What's a Client Avatar?
is it of use to me?

What Is a Customer Avatar?

Simply put, a customer or client avatar is the personality of your ideal customer or client. It contains everything you‘ll need to understand them, their wants, needs, pains and fears. It directs you to understand what makes them different from other people, perhaps in the same social or economic circles. Your goal is to contact them directly and speak to them in a way they fully understand and hear. No matter if the communication method, such as written, visual, audio or something else on social media.

Typically, you create a customer or client avatar on a worksheet, basic information is included such as their age, occupation, education level, their favourite magazines, inspirational leaders or gurus, etc. we‘ve created a Customer or Client Avatar Template Worksheet as an editable PDF, so you can type your answers in and save or print them later. Some people like to get photos of people who look similar to their ideal client and attach them to create a fuller picture.

A customer or client avatar will take time to create, from the research, to the filling out of the sheets and the creation of any background story all affect how long it takes. Do not skimp on this effort, as a solid foundation will pay dividends later. There is a Client Avatar Worksheet Guide available to get you going.

Scope

To be clear, the customer or client avatar will impact all aspects of your sales and marketing activities.

It affects how new clients will be initially interested in your offer, through to how you present information in a meeting and how you deliver support and help.

This truly covers all aspect of potential client and client engagement. Get it right and increase your average value per sale.

Why Use a Customer or Client Avatar?

Once you understand something about your ideal client, it is possible to refine that understanding and target with laser like precision the perfect or ideal client. This helps to understand:

• Where the ideal customer will see your sales or marketing message.
• The types of advertisements that interest your ideal client.
• The tone of voice and vocabulary that best resonates with the ideal client.
• The messages and presentations that strike a chord with your ideal customer.
• What colours or images to avoid, or what will put off your ideal client?

Each of these factors directly influence how your ideal client or customer will react to your sales or marketing materials and presentation. Only once you fully understand the customer or client can you fully, with any reliability, understand how and what they want from you.

Ideally, create a customer or client avatar in conjunction with our Value Proposition Canvas, as this gets to the heart of their wants, needs, pains and fears. As soon as you understand these wants, needs, pains and fears, then and only then can you ensure your products and/or services will address them all directly. Perhaps more importantly you‘ll understand how your competitors are missing the mark.

How Many Customer or Client Avatars Do I Need?

Very few businesses have only one client avatar that corresponds to all their clients. Typically, because, each product appeals to multiple industries or groups. For example, my product might apply equally well to an accountant as it does to a lawyer. In this case, it makes sense to create a customer or client avatar for both my ideal accountancy client and my ideal legal client. It might be clear, that they are basically the same, however, experience says you‘ll find similarities, but significant differences, so will treat them accordingly.

Furthermore, it‘s often necessary to create additional client or customer avatars, to make sure that no important aspect is missing, such as male and female versions if that‘s necessary. By way of an example, I might need to treat male and female customers differently, because they read different magazines. Or perhaps, my product doesn‘t appeal to one or the other.

We have a post on filling out our Customer or Client Avatar Template Worksheet.

Do I Need a Folder and Story?

Some people like the detail offered by turning the client avatar into a much more detailed client profile. Others don‘t need this step. Since most businesses skip this process all together and simply try to wing it, doing something, is better than nothing. To that end, fill out and create the customer or client avatar, understand your customer or client, try and see the world from their perspective. After all, that is what we‘re trying to do here. The same goes for the Value Proposition Canvas.

Once you can see the world as they see it, understand their wants and needs as they see them. Feel their pains and fears, as they do, only then will you understand them as they understand themselves. This is what we‘re trying to do.

So, do what you need to do in order to achieve that goal.

Key Points

The following key points are the lessons from this article:

• The fictional character that represents your customer or client avatar helps you understand your ideal client.
• Use as many customer or client avatars as you need.
• Understand the world as your ideal client understands it, from their perspective.
• It takes time to work through, do NOT rush it.
• Knowing where and how-to tailor messaging improves the success rate.
• Iterate until you fully understand your customer or client.