Buyer Persona, Customer Avatar, Idel Customer profiles (ICP), or Marketing Persona.

If you have been trying to give your product a substantial footing in any competitive industry, you must have come across one of the terms above.

A buyer persona, customer avatar, ICP, or marketing persona all mean the same thing and serve the same purpose.

In this piece, we would stick with customer avatar—I love its mysterious nature.😉

Customer avatars are used in profiling buyers.

Let’s say you are trying to sell a health product. You don’t need a doctor to tell you that not everyone in the global market would be interested in your product.

To navigate individuals or a portion of the market interested in your product, you have to create a customer avatar that profiles such individuals.

Taking out time to build or design a customer avatar enables you understand goals, needs and expectations that can influence marketing/buying decisions.

Before we dive into the processes and steps involved in creating an effective customer avatar, let’s take a look at how Amplify leveraged customer avatars for laser-focused, conversion-centric web development.

The Motion Control and Motors Association (MCMA), an Amplify client since 2010, recently launched an initiative to drive more membership across all member types. Part of this initiative was a bottom-funnel revamp of their “Become A Member” website section where visitors converted into marketing qualified leads (MQL).

MCMA was already an authoritative resource in the industry, but they wanted to drive more membership to better serve the motion control and motors industry.

Challenge

Business needs and priorities shift over time – value propositions need to change in-step. What captivated MCMA audience a few years ago was not necessarily captivating them today. Working together, Amplify needed to find out not only what could motivate web visitors to become MQLs, but needed to do this for six distinct member types for an entirely new section of the website.

Amplify had to collaborate and find one concept that connected all their motivations for being a member, then apply this concept in a member-specific context that touched on the topics that would most entice them into becoming a member.

Solutions

At the start of the relationship, we had sat down with our client to develop multiple customer avatars to inform the larger integrated marketing strategy. Over the years, as the industry changed and new technology emerged, these customer avatars were readdressed, updated and improved. It was these constantly evolving customer avatars that were consulted and expanded in the development of a new website section to drive new members.

Historical data was analyzed and combined with existing customer avatar knowledge to determine where the website section was underperforming, how it could more effectively motivate the different customer avatars to convert, and what would be initially prioritized for optimization. The scope of the project was laid out based on this deeper understanding of the problems with conversion rates.

Copy was created, alongside aesthetic and usability improvements, for pages dedicated to each customer avatar, including a main landing page for the section. All content and design were directly informed by the thorough knowledge of evolving customer avatars to create a highly relevant, engaging and motivating experience.

Results

MCMA received a completely redeveloped website section based on real data and customer avatars that lead directly to more lead generation.

This website section now more accurately reflects the value they provide to members, the service they provide to the industry and how prospective members benefit from joining. Deep insight from customer avatars developed over several years, effectively drove the direction of the web development for a laser-focused, conversion-centric bottom-funnel website section.

Amplify continues to work with MCMA on an ongoing integrated marketing initiative, of which the membership push was just one piece, widening sales funnels and updating customer avatars as the market changes.

Reference: Amplify

Building A Successful Customer Avatar for Your Business

Amplify did a great job at MCMA. They optimized the already existing customer avatars by paying attention to the industry/company historical data and what customers were saying.

To avoid the bore’s contained in MCMA case study, let’s break it down to actionable insights. What are the takeaways from Amplify customer avatar marketing strategy?

Exceptional Listening Skills

Do you know why a lot of products remain under the radar even when offering premium services? The marketers spend time listening to the CEO more than they do with consumers.

Going back to the ‘health product’ reference—no doubt you created the product—you know about every feature and benefit of the product, you can easily explain how and why you created the product but surprisingly, the reason consumers buy the product can be different from why you created it.

We live in a fast-paced world. Nobody waits around anymore. The moment a customer visits your site and does not see the ’keywords’ he/she is looking for at the top of your homepage, ‘forget about making sales.’

Listening to your customers helps you understand what they value in your product or similar products.

Listening to others viewpoint reveals the one thing required to complete your goals.

D. Ridgley

Amplify were able to capture MCMA buyer’s expectation because they didn’t work with guesses or assumptions. Listening to MCMA customers, they were able to find the sweet spot between MCMA’s solution and buyers need.

Research

If you have an existing client base like MCMA, you can work with it to profile customers and build a customer avatar you can relate with. If you don’t have, then you would have to build one.

Historical data and analysis of existing customer avatars helped Amplify create a successful campaign for MCMA.

How can you conduct such research for your business?

Interview, interviews and more interviews. Like we said earlier, only consumers know why the market requires your product.

Optimize your existing customer base. Get in touch with customers who made a recent purchase. Find out if they can spare a few minutes. Prepare a brief with questions that would enable you to gain insight on their decision process or contact a research analyst or journalist—if you know any that would be willing to help.

Look for hints and answers as to why they chose a particular product, factors that influenced their research and purchase decisions, other products they considered etc. Create a research analysis to gain insight into the buying process.

Amplify understood the selling process between MCMA products and customers expectations. This gave their marketers room to influence consumers buying decision and call the shot without having to rely on dubious marketing strategies.

Note that this is an efficient method for high-value consideration services. Suitable for marketing services such as schools, professional services, B2B services etc.

Interview Process 

Amplify needed to find out not only what could motivate web visitors to become MQLs but also needed to do this for six distinct member types for a new section of MCMA’s website.

Your business and customer avatar requirement might be different from the one Amplify had to work with. Though, you would still need to place your buyers into different groups to make your customer avatar effective.

The different types of buyers you would encounter when trying to build an efficient database include,

• Possible buyers
• Your customers
• Individuals who considered you but chose a competitor
• People who considered you but decided to keep things as they were to maintain the status quo,
• Individuals who never considered you
• Active sales prospects.

You now know the buyers and the buying stage. With your customer data, you can group customers into different avatars and create an interview strategy for each of them. You don’t have to interview 100 customers; five in every category would do the job.

After co-ordinating your findings, you would be able to create copies and websites adjustment that guides the buyer through the buying process.

Why go through all this process?

Avatar research is a complicated process. A lot of marketers shy away from it {Prefer working with assumptions and guesses from demographics}. It’s highly recommended you don’t follow such paths.

It’s impossible to gain insights or understanding of your buyer’s needs and assumptions without taking out time to interact with them.

Building an efficient customer avatar for your product or service is a necessary venture. Apple Inc is among the few companies that have experienced the catastrophic consequences lack of insights from customer avatar can have on a product.

Check out this case study on why iPhone 3G did not succeed in the Japanese market {note that Apple had already built an influential reputation in the Japanese market the previous year}.