Do You Really Know Your Ideal Client?

A staggering “78% of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing”, according to DemandMetric. This comes as no surprise, as at least 50% of online consumer time is spent engaging with unique content (Source: HubSpot).

And yet, so many businesses struggle to regularly produce, what they believe to be effective content.

“Only 32% of marketers say they are effectively executing enough content.”
‍(Source: Aberdeen)

So, what’s the secret to creating content that resonates?

Getting to know your target audience

As you know, when it comes to business, it’s so important to have a clear idea of who you’re aiming to reach.

Whether you’re an established company or you’re just starting out, without a clear understanding of who your target audience is, you’re going to struggle to reach the right people at the right time.

Not to mention, you’ll waste time and money building your company for the masses.

Well, the same can be said about producing content…

If you create content that’s intended to appeal to everyone, there’s a very strong chance you won’t appeal to anyone. Why? Because the messaging won’t be strong enough for any one individual to relate to.

This is why it’s vital to determine who your target audience is before you develop the content. A really great way to do this it to create a customer profile, or Avatar.

An Avatar is a profile of your ideal client.

Once created, you can use it to position your content for a specific customer. If you’ve more than one ideal client, you can create a different avatar for each, and then cater your content to resonate with every audience you’re trying to reach.

Instead of just talking about the solutions your products offer, you can use the knowledge you gain from building your avatars to create content that speaks directly to them, using language and material that they will engage with and have an interest in.

How To Create An Avatar

To begin creating your customer avatar, the first step is to ask yourself, as well as the other key stakeholders in your business, “Who is our ideal customer?”

Give this character a name and then take some time to answer a few key questions about them:

• Where do they live?
• What industry are they in?
• What is their job title?
• What is their age & gender?
• Do they have a family?
• What is their average household income?
• What are their pain points?
• What are their goals?

To help inform your profile, do some research to better answer these questions…

Something that’s helped our clients when creating their avatars in the past, is reaching out to their existing customers directly to learn more about them. Chances are, they don’t have time for face-to-face or phone interviews (and nor do you!), instead you can create a survey to contact them via email. This will help you to collect information about their habits, needs and demographics.

Once you’re happy with the amount of research you have collected, you can then begin to build out a few key customer avatars that can be communicated with the rest of your business. It’s important to make sure that everyone is on the same page once these avatars have been created, all employees and departments need to understand who your ideal customer is and how they can use the avatars going forward.

At JTN, we suggest creating 2-3 avatars using the profile graphic above, as a starting point.

Once you have these set, you can then begin developing content ideas that appeal to each profile. This process will not only save you time, but it will also help you to create truly engaging ‘unique content’, keeping you ahead of ‘the future of marketing’.

We’ve implemented this process with many our clients at JTN and they have seen really positive results. With a little planning, you can develop content that effectively attracts the right audience to your business.

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