An ideal client avatar (ICA) is a deep dive into the minds, behaviors, and challenges of your target audience.

It’s a highly detailed profile of your ideal customers that includes demographic information, psychographic information about their goals, values, motivations, and buying behavior, and specifics about common pain points and challenges they are facing in their lives and businesses.

A comprehensive ICA starts with research- lots and lots of research. You’ve got to learn who your audience is and where they’re coming from before you can convince them that your products and services are the solution they’ve been looking for.

Once you’ve done the research and compiled all the data, it’s time to put your insights to work and start building your ICAs! Here are some tips to get you started:

•   Segment Your Audience

Most businesses will need at least 2 or 3 ICAs to accurately guide their content marketing strategy. Before you can begin building your profiles, you have to segment your audience into similar groups so you can develop an ICA for each one.

Tip: Use your CRM, Google Analytics, or social media insight tools to segment your audience based on demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns.

•   Use Your Existing Customers

Your most highly engaged and satisfied customers are a goldmine of valuable information. After all, they’re already ideal customers! Use them to fill in any gaps in your research or add additional details about your customers’ needs, challenges, and decision-making processes.

Tip: Create surveys using tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms. Make sure you’re asking open-ended questions to encourage more detailed responses from your best customers.

•   Create your ICAs

Now it’s time to create your own ICAs! Use a template or framework to create a realistic profile for each audience segment that includes key demographic information, details about their jobs, lifestyles, interests, and goals, and buying behavior, and most importantly, LOTS of information about their pain points and challenges.

Tip: Make your avatar come alive by adding a name, photo, and brief narrative that humanizes your ICA and makes it more relatable.

 Once you have a set of fully developed ICAs it becomes much easier to create targeted content that resonates with each segment of your audience.

The more you understand about your audiences’ priorities, pain points, and goals, the better prepared you are to offer real solutions to their problems- and that makes you far more likely to make the conversions that boost your bottom line!

Want some guidance on creating ICAs that make your marketing more effective? Talk to the marketing experts at SophieZo! Visit www.sophiezo.com to learn more about our comprehensive content marketing strategies!