This turned into a series! lol
Part one is How To Start An Email Marketing Campaign
Part two is How To Create A Lead Magnet.
IDEAL CUSTOMER = AVATAR
Today, I want you to decide who your ideal customer is…your AVATAR. Avatar is just a name given to the embodiment of who our ideal customer is. We will create a cheat sheet for them using Beacon.
It is important that you do a bit of work on figuring out who your “ideal customers” are. There is more than one “type” of customer for each product. For example, dogs toys. There are toys for puppies, who can be wild and who don’t know the rules yet; then toys for adult dogs, and toys for older dogs who are a bit more tired and more settled into being dogs.
You do not want to target puppy toys to people with older dogs, because the needs are different. You can target your toys to all dog owners, knowing that the ones with puppies will eventually need new toys for their older dog, but when selling toys for puppies know that it is not all dog owners who will be interested. This shrinks your blog audience and customer base…in a good way!
For many of us with niches that target a broad audience from all walks of life and differing age groups, you cannot use the “avatar creation” worksheets that many tech-type bloggers refer to in their posts. People who are looking for a good toy for their puppy cannot be pinned down into categories like “annual revenue” or “years in current position” or you will never get any work done because you will be writing the various profiles of pretty much 7 billion people.
With that in mind, try to find 3 different customer-types for your business, i.e. puppy owners, adult dog owners, older dog owners.
Ask yourself:
– Who wants to buy my products/service?
– Why do they need my products/service?
– Where are they at in their buying experience? Research? Shopping? Buying?
– What is the product or service for? Themselves? Family or friends? A project they are creating?
– When do they need the product or service? Now? In the future?
– How can my product or service enhance their life? Save time? Save money? Or in the case of puppies, save furniture?
List 3 problems that your Avatar has
And how you will solve them, and how that will make them the avatar for your business. Again, using puppies (poor little doggy!)…
- Puppy is chewing everything! Puppy ate my new shoes!
- Puppy is jumping on everyone. Puppy ripped a hole in my new dress pants!
- Puppy is “play” biting everyone. Puppy ripped a hole in my hand!
Here are three problems; can any of these be solved with your product, which is toys for puppies? Yes!
So now we have some “customer types” and we understand some problems that they have. You can you use this information to create a lead magnet! You do not need to create a cheat sheet that encompasses all of their problems, only one. Save the other problems for other lead magnets!
Go to Beacon and create an account. It won’t take long and you will likely create more lead magnet projects, so you might as well go do it now.
After you create your account, and any time you log in after that, you will get a screen asking you to upgrade so that you can remove the logo from your creations. Beacon is on my list of top things to upgrade a.s.a.p. For now, the free account works for our purposes.
On the main page with the request to upgrade, you will find any projects that you have created, which you can delete, share, download or edit if you want. Above this, you will see a yellow CREATE NEW button. Click it. Choose your project. For today let’s go with a simple CHECKLIST. This will also help you identify your avatar, since you are writing it for them.
We are doing original content today, so choose NO when asked if you want to import blog content. Choose a theme. On the second row down is a green The Checklist, which is what I am choosing.
Next, you will see 5 tabs on the left pane: Pages, Content, Layout, Colors, Fonts.
Under the tab heading PAGES, you will see The Checklist, 3 Steps to Better Checklists, and Call To Action. These are the pages of your checklist (front cover, checklist, back cover). You can click anywhere in the boxes on the right side to edit the front page of your checklist. When you are finished, you can click the right arrow in the top right corner (under the green GENERATE PDF button) and go to the next page.
On this page, you will write your checklist, either recycled from old blog posts or new content. As you can see, they are giving you a few ideas for where to get content for your checklist. You can remove any of the white boxes, add links or photos, and modify it your way. From here, you can change the layout, colors and fonts. Be aware that changes that you make are only for your current page, and there is NO undo button.
This is where you will be answering the question of “How can I solve problems for my avatar?”. Give them some information, but do not replace the need for your subscriber to come to your website. You only want to offer them a taste of what you have, not the whole plate!
When you are happy with your creation, move on the back cover page, where you will place your call to action. There are more instructions for how to use the Call To Action back cover page, so go ahead and write something that will urge your avatar to return to your website for more wonderful information that will enhance their lives. You can place your url in the LINK URL box if you like, and add a catchy phrase for the button. Be aware that there will be a Beacon logo in the bottom corner of your creation if you are using the forever free subscription.
When you are happy with how things look, you can use the GENERATE PDF green button. In a short time (seconds,really!), you will have your new lead magnet! You can add this to your email marketing program to offer a nice free gift for your subscribers and encourage them to return again and again to your website.
I hope that this has been helpful to you. If you see errors or omissions please message me at support@fearlessaffiliate.com.
If you enjoyed this article, please leave comments in the box below and consider sharing this information with others.
Hi there Irma
I loved your last two posts as they were amazingly useful, especially as I have just started out with an email marketing campaign.
I’ve actually found your website one of the most helpful sites I’ve ever been on!
I’ll be back.
Hello Lawrence, and thank you for stopping by today!
