How Your Customer Avatar Can Determine Your Success

This article is a personal one to me as it’s based on my own failure as a digital entrepreneur to define my customer avatar. We ran a website for seven years whereby I just could not make a breakthrough when it came to monetizing what was quite a large global following of close to 1.5 million.

It was hard to walk away due to my emotional connection to the project. I always believed I would crack it and make that breakthrough.

I had a passion for this project, I worked tirelessly and I was unbelievably consistent with my efforts.

It all sounds like a recipe for success. But it really wasn’t.

Why not I hear you ask?

Well, the truth of the matter was that I simply did not know what I didn’t know.

It was this ignorance that led to my demise. Which was not a total loss as I did end up selling the website to a competitor company – they absorbed the content and social following and merged it with their own efforts.

This was some consolation for my efforts but still, a tough pill to swallow.

Customer Avatar The Turning Point

Several years after selling the website, I start studying the SFM digital marketing course. In hope to understand where I went wrong and why despite all my efforts could not get this to work for me.

The course helped me realize very quickly how I failed in the following ways:

• I didn’t understand my audience enough to allow me to segment them
• We were unable to adopt automotive techniques
• There was a failure to define an avatar for my target audience
• The products built were not based on a defined avatar
• There was no marketing strategy that was based on building relationships

Everything I’ve mentioned is essential based on one thing – customer avatar.

For those of you that don’t know, essentially a customer avatar defines who is the person you are targeting. Then letting this person represent a group or demographic of people that resemble that.

Why is this important?

Well it allows you to ask really important questions such as:

• What are their goals and values?
• What are their challenges and pain points?
• Where do they go to get their information?
• What are their objections in the buying process?
• Which level do they work/study at?
• What age are they?
• and so on…

It’s the answers to these questions that allow you to define your product line and your marketing strategy. Giving you the reassurance that your efforts are indeed focused to answer the needs of someone specifically. Increasing your chances of serving them in a way that truly benefits them.

Avoid Resorting Marketing Tricks and Hacks

This means you don’t have to resort to tricks and marketing hacks because you are in fact providing them with something that is of true value to them. In a way that they genuinely appreciate.

You are aligning yourself with them harmoniously meaning it is easier for you as a marketer to leverage automation.

Your able to automate is what will help you scale up your efforts with minimal investment.

Why It’s Worth it

When this occurs the result is that you stop trading your time for money and instead trade your resources for results. Which puts you in a position exponentially multiple your efforts and in turn your results.

For example, in the world of digital marketing, it will take you the same amount of time and effort to market to one person effectively as it will to market to 10,000 people effectively, as long as they match your chosen avatar.

Instantly you can see why it is worth taking your time to define your avatar and then to understand them as this will give you the foundation to scale up and increase your earning potential.

Now if you have a mailing list of 10,000 (which I did) and your Avatar is not defined, it really won’t matter if your list increases to 100,000.

While you may get some results, inevitably most of your list will treat your efforts like they are SPAM and file them accordingly.

Why will they treat them like SPAM?

Well for one the content is not delivered to them in a way that connects with them.

This leaves them with the thought that you are wasting their time. People have a tendency to value their time and here you are wasting it. Damn straight you’re going into the SPAM folder.

The quality of your list is based on how well it is defined. The quality of your results is based on how well you connect to that list in terms of building a relationship with them.

Your ability to build a relationship with them is based on the extent to which you understand them. Which is, of course, is near impossible if you have not defined them based on an avatar.

Do you think you’d have a high quality in-depth conversation with someone you barely know?

Yes it’s possible but not likely. If you do not connect with them well, how likely are they going to be convinced to purchase something from you?

If you’re answer was “Not very likely Scott” – then you’re on the money.

So spend the time and invest in defining your avatar. It may hold you back and slow down your efforts but when you unleash your marketing strategy, it will be targeted and more likely to convert, which ultimately is what you want.

Action Steps – Customer Avatar

• Sit down and think of at least one customer avatar that reflects your own customer
• See how your current marketing efforts align with your what you come up with
• Adjust accordingly

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