Do you really need to work out your customer avatar?
YES DARLING YOU DO!
I know I know… all the marketing courses and information you’ve been looking at say you need to be super clear on your customer avatar, but it seems so silly!
- But won’t creating an avatar and marketing only to that person cut a bunch of potential customers out of your potential market?
- And how on earth does someone’s marital status determine whether they will buy my handmade scarves?
In this post, I’m harping on about about how to make a customer avatar to help you find your target audience and make your marketing easier. At the end, you’ll be able to download our avatar template made for handmade businesses so you can get started working out who you’re marketing to, and what they need from you.
So, let’s get started shall we?
What is a customer avatar and why do I need one for my handmade business?
You need to be speaking the same language as your customer to be able to connect with them right? If you’re speaking English, and they are speaking French, you’re going to have a very hard time connecting over the nuance of your product…. sure they might buy it because they needed pink earrings and you had the perfect pair but finding more people like that might be difficult.
I recently wrote an article about copywriting for handmade businesses, and the first thing I mentioned was writing with your ideal customer in mind. The language, tone, and imagery you use in your marketing copy needs to hit all the pain points and desires of your target customer to be successful.
If you’re not writing with your ideal client in mind, then you’re writing for a client who is not ideal which is less likely to result in a sale. By writing with your ideal customer in mind, you’re making your job much easier, as you are speaking their language and telling them what they want to hear.
Can I have more than one customer avatar?
Yes! In fact, many businesses have several avatars and market to them all seperately!
Having several avatars really helps you niche down and talk directly to your target audience, especially if you have several different product ranges that would appeal to different people.
For example, a candle maker might have a range of candy flavoured candles in pastel jars, and a seperate collection in masculine containers… the customers interested in these two product ranges will vary widely!
For example, at my shop in.cube8r, we have multiple sets of customers including people like yourself who we help through mentorship and business skills (and of course helping you sell your stuff) as well as our in-store customers who love buying handmade products!
You can have as many avatars as you like, but the more you have the harder you’ll need to work when doing your marketing… I would recommend having no more than three, unless you have multiple businesses.
However, more is not neccesarily better, so let’s just start with one, and if adding another happens organically then so be it!
What information needs to go into my customer avatar?
Different types of businesses have different customer avatars. For example, HubSpot has a great tool for creating your avatar, but it is more geared towards corporates.
There are buyer persona’s built on demographics such as age, location, gender, marital status etc and others built on psycographics such as buying behaviours, dreams and values, favourite brands etc. Some focus more on one than the other, but both are helpful when trying to work out your target customer.
I created a handy template for our cubers to use in one of our monthly focusses, and since you’re here I am more than happy to share it with you too! Just head over here to have it delivered straight to your inbox.
Download the customer avatar template for handmade businesses here
Creating a visual representation of your customer avatar
Once you’ve got your avatar sorted, use Pinterest to discover who they really are!
Pinterest is a great tool for helping you put together a visual representation of your customer avatar!
Another fun thing to do once you’ve created your profile, is to go onto pinterest and create a board or folder to save images which your avatar would like to. Then, once a week or every so often, use pinterest / google as that customer and saving images along the way.
While doing this, you’ll be thinking “what would Sally be looking for for her mothers 60th birthday party” or “Sally needs new shoes, where would she shop and what would go on her wish list”. This seems a bit silly, but once you go back and look at that board/folder of images you will notice a colour pallette, and themes you had not thought of emerging, and you can then tailor your marketing to fit that board!
Once I’ve created my customer avatar, what do I do with it?
Now that you’ve done the hard work, your marketing has gotten easier! Remember, the purpose of the customer avatars is to help you create content for your ideal customer.
Once you have your avatars sorted, you can stick it up above your desk or make it your desktop background, or put it in your diary… and then, when you’re writing your newsletter or social media post, you’ll be able to write it like a letter straight to the avatar, making you more likely to connect with them on a deeper level.
You’ll also find choosing hashtags, working out what platform to market on (not all demographics are on Instagram), what events to attend or what targetting to do in your paid advertising. Being crystal clear on your ideal customer will not only help you find your audience, but in the long run it is going to save you MONEY! As you’ll only be targetting those who are likely to buy your things!
It may seem like you’re alienating other audiences by marketing in this way, but you need to remember there’s no point screaming into the void. Find your people and connect with them so that you can build the know>like>trust funnel and eventually turn them into customers.
Big brands (not neccesarily handmade/arts brands) also use avatars to choose what products to manufacture and sell, and you may like to consider when making if your product is suitable for your audience. If your target customer is not a pink and pastel kinda girl, that product is probobally not going to sell very well, so maybe best to keep that piece to yourself 🙂
Can you show me how to make a customer avatar?
Yup! I’ve made my very own avatar template for handmade businesses below so you can get started on creating your customer avatar!
If you don’t have a printer, don’t stress…. it comes as a handy Canva template so you can edit in in Canva! Or just make your own using mind as a guide… I know you’re crafty like that! Grab your preferred medium and copy the info down, and add all the colours, washi tape and glitter you need to make your marketing fun!
If you need a little more help, book a 1:1 mentoring session with me! You don’t have to do everything all on your own! We can go through the template together and work out who exactly your target customer is and how to craft your marketing to connect directly with them!