And thank you for your kind words! I really appreciate them, and that my posts have been helpful to you. Part four is coming this week!
Cheers,
Irma π
Hi Irma,
Thank you for posting this. This made me take a hard look at the way I have been doing things up until now. I have never heard of Beacon before visiting your site so it has given me yet another powerful tool to add to my arsenal. This taught me that maybe my view of my target audience was much too general and could be broadened much more. Thanks again for the post.
Hi Lance, and thank you for visiting us today!
Well, that is awesome. I am glad that my series is helpful to you, and as I discover more free tools, I will be adding them to the “cheat sheet” post list.
Cheers,
Irma π
Thank you for effectively explaining an aspect of Internet Marketing often overlooked. I feel it all plays a role in achieving conversions so it’s good you touched up on that. Also I’ve found that creating a checklist is the literally thee only way to effectively get tasks done. What’s your take on call to action button colors?Let’s say in theory that a certain color will appeal to certain shoppers.
Hi Michael and thank you for stopping by today π
Red for action or green for GO! I think that whatever color causes you to think positive thoughts about the future of your website π
Cheers,
Irma π
Hi, Irma. Thank you for your wonderful article. I am looking forward to the others in your series. Great idea! I had not heard of Beacon before, and your definition of an Avatar really got me thinking in a more defined direction. What if someone is totally new to the blogging and getting a Niche going? Is this something they should be doing in the beginning or would it be too confusing for someone new?
Hello Merry and thank you for stopping in today π
I think that working on your avatar is best done in the beginning, so that you can be targeting your audience with relevant content right away.
Cheers,
Irma π
Hi Irma,
This is a good website for someone like me who has just started her website but I am not sure of who my audience is going to be. I will try it and see how it works for me. I did not think of the idea that you cannot sell puppy toys to older dogs, this has been explained in a very brilliant way (the whole complicate task of targeting your audience ). I am definitely bookmarking this page for future reference.Thank you for sharing.
Thanks
Raman
Hello Raman, and thank you for your kind words π
Yes, after working hard on choosing a niche, we find out that we have to refine things a bit more! This is good, though, because it will only serve our audience more if we give them more targeted content. And we can try different lead magnets for each of our audience types and see how effective they are. Always learning!
Cheers,
Irma π
Great advice. love the graphics. Do you guys have an RSS feed? I’d love to subscribe as I’d certainly be interested in more posts like this. Will be popping back regularly. Thanks again and keep up the great work.
Hello Sean and thank you for dropping by!
Not yet! More stuff to learn about, I guess lol. I am going to put that on my posting schedule, so thank you for that π
This really is the best job I have ever had!!
Cheers,
Irma π
So I am really new to this whole blogging thing. But your post helped me gain a but more perspective on catering to a specific audience. My website is catered towards allergy sufferers looking for relief. Any suggestions? I will have to take a look at that Beacon thing, sounds very helpful. Thanks for the tip!
Hi Charlie, and thank you for stopping by today π
I think your audience is specific enough, and I was super glad to be able to check it out and get a new tip for my allergies…thank you!!
Cheers,
Irma π
Great posting! This has a lot of great information I will be sure to be using in the future!
Hi Brandi, and thank you for stopping by!
Cheers,
Irma π
Hi Irma,
I have read all three articles in your e-mail marketing series, and I have gained a lot of useful information. Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I learned something new about an avatar. Before reading your article, I thought it was the cute little profile pictures people created for games and comments. You taught me something new today. I have not tried Beacon, but from your description, it looks something similar to Canva. Can you explain the difference? When would you use one over the other?
Kathy
Hi Kathy,
I would use Canva to create more detailed offers, since it comes with many more editing options, which can take longer. Beacon is a great program that can help you create something quick (under 30 minutes for a cheat sheet), and is useful when you are new to the whole process and want to get started simply, or if you want to merge old blog posts into a new ebook, which seems to be their specialty.
Cheers,
Irma π
Hi Irma,
I think the mistake most new bloggers make is writing for themselves, instead of for their targeted audience. This is a great post reminding us bloggers on who we should be focusing on when we write a post, and having a checklist on how we should approach that is indeed very useful.
I have not tried out Beacon before, but it sounded really useful. I will give the trial account a try and see whether it’s something that I’ll like using. Thanks!
Hi Alex, and thank you for stopping by today π
I think creating a cheat sheet is a useful exercise in targeting what your audience wants, or at least part of your audience. I know for myself, I really had to debate myself about which part of my audience I wanted to target with my lead magnet. I went ahead and created 3 profiles and then just picked one. Time will tell if I chose correctly, but Beacon is available for more cheat sheets!
Cheers,
Irma π
Hi Irma, it is really important to know your audience. It was one of my very first mistakes that I was not thinking as a visitor even if I was passioned with my niche.
I have not tried Beacon before, it has a free trial so I will check out how it works.
Thanks for the info,
Ilias
Hi Ilias, and thank you for your comments!
Yes, I agree! I had a general idea of who I was writing for, but not a concrete avatar. It is a good exercise for anyone starting a blog.
Beacon is fun and fast…highly recommend!
Cheers,
Irma π