Important Questions that Can Provide Insights About Your Ideal Customers
Creating an ideal customer profile, or Avatar is an important step when you want to get more leads and better-qualified leads while expending fewer resources.
Here’s how it works: an avatar is a fictional representation of your ideal customer, so you can use avatars to narrow down particular people you want to target and use the information contained in the Avatar to create more targeted marketing messages.
In other words, Avatars help you find your ideal clients faster and help you market to them more effectively, and this translates to more leads for less.
However, building your Avatars takes time and hard work, but there are a number of questions you can ask about your ideal customers to help you build accurate and detailed profiles.
We’ve broken the questions down into two categories, life/status questions, and emotional questions, to give you a better picture of how to create a customer avatar.
Life and Status Questions
What do they support?
This first question has to do with what types of products and services your best customers consume, and where and how they consume them.
The things you want to find out include the brands they buy, what media they use, and the particular products and services they purchase.
This can tell you a great deal about your customers, including their status, what they care about, and who they are as people.
For example, if your customers drive an Alfa Romeo versus a Ford, then you have an idea of their economic status.
Or, if they wear only non-leather shoes and clothes, then you have an idea that they may be vegetarian or vegan and care about animal welfare and the environment.
What is their desired status?
One thing that most people have in common is that they want to improve, so the focus here isn’t on the current social or economic status of your best customers, but rather the status they’re striving for.
One example could be if your best customers are students, but maybe they’re studying to be lawyers.
Similarly, maybe your ideal clients are overweight but want to be healthier.
Another way of looking at this question is what do your clients need to achieve fulfillment, and how can you provide that?
What are their interests?
Hobbies and interests are crucial parts of your avatars because they can tell you what your customers like and where they can be reached.
For instance, a middle-aged man who watches football can likely be targeted through a local sports arena.
Or, if your best customers collect rocks, then maybe you can reach them through special interest groups.
Think beyond hobbies and interests as well to things like whether your customers are religious, what beliefs they hold, and what’s important to them.
What do they do?
The focus here is how people spend their time, and that includes what they do during the week when they’re at work, and what they do with their free time.
For instance, do many of your customers spend their weekdays enmired in numbers because they’re accountants?
Or, are they marketers, data entry people, conference organizers, administrative assistants, or some other position?
However, how people spend their spare time is equally important because it’s indicative of what’s important to them, so this is vital information you can use when creating targeted messages.
For example, a 45-year-old father with two children may prefer spending time with family on evenings and weekends, whereas a single mid-20s woman may prefer socializing with friends or consuming different forms of entertainment.
What’s their preferred technology?
The main types of tech options include smartphones and tablets, desktop computers, and laptop computers, and it’s important to know what your customers prefer because messaging platforms, delivery platforms, and message consumption is different for all three.
What and how do they share?
This question has to do with platforms your customers choose and what they decide to share through these channels.
Common channels include:
- Snapchat
- Promotional products (logos)
As long as you know where to look and are listening closely, your best customers can tell you everything you need to know about them through what they share and where they share it.
What do they want from you?
This is arguably the most important question to ask, because if you can’t show your best customers how you can improve their lives, then it doesn’t matter how much you know about them.
However, it’s also important to look beyond the customers’ intent to their actions, because people often say one thing but do another.
Emotional and Goal-Based Questions
What are their pain points?
Pain points and what customers want from you are related, but the focus here should be on what problems they’re trying to solve and how your product or service can provide a solution.
Focus on the benefits in terms of pain relief and overcoming challenges.
What and who do they believe in?
The emphasis here is the customers’ trust rather than their actions, and about who they follow and where they get their information.
For example, do they listen to a particular guru or influencer, and if so on what platforms (such as conferences or social media)?
In other words, who do your customers listen to and on what channels, because that’s where you can get in front of a targetable audience with your messaging.
What are their fears, loves, and dreams?
All these things are related, because if you can address what your customers’ fears are (such as failure, not meeting expectations, or looking bad), can create common ground through their loves (such as their friends, family, and pets).
If you understand what they’re seeking (such as approval, status, or fulfilment) then you can connect with them, build trust, and show them how you can make their lives better.
Who are their friends?
When you want to know how to get ideal customers, then identifying the friends of your best clients is a great place to start.
People often associate with people who have similar needs, goals, and interests, and who are in similar demographics, making friends easy leads you can target with your messaging.
How to build the ideal customer profile starts with asking the right questions, and these should get you off to a great start.
By finding out these answers, you’ll have a full picture of who your ideal customers are, including what they do, what’s important to them, what they want, what their hopes and dreams are, and most importantly, how you can position yourself as a trusted solution to their challenges and pain points.
Download your ideal customer profile worksheet now to get started building your own customer avatars and to make lead generation a breeze.
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