You want to know how do you find your ideal customer let me give you my Customer Avatar Template?
To find more of your ideal customer you need to create a Customer Avatar. Often overlooked by business owners its one of the first things I do with my clients on my Business Accelerator programme.
When people first start out in our business, they will work with anybody that’s got a pulse or a chequebook (aka EVERYONE).
The problem with that is you will end up working with clients that suck the life out of you. They want everything for nothing and just cause you so much stress you no longer enjoy running your business.
By crafting a Customer Avatar you will consider what your perfect customer looks like so you can attract more of those.
Why You Must Not Just Work With Anybody
Does this sound familiar, someone makes an enquiry and they kind of frustrate you. Asking for discounts, pushing you to agree to terms you would not normally agree. But because you did not get many leads that month you still decide to work with them. Even in your heart you know its going to be a painful experience.
As a business owner, it’s essential that you stamp that out as quickly as possible. You need to be attracting more of your ideal customer.
To find your customer avatar you must spend some time figuring out who they are. What do they like, dislike and where do they hang out. Also consider the attributes of the people you don’t want to work with so you can push them away.
Push people away who:
- Haggle on price.
- Are demanding before you even start working with them.
Customer Avatar Worksheet/Template
When we use a customer avatar worksheet, we look at various things. To successfully find your customer avatar, you need to be looking at these different variables.
Firstly we look at gender, age, income, and marital status.
Gender
You might have a business that works with male and females. However, they hang out in different places online. The messaging to those genders is normally going to be slightly different. So if you do work with both genders then create two Customer Avatars.
McDonald’s sell to males and females, however they might buy different products. A lady might be more likely to buy an iced coffee and a male a large burger like a Big Mac.
So the guy needs to be be marketed a Big Mac and a lady needs to be marketed a salad or iced coffee. The messaging to each gender is going to vary massively, not only that they might have out in different places online.
Example: My daughter, Georgia, she’s 20 years old and so she goes to McDonald’s. She would be brought in there by things like McFlurry and stuff like that. But if I go to McDonald’s, a 40 year old guy I would prefer to get a Big Mac instead of an ice cream.
Age
We also need to look at the Age of our ideal customer.
A lot of business owners will work again with almost anybody.
That’s a big mistake.
If you think of certain businesses, there are people that can afford your services easier compared to other people.
Example: A hair salon, you might be looking at ladies that are 30 to 40 years old. Generally they will have more disposable income at that age. They will likely spend considerably more on a haircut. My daughter, a 20 year old won’t spend £150 on a haircut, but my 40 year old partner Katie will.
You need to attract more like Katie’s into your business if you’re a hair salon, rather than my daughter. Georgia does get her hair done, but she would be looking for a discount. She will also do a lot of hair care at home rather than paying someone to do it for her.
When I started running my Business Accelerator programme, we started out marketing to anyone.
This meant we got a lot of University students that came to our seminars and events. We love to help students but the problem was they could not afford to buy our products or services.
We helped as much as we could but ultimately we needed to attract more established business owners. The students can come back to us once they have finished Uni and are starting a business.
So pick an age range for your ideal customer, it does not mean you won’t work with people outside that range. Its just to get clearer on who you are going to advertise to.
Marital Status
We also need to look at things like marital status. If I ran a building firm or was a plumber, I would want to attract married people. Normally married people have more disposable income. Their bills are shared, maybe they share one car life is generally cheaper for couples.
The plumber might be more likely to sell them the higher quality more expensive boiler. Where as the single guy might go for the cheapest boiler, it does not mean he is a bad customer its just the plumber will do better selling more of the expensive boiler.
Some businesses would do better to target single people, for example a bar might get more repeat business from a single person. Ive recently had a baby girl called Amelie, while I do still go out to pubs and bars its a lot less frequent.
My friends who are single go each weekend and spend a lot more money and thus are a better client for the bar.
If you’re a builder, a family might be looking at an extension, right? Whereas if you attract someone that’s in their 20s, and they’re single, they might just be looking for fixing something that’s gone wrong with the property that project won’t necessarily be so big.
Its a real consideration, try to think about your last 10 customers. Two of those will have been better than the others, take an educated guess are they single or married.
Income
Other things we need to look when completing our Customer Avatar Template is their income, what’s their salary.
That indicates whether they can afford our product and service. Now you could be Lamborghini and advertise to everyone. But not everyone can afford a Lamborghini, they might want one but you would be wasting a done of your marketing spend.
You need to be advertising to the people that can actually buy your product and service. Remember originally I had a lot of university students attending my events. While they were lovely people who wanted to learn, they could not afford my products.
We also look at a lot of other stuff including, what do they talk about a home? What do they do in their spare time? etc etc.
Download the Customer Avatar Template below and start to fill in the sheet.
The more we know about your ideal client the better.
The more we know about our ideal customer, the more our marketing can attract those people. We can talk about things that they like to do that will resonate with them, and draw them into your business.
You want to be drawing people into your business, rather than you going out and chasing them.
Here are some posts you will find useful.
How to Enable Thumbnails on YouTube
Lead Generation for Estate & Letting Agents
How To Get Multiple Streams Of Income
How To Get Your First 1000 YouTube Subscribers
