Have you ever heard this saying: “You can have the best offer but if you are pitching to the wrong audience you will not make any sales”?

Knowing who your customers are is essential for any marketing campaign.

To know them means to know who they are as a person, what they like and respond to, what makes them angry, what excites them. Once you know them you will know exactly how to advertise to them, which will result in making more sales.

It sounds pretty easy, so why are many businesses still struggling?

Most business owners fail to plan their marketing and as a result they are too many things to too many people.

This means that lack of clarity and identifying who your targeted audience will result in shooting your message to potentially wrong audience or sending mixed messages. Imagine for a second, that you are selling designer women’s fashion with a high end price tag and you are advertising your products in a teen fashion magazine. You will not make many sales. Teens may grow to like your brand but are probably not in a position to buy from you yet. If you would advertise exactly the same products in a magazine that targets women with high end earnings, your sales would be skyrocketing.

How do you determine your target audience?

This is as easy as asking yourself few questions but it’s probably one of the most important tasks you need to complete as a business owner before you start any marketing campaign. In fact, it is so important that you should do that before you even start your business.

If you haven’t done so, you need to do it as soon as you stop riding this article. I cannot stress enough how important this is. Without in-depth knowledge about your target audience, you can forget about successful marketing campaign.

So, where do you start?

I’m confident that in general you know who your products or services are for. To be really effective in advertising you need to get few steps further and really get to know these people. You need to consider:

• The way they think, talk, their beliefs, opinions, and how they form their opinions
• What are their hobbies or interest
• How they spend their leisure time
• What they wear
• Where they hang out
• What kind of publications they read and which stations they watch or listen
• etc

All these details are important and will make your marketing campaign successful. The better you know your targeted audience the better you can communicate with them. Once you have a good understanding of them then you will know exactly how to appeal to them.  Makes sense?

Then once you know them you have to become them. This means that when you are creating your marketing campaigns, you need to put yourself in a position of your audience and consider your add from their perspective. You need to step in their shoes.

The easiest way to achieve this is to create you perfect customer Avatar. If this brings blue tall creatures to your mind, you are half way there. Because imagination is important part of creating your customer Avatars, you need to get ‘under their skin’

Your perfect customer Avatar is a list of traits that your ideal client portrays. It’s their inner desires, hidden fears and all the things that keeps them awake at night.

Your avatar represents a whole group of people that you identified as target audience. When you communicate with your target audience, you always talk to your Avatar. This means you always communicate in first person, like you are talking only to your Avatar. If you studied your targeted audience well, then each person will identify themselves in your Avatar.

Everything you communicate to your prospect market is designed around your Avatar and speaks directly to your Avatar, which makes it the most valuable marketing tool for your business.

Creating your Avatar might feel a bit strange at the start but it’s actually heaps of fun. They are like your marketing campaign buddies that you can turn to every time you are creating ads. Visualize yourself looking at your ads from your customer avatar perspective and take into account all relevant factors.

So now that you know the secret to successful marketing, all you need to do is get thinking and spend couple of hours considering your Avatar.

I’ve created a report for you that will take you through the process and the most common questions you need to ask yourself to create your ideal customer avatar. You can download it HERE.

 

Now that you know your ideally customer, keep the Avatar in mind anytime you are communicating with your target audience, whether it be via ads, blog post, videos, social media…and you will notice it’s sometimes easier to talk to one person then a big group.

 

I would like to know what you think about Avatars and how will you use this secret powerful marketing weapon.