You don’t have to spend too much time in your business to realize that you need to define who your ideal customer is.  In online business, the prominent term for this is referred to as an avatar, and it refers to an all-encompassing term that includes several factors we need to consider when we are focusing on targeting and speaking directly to our ideal customer.  Even though we might also reach beyond our ideal customer, and we may even eventually have multiple avatars for different segments of our business, it is crucial that we begin with one central avatar for our business and heavily focus our advertising campaigns on reaching that ideal customer with all our might.

There are a number of questions you will want to get super specific about when creating your avatar, but for the sake of simplicity and ease, I want to focus on the first two questions I personally feel are the most important when determining and creating your avatar.  1.  Who are we?  and 2.  For Whom?

Who Are We?

As in, who is my business?  What are we about?  What do we look like?  Feel like?  Smell like?  Talk like?  What is our motto?  What are we known for?  What do we want to be known for?  This may seem obvious, but it also may not be something that comes easy for us initially.  When I think of who I am as a business, I think a lot about the first and lasting impression I want people to have when they see my brand.  I also think about things like the kind of vibe I want to give off, the style of my website and logo and the unspoken and spoken authority my business has in its industry.  This causes me to need to do a little research, and find out what I like to look at online and what the brands inspire and leave a lasting impression on me.  And I’ve realized more and more that I need to do this often to stay current and see what others are doing in terms of demonstrating characteristics that I want my company to have.  It may seem silly, but even font and graphic choices go a long way in terms of impression and demonstrating a specific idea in our minds. Sometimes it’s obvious and other times it’s very subtle.  For instance, some fonts appear more authoritative, elite and chic while others may be crafty, cutesy or whimsical.  Also, is the font too small or too busy to read easily?  I don’t want to spend too long on this topic, but it begs a little bit of our care and attention, and I know personally what I think about as soon as I see the fonts on a website and read the copy in an ad.  And so should you!  To help me with this process, I’ve installed an app on my browser called “Font Ninja”.  If I’m on a website and just really like the look of it and feel, I can turn on Font Ninja and it allows me to see which font they used.  I love it!!  I’m nerdy like that. 😉  Graphics are very similar.  If I see an out-of-date graphic on a website, it causes me to question if the business is really serious and forward thinking or behind the times.

So, think about what you like to see.  What leaves an impression on you that you want your customers to have when they see your brand?  Get as specific as possible.  Nothing you write down is stupid or irrelevant if it is truly what you want your impression to be.

For Whom?

This one may take you a little more time to figure out.  I’ve found that my ideal client and who my clients actually tend to be are sometimes different people.  Sometimes, we may start out with a broad idea about who are clients are (everyone), and then realize over time, with savvy advertising strategies, that we are able to niche down into something more specific (women in their 30s and 40s who live in rural towns).  Play around with it.  Create ads on Facebook or Instagram and start broad and narrow down after you see your statistics and who is responding.  But the bigger and more helpful questions might be, “Who do I want my customer to be?” and “Who is like me?” or “Who can I help the most?”  This is a great place to start, and testing out your ads and noticing who responds to your posts are great ways of identifying who you are speaking to.  Businesses who take the time to carefully define their ideal client are more likely to become crystal clear with how they advertise and what they achieve with their advertising efforts.

More and more lately, I’ve been hearing and reading about business owners who identify their specific clients and even give them names.  I heard a podcast the other day where a business owner was describing this woman in her mid-thirties who lived on a farm in California and raised goats.  This woman made goat milk soap and sold it at her local farmers’ market.  Anthropologie associates just happened to be walking through that farmers’ market one Saturday afternoon and they were interested in carrying her soap in their stores.  She has to find out how to mass produce the soap and package it in a way that would sell to Anthropologie customers.  This was her ideal client. That’s pretty specific right?  That’s how specific we need to be.  We need to tell our client’s story from start to finish, so we can begin to answer their questions and address their pain points from the gate.

When we ask these questions, we really get the ball rolling with our business and find out what we’re actually about.  It helps us begin the process of fine tuning our business and understanding who we want to be as a business brand and who we are marketing to.  And, truth be told, this is my favorite part of the whole process!

So, get to work, my friend!  To make it easier for you, I’ve created a printable sheet you can download and fill out for your own business.  And ideally, I’d love for you to print out this sheet and put it and the ones that will follow about your avatar at the very beginning of your business notebook.  It really helps to think these things through!  So enjoy!  And if you get the chance, share with me what you found out by doing this simple exercise.  If you’ve done it before, it’s OK.  You can always do it again.

As always, please feel free to share this with someone else who may need it.  And tell me how you liked it! 🙂

Grab your worksheet here!

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