To get the most out of your business you should be directing your product or service at your ideal client. The Eonic discovery process includes an exploration of this person – we call it your avatar but you may also know them as a pen portrait or a buyer persona.
Why do I need an avatar?
It is much easier to produce website copy – and advertising copy and instruction manuals, any client-facing text, really – if you can address it to someone; and that someone is your avatar.
Your avatar stands in for all of your clients, so although they are technically an imaginary friend, they are an extremely important member of your team, and an hour spent bringing them to life will save you time and effort in future.
How do you create an avatar?
If ‘creative’ is not part of your job description, you may be surprised to learn that there is a step-by-step method you can use.
The quickest way to form an avatar is to generate a detailed description by giving them an imaginery interview. Some example questions are:
- Think about their age, gender identity, job, socioeconomic class and marital status.
- Ask whether they have children, whether they have pets and what responsibilities they have.
- Think about what they do in their spare time and where they go on holiday.
- Identify their reading habits – are they into hefty novels or light romance? Do they buy a newspaper or skim the news online? Are they Hello readers or do they get New Scientist?
- Look at their viewing habits. Do they fall asleep in front of the news every night, or do they enjoy a boxset binge
Top tip
If you are a visual person, use something like Pinterest or even a good old-fashioned corkboard to collect images that relate to them. The avatar is just for you and your colleagues, and it’s okay to be playful – often an idea that seems off-the-wall gives helpful insights.
Digging deeper
Once you’ve got a basic avatar down, it can help to name them – we’ll call our example Christopher – and then ask some even more searching questions, such as:
- What keeps you awake at night, Christopher?
- What do you value most?
- How do you want people to remember you?
These types of questions will help you to present your services in a way that will solve Christopher’s problems, soothe his worries and help him achieve his dreams.
Get the tone right
This detailed description will also tell you the tone of voice you need to use. Christopher, professional, aged 35, Volvo owner, will not appreciate the same tone and word choices as Christopher, self-employed manual labourer, aged 35, van owner. It can help your designers, too, by telling them what types of imagery will resonate with your ideal client.
Ready to give it a try?
Avatar creation is all part of the Eonic discovery. Give us a call and find out how Eonic can help you.
Further reading
Technical writer and content marketing expert John Espirian has collected some real-world examples of customer avatars in this helpful blogpost.