Imagine for a moment that you knew all about your ideal customer. You knew what they did for a living, what kind of entertainment they preferred, and what food they ate. You knew what periodicals they read and how they got their daily news.
You knew this person was female, in her early 60’s, and owned a medium-sized dog. Because of the size of her dog, she drove a small SUV. She was widowed, and had two children and 3 grandchildren. Her name is Lois.
Since you knew so much about her, what she liked and didn’t like, and how she thought about certain things, you could talk to her as an individual. You could explain your product or service from her own point of view. This is the power of a target market avatar.
Essentially, a target market avatar is a written description of your ideal customer, compiled from all the points of similarity that you discovered while profiling the individuals in your target market. It distills all those similarities down into the profile of an idealized person – someone to whom you can actually give a name. Some companies go so far as to create pictures of their avatars.
Depending on how many products or services you have, or the differences between their variations, you might create more than one avatar.
The purpose of an avatar is to help you address the members of your target market as individuals, to personalize your sales messages. You want to enter the conversations already going on in their heads. By focusing on who you want to reach, you’re ignoring the people you can be reasonably sure aren’t going to listen to your message. And that’s all right! In this case, discrimination is a good word. You want to pick and choose the people to whom you present your most compelling messages.
