There’s a great quote by Jeff Walker, information marketing professional, which will hopefully influence the way you look at business. He said, “You are not your market.” He’s referencing the fact that you need to think like your buyers when marketing your products. I love this concept, since many of us are guilty of promoting without relating. Do you believe that everyone thinks like you? Maybe you’re not even thinking about it in personal terms, but rather mechanical. If you’re marketing, selling or generally doing business, though not intentional, people often act with no regard for how the person on the other end thinks. Instead, they focus heavily on content and creativity, and less on what really touches their audience. Often sales and marketing campaigns fall short because the focus is not where it should be.

I’ve seen several styles and ways of doing business. For the people I have directly managed or coached, I often teach something which also served me well in my own career. Today, marketers call it building an Avatar, but I always called it modeling my prospects. Many of you view an Avatar as an animated character which might appear on a website or survey. Others think it refers to the blockbuster movie. The Avatar I’m actually referencing is the practice of designing and building a model of who you believe is your ideal prospect and client. The deeper you can go the better, get as specific as how they dress, what their work environment looks like, what motivates them, what are their fears, what are the issues they face, etc. Map out this person and build your message to meet his (or her) needs and you have something to develop your marketing or sales strategy to. If you’re reading this and thinking this is a waste of time, then you’ll probably always focus on the mechanical. Being empathetic to the people you’re catering to is a great way of relating to their needs, wants and desires. Without that, you’re basing it on things which may or may not matter.

An Avatar doesn’t preclude getting to know each individual prospect or client’s needs. What it does do, however, is give you the ability to build powerful strategies; strategies that will drive success for you and your company. It also gives you a means of training staff to deal with issues before they come up. It means you’re getting closer to understanding why people choose to do business with you and why they choose to go elsewhere. If you know those things, then building a plan to overcome the hurdles and objections is a much simpler task.

For me, it started as an exercise in a college psychology class. It has turned into a tool which has helped me get a leg up on my competition and it’s helped others who embrace the concept. The fact that it’s formalized within certain areas of marketing affirms my thinking. I encourage you to start to identify who your model prospect and client is. It doesn’t have to be one person, but get specific with the details. Then, develop your strategies from there. As Jeff stated, you are not your market. However, you can go a long way toward understanding what it takes to dominate within yours. If you want to learn more about my perspective or to learn more, visit www.actusmr.com or email me at paul_kirch@actusmr.com.

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