How to create your small business Avatar profile, a personification of your ideal client or customer, with Henry Lopez. Henry is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and host of The How of Business podcast.

On this episode of The How of Business podcast Henry focuses on helping you create your target Avatar profile, and he explains why it’s important to clearly define the one Avatar for your small business.

What is an Avatar? It’s more than your target market, which can be fairly broad – it’s your target persona for your small business. Your ideal client or customer. The personification of the one ideal person who represents your best client or customer.

If you are planning to start a new business, then it’s critical that you have a clear and concise profile of your Avatar. If you are already in business, and you don’t have a clear Avatar, then this episode will help you define one. And if you do have an Avatar defined, use this content to validate or perhaps enhance what you already have. It’s something you should revisit periodically, as it may likely change as markets, conditions, and your business change.

Your Small Business Avatar:

• A critical starting point for all plans, including business plans and marketing plans, is to clearly define your ideal client or small business avatar.
• What is an Avatar?
  • In computing, an avatar is a graphical representation of a user or the user’s character or persona.
  • In marketing, an avatar helps us understand who our ideal customers are so can more easily find them. It’s a detailed profile of your ideal customer or client.
• “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it.” You may already have a clear definition of your target market of ideal Avatar, but it’s important to revisit it since it’s at the heart of everything you do in small business marketing. Most marketing decisions depend on knowing your target audience. Be as specific as possible when choosing where you “aim” your marketing campaigns and efforts.
• Your Avatar (also called an Ideal Client or Target Persona) is the person who you are creating your business, your content, your services, and your products for.
• For B2C businesses, your Avatar is an individual consumer. For B2B businesses, your Avatar is the decision maker or buyer at your ideal client company.
• To clearly define your target or ideal client or customer in detail, you need to go beyond basic demographics – define your Avatar as if it’s a person you know.
• Points to consider include:
• What are their demographics: Age Range, Gender, Education, Income, Location, Occupation, Marital Status, Children Age Range – but be as specific as possible.
• What are their pains or problems? (That you can solve!)
• What are their buying habits?
• Where do they shop?
• What do they believe in?
• What are their goals and values?
• Who do they listen to?
• Where are they online?
• What materials do they read?
• What gurus or influencers do they follow?
• Are they the primary decision maker or an influencer?
• What is their typical buying decision making process?
• What questions will they have about you, your business and your product or service?
• Ideally you have one target Avatar, but for some businesses you may have two or more. For example, for The How of Business we have someone who wants to start their first business, and another listener and client who is an existing small business owner. When you are getting started, I recommend trying your best to select the one best target Avatar.
• If you are not sure who your Avatar or ideal client is, it helps to ask where does most of your business come from today? Who are you’re your biggest customers or clients? Which types of clients or customers are most valuable to your business?
• Defining your target avatar is the most important initial step in creating an effecting Marketing Plan. It allows you to focus your marketing, advertisement and sales efforts and investments to get the highest return possible.
• After clearly describing your Avatar, you will develop your Value Proposition or marketing message for your target Avatar. Answering the question: How do you help solve their pains or problems?
  
• Common Mistakes with creating your small business avatar profile:
  • Not having a clear Avatar or Ideal Client Profile.
  • Too broad or high level – only high-level demographics – ranges instead of specifics.
  • Not being able to give the Avatar a name – not specific enough.
  • Having more than one avatar.
  • Not being in alignment or congruency with your Avatar – Your marketing, messaging, tone, décor.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Free Downloads:

• Avatar Profile Worksheet

Related Podcast Episodes:

Episode 382: Small Business Plans

You can find other episodes of The How of Business podcast, the best small business podcast, on our Archives page.

Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos and some other minor inaccuracies.

Your Small Business Avatar:

0:00:21.0 HENRY LOPEZ: What is an avatar?

0:00:22.6 HENRY LOPEZ: It’s more than your target market, which be fairly broad, it’s your target persona for your small business, your ideal client or customer, the personification of the one ideal person who represents your best or potential best client or customer.

