Create an Avatar:
One of the best tools for getting into the mind of your prospect is to temporarily become them by creating an avatar. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all woo woo on you here. An avatar is a detailed exploration and description of your target customer and their life. Like a police sketch artist, you piece together a composite that creates a vivid picture of them in your mind. It helps tell their story so that you can visualize life from their perspective. It’s also important to create avatars for each type of decision maker or influencer you might encounter in your target market. For example, if you’re selling IT services to small companies in the financial services industry, you might be dealing with both the business owners and their assistants. Here’s an example of avatars for Max Cash, the owner of a successful financial planning firm, and his personal assistant, Angela Assistant. Max Cash: Max is 51 years old. He owns a successful financial planning business that has grown steadily over the past ten years. Previously, he had a career working for KPMG and some other large corporates before he went out on his own. He has a bachelor’s degree and an MBA. He’s married and has two teenage daughters and a younger son. He lives in an upper-middle-class suburb in a five-bedroom house that he’s been in for about four years. He drives a two-year-old Mercedes S-Class. He has eighteen staff members and operates from an office building that he owns. His office is a 15-minute drive from home. The business has an annual turnover of $4.5 million, which is predominantly service-based revenue. He has no IT support person on staff and delegates most of the IT and tech responsibilities to his PA, Angela Assistant. He spends about $4,000 per month on the various pieces of software that are used in his industry and give him access to the most current financial data. He knows the software helps him and his clients, but he also knows that there are many features that are going underutilized. His office server and systems are a hodgepodge of various computers mostly installed by his software vendors and that have had very little maintenance since installation. The backup systems are archaic and have never actually been tested. He’s a golf nut. His office is decorated with golf memorabilia. There are photos of him playing golf throughout. The desktop background on his computer is a beautiful panoramic photo of Pebble Beach Golf Links. In his spare time, unsurprisingly, he likes to play golf with his friends and business associates. He reads The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and his local newspaper. He uses an iPhone but it’s mostly used for phone calls and a little bit of email. See how this can give us a valuable insight into what the life of our prospect looks like? Now let’s look at the avatar for another influencer within our target market: Angela Assistant: Angela is 29 years old. She’s single and lives in a two-bedroom rented apartment with her cat, Sprinkles. She takes public transport to work and commutes daily for about 30 minutes. Angela is organized, always smartly dressed and very enthusiastic. Angela has been Max’s PA for the last three years when the growth of the company has really started to accelerate. She’s his right hand and he’d be totally lost without her. She organizes Max’s calendar, sets up his laptop and phone, makes and takes calls on his behalf and much, much more. She’s the glue that holds Max’s business together and she does a bit of everything from ordering stationery to IT to HR. Although her title says PA, she’s more than that. She’s really the office manager and probably even to some extent the general manager. She’s the one that staff go to when something needs to be fixed, ordered or organized. She’s tech-savvy but really out of her depth when it comes to the more technical and strategic aspects of IT systems. After work, she usually hits the gym for a workout and loves to watch new shows on Netflix. On weekends she catches up with friends and loves the nightlife. She spends a lot of time online reading beauty, fashion and celebrity gossip blogs. Angela spends most of her discretionary income on going out, entertainment and online shopping, which is like an addiction for her. Even though Angela is quite well paid, she always runs short of money, which has resulted in her having about $10,000 worth of credit card debt. She knows she needs to be better with money but there always just seems to be too many temptations for her to resist. She’s always glued to her phone, constantly texting and using social media apps. To take a step further, find an actual image to visually represent your avatar and have it in front of you whenever you’re creating marketing material for them. Hopefully, by now, you can see how powerful avatars are. They are the marketing equivalent of method acting. They get you right into the mind of your prospect, a perspective that is going to be absolutely crucial when it comes to crafting your message to your target market.
One of the best tools for getting into the mind of your prospect is to temporarily become them by creating an avatar. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all woo woo on you here. An avatar is a detailed exploration and description of your target customer and their life. Like a police sketch artist, you piece together a composite that creates a vivid picture of them in your mind. It helps tell their story so that you can visualize life from their perspective. It’s also important to create avatars for each type of decision maker or influencer you might encounter in your target market. For example, if you’re selling IT services to small companies in the financial services industry, you might be dealing with both the business owners and their assistants. Here’s an example of avatars for Max Cash, the owner of a successful financial planning firm, and his personal assistant, Angela Assistant. Max Cash: Max is 51 years old. He owns a successful financial planning business that has grown steadily over the past ten years. Previously, he had a career working for KPMG and some other large corporates before he went out on his own. He has a bachelor’s degree and an MBA. He’s married and has two teenage daughters and a younger son. He lives in an upper-middle-class suburb in a five-bedroom house that he’s been in for about four years. He drives a two-year-old Mercedes S-Class. He has eighteen staff members and operates from an office building that he owns. His office is a 15-minute drive from home. The business has an annual turnover of $4.5 million, which is predominantly service-based revenue. He has no IT support person on staff and delegates most of the IT and tech responsibilities to his PA, Angela Assistant. He spends about $4,000 per month on the various pieces of software that are used in his industry and give him access to the most current financial data. He knows the software helps him and his clients, but he also knows that there are many features that are going underutilized. His office server and systems are a hodgepodge of various computers mostly installed by his software vendors and that have had very little maintenance since installation. The backup systems are archaic and have never actually been tested. He’s a golf nut. His office is decorated with golf memorabilia. There are photos of him playing golf throughout. The desktop background on his computer is a beautiful panoramic photo of Pebble Beach Golf Links. In his spare time, unsurprisingly, he likes to play golf with his friends and business associates. He reads The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and his local newspaper. He uses an iPhone but it’s mostly used for phone calls and a little bit of email. See how this can give us a valuable insight into what the life of our prospect looks like? Now let’s look at the avatar for another influencer within our target market: Angela Assistant: Angela is 29 years old. She’s single and lives in a two-bedroom rented apartment with her cat, Sprinkles. She takes public transport to work and commutes daily for about 30 minutes. Angela is organized, always smartly dressed and very enthusiastic. Angela has been Max’s PA for the last three years when the growth of the company has really started to accelerate. She’s his right hand and he’d be totally lost without her. She organizes Max’s calendar, sets up his laptop and phone, makes and takes calls on his behalf and much, much more. She’s the glue that holds Max’s business together and she does a bit of everything from ordering stationery to IT to HR. Although her title says PA, she’s more than that. She’s really the office manager and probably even to some extent the general manager. She’s the one that staff go to when something needs to be fixed, ordered or organized. She’s tech-savvy but really out of her depth when it comes to the more technical and strategic aspects of IT systems. After work, she usually hits the gym for a workout and loves to watch new shows on Netflix. On weekends she catches up with friends and loves the nightlife. She spends a lot of time online reading beauty, fashion and celebrity gossip blogs. Angela spends most of her discretionary income on going out, entertainment and online shopping, which is like an addiction for her. Even though Angela is quite well paid, she always runs short of money, which has resulted in her having about $10,000 worth of credit card debt. She knows she needs to be better with money but there always just seems to be too many temptations for her to resist. She’s always glued to her phone, constantly texting and using social media apps. To take a step further, find an actual image to visually represent your avatar and have it in front of you whenever you’re creating marketing material for them. Hopefully, by now, you can see how powerful avatars are. They are the marketing equivalent of method acting. They get you right into the mind of your prospect, a perspective that is going to be absolutely crucial when it comes to crafting your message to your target market.
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