Attract Your Perfect Clients With a Specific and detailed Client Avatar.
As you’ve found this page, you probably have some idea of what client avatars are, but let’s dig a little deeper and look at how to use them in the right way to access your ideal clients.
What is a client avatar?
Simply put, it’s a fictional persona of your ideal client. Note that this is not the same as your target market. If you’ve been running a business for any length of time, then you no doubt have a very good idea of who your target market is. But a client avatar takes this a step further. Rather than trying to appeal to an audience, you’re trying to appeal to a specific person.
Having a client avatar will allow you to identify not just whom you’re talking with, but to actually understand them on a deeper level. When you can do this, you’ll be able to address them directly in all of your content and marketing materials.
Whether you’re creating copy for your website, your email newsletter, paid advertisements or even YouTube videos, you can target it specifically to your client avatar as though you had them opposite the desk in front of you. By imagining you’re having a conversation with your ideal client, you’ll naturally be writing (or creating) specifically for them.
Doing this will enable you to create a real connection rather than just appealing to a group of people (your target market). This is the big difference between your avatar and your market. Of course, you can (and probably should) have more than one client avatar. You probably serve more than one type of person in your business, especially if you offer different services and/or products.
If you have staff, get them involved. Brainstorm! Everyone has different ideas and I have no doubt that they will think of things that didn’t even occur to you.
Client Avatar Stages
There’s no right or wrong way of making up your client avatar, but there are some best practices and ways to make sure you cover all that you need to. I like to split it into three stages:
Details and Demographics
This section is all about basic data and is the section that’s most closely linked with your target market as it contains very similar details. There is one huge difference however. The best way to demonstrate this is to show you an example of an Avatar used here at WDM.
This is Paul Sutton
Paul is 45 years old. He’s male, lives in Bury St Edmunds (in Suffolk), and he’s a health club owner. He’s also married with two children.
You may wonder how having children could possibly be relevant and perhaps it’s not, but by giving details like this, it helps to give your avatar character and make them a little more real. This way you can better target them when creating content for you business. Paul earns £70k a year. He went to college, but not university.
So far, most of this sounds fairly standard and exactly the type of facts you’d be looking at when determining your target market. But here’s where that big difference comes in that I mentioned earlier.
Backstory...
When I’m writing content or creating a video I want to see Paul, My Avatar, as a real person, not just a bunch of statistics. If I want to connect with Paul at this level, then I need to know more about him, not just facts and figures. That’s why I’ve created him a backstory. It doesn’t contain his entire life history but it does tell me a little about him and what makes him who he is.
Paul has an established health club with a great reputation. He’s looking to take it to the next level and bring in an operations manager so he can focus on the bigger picture and take more time out without his business being affected. Although Paul has to use computers for his work, he’s not tech-savvy and doesn’t like dealing with technical issues. He’s open to new ideas when it comes to marketing and managing his online growth. His website’s okay, but it’s a little dated and not really much more than an online brochure.
You’ll see how these details further come into play very soon.
Goals and Motivation
What are Paul’s goals and his values? What motivates him?
As we know, Paul would really like to hire an operations manager. This will allow him to focus on the bigger picture, but also to take a little time out of the business. To facilitate this role, Paul knows that he needs to increase membership sign-ups by 30 percent (preferable in the next 12 months).
Why? What’s Pauls motivation?
Well, he may be a businessman but for him (and most people) it’s not just success in business that we strive for. We’d like to also improve other areas of our lives.
I mentioned taking time out of the business. Paul would like to spend more time with his family and he’d like to get back into some of his old hobbies. He’s spent most of the last few years running his business, and now he’d like to devote a bit more time to leisure activities. He also feels that he never travelled as much as he’d have liked so he’s keen to make up for lost time.
Values
What are Pauls values? Well, he worked long and hard to build his business. It’s important to him that it stands the test of time and maintains a great reputation.
So he values outstanding customer service.
He wants his Health club to be welcoming, comfortable and unintimidating. Remember, this is a health club, not a muscle gym. He wants people to feel warm and invited. He also, of course, genuinely wants to help his members achieve their health, fitness, and relaxation goals.
He values his staff highly and would like to help them with professional development where he can. He believes in promoting within where possible.
