List Building Funnel Foundations Part 1: The Customer Avatar

The aim of a Customer Avatar is to assimilate and integrate all we know and understand about our ‘Perfect Customer’ into one handy reference document, to equip us to create the kind of copy, content and creative that can actually connect with our target audience. 

But crucially, it’s also a tool that unlocks the ability to build the foundational steps of our list-building funnel in the most efficient and effective way. And that’s firstly because, the better you understand what your perfect customer wants, thinks and feels, the better your email opens, content engagement and actual sales are likely to be. 

Secondly, the better you understand what your perfect customer wants, thinks and feels, the less time and resources you’ll waste creating content and copy that doesn’t resonate.

Having said that…

If you want to create the kind of content, copy and creative that can not only attract the best-fit audience for you, but can also keep that audience moving in the right direction (towards a sale), simply describing your idea of typical customer with a few basic demographics thrown in for good measure - the recipe most of your competition probably use - will not do.

Keep reading and I’ll explain…

What the most effective Customer Avatar should include (and there’s a free checklist for that as well).

Why an average Avatar will only get you so far (and what you can do to elevate it to awesome instead).

But most importantly…

How to actually create it (without too much head scratching and second guessing along the way).

Don’t Drink From The Mainstream

It’s natural to think you need to reach the widest possible audience to appeal to the most possible people, so you can generate the most possible subscribers and sell the most stuff. Natural, understandable, but also a wasteful approach. Simply because, when you attempt to speak to everyman (or every wo-man) on every wavelength, it’s easy to end up with diluted messaging that speaks to no-one. 

And even if you can hit the nail on the head with some of your audience, you may not be in the ballpark with the rest. And the result is a leaky funnel, wasted opportunity, sunk resources and below-average success. It’s a numbers game that - unless you have resources to burn - can fail, simply because, every visitor costs you time or money to attain. 

Time or money it all costs.

And if your messaging is not hitting home with the majority of those visitors, that money and time is not coming back to you.

Boo-hoo.

So, if you’re a small independent business or someone flying solo, no matter how thirsty you may feel, my message to you is: don’t drink from the mainstream.

The only way to compete for online eyeballs against the mega-corps and established players out there, is to get much more personal with specific audience targeting. Then you can create messaging that attracts, resonates and connects with the best fit leads, subscribers or potential clients for you.

Crap In. Crap Out.

Bottom-line, even if you have quality products or services to sell (which of course, you should), how much you sell is likely to be correlated to how well you attract the right people to fill out your forms or subscribe to your list (relative to the resources you have to invest). 

Remember...

Low quality traffic leads to low quality subscribers. 

Low quality subscribers are less likely to open your emails, engage with your content and so, actually buy anything from you. 

And each customer you do get, will cost more to acquire, eating into your profits, making your business less viable in the long run as well.

Which doesn't sound like much fun it has to be said.

Not So Fast

Of course, the natural inclination is to get stuck into building stuff, because that’s the fun stuff. Rapid implementation can be a wonderfully productive thing - but it can also be a false economy, if those rapid ‘assets’ fail to deliver the results you seek. So, rapid-implementation is no excuse for ‘that will do’ work, if the future success of your business and a better quality of life is at stake.

When you rush to get your content, your ads, your lead magnet and your squeeze page up and running fast - without doing the specific audience targeting ‘homework’ first - the time and money you invest are yours to waste. 

If, on the other hand, you take the time to lay solid foundations that can open the door to more relevant and resonate messaging, then more…

• Attention
• Engagement 

And actual…

• Sales

Are yours to make.

So let’s do that instead…

What Is An Avatar Worth?

To give yourself the very best chance of building a profitable email list, there are several key assets you need to put in place.

1. Your Lead Magnet

2. Your Squeeze/Opt-in Page

3. Your Welcome Email Content

4. Your SEO Optimised Awareness Content and/or Ad Copy & Creative

This in a nutshell is your TOFU (Top Of Funnel) or SAS Level 1.

But to be most effective, each of these assets requires a further foundational piece put in place first. Which brings us back to The Customer Avatar.

Preparing the ground with a Customer Avatar first, so you have a deeper understanding of your target audiences wants, needs, drives and desires may sound nice, but what is it actually worth?

