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95% Of Business Owners Overlook This One Critical Area
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Today, we're spilling the beans on a marketing gem you don't want your competitors to find out about... your customer avatar! It's surprising how many businesses overlook this crucial step. Join Olivia Jenkins as she breaks down the concept of the customer avatar from a stuffy marketing term to a relatable friend. She'll explore demographics, pain points, sources of information, objections to the sale, and more. Plus, Olivia will share why understanding your customers on a deep level can supercharge your marketing efforts. Get ready to revolutionise your approach to messaging and marketing!
Ready to level up your business game? Join SUMMER SCHOOL™ with Olivia Jenkins for hands-on coaching and core marketing, strategy, and sales skills. Achieve consistent 10k months and experience a transformation in your business growth. Excited to learn more? Chat with Olivia through her dm @oliviajenkins.co.
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Background
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the CEOs Win Woman podcast. I'm Olivia Jenkins, your host and strategic partner, helping you elevate your brand to cult-like status. Over the past five years, I've helped over 500 visionary CEOs to generate in excess of $70 million in revenue. And now it's time for me to share my tips, tricks and strategies to help you supercharge your growth. I'm here to help you step into your power to develop a bulletproof business and growth mindset to match. Consider me your secret weapon to scale. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of the CEO's Wingwoman.
Importance of Customer Avatars
00:00:35
Speaker
Today, we're diving deep into a topic that is all about nailing your customer avatar. Now, I cannot begin to tell you how many businesses don't actually have a customer avatar that is clearly articulated, documented and regularly refined. in order to be able to shape the messaging that they're putting out for their marketing strategies. So this is a really big marketing secret that you'll never want your competition to find out and we're going to dive deep on it today. So when I say the words customer avatar, it seems so formal, right? Like this concept that's just been plucked out of a marketing textbook and your brain often doesn't actually humanize customer avatar. It just seems so formal.
00:01:16
Speaker
But here's the thing, your customer avatar is basically just a personality profile of your ideal buyer. So the way that I want you to think about this is to think of them, your ideal buyer, your custom avatar, as a friend. What do they like? What do they dislike? What are they afraid of? What are their big dreams in life? Now, we learn all of this information about our friends so that we can find common ground with them, to be able to better understand them, improve the friendships that we have with them, to know not to buy them a skydiving ticket if they're terrified of heights, and to instead buy them a voucher for business books because You know that they dream of starting their own business one day. So think about the relationships that you have with your friends, with your family, and everything that you know about your closest friends and family. You would inevitably know what they like, what their wants are. You would know what they dislike, what's frustrating them in life. You would probably know what they're afraid of, what they're scared of, what some of their fears are. And inevitably, you would probably also know what they're working towards and what
00:02:24
Speaker
their ultimate dream is for themselves in their life, right?
Creating a Customer Avatar: Demographics and Psychographics
00:02:27
Speaker
So when you think about this and you humanize it and you bring it back to a friend context, it's actually a really simple and straightforward process. So this is the thing that I want you to keep front of mind as we go through this episode today and unpack exactly what you need to know about creating your own customer avatar. So when you think about what needs to happen or what you need to know in the context of customer avatar, there's a few things that we need to build out a customer avatar. One of those is to understand the demographics of the customer. So we need to know what their age is, what their gender is, what their location is, We often will want to know a little bit about their education, perhaps their income level, are they married, what their marital status is. So it is the statistical information that we find out first around the customer, who they are, where they live, how old they are, etc. So if you're at an earlier stage of business and you don't have a lot of customer information yet at this point,
00:03:25
Speaker
but you might have social media, I'd encourage you to go and check out your social media insights as a starting point. And again, guys, done is better than perfect. So I would rather that you put together something when you go through this process and come back and refine it later, then you know be focused on perfection and get paralysis and not put anything down at all. So as a starting point, if you don't have heaps of interactions with customers at that point, that's okay. Go and have a look at your social media insights. And if you do have this information and you're a more established business, Either you can grab that from Google Analytics, you can grab some information from socials as a way to cross-compare the data also. And you can also look at surveying your customers as well. And this is something that we do for consulting clients annually, generally, sometimes more frequently if we need to find out extra information. But we are constantly looking at and refining customer avatar for consulting clients. So start with the demographics first, all of this simple information that you can find out.
