Market Research and Customer Avatar
Episode 9 Part 1
Show Notes:
How do you know who your ideal client is? This episode talks about tips on how to create your ideal client, their demographics and how to conduct market research.
Transcript
[Music intro]
This podcast is about our experiences with being self-employed, entrepreneurship, and bootstrapping it. Sometimes I have a spectacular guest that join me and share their stories. Also it’s about connecting to our soul, our inner selves to unwind and chill. My name is Lourdes, and I hope you enjoy this episode!
Hello again! I’m very grateful that you are here listening to my podcast today. In today’s episode, I am going to talk about market research, and creating a customer profile. And what do I know about customer profiles? Well, I’ve been running my own business since 2014, and let me tell you quickly what I do. I create and design WordPress websites, digital marketing, and technology automation, manage webinars, and also coach new business owners with optimizing their presence online. If you want to learn more about what I do, please check out my https://8thlevelpodcast.com/ website.
One of the things that we need to do is to create a market research plan. Just to let you know, this would be a guide that we can use, and of course, a marketing research plan can change any time, and that’s fine. Sometimes, your business might pivot, and then you might need to make another market research plan.
Back in episode 1, I talked about different types of service you can offer by assessing your skills. And once you know what services those are that you’ll be offering, it’s time to start a marketing plan. I’m gonna start with a customer profile. What we’ll need to do is create an imaginary client, or customer. Sometimes they refer to this as a customer avatar, or a client avatar.
Again, it’s an imaginary client, but some of you who might have had clients that you liked working with, that is your ideal client, you can also base this marketing plan and create a profile based on them, and we can use that as your client avatar. Ok, but before we go into the client avatar, let’s go ahead and brainstorm some ideas on who you want to make this offer to.
Write down on a piece of paper or on your digital notes everyone that you can think of that can use your services. Would they be a musician? Music producers? Wine enthusiasts? Doctors or dentists office? Yoga or health coaches? Restaurant owners, etc.
So, I’ll provide an example here. So let’s pretend you are targeting a female life coach. Let’s name her Stella. Stella lives in a small town in Arizona. She’s married, and has two children, and their ages are 10 and 13, and she also has a dog. Stella’s husband is a director for a cruise ship company, and he travels a lot. Their combined household income is about $85,000 a year.
Now Stella, she’s been in business for about 2 years, and she’s getting busier picking up more and moreclients. While her husband is away, Stella is pretty much taking care of everything, including household chores, helping with the school work, she volunteers after school for the kids’ activities, driving the kids to school events, and running her own life coaching business too. So this is an example of a customer avatar. Now, let’s think about how we can help this female life coach.
Ok, once you have customer avatar, it’s now time to come up with at least 10 to 20 questions. Make sure you are asking important questions! Include the services you are planning to offer. Write down your questions on a piece of paper or on your computer, because you will need this in front of you when you make your first phone calls or meet with that person face to face.
So again, form your questions based on your client profile. If your client profile is a musician, form your questions for a musician. Will they have albums or CDs coming out? Will they need an event page to let people know where their concerts will be? Do they have a place where we can listen to their music, like soundbytes of their music? Like MySpace, I think that’s where some musicians use. So, think about questions that you can ask your client avatar based on their industry.
Ok, so now that you have your questions ready, the next thing is to set a deadline when to complete your market research. So the plan is to start booking phone calls for your market research. I had to get my appointments lined up first. For me, back then, I think it took me about 3 weeks to finish calling and talking to all 15 people.
The deadline starts when you make that very first phone call. Determine how long it will take you to complete your market research, and stick to that plan. But anyways, make sure the questions are targeted to someone you are thinking of serving. Now, if you need any help with coming up with questions, go ahead and visit my website at https://8thlevelpodcast.com/ and click on contact.
Next, start contacting the people on your list. Send them an email to schedule a time to talk with you either by phone or by Zoom. Let them know that you’re doing market research, and you need to find out what services they use or are missing. You do not, and I mean you do NOT, want to send them an email, because you might potentially miss out on the actual words that they use in regular conversation.
This is so important to capture their immediate answer, since you will need to use these words that you will be using for your copy. And before you get on a call, make sure you have something to write on, or type your answers in. Write down everything, or as much as you can. Listen to what they’re saying and write down as much as you can and as fast as you can. And then you also wanna keep your interview questions separated per person. So have a little folder per person, ok?
Alright, that’s it for this episode. And I know it’s a lot to think about, and a lot to do. My name is Lourdes, and if you need any help, visit my website at https://8thlevelpodcast.com/ and connect with me there.
Join me next week for the next part of this market research plan, and then we’ll talk about what we do with those questions and the answers we received that you were collecting. It’ll be fun!
[Music Outro]
I hope that you enjoyed this podcast and please share this episode with your friends! Please subscribe, rate, and review this episode! And as always, the show notes will be available at https://8thlevelpodcast.com/. Thanks for listening!
About the Host
Lourdes McCombs is passionate about helping you take your unique skills into the online world, learn digital strategies, and scale. She is a Business Mentor & Success Coach and helps men and women transfer their local business online to create a global impact and to attract more clients. She is spiritual transformation coach that helps people make changes in their life without compromising their mission and their soul.
If you need clarity, or defining your life’s purpose, visit her business website: click here for her website at: BlueLarimarCoach.com
Or schedule a 30-minute complimentary meeting to get to know her, ask questions about business development and kickstart your business ventures here.
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