0:00:42.0 HENRY LOPEZ: And so on this episode, I’m going to share some thoughts and tools and tips help you define your avatar, whether you’re planning to start your first business or you are already an existing small business owner, if you are planning to start a new business. That is critical that you have a clear and concise profile of your avatar if you’re already in business and you don’t have a clear Avatar, and encourage you to do so now, and if you do have an avatar to find, use this content to validate or perhaps enhance what you already have, I think it’s something you should revisit periodically as it could likely change because markets change, conditions change your business changes, so it’s good to revise it or at least review it on a periodic basis, maybe once a year, if you’re an existing business owner, if you wanna receive more information about that in business, including links to the show notes page for this episode in particular, there’s gonna be a free download that I’m gonna talk about and share with you called an avatar profile worksheet and a sample avatar profile that you can download for free. Just go to the business dot com and go to the show notes page for this episode.

0:01:52.3 HENRY LOPEZ: Recently on episode 382, I shared my experiences, tips and tools on how to create a business plan, and in that conversation night, I highlighted the importance of defining your target Avatar ’cause it all starts there is a critical starting point for all plans, including business plans and marketing plans, it’s to clearly define your ideal client or avatar. So what is an avatar? Anyway.

0:02:20.8 HENRY LOPEZ: Well, that term comes from various sources, but in the computing world most recently, and avatar is a graphical representation of a user or the user’s character or persona, when we talk about it from a Business Marketing Perspective, and avatar is a word we use to define and help us understand our ideal customer so we can more easily find them, and so that we can plan for how to appeal to them, how to find that ideal target person, it’s a detailed profile of your ideal customer or client.

0:02:57.2 HENRY LOPEZ: You’ve probably heard the saying that If you Amit, nothing. You’ll hit it.

0:03:01.7 HENRY LOPEZ: And that’s, I think, appropriate when we think about navigating our business or aiming our marketing efforts without knowing exactly who our target or what our target is, you may already have a clear definition of your target market or your ideal avatar, but again, as I said at the beginning, it’s important to revisit it, since it’s at the heart of everything you do in your small business marketing efforts, most marketing decisions depend at least the right decisions depending on knowing your target audience, your target avatar, so you want to be as specific as possible when choosing where you’re aiming your marketing campaign and efforts, we have limited resources, we have limited budgets as small business owners, so we simply can’t afford even if we wanted to try to try to attract everybody. And that’s why we have to focus. And that’s part of the idea of defining one target avatar for our business, so again, your avatar or it’s also called an ideal client, or a target persona is the person who you are creating your business, your content, your services and your products for a business to consumer businesses for B to C, your avatar is probably an individual consumer for business-to-business, your avatar may be the decision maker or the buyer at your ideal client company, so it’s a little trickier there, but it’s the same idea, same concept, who is that decision maker? And that’s what we’re talking about in B2B.

0:04:39.8 HENRY LOPEZ: When we say, Who is your Target avatar?

0:04:42.8 HENRY LOPEZ: In order to clearly define your target or ideal client or customer in detail, you need to go beyond just basic demographics, that was often would I see people… When I ask them if they have a target customer or a target market, they’re thinking more broadly, they’re thinking ranges, they’re thinking general demographics, but you wanna define your avatar as if it was a person that you know, that ideal person that would walk into your business or call your business and is the ideal fit for the services of their products that you offer, be able to visualize that person as if they are an individual or… That’s the key behind this. Your avatar.

0:05:26.9 HENRY LOPEZ: So here are some points to consider that the definition or the profile for your avatar should include, certainly, it does include the basic demographics like age, gender, education, income level, where they live, what their occupations are, those things are part of defining it, but we wanna know then of course, What are their pains or problems, but specifically what are the pains or problems that you can solve? We don’t need to know all of their pains and problems unless they’re related, we wanna know, and this person, this ideal person, this ideal avatar, we wanna identify that painter problem that of course, we can help them solve through our services or our products or both. You wanna know and identify what are their buying habits, how do they go about buying the service or product that you offer, where do they shop for that, do they shop online? Do they shop in person, how do they go about shopping for that, what do they believe in, what are their values? Their goals, and that might seem like it’s not related, but it certainly is because that then has to do with the alignment of your branding and how you position your product or service, it needs to be an alignment with what that ideal avatar believes in and what their values are, where do they listen? Where do they listen for advice? Where do they listen for news.

0:06:57.8 HENRY LOPEZ: For information? For education. Where do they go to get that information? Do they go online? Or do they read periodicals? Do they still read the newspaper? Where do they go for information, and so that leads to them where we’re gonna be able to find them so that we can put our marketing messages in front of them, so what types of materials do they read, what gurus or influences do they follow? So who are they influenced to buy, are they influenced by celebrities, are they influenced by experts in a particular industry, are they influenced by a local person, maybe a sports hero or some other type of persona, you wanna understand… Those types of things as well.

0:07:43.1 HENRY LOPEZ: And then in this in particular, is of consideration, if you are a B2B, if your target client is a company, are they the primary decision maker or are they an influencer that can also apply to individuals to consumers, is your target market that target avatar… Are they the decision maker? Or do they influence the decision? What are their decision-making processes? How do they decide to buy something? And

0:08:13.3 HENRY LOPEZ: Of course, this is different depending on the price point of your product or service, the complexity of the sales process for your product or service, but you wanna understand very clearly for the service or product that you offer, how do they typically go about making that decision do they make the decision themselves? Do they consult with others, do they take the opinion of their friends and family, do they want to get referrals or references, do they wanna hear testimonials, all of those things are important components of defining our avatar profile.

0:08:53.6 HENRY LOPEZ: And then here’s one that often we don’t think about, they should be part of your avatar profile, what questions will they have about you, your business, and your product or service, so what questions are they gonna have about you by anticipating that, I understanding that then of course, you can begin to prepare to handle those objections or even anticipate those objections in your messaging and in your marketing materials, so what questions, once you’ve defined this ideal avatar, what questions are they gonna have of your business? And then that relates back to the earlier point of, where are they going to typically go to ask those questions.

0:09:39.6 HENRY LOPEZ: Because they may not come to us to ask those questions, they may ask those questions elsewhere of their friends of their family online, they might check reviews again, or testimonials, maybe that’s how they go about answering that question.

0:09:54.5 HENRY LOPEZ: So ideally you have one target Avatar, and this is a big point of discussion for a lot of business owners, when I’ve chatted with them and other people I have talked to, for some businesses, you might have two or more. That is true. I mean, for example, for me, with the how a business podcast, I have two ideal listeners or my avatar to Avatar, one is someone who’s looking to start a business, maybe start their first business, so they’re aspiring to become a business owner, and the other avatar for The how business is an existing small business owner, so I have two target avatars that adds a level of IT complexity, so when you’re getting started in particular, and if you haven’t done any of this work, then I really suggest and recommend that you try selecting just one avatar what one person or persona best represents your most ideal client or customer, your most ideal… Again, the question always comes up, or the push back always come back that, Well, I appeal to many different people, that may well be true, but what I encourage you to take away from this, if nothing else, is that in order to focus our efforts in order to make sure our brand is an alignment in order to get the most from our limited resources, we have to focus, we have to niche down.

0:11:22.2 HENRY LOPEZ: And by selecting one target avatar, then your messaging and everything that you do and the problem that you solve for the customer is all in alignment and you’re gonna have a much better opportunity for success if you focus as a small business. If you’re not sure who your avatar or ideal client is, then it helps to ask, Where does most of your business come from today, if you’re an existing business owner, who are your biggest customers or clients, which types of clients or customers are most valuable to your business?

0:11:58.0 HENRY LOPEZ: If you’re starting a new business, then hopefully you can ask those questions in relation to your competitors or existing providers of that product or service, but think about those questions, who are those ideal people that are your customers today or that are customers of competitors of the type of business that you’re looking to start, and that will help you start to think through and begin to define this profile of your target avatar, finding your target avatar is the most important initial step in creating an effective marketing plan, it allows you to focus your marketing advertising and sales efforts and all of those investments to get the highest return possible, once you’ve clearly described your avatar, I mean really detail them, you’ve given it a name, you can envision that person, then you will develop your value proposition or your marketing messages for your target of a turn.

0:12:54.2 HENRY LOPEZ: So if you can’t give them a name, as silly as that sounds, if you can’t give your avatar a name, that might be one clue that you haven’t done enough work to get as specific as possible with your avatar profile.

0:13:08.4 HENRY LOPEZ: The other common mistake, as I addressed already, is having more than one avatar sure, it is legitimate that on some businesses… That may well be the case. I would encourage you that if you first, if you’re doing this for the first time or you’re planning a new business, you haven’t done any of this work before, start with one ideal avatar, and then later on as you get more sophisticated with this as your marketing efforts become more sophisticated or as you expand into other markets or other product lines, then you can add to that with other avatars maybe that are specific to those separate product lines, and then the ultimate mistake is often because we haven’t taken the time to define our avatar clearly, then we end up being out of alignment, we’re not congruent with what that target avatar wants and expects how they buy, what they’re looking for, what their pains and their problems are, so that the result is then that our marketing messages or marketing efforts are copy our website, or collateral, our sales pitches, it doesn’t align with any one person, we’re trying to appeal to everyone, and we end of appealing in essence to no one.

0:14:32.2 HENRY LOPEZ: So if you are not clear about the tone of a marketing message, for example, or the words that you should be using on your website or the tone of a marketing piece, or the call to action, or how you share… The problem that you’re trying to solve is probably one of the clues to fixing that, or one of the steps of fixing that is to go back to looking if you really have… And are you taking into consideration a clearly defined target avatar for your business? So I mentioned a free download at the beginning of the episode, if you go to the show notes page for this episode at the Halas ness dot com, I have a free download for you, it’s an avatar profile worksheet as well as a sample avatar profile that I’ve created, this is an easy way to get started with defining your avatar, and so let me give you an overview of what you’re gonna find on this worksheet and some tips on how to complete it, the first part of the avatar profile that you’ll find on this worksheet are the demographics, the age, the gender, education, income, where they live, occupation, marital status, the children ages, and any other type of demographic data, and remember, again, be as specific as possible, if you wanna go with an age range, I even have that on the worksheet.

0:15:57.5 HENRY LOPEZ: That’s fine, but don’t… Don’t go 25 to 45, for example. Be very specific.

0:16:03.2 HENRY LOPEZ: I would make it no more than a five-year age range, let’s say, as specific as possible, or

0:16:08.9 HENRY LOPEZ: It’s perfectly okay, in fact, that would encourage you to give that ideal avatar a specific age… A specific gender. A specific occupation. So be as specific as possible. Remember, you’re creating this persona. And you’re going to even give them a name so that you can really visualize them as you’re doing your marketing and your planning for your business.

0:16:36.1 HENRY LOPEZ: The next section is about defining and answering some questions about them that are more specific, like what are their pains or problems, and again, where it’s talking about the pains and problems that you can solve with your business, what are their goals or aspirations and how do their current problems keep them from achieving them.

0:16:56.0 HENRY LOPEZ: I think about that question, this is how… When you begin to answer that question, this then think about how much easier it makes it for you to write your advertising copy, for you to create the messaging for your sales pitches, for you to really connect with that target customer. If you understand what it is it that you’re trying to do, what are their goals, their aspirations, and how is that pain or problem that they have keeping them from achieving that, and then ideally, there’s that pain or a problem is something you have a solution for the next box and the worksheet is, Where do they shop or source for similar products or services? Again, they might shop, they might source it, if they’re a business, where do they usually go for that type of product or service or something similar, what are their buying habits? What is their buying process? Who do they consult with before they make a decision, who influences them? The next box is what are their buying habits, what is their buying process, who do they consult with before purchasing your product or service, or a similar product or service, are they influenced by…

0:18:07.7 HENRY LOPEZ: So you’ll identify those things there and you’ll complete this work just by using bullet points. You’re not writing an essay here. You don’t have to over-complicate this. An approach that I like is to do a first pass through it and then add more layers, work together as a group, if you have a group or a partner, or maybe you have some marketing person who’s helping you with this, so don’t turn it into something that you feel like you have to get it perfect their first time, just take a first pass at it and then work on it. Over time, perhaps until you get it to the point where you feel you have a good definition of your avatar profile.

0:18:46.8 HENRY LOPEZ: There’s more in this worksheet, where are they online? As we’ve talked about before, What do they read, are they a decision maker and an influencer, what are those questions that they’re going to ask about you, so once you complete that worksheet with just those questions that I walked you through, you’re gonna have a really good start to a strong, detailed avatar profile, and then you can begin to craft the right messaging, the right marketing plan, make the right decisions about how to attract more of those same ideal clients or customers. So my key takeaway for you for all of this is that it all starts with your target avatar or ideal client or customer, every decision should then be an alignment with attracting and solving that target avatars problems or pain for which of course you have a solution and so that’s the focus. You can’t be everything to everybody. You must focus on being the best option for an ideal target market or avatar.

0:19:57.1 HENRY LOPEZ: We don’t have unlimited budgets or resources, so we have to be extremely focused.

0:20:02.5 HENRY LOPEZ: So I encourage you to download the avatar profile worksheet and the sample avatar profile. Just go to the show notes, Pat, this episode at the holiness dot com, and you’ll find the free download on that page. This is Henry Lopes, and thanks for joining me on this episode of The How of Business podcast.