Knowing who your ideal customer is can be tricky. As a small business owner, you’ve probably heard that you should “visualize who your selling to,” right?
Maybe you’ve even heard the word “customer avatar” thrown around, too.
Well, if there’s one thing we’ve learned in our business, it’s how important it is to get VERY specific about WHO that perfect customer (or avatar) is.
For a long time (like 7 years – yikes) we just thought “okay, our customer audience is 95% female, ages 25-44, they have a few kids, and they like to make simple recipes at home.”
It was a fine start, but it wasn’t helping us pinpoint our marketing efforts. So, we started studying more about serving your customer and how we can do that BETTER. We learned how important it was to get super specific about your ideal customer.
Over the last three years, we have focused our efforts on getting to know our avatar for Six Sisters’ Stuff inside and out.
MEET THE SIX SISTERS’ STUFF AVATAR
This is who we base almost every single business decision on! While she may not really be real, she’s present at every meeting helping us decide what to pursue and what to let go of.
- Name: Susan
- Age: 35
- Married mom of 3
- Kids: ages 12, 9, and 6
- Lives outside of Dallas, TX
- Dental Hygienist by day and main meal prepper/mom/wife by night
- Average income is just under 100k
- Loves to read, but doesn’t really have time
- Guilty pleasure is watching the bachelor after her kids go to bed
- Goals to run a marathon and pay off all her student debt
- Doesn’t mind cooking, but doesn’t have a lot of time to do it
- Looks at pinterest for new recipes, but sticks to tried and true favorites a lot
- Wants to eat more dinners at home with her family, wishes she had more time to spend with husband and kids
- Sometimes feels completely overwhelmed
A LOT more specific, RIGHT?
Now, EVERYTHING we do – the messaging we use, the products we sell, the content we create – is done with SUSAN in mind.
And every launch, every piece of content we publish, every product we put out – we get to know her a little bit better.
Just recently we dug deep into our sales analytics over the past 11 years and realized, you know what? Susan likes digital things, but she ABSOLUTELY LOVES physical products. So for the last 8 months we’ve been developing and testing physical products for Susan that we know she’s going to love.
Because we really honed in on WHO Susan is, not only has it helped us find clarity in how we make business decisions, but also why.
We fully attribute the continued growth of our company (even when a lot of other people in our industry were seeing a decline) to this practice. By REALLY knowing who we were serving and exactly what they wanted.
Do you want to get to know your ideal customer better?
Start by looking at:
1. Website Analytics
2. Facebook Analytics
3. Social Media Polls/Feedback
Next, decide who YOU want to serve. It’s not always someone like you. It may be someone similar, and it will probably be someone you would consider a friend.
If you want more help defining YOUR perfect avatar, be sure to listen to the Start-Up Spark Podcast episode 1 . Want the shortened version? You can check out the show notes HERE. Yep, it’s our very first and most important episode we’ve done!.
You can also use this awesome worksheet to dive in and really discover your ideal customer so you can show up and serve them.