00:04:20
Speaker
The next piece of information that you may want to find to establish your custom avatar is a little bit of information about their pain points. Now, the way that I like to look at pain points is fourfold. So we look at the immediate frustrations and wants that they have, because every person has in their short term thinking things that they want to solve right now. There are immediate frustrations. And on the flip side of that, they also have immediate wants. So they're things that they want to get a quick win or a quick fix for virtually immediately. And on the flip side of that, when you think about wants and you think about frustrations, both of those have a long term
00:04:58
Speaker
fear or aspiration that they're connected to, right? Because if you're frustrated by something, let's say you're frustrated by the lack of sales that you're having in your business at the moment, that's the frustration. That's the problem that you want to solve immediately. I've got low sales. I need to fix this. I'm frustrated by it. But inevitably, that frustration is actually linked to a deeper seated fear. right So that's linked to a fear that perhaps, wow, if I don't actually get sales off of my business, I may not have a business anymore because I'm not able to support the expenditure that I have in my business and that might mean I have to close the business down. That might mean that I have to fail in front of my friends and family. That might mean that I have to go back to my nine to five job. So you can see how that immediate frustration that felt tip of the iceberg a moment ago
00:05:45
Speaker
actually has a much deeper emotional connection when you think about it from a fear perspective. So I like to have the frustration there, but I also like to link it to a longer term fear that might be realised if that frustration continues. Now moving on to wants. When you think about immediate wants, it may be to increase the sales figure. So to grow sales might be the immediate want. But again, that's linked to a bigger aspiration. Well, it may be that the business owner wants to increase sales because they want a brand. They want to create a brand that has enduring brand legacy that can stand the test of time that can be here for decades to come and can be renowned as an industry leader. So that's an example how you can always connect the immediate
00:06:28
Speaker
pain points, the wants or the frustrations to a longer term example, whether that be an aspiration or a fear. So definitely on a custom avatar, you will see challenges, pain points, wants, aspirations more than likely. And you'll often see sources of information. So where is your customer, your target audience? Where are they spending time? Are they reading books? Are they reading magazines? Are they social media people? Are they going to conferences, trade shows, expos? Where are they looking to in terms of sources of information? So having a look at the main sources that your customer is looking to for inspiration, for information, and being able to articulate what those things are. And again, if you don't know the answers to some of these questions, ask.
00:07:13
Speaker
Ask your customers. I think sometimes we are a little bit afraid of asking questions and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And you can have these conversations very fluidly with customers at the time that you're chatting with them. So whether that's, you know, you're chatting on the phone or you're chatting in Instagram or you're chatting face to face, whatever it may be, you can learn all of this information simply by asking the question. So don't be afraid of having a conversation with someone and asking them questions to help you uncover the answers to the things that you're needing to know. Now, the other part of this is to understand the objections to the sale. So what are some of the objections that your customer may have? So, for example, if we think about this in a business, let's say it's a startup business owner and they're looking to come into our flagship program, Summer School, they may have an objection that they don't have the money or they don't have the time or they don't think they're at a stage yet where they would be in a position to implement everything. So what are some of the objections that they might have? to the sale when they're thinking about purchasing a product or a service from you. What possible objections may they have? And the other part of this is what is their role in the purchase process? So are they a decision maker? Are they not? Where do they sit in terms of the purchase process and what role do they play in that purchase process?
