the process of building an effective marketing strategy. You will be able to know things about your customers you may not have thought about before. Things like where they spend the most time online, what their needs are, and what is most important to them in the decision making process. Knowing these things can save you money and reduce the amount of trial and error you have to go through to get successful results. 

What is a client avatar/ buyer persona?

Client avatars, also known as buyer personas, are a tool to better understand your audience. They are a semi-fictional representation of a certain type of customer your business sells to most often. They are made through organizing customers and potential customers by recognizing certain patterns in buying, demographics, motivations, goals, and other behaviors. They are useful in understanding the wants and needs of your target audience. This is so you can get your message in front of the right audience and better cater your message to them. There are a large number of details you can include in a client avatar, but what matters most is that you focus on the most relevant kinds of customers and gather information that is pertinent to your business. All of this information provides a greater context as you try to understand the audience and build your strategies around them. A business can also have multiple buyer personas. This is because it is not uncommon that a business might sell to a few different types of customers.

How do I make a client avatar?

The process of making a client avatar can be broken down into at least 3 steps. There is the first step, which is the process of researching your customers and  collecting data. The second step is the sorting of your data by their similarities and recognizing important patterns. Lastly, there’s the third step where these specific patterns and information are crafted into a client avatar. All of these parts are essential to crafting an accurate client avatar that will represent a particular type of customer that you have. These parts can be broken down further, but we have decided to share with you a basic overview of the process. 

Step #1: Do your research!

Nothing beats hard data when you are studying your customers. A lot of businesses make the mistake of creating a client avatar based off of their ideal customer alone, and ignore the data of who is actually buying from them. The accuracy of your client avatar will be dependent on the use of the information gathered from your data in combination with your own intuitions about your customers. It is extremely necessary to collect data, both quantitative and qualitative, as you study your target audience. It is also helpful if the data comes from a number of different channels. This will give your business a more accurate perspective of who is buying from you. The data you gather can be collected from various analytics tools, interviews, surveys, and insights gathered from your employees. If your business is new or you are starting your marketing from scratch, then you may need to find ways to study the type of customers you want to target and focus on them.

Every kind of marketing channel online has certain metrics that can be tracked. The best way to gain access to this collected information is through the use of various analytics tools. There are a lot of analytics tools, and the ones you should use depends on what marketing channels you are using. Each different social media channel has its own different analytics tools. Google also offers a number of analytics resources. These different analytics tools help businesses track visits to their pages or websites and allows users to see who follows their business among a number of other things. Multiple choice surveys are also a great way of gathering quantitative data for free. It is also important to collect and take into account various kinds of qualitative data. Gathering qualitative data helps to fill in the informational gaps that can be left by your quantitative data. As mentioned before, surveys and interviews are both great for getting more qualitative information to help with understanding your customers.

Step #2: Look for patterns!

Now that you have gathered information, it is time to look for patterns and discover the types of customers you have. From the different kinds of information you have gathered, there should be trends among similar customers. This is where you can start to sort out the types of customers you have and what these similar customers all have in common. Once you have started to form groups of similar customers, you will notice what makes each customer category different. This is helpful as you look to see which groups are the most worthwhile and where you could improve with the less successful groups. The less successful groups of customers are still important, and by getting more insights, you will likely be able to improve the effectiveness of marketing efforts directed to these types of customers.

As an example, let’s say you have organized your customers into 3 main groups. One of these groups is buying more consistently. You now know that by focusing on getting strategies in front of this particular type of customer, your time spent will be more effective. You may also notice that there are clear demographic reasons one of the other 2 groups did not do as well, such as the group being less tech savvy than some of the other customer types. By seeing patterns like these, you can decide where to focus your efforts, or how to improve your strategies and gear them towards each specific customer types. 

Step #3: Craft your client avatar/ buyer persona!

Now that you have sorted this information and recognized the patterns, you can start to draw more conclusions and create your client avatar. You will create a fictitious person based off of what is most common for each of these types of customers. Usually they will be named something related to what it is that makes their type of customer unique from your other client avatars, such as unique needs or circumstances. An example might be Soccer Mom Stacy, a mother of 4 who is always on the go. After naming this persona, you will want to fill in the specific information provided by your research. This is often done by answering questions about this type of customer’s demographics, behaviors, and unique traits. You will want to fill in information about their demographics, psychographics, communication information, and buying behaviors.

The infographic above shows a lot of the most common things included in a client avatar or buyer persona. The culmination of all this information will result in a better understanding of who you are selling to, what motivates them, and what their needs are. This gives your business the representation of this specific segment you will be able to market to. 

How do I effectively use my client avatar/ buyer persona?

The insights gained from having a client avatar for your specific sorts of customers will provide essential context for your business as a whole. The information gained can be used in many different ways. In your marketing efforts, it can be used to help as you try and cater your copy, put your message in front of the right people, and help your strategies be more centered around the most effective kinds of customers. Along with the marketing benefits to be gained from having a client avatar, you can also use this information in all customer related aspects of your business. It can be used to help with the development of your products or services. There is also potential to take this information into account when allocating time and resources in the sales and support departments. It is important to also update your client avatars periodically as people change over time. New trends will pop up and you don’t want to fall behind. 

Client avatars are essential in business. They are the way that we can get to know who we are selling to. They allow us to take data, insights, and feedback, and channel them into making our businesses more successful.  We need to know who we are selling to, what their needs are, and how we can cater our efforts to best suit them. By knowing these things we will be able to work smarter, not just harder. Having a clearer understanding of your customers will help you know how to motivate them towards action. I am absolutely certain that if you are not using client avatars now, by making accurate client avatars and using them effectively, you will be able to improve your business and your marketing efforts without question. 

If you have any comments, questions, or marketing needs contact us. We’d love to help!

-The Forge Team