Challenges and Obstacles
What challenges and obstacles does Paul face?
What’s stopping him from achieving his goals?
Well, he has a website, but it isn’t converting well. it’s really just an online brochure. It does generate phone calls but there’s no real system in place for dealing with these. He’s not really doing anything with his website or measuring conversions. He doesn’t have any analytics to know what’s working and what isn’t. You’ll probably see it written or hear me say it many times but if we don’t measure, we can’t improve.
Paul has low client retention after year 1 ends. This isn’t because of poor service or anything negative. Its simply the standard in his industry. People will often join a gym or health club and not renew the following year because well, let’s face it, most of us have done this at some point (I know I have). But, if there were something he could do to improve retention, that would make a big difference to his business. It’s usually far easier to retain a client than gain a new one.
Paul is also concerned about losing business to larger competitors with better marketing strategies and perhaps bigger budgets, such as Bannatyne’s, which is of course a well-known brand and also local to him. He needs to find a way to make his club stand out against this competition.
Paul is very busy. His role as owner is demanding and he doesn’t have enough time to complete his tasks (or he certainly feels that way). He’s not sure how to scale the business from where it is now and he feels a bit trapped in a cycle because he can’t see how to free up more time so he can move things forward (focus on the bigger picture).
I’ve learned a lot about Paul but how will this help me in my business?
So What?
I’ve learned a lot about Paul but how will this help me in my business.
I’ve identified that Paul is my ideal client. But how does this information help me?
Knowing what Paul would like to achieve, what motivates him, and why he does what he does allows me to tailor the services I offer specifically to meet those needs.
I can see now that Paul will benefit from a website redesign that engages visitors and encourages them to take action. This might be to book an appointment, become a member, or order a spa-package.
I know that automation will help reduce his admin time, his costs and increase sign-ups. It needs to be easy to use and non-techie because he’s obviously not interested in that stuff. He doesn’t do technical. He has enough on his plate and doesn’t want to deal with hosting, website maintenance, back-ups, and security. With this knowledge, I know create a website care-plan that will be perfect for Paul.
I can install analytics on his website and display them in a way that’s simple but allows him to see analyse website visitor behaviour and also measure conversions. His care plan can include making improvements based on the data from his analytics.
Paul will probably be interested in some kind of lead generation system too, that to entices and draws in new members. This would include landing pages and full email automation that ensures everyone gets the right email at the right time with no manual work required by him or his team. Once it’s in place, it will run itself 24/7. As long as his subscribers are being sent the right e-mails at the right time, they can then be given an offer that’s specific to them. They can also join or pay online depending on what the service is. This is far more likely to bring in new business than the simple phone number he currently has.
Paul would also benefit from ongoing newsletter that offers advice, help and perhaps incentives to stay a member after their year 1 contract ends. As long as the emails are well-timed, especially coming up to that 10-12 month period, he’s far more likely to be able to retain more clients after that first year.
To further increase traffic to his website (or business in general), a local marketing campaign would be extremely beneficial.
I can offer him an audit/review that includes Google Maps, and his ‘Google my business‘ page. Perhaps offer some optimisation to help him rank higher for relevant terms to his health club.
The same applies with SEO. Paul would really benefit from a local SEO campaign to make sure that he is showing in Google when (the right) people are searching for those kinds of services. I could also look at targeted pay-per-click campaigns specifically to his area.
It might be a good idea to suggest that Paul creates a refer-a-friend incentive for any of his members so they can bring in people and perhaps get either a discount, a free month’s membership, a free massage or something similar if a friend becomes a member.
Because I have a detailed Ideal client Avatar, I now have an array of specific services that I can offer Paul. And, because they’re tailored to his needs, I know that not only is he likely to agree to them, but also (and perhaps more importantly), they’re actually going to help him achieve his goals.
Paul will be an extremely happy and long-term client. In turn, I’ll feel great for being able to help him achieve what he’s set out to do.
So now I’ve built up a specific image of my ideal client. I can speak directly to them in all my marketing efforts.
This includes my website, my services, my email newsletter segmentation (an email autoresponder that segments subscribers based on their actions and ensure they only receive emails that they are interested in), and my video content.
When your content is designed for your ideal client, you are far more likely to attract…
Wait for it….
