Understand Your Ideal Customer Using Customer Avatar Worksheet

• A customer avatar is a detailed profile of your ideal customer that includes their demographics, interests, frustrations, fears, wants, aspirations, and key purchase drivers.
• Creating a customer avatar worksheet can help you to craft a tailored message for your audience and improve your marketing campaigns across different disciplines.
• The article provides a step-by-step guide on how to fill out the customer avatar worksheet, which consists of two parts: defining your avatar and describing their before and after states.

There is nothing more important than knowing your customer. In this article, you’ll create your own Customer Avatar Worksheet: a 1-page document that has everything you need to truly understand who your ideal customers are. You’ll learn what a customer avatar is and the steps to create it so you can finally get clear on who you’re selling to and craft a tailored message for your audience.

What You’ll Learn:

• Develop your own Customer Avatar Sheet so you can finally get clear on who you’re selling to and craft a tailored message for your audience

Understand the Purpose & Role of a Customer Avatar

Understand the Objective

It’s a huge mistake.

And yet, we see it happen all the time.

You get so focused on WHAT you’re selling that you forget to think about WHO you’re selling to.

You could have the greatest product on earth, but if you’re trying to sell it to the wrong person—you’re never going to hit your sales numbers.

That’s why understanding your customer avatar (AKA buyer persona) is so important.

Before you can sell anything effectively, you need to understand…

• Who your ideal customer is
• What their key purchaser drivers are
• What their challenges and wants are
• How your product/service transforms their lives for the better

And filling out the Customer Avatar Canvas will help you do all that.

Defining a Customer Avatar

Every business has multiple “customer avatars,” or segments within its audience. You may have also heard the term “buyer persona” or “target audience.” But throughout this training, and at DigitalMarketer as a whole, we call it the customer avatar.

Just as your business has multiple customer avatars, every product that your business sells also has different customer avatars. That’s because different