your ideal customer avatar (ICA)
Before you can sell anything its crucial to know WHO you’re selling to.
This is where the idea of your Target Audience, or your Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA), comes in. Your ICA is the single most important person in your business, well, besides you!
When you start trying to sell anything online, if you’re just blindly throwing your products out into the online social media world and seeing who will bite, you are wasting time and energy that could be better spent on throwing your ideas out to the right people who you know will catch them.
You should not try to sell to everyone. There are so many humans on this planet, and when you try to sell to ALL of them, you’re really selling to no one.
This is a hard concept for some people to understand because they don’t want to make a mistake and miss a potential sell. They might think its better to attract everyone. But its proven that when you try to attract everyone, you attract no one.
Your efforts will have way more return when you sell to one person. Sell to that person over and over again!
This person is your Ideal Customer Avatar and they belong to your Target Audience. We break down the Target Audience into one single Avatar because its easier to think of one person than it is to think of an entire audience of people.
When we think of only one person, you can really narrow down specific details about them to help you know them better, and then better communicate with them.
So how do you determine your Ideal Customer Avatar?
You know I love sharing my favorite Marketing Resources with you, and for this question I want to share one of my favorite Websites for Content Marketing advice called CopyBlogger. (If you’re wondering what Content Marketing is — content marketing is when you post content about your product or service online via various medias like social media networks, blogs, video blogs (vlogs), or podcasts.)
In an article on CopyBlogger titled How to Attract Your Ideal Customer with Perfectly Positioned Content, they list questions such as the ones below to determine your WHO.
Take a look and think about your Ideal Customer Avatar as you read these questions:
What does your character look like?
What does your ICA think?
What does your ICA do?
What does your ICA feel?
What does your ICA see?
What keeps your ICA up at night?
What are your ICA’s hopes and dreams?
Describe your ICA in DETAIL.
After looking at these questions you can see just how personal you need to get with your ICA. You may have an idea in your head about WHO you want to sell to, but you need to know that person in DETAIL. Even intimately. Write the answers to these questions down, and describe your ICA on paper, then have this paper handy every time you create any content marketing pieces.
Another question you need to consider when determining your ICA is your WHY. I talk about this in my blog post Knowing Your Why, click here if you haven’t read it.
Your WHY you’re selling WHAT you’re selling is important in determining your ICA, because your ICA will understand and share the same values as you have listed as your WHY.
Let me give you an example:
If you’re WHY for selling makeup is to help Mom’s create a quick and easy five-minute face so they feel confident and ready to conquer their day – then your WHY is one of the values you share with your ICA. Your ICA is the Mom who wants a five minute easy face because she wants to feel confident and conquer her day. You SHARE the same values.
So also ask yourself this question when determining your ICA:
What is your WHY of WHAT you are selling?
How does your ICA share your WHY?
One trap I want you to avoid, is saying that YOU are your ICA. Yes, you’re probably going to share many attributes similar to your ICA, but when you fall into the trap of thinking you are your ICA, you can easily create content that will be over your ICA’s head, and you can make the mistake of assuming your ICA already knows the value of your products, as you do.
Differentiate yourself from your ICA.
In Amy Poterfield’s podcast Online Marketing Made Easy: episode #235: How To Identify Your Ideal Customer Avatar, she states an easy way to do this is to think of the client you LOVE to work with most. Is there one client that has already bought from you that you loved to work with so much, that you wish ALL of your clients were as great as them? You were able to help them by serving their needs, and they loved buying your products. You solved a need they had and it felt great.
Picture this client when describing your ICA.
Another tactic Amy recommends is actually questioning those clients that you love so much. Ask THEM questions like this:
What do you struggle with?
What do you need help with?
How would my products help you?
Amy explains how to do this in more detail in her podcast episode #235: How To Identify Your Ideal Customer Avatar. Listen and let me know what you think!
In the same podcast, Amy also describes communicating effectively to your Ideal Customer Avatar when that person thinks thoughts like, “Did you read my mind? How did you know this was what I wanted and needed in this very moment?”
Has that happened to you recently? Have you read something or bought something that you thought, “Wow that was just want I needed?” OR “She was talking right to me!”
This happened to me when I read Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. The whole time I was reading her book I was thinking, “Wow she is talking right to ME!” I hear that a lot from people that read her book. Even with Rachel’s Podcast and her Rise Conferences, she is nailing her Ideal Customer Avatar. When this happens, you can see the success! Girl Wash Your Face is the second most sold book of 2018, next to Michelle Obama’s book. WOW!
There is definitely success in knowing your Ideal Customer Avatar.
By knowing WHO you are talking to, you can create content for your social media posts, blog posts, videos, and Website so much easier. You know WHO you are attracting, and you’re selling right to their hearts.
This is going to provide you much more success in the long run verses blindly posting on Facebook and trying to get people’s attention.
Take time to write, in detail, your Ideal Customer Avatar profile, and then use it next time you post about your products. Let me know how you do!
I can’t wait to talk more about your Ideal Customer Avatar with you! What questions do you have? How can I help you?
