The goal for all your marketing is to offer your perfect customer content they will love.

When your marketing is in tune with your audience, you can engage them and build a strong relationship.

Your marketing should lead your ideal prospect to follow you and eventually buy from you.

For this reason, the first step in any marketing strategy is to know your audience well and build content they are sure to like.

Create a Customer Avatar

Although you’d like to appeal to a wide range of people, it’s important to be specific in your targeting.

You need to speak directly to those who most need your products and services.

The best way to get to know and target your audience is to create a customer avatar.

A customer avatar is an imaginary person who embodies all the characteristics of your ideal buyer.

Give them a name, decide where they live, what they earn, how they dress, the car they drive etc…

Really understand their attitudes and behaviours.

When you have a fully defined avatar, it is much easier to “speak” directly to them through your marketing.

Your avatar then becomes the stand in for all and any of your potential customers.

It should tell you who they are, what they like, and what problems they’re facing.

Understand Content Preferences

An important part of your profile is your avatar’s preferences in terms of content.

Do they take the time to read long-form content or do they like it short and sweet?

Do they prefer text or video?

What tone and language do they use?

This is critical to making your content relatable.

For example, does your avatar prefer a formal, authoritative tone, or something friendly and casual?

What pop culture references do they get?

What’s their sense of humour like?

Focus Your Marketing on Customer Needs

Another important thing to know is your avatar’s needs.

What information are they looking for?

What problems do they need solutions to?

You need to provide these answers using your expertise.

If you can provide what your avatar is looking for, you’ll be able to build strong relationships with your ideal customers in the real world.

Plan Out Your Customer Journey

One thing to consider when planning your marketing is the customer’s journey with your brand and where they are at each point of contact with you.

When they first come into contact with you, they’re looking for information on general topics.

Your aim is to provide this information and get them to keep following you.

Once they’re following you, you’re building a deeper relationship by offering more personal engagement as well as more specific topics within your niche.

At another point in the journey, a customer is considering products to buy.

At a later point they’re ready to purchase.

You need to be offering different content at each step of the buying journey.

Each content along the journey should lead them to the next step.

Gather Customer Feedback

It’s essential that you base decisions about your website content on actual feedback from your market.

Don’t act based on assumptions alone.

Find out directly from your audience what they expect from you so that you can deliver it to them.

You can also collect demographic data to update your customer avatar.

There are several ways to gather feedback from the market.

One is to create a two-way dialog with members of your audience.

Connect with audience members on social media and engage with them to find out more about them.

The other way to obtain objective data is to look at analytics.

Website metrics will tell you whether your web marketing is performing or not and why.

Keep It Focused on Your Audience

Although you’re talking about your unique offering, always keep it focused on your audience.

Your avatar gives you a clear understanding of who they are and what they like.