00:08:28
Speaker
Now, you also might want to include some psychographics information. So psychographics is a little bit different to demographics. When you think about demographics, it's very statistical, right? So it's age, gender, location, employment. But when you're thinking about psychographics, It tells you more. It's a bit deeper. It starts to lean into the personality type, the values, the attitudes, the interests, the lifestyle information. So as an example, you might have for demographics that the person is single. They earn $100,000 a year. They're female. They live in Melbourne. They are a medical professional and they're 30 years old. But they're not from a psychographics perspective. It might be that they are an AFL fan. They value time with their family. They're really good at saving money. They like going to island destinations when they go on holidays. They're a cat person. They like rock music. So you can start to see how you get a much better feel for who that person acts actually is when you look at the psychographics information because it tells a different story than the demographics which is very sort of
00:09:35
Speaker
one-dimensional, but then when you put the demographics and the psychographics together, you're able to paint a much clearer picture on who your customer avatar actually is. So they are some of the things that you need to know in the context of what to put in a customer avatar and some ideas on how you can capture some of that information. And one thing that I will leave you with that I think is really important here and it is essentially the whole point of why a customer avatar is so um important and why I said at the start of this episode that this is something that you don't want your competition to find out about and to get really good at.
Enhancing Marketing Messages
00:10:11
Speaker
It's because the more that you understand about your customers, the better and more targeted you can be with your messaging and with your marketing.
00:10:21
Speaker
Sorry, I'll say that again. The better that you know your customer, the more targeted you can be with your messaging and ultimately the better your marketing results. Now, if you are winging it and you don't really know your customer that well, inevitably your messaging is probably not going to be that precise. It's probably not going to be speaking directly to the pain points of your customer. And so you are probably leaving a large amount of opportunity on the table simply because you haven't refined your messaging to a point where it's really deeply resonating with your customers. So I challenge you.
00:10:57
Speaker
to have a look at what you have in your system right now in the context of customer avatar. No judgment. If it's nothing at all, that's so fine. Start somewhere and get something on paper. But I really want to challenge you to think about how well you know your customers, how well you've articulated it, and how well you've documented it. And is this something that you're focusing on when it comes to your marketing to ensure that the messaging that you're putting together for your campaigns for your website, for your social media, for whatever it is in your business is speaking directly to the frustrations, the fears, the wants and the aspirations of your customer avatar. Or are we generalising who they are and we're not being as direct as we could be with our messaging?
00:11:42
Speaker
So again, last message to leave with you. Think of them as a friend. If you were building a relationship with a friend, you would want to know the things that they like, the things that they dislike, the things that they're afraid of, what their big dreams are in life, what their passions are, what their interests are. So I challenge you. to think about your customers as though they're friends and go out there grab as much information as you can possibly find, articulate it, document it, put it into something that you can call a customer avatar or the personality profile, give them a name because I find when you give them a name that just takes it to a whole other level and you can really personalize it and I want you to think about that customer avatar every single time your
00:12:23
Speaker
working on innovation, you're working on messaging, you're working on marketing in your business so you can speak directly to that customer avatar that you've articulated. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode on all things customer avatars and really nailing the messaging and marketing that you have in your business.
Engagement and Call to Action
00:12:39
Speaker
As always, I would really appreciate if you could give us a five-star review on at OliviaJenkins.co and also come and check me out on Instagram. I love hearing from you guys in the DM. So if you want to come and say hello there, you have a question, find me at OliviaJenkins.co and you can also discover all the ways that we can work together by visiting the website, which is www.OliviaJenkins.co. I hope you have the best rest of your day and I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye. Are you ready to transform your business approach? Join Summer School where I, Olivia Jenkins, will lead you to your breakthrough. We focus on what truly matters, strategy, marketing and sales to get you to those consistent 10k months. With live coaching, actionable insights and an engaged community, success is just around the corner. Step into the School of Success and watch your business rise.
00:13:30
Speaker
Thank you so much for tuning in into the show today. If you love today's episode, be sure to let me know by leaving a five-star review at oliviajenkins.co. You can also connect with me via Instagram dm's at oliviajenkins dot.co or learn more on how we can work together at www.oliviajenkins dot.co. Have an amazing week and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode.