THE PROTAGONIST OF YOUR BUSINESS- CUSTOMER AVATAR

In the past few months, life gave me few chances to try and tread paths which I otherwise would not have chosen to tread. I shifted from Hyderabad to Mumbai and was settling down my daughter in her new school. During one school meeting, the school was planning to host an exhibition of items that are completely hand-made. I instantly agreed to put up a stall for south handloom sarees and dresses and thus began a new journey of a reseller.

 Fortunately, I received a lot of support from my friends, family, and dealers in the form of suggestions to join target groups, attend exhibitions, and market it at various places. Though I am an experienced marketing professional, these tips were extremely useful, but it lacked some focus. At exhibitions which I randomly participated; people would come to my stall yet not make a transaction. My strategy was to build a customer base and then increase their buying potential hence my stuff was all reasonably priced but still there would not be much of a sale. Something was not right, and I needed to focus more is what I knew. And the Eureka! moment happened, when I rejected the invitation to an event, stating those are not my target audience and I would like to cater to this kind of women.

So, this focus or clarity is nothing but the outline of the PROTAGONIST of your business 

i: e Customer Avatar. Our second class in Digital Deepak Internship batch 3 was all about sketching your Customer’s Persona. Firstly, let me explain what exactly Customer Avatar is and why it is an important aspect for your business.

CUSTOMER PERSONA- WHAT & WHY

Customer Persona is an in-depth profiling of your ideal customer. The more detailing you do the more accurately you can strategize your marketing efforts. Beyond demographics, income group, age group etc. it is ideal to envision the customer. In short create a fictitious character who has a name, traits, likes, dislikes, hobbies etc. As this will not only help you in understanding and addressing their pain points but also may give you more touch points to create different communication messages.

HOW DO I CREATE THIS FICTITIOUS PERSONA??

There are many ways in which you can create your customer avatar. 

• If you already have ample customer data with you then you can just mine your data.
• You can talk to few select groups of customers by incentivizing them for their time and you can know them better.
• Or If you are somebody like me who is starting afresh, then the best tool to use would be survey. As you must have already traced relevant groups and places where you will find your target audience, you just go ahead and do the survey. There are many sites where you can create your customer survey forms e.g.: Google Forms, Survey Monkey, Survey Sparrow, Typeform etc.

LASER FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS:

Once you have your customer persona, just narrow down your strategies like a laser shot and shoot out the best ads, emails, polls etc. and engage them more deeply with your brand.

Through my exhibitions I realized that many women are into great businesses but lack the skill of targeted marketing. So, after giving a deep thought of digging my gold, I decided to go with my niche of targeting Women Entrepreneurs owning small to medium business and my survey is based on the willingness of these women entrepreneurs to learn digital marketing.

So, you see making a mistake of attending events without a focus benefited me to help me dig my niche. And when Deepak mentioned the same thing in the class it was like a déjà vu for me.

Once having identified your focus group, the next best step is to create a communication message. While I was doing my reselling business, I realized that even my WhatsApp broadcast messages worked better if it was targeted as 1:1…. The customer should feel you are talking to him personally. In this digital era customers want to converse with the brand individually and if you bring it out in your communication then my friend you have succeeded in creating a loyal member for your tribe!

But the point to remember is that you should be authentic. Fake filters do not work anymore, customers are highly intelligent to understand the difference and the new mantra is to be as transparent and true as possible. Showing your true character actually works wonders for your brand, and the faith they have in you always stays.

I always believe that the innate skill of a great marketer is Storytelling and those who are well traveled and well read have many stories to tell. So, start drafting stories on your experiences and to create more interesting stories start your journey of becoming a better version of yourself.

I genuinely believe that discomfort or awkwardness is one such thing that pushes you out of your comfort zone and makes you take the necessary action which is the missing link in your journey. So after almost 9 years Deepak has pushed me out of my comfort zone to not only find my niche but also to identify my Customer’s Persona.

I conducted a survey with a group of Women Entrepreneurs who own small or medium size businesses. And based on the responses below is the sketch of the Protagonist of my business:

She is a 35-year-old ambitious budding entrepreneur running her apparel business from a small workshop on her partners terrace. Her brand is registered and has a potential customer base to target. She is marketing her products online through Facebook and has just begun with Instagram. She does not have a company website yet. She is planning to build an e-commerce kind of website. She is willing to learn digital marketing to grow her brand image. She is ready to invest somewhere around Rs.499 to Rs.1999 for the course.

Another Customer Avatar is as below:

She is a 35-year-old hair accessories designer working from home and is doing business in known circles. Wants to increase her customer base. She is presently not doing any form of online marketing but would be interested to learn basic digital marketing and is ready to invest around Rs.499-Rs.999 for the course.