In any sales and marketing campaign, one of the first activities undertaken is to identify what your target customer looks like, where do they hang out, what do they read, what age are they – marketing people call this the ‘customer avatar’ – and they develop a really in-depth understanding of their avatar(s) so that any sales and marketing activity can talk directly to the specific avatar – they often give them actual names.
Why is this relevant to you?
Because the people that you need to be targeting within the organisations that you have identified as your ‘ideal’ are individuals and by understanding them better you’ll be able to connect with them better both physically and within every communication.
Activity:
Look back on your outputs from the session on Your Proposition, specifically the part where you identified the type of organisations that you enjoy working with. Now think about the type of people within those organisations that would have the authority to employ you.
Write a description of this person;
- What age are they?
- What is their gender?
- What would their previous career look like?
- What do you think they would read?
- Where do they hang out?
- What professional memberships/ groups etc would they join?
- What are their pains and frustrations?
- What are their goals and desires (career wise)?
- What are their fears and what are the implications to them of these fears?
- What are their dreams and aspirations?
Draft a couple of paragraphs that describes your client/ employer avatar and give them a name. Let’s use Jane Doe as an example. From this moment on, everything that do online, in every ‘generic’ communication, you must be talking directly to Jane Doe
Why does this matter?
If you are confident that Jane Doe is your ideal client/ employer, then by talking directly to them, about their fears and aspirations (moving away from pain/ towards pleasure) within the very groups etc. where Jane is likely to be, you’ll be putting yourself right in the firing line of clients/ employers just like Jane Doe.
Moreover, you’ll immediately stand out to them because you are talking their language – You’ve achieved your first objective – To grab their attention.