Well, it can open the door to…

• More strategically aligning the value you provide with outcomes your audience seeks.
• Copy, content and communication that provides value and builds trust so your audience is more interested in what you have to say.
• You (or your products and services) becoming more relevant and salient by having the answers your audience needs, ready and waiting as they move forward and progress.

All of which are key to helping your audience make decisions in which you have a stake. Simply because they lead to attention, engagement, conversions and sales. Or not. As the case may be.

So, what should an effective Customer Avatar include?

Glad you asked, because…

We have a process for that…

Knowing Me Knowing You

A Customer Avatar helps prepare the ground, so that once you’re ready to create each piece of content, marketing copy and creative for your funnel, you understand your Perfect Potential Customer in a way that enables you to communicate the right things, in the right way, at the right time - and lead to a sale in the most natural and frictionless way. And the deeper you dig, the greater you understand - the more solid this foundation will be. 

Aha.

And so, if an Avatar is this wonderful thing, but you're not able to magically pull one fully formed from your hat or figure out quite where to begin - your starter for ten is this…

Do you know, what you need to know?

What you need to know are things like:

• Demographics – the nuts and bolts, that define who they are
• Traits – what makes them tick; their values, attitudes and beliefs
• Drivers – the problems, pains and fears that explain why they do, what they do
• Aspirations – the dreams and desires, that motivate them to do what they do

The only way to understand what your specific target audience really wants, thinks and feels, is to dig deep, do the research and – ideally – talk to them. 

However, even if you don’t have access to actual customers (yet), the internet with all its customer reviews, communities and social commentary do make it easier than ever to connect, observe and interact with those you seek to serve.

To gather together the building blocks of an Avatar and get to grips with “what you need to know” step one is…

Download the FREE Set Of Avatar Checklists (Demographics, Traits, Drivers, Aspirations) Here.

And you’re good to go.

The completion of each checklist will help you transform any abstract ideas you might have about your target audience into more tangible, living, breathing human beings you can get to know, understand and empathise with. And once you’re on your perfect-subscriber’s wavelength; once you can speak your perfect-client’s language; and once you can communicate with your perfect-customers in a way that resonates and connects, the upshot is - your copy comes to life in a way that allows something quite magical to happen…

If you think of this Four Part Checklist Set as a research roadmap, a route to the essential things ‘you need to know’ about your target audience, this can lead to a clearer understanding of what the best fit client, subscriber, customer for you thinks, feels and will need from you - if you are to effectively connect.

So far so average Avatar.

So here's the twist bit…

Every Funnel Needs A Hero

While every Avatar begins life in a pretty mundane way - with the previously mentioned demographics, aspirations, drivers and traits - no matter how accurate your Avatar is, and how effective you are at attracting an audience into your funnel, to keep their attention and keep them moving in the right direction, you need to understand what they need to hear and when they need to hear it. Which means being able to effectively align the different stages in their journey with the different stages in your funnel. And the most effective way to do that, is to ensure you always cast your customer as the hero of your funnel.

Let’s use the analogy of film-making as example...

If you're a director, then while it may be a full production-team effort, the responsibility for success or failure is ultimately yours. And key to this, is good casting. Which means the hero of your funnel’s story, should always be: your client or your customer.

So, if we want a story that’s credible, a story that inspires action and a story that delivers a satisfying conclusion, you have to understand your hero’s journey from pending disaster to happy-ever after and every point between. That means putting yourself in their well-worn ruby slippers, so you can understand their ups and downs, their comparisons and considerations and all their doubts and decisions along the way.

Ultimately, there’ll be no satisfying conclusion for you or your customer until all is overcome and they find their way to that happy place where your deeds match their needs and your product or service delivers the outcome they seek.

So the more accurately you can design a funnel that provides what they need, when they need it, and gradually, naturally, logically lead them to a long sought after resolution, the more likely you can become the hero of their story and there’s a happy ever after for everyone.

And we all love a happy ending right?

And so this is where the backstories part of Prequel Process comes in. Because it’s the backstories that will give you an edge and it’s the backstories that can transform an Average Avatar into an Awesome Avatar…

Average To Awesome

Having gathered together all the demographics, aspirations, drivers and traits of your 'perfect-one'; subscriber, client, customer, you can now use this information to fill-in-the-blanks of their thoughts, feelings and actions at every step on their journey, from passing enquirer to curious subscriber, satisfied buyer and beyond.

But how, exactly? Well as luck would have it…

The Customer Avatar Workbook - only £7.99 no terms or conditions apply - has been designed to walk you through the entire process and deliver a fluid narrative of a customer journey you can then match the content of your funnel to. Upshot being, your prospects become more likely to see, read and consume what they need to, when they need to. Which in turn should keep their hearts, minds and trigger fingers moving in the direction you want them to go. 

Ker-ching.

Questions, Questions

To give you a taste of how the process works, let’s zoom in on the drivers and aspirations sections, beginning with a few simple questions designed to deliver the raw materials we can then build our narrative from...

WHO?

So, who are you aiming to reach?

The point here is to have a group name you can use to identify and address your audience with (while delivering an “oh that’s me” moment of recognition from them when you do).

So, what noun or short phrase best describes your perfect-one?

Let’s go for: List builder.

Who knew.

PROBLEM?

Everybody got problems, but to deliver more clarity than confusion, we want to focus on one - the big one.

So what’s the big-one, your 'perfect-one' most wants to fix?

Keeping it simple for demo purposes, let’s say they have a high bounce rate.

NEED?

No doubt there are many things they need, but again we want clarity on the biggest need. And while your perfect one may think they know what they want, with your experience in the field - you might have a better idea of what they actually need to deliver the outcome they seek.

So, what can you actually do, to address their core problem and provide what they NEED?

If they have low conversions, what they want is higher conversions, of course. But to get that, what they need is - uhm, let’s say - 'copy that quickly and clearly connects' shall we?

FEEL?

This is all about how they FEEL about their problem now, relative to what they can look forward to feeling, once they've delivered their desired outcome. We’re looking for the emotions that motivate their actions. 

So, currently their problem makes them feel: worried that all the time and money they've invested won’t pay off. But if they fix their problem they will feel: relieved, optimistic and eager to proceed right?

So that’s a quick example of the Q & A process - as featured in the Customer Avatar Workbook - you can use to gather up some of the basic core factors that drive our Avatar’s actions. But of course, to deliver a complete customer journey narrative from initial problem awareness all the way to a final desired outcome, there are more factors we need to hone in on.

Luckily, the checklists - also included in the Avatar Workbook - will help you get up to speed on that as well.

Now, from the information we’ve gathered so far, let me show you how the magic happens, with the couldn’t-be-simpler fill-in-the blanks…

Backstories Process

STORY

Planning + Process = Powerful Result

So as you can see…

• Gathering up the raw materials of your perfect-one's thoughts, feelings, drives and desires.
• Filling-in-the-blanks to create a narrative.
• Building a clear picture of the customer’s journey and how they think, feel and act at every twist and turn along the way.

… is simple enough to do, as long as: you know what questions to ask first.

And once you have this narrative journey to work with you’ll then be much better equipped to…

• Address what your prospect's need in the right place, at the right time.
• More effectively communicate with copy and content that’s relevant, resonates and so better connects.
• Plan a funnel that’s more logically aligned with your subscribers frame of mind at the time.

Which of course means…

And that is the difference between a list building or lead-gen funnel with a specifically targeted quality over quantity approach built into its DNA and one built in haste for wide appeal, that drains resources and ultimately fails.

Dum-dum-dum.

So remember, no matter how accurate your Avatar is and how effective you are at attracting an audience into your funnel, to keep their attention and keep them moving in the right direction, you need to understand what they need to hear and when they need to hear it. That means being able to effectively align the different stages in their journey and awareness, with the different stages in your funnel and the most effective way to do that, is to ensure: you always cast your customer as the hero of your funnel.

The Next Step…

If you want a complete no-brainer step-by-step walk-through from the vital demographics, aspirations, drivers and traits to the key questions that can help you understand your own perfect-subscribers journey The Customer Avatar Workbook has everything you need to get you there in the most efficient and effective way.

And once you’ve done that, don’t forget to come back to check out the rest of this action guide series to get the lowdown on more SAS how-to processes and tools, designed to get your top-of-funnel list building or lead-gen assets underway in the most efficient and effective way...

Click Here To Learn More About The Strategic Lead Magnet Process & Free Checklist