As Featured in Emerging Manager Monthly
A lot of time and money is spent on marketing and selling. For firms seeking growth, it is not enough to simply invest in business development. Taking the time up front to understand who your ideal client is will greatly enhance the outcome of your growth investment. Simply put, an avatar is a creative way to think about your ideal client. While we all may believe we have a good handle on our ideal client, creating an avatar brings depth to the picture and more importantly, context as to where and how to reach this target audience.
To learn more about avatar creation, we caught up with Katie Riess, the brains behind KT Media Strategies (check them out here), a media relations firm that helps companies, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and authors gain media exposure to bring their message to their ideal audiences.
What is an avatar and why are they important to create?
An avatar is an example of your ideal audience. It's a fun way to dive into the life of someone you are trying to get the attention of. The avatar represents the ideal audience group. The more detailed you get, the more you can drill down into your audience's day to day issues. Doing this will allow you to create content that is relevant to them, appearing in the right places and focused as to the most impactful messaging.
What are the types of questions we need to ask when building out an avatar?
What are some demographic characteristics of this person? Where do they live? How old are they? Do they have children? Are they married? The more specific the better.
Where does this person consume their media and get their information? What podcasts do they listen to? What's their favorite radio station? What do they find themselves watching on YouTube? What publications do they read? What influencers or persons of interest do they follow?
What are their major pain points?
How can your product or service solve these pain points?
What are their goals and values?
How much can the avatar creation process truly change our messaging?
The value of the avatar creation process is that you'll use the profile you've created to determine the appropriate message that matters most to this audience. When you approach the right audience with the right message, they will notice it right away. Publications will look for this as well; they will see that their audience is interested in the content and message you are providing because you have taken the time to tailor it to exactly the topics, positioning and priorities that their readers are most interested in. This results is better placements and more responsiveness from potential publication outlets.