It’s frustrating, right?
Your product/service is better than your competitors’. You spend more money on your marketing efforts but your business can’t seem to move much; and, in many cases, your price is actually lower than your competitors’.
The worst part?
People are raving about their services, and they’re growing at a faster pace than your business with a much higher ROI than yours.
What’s the difference?
Here’s the key: They’re more relevant to their customers, and they’re just after a small group of people whom they know very well (their ideal client).
The reason is that, in short, they know their customer avatar.
What Is Customer Avatar (And Why Is It Important)?
A customer Avatar (or buyer persona, as some like to say) is a detailed picture of the ideal client who you want to work with. You might be tempted to make different categories of customers and go after different groups. Don’t do that.
The solution is that you need to have one person in mind and go into extreme detail to understand this person well. I came up with a cool methodology called 360 Degree Avatar Review. I call it that because you need to know everything about that person, and this exercise will help you do exactly that.
But is this exercise really important? Wouldn’t this limit my growth?
Here’s a little story to show you how it could make or break your business.
How I Went From Having a Multi-Million Dollar Agency to $1M in Debt
If you don’t know, I had an agency in 2013-2014 that made almost 2 million dollars. I even had some big-name brands such as Audi as a customer back then.
I was doing billboard advertising, online Facebook ad campaigns and Google Ads campaigns.
So things should have been progressing well, and my company should have scaled even more, right?
Yet here’s what actually happened next.
I couldn’t get good at anything. The business was very difficult not only in terms of profitability, but managing it was a real pain, as well.
I couldn’t develop the right systems to make and sell my services since I couldn’t target anyone specifically.
Long story short. I ended up burning money, and I couldn’t manage the company. In the end, I was left with a lot of debt.
If I honed in on my ideal client and had a clear specific customer avatar, not only would things have been much easier to manage, but also, I would have been able to execute marketing and sales much more easily, and thus I would have been able to develop the right systems to be able to deliver what I was actually selling.
So what happened next?
I founded Infinitus and within 1 year I was able to generate 800k in revenue. Then, I was able to scale the business to over 2.5 million dollars a year in 2 years.
I did a lot of things differently when I started this company, but one thing I knew for sure was that I was after a small group of people. I knew my customer profile to a T.
Again, maybe you’re thinking that you could go after a bigger audience and that would be better to scale faster.
Well, let me introduce you to…
Bigger Fish, Small Pond Formula
The Key to Successfully Advertising to Your Customer Avatar
When most people think about their business, they think about all the different groups of people that they could help.
They try to compete in a “big pond.”
So many Entrepreneurs do what I did, it happens to the best of us.
But what you soon realize is that you are just a small fish that is competing with big companies in a big pond. Even if you are able to grow and gain momentum when you’re starting out, the time will come when you won’t be able to scale your business, because you’re competing with established businesses and you don’t have the same resources that they do.
So what do you do?
Be a big fish in a small pond. Target a very small group of people (your most ideal clients) that you can help the most, and be super relevant to that group to compete in that small pond.
Still don’t believe me when I say that you need to go after a small group of people and you could still build a multi-million dollar business?
Then check this out: In 2018, I launched a business oriented to just those who were a very specific niche.
In 14 months of 2018-2019, I generated over $10,000,000 with less than 400 customers.
I know, but that’s how you can build a 7-figure online business today. You don’t need a large group of people.
A few thousand people are enough to build a multi-7-figure business, as my story proves.
You don’t need to go after millions of people. Not all attention is good.
The question now is how do you build your customer avatar?
Creating Your Customer Avatar: The 2 Most Important Questions to Answer
When you read most posts about customer avatars, they go directly into a template of 30+ questions to ask. Sometimes you get bored before you even reach the end, and you end up slacking in the process.
That’s why I wanted to start right away with 2 questions that not many people discuss, which I think are more important than all the other small details.
1. Who Can You Resonate With? And Why?
The first thing that you should think about when creating your customer avatar is who can you resonate with? Who comes from the same background as you? Who do you understand most and will be able to reach faster than others?
You don’t just look for the person who will benefit from your product or services, you are actually looking for someone to resonate with you.
If you cannot resonate with your ideal client, they’re not going to be able to resonate with you.
The reason is very simple. Marketing is energy. Marketing is the ability to create an energetic bond with somebody else and make that bond strong enough that they want to work with you, that they actually want to transfer their energy, AKA, money, to you.
So if you’re going to go to a customer avatar that you cannot resonate with, that you cannot be empathetic with, if you do not have some level of ability to be empathetic with that group of people, it’s going to be really hard to bring your energy such that they can actually feel you.
You know what? I could create an ideal client avatar for all the corporate people that have hundred-million-dollar businesses, and I could go in and get paid a hundred thousand dollars a day; after all, my strategies work when it comes to scaling most businesses, if not all of them.
But I don’t resonate with that because I have never been in corporate, I’ve never had a job working for someone else. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was seven years old.
So if I go and do that, my level of resonating with them is so far away from who I am, that it’s kind of difficult for me to get there.
So why do it? Why not work with a group of people that I can actually resonate with?
2. Who can you have fun with? Who is your MOST ideal client?
Who said that you can’t have fun while building your business? Why does it need to be hard and feel boring?
Here’s the honest truth.
It’s really hard to make money if you’re not having fun.
I guarantee you that.
I’ve closed over $40 million in my lifetime at this point in revenue. I kept very little of it when I wasn’t having fun, and when I did have fun, it was easier to make the money, keep the money, and actually use that money.
I had my business doing 300k-500k in revenue every month in 2017, but I ended up blowing that business because it wasn’t fulfilling.
And you know what? My life has completely changed for the better. I went from hustling to being in the zone and enjoying every moment working on my business.
I make more money, too 🙂
You can read more about this in my article on Entrepreneur magazine, Why I Shut Down a Multi-Million Dollar Business.
At the end of the day, I want you to be building businesses that you wake up feeling motivated about and that you really enjoy. I don’t want you to just have an avatar because that’s the avatar that’s the best one to be able to make money.
I don’t believe in the idea of turning passion into a business to make money.
But if you are able to find a specific group of all your ideal clients who you can have fun serving and hanging out with and that you resonate with, you’re going to have a business that does incredibly well.
The reason for this is very simple. When you wake up feeling motivated about your business, any problems that you have to solve to be successful will become opportunities instead of obligations and obstacles.
So have those 2 questions in mind before you continue on with the rest of the details 🙂
Creating Your 360 Degree Customer Avatar (A Step-By-Step Process)
So now you know how important a customer avatar is and how it can help you save a successful business from going into debt (like I did with my agency), grow revenue quickly when you’re starting out, and scale your business past 7 figures.
The question now is how to do it effectively, and not just do it to fill a piece of paper that won’t do much for your business.
Enter the 360 Degree Avatar exercise.
This is one of the first things that we get people who join the ROI mentorship programs to do.
What this exercise helps you do is make you get into your customer avatar more. It helps you get inside of the mind of your ideal client more, so no one can compete with you in the small pond, and you become the big fish.
In the rest of the post, I’m going to share with you the process for this as well as examples of answers to help you understand the level of depth you need to go after.
So before proceeding, make sure to download the 360 Degree Customer Avatar workbook that I’m providing from my mentorship program to help you finally build and scale a business past the 7-figure mark.
A quick word of caution:
This worksheet will take an investment of time and some serious thinking. Trust the process and give it your all. The things that you write here will become the basis of almost every other part of your business.
A quick tip to make the process easier:
One of the easiest ways to really find who your ideal customer is if you don’t have full clarity is just getting on the phone with them. Just get to know your customer more, because the better that you can articulate the way that your customer thinks, the easier it’s going to be to actually be able to sell to them.
And it’ll be easier to answer the questions below if you do this, so if you have difficulty answering these questions, you know what you should do.
With that out of the way…
Let’s get to the step by step process to create your customer avatar.
Step #1: Who Is Your Ideal Client
In the first part of the exercise, we get started with basic yet very important data that you need in order to understand your ideal client.
Here’s what you should do in this step:
1. Identify basic data like sex, age range, field, interests (top 4-8 interests of your audience on Facebook).
2. If you had to describe the result that your work provides to your client in a single sentence, what would it be? This should be clear, concise, and tangible. Consider this the hook that will resonate with your audience.
3. Describe the best client you’ve ever had. We already touched on this. Most of the time these are people you resonate with and enjoy working with.
4. What is the single biggest thing your client is struggling with externally right now? These are the tangible results they are looking for. Getting clients, for example, losing weight, and so on.
5. What is the biggest internal struggle that they are experiencing right now? This is huge. This could be things like feeling like a failure, doubting themselves, and so on.
6. If you could put the thing they want the most into a single sentence, what would it be? This is basically a 1-sentence answer of the above 2 questions.
Now I’m going to show you a thorough example of how these questions could be answered in real life.
Here’s how a fitness coach could answer these questions in the 360 Degree Customer Avatar worksheet:
Most people stop here, but we don’t. As I said, this is a 360 degree avatar, not just one that scratches the surface.
Once you’re done, let’s move on to the next step.
Read this post to learn more about how to attract the right people.
The Pain and Problem Your Customer Avatar Faces
In this part, we get deep into the pain and problem that your ideal client avatar is facing.
This is what makes the difference between knowing the problems your customer avatar has and actually getting inside their head and understanding it completely more than they do, making it so that they can’t help but take out their credit card and purchase your products/services.
Here are the questions you need to answer to reach that stage:
1. What’s the biggest problem your ideal client has?
This is what is stopping them from achieving their goals. Get the details about what is the financial, emotional, and psychological pain that they’re experiencing.
2. What is the biggest headache your ideal client faces on a daily basis?
These are the small details that they struggle with on a daily basis.
3. What worry or fear haunts your perfect client?
What keeps them up at night? This is you getting in their mind thinking about what they are saying to themselves when things are not working.
4. What does your client believe will happen if they don’t succeed?
This could be a situation, event, or circumstance. What is the consequence of their fear coming true? Understanding this will help you to be more emotionally connected with your client.
5. Why is it important that he/she fix this problem now?
Describe how solving this problem could affect his/her life in different aspects (emotionally, financially, relationship life, business, health). Understand their desires.
6. What is the underlying cause of the problem or pain they are experiencing?
The root of the problem. Do they realize that this is the root cause of their pain, or are they chasing something else?
7. What things does your ideal client no longer want to experience/deal with?
What are the things they want to be relieved from? (Things including tasks, actions, interactions, feelings, etc.)
Here is how an ecommerce agency would answer these questions. Notice the level of details:
Can you imagine the difference between you and someone else competing for this customer?
In the first instant they come across your work, they will know emotionally that you understand them, and they will want to get started working with you right away. But they will need logical reasoning to convince their partner. That’s what we’re going to do in the next step.
The Process to Solve This Problem
Now, you know your ideal client’s deep pains and struggles. The next thing you need to do is to have an idea of how you could help them solve these problems and achieve the results they want.
This is the logical part that they will use when they try to convince their partner or their significant other when it comes to investing with you.
And usually, the points here are not as in-depth as the ones in the previous section. In fact, each point could be a different product/offering in itself.
But you need to have a big overview of how you can help them solve their problems once and for all.
Here are the questions to answer:
1. What are the four to five areas that you focus on in your work in order to get your customer avatar the result they want?
As I said, what are the main things they need help with?
2. What are the biggest tips/strategies you would give someone who needed to get results quickly?
These are quick wins that could help you get some quick improvements for your clients/customers.
3. What are the mistakes that your customer avatars are making right now that are keeping them stuck?
For example, focusing on the wrong area (from question 1) or not implementing the strategy (from question 2) the right way, or having the wrong mindset because of their fears or past experiences.
As I said, for many this will be an easier step compared to the previous ones.
Here’s a quick example of how an ecommerce agency could answer these questions.
Make sure to grab the worksheet and start filling in the answers now
The Gap That Prevents Your Ideal Clients From Reaching the Goal
Here’s the thing.
Any time you’re selling anything that has to do with coaching or consulting or anything to do with helping somebody, this is pretty much where all the money is made.
All the money is made in the gap between someone’s current self and someone’s future self. In other words, the gap between their current pain and their vision of their future self.
This is where your opportunity to be able to make money is, because it’s your opportunity to add value.
It’s where the most powerful transformation comes from, and that’s also where somebody is going to be compelled to buy the invisible because that’s what they’re doing: buying an invisible, intangible product.
In this step, we’re going to get into the gap. what is stopping them from achieving their goal, and why your competitors can’t help them the way you do.
Here’s how to get into the gap and understand it:
1. What are the biggest obstacles that stand in the way of your customer avatars getting the results they want?
Sometimes it’s information. Most of the time it’s motivation, community, or limited time. Be specific.
2. Who are your biggest competitors for this offer/niche?
Simple question. Name 3-5.
3. What does your ideal client NOT like about some of the other products, services, or businesses in your niche?
Maybe this is why they still have obstacles?
4. Has your customer avatar had other experiences with businesses or services like yours?
What didn’t they like about those experiences? This is how you could capitalize on the gap, because you understand it better than others.
5. What about your offering needs to be different in order for your ideal client to invest in you?
What do they need to know/believe before they can commit? This relates to their inner struggles and thoughts.
Here is what these answers might look like for a health and fitness coach business.
As you can see, the questions are simple, but once you know them not only will you have the perfect process to help your clients solve their problems (which you found in the above step), but you will also be able to position it in a way where you have no competition, and they can’t really overthink things.
The Vision of Who They Want to Be
The last and final step is to get deep into the vision of who your customer avatar sees themselves becoming.
This could be the persuasive point that convinces them to go from thinking about your products and services to saying, “Here’s my money,” because you expose what they want to be so vividly that they can’t help but give you and your products/services a try in their pursuit to achieve that vision.
Here’s how to understand their vision and their deep wishes and desires to achieve in the future:
1. If they could wave a magic wand, what would their life look like in 6 months to a year?
(Where would they live, what would they be doing, making, etc.? With whom?) This is a common question in copywriting and helping you come up with the right offerings.
2. Describe your perfect client’s deepest desire in a single sentence.
What do they secretly want that will be their happiest moment?
3. Name the 3 things that, if they had them, would make your ideal client feel completely fulfilled.
Be as specific as possible. How much money do they have? How are their relationships going? How is their health? Career? Emotional state?
Here’s an example of the vision of the ecommerce agency clients.
This is the last part of the 360 Degree Avatar process which will enable you to have a complete understanding of your customer.
Now You Are Equipped to Be Hyper-Relevant (And Have a Successful Business)
Knowing your customer avatar is the first and most important piece to being relevant to the small pond that you are after.
Now, whenever you’re creating new content, new courses, new copy, new webinars, or any marketing/sales material, pull up the 360 Degree Customer Avatar worksheet and review it to write a copy that connects with your customers/clients more than anyone else.
Because when you understand your perfect customer avatar, you understand your positioning, you understand who you are. And now you have the ability to go and create content that’s actually relevant.
This is just one piece of the ROI marketing and sales method. Imagine what would happen if you nail other parts of relevancy and the whole system?
I have created this cool resources page to show you how YOU could start implementing this method to YOUR business.
So dive deeper and check out how to make The Relevancy, Omnipresence & Intimacy Method work for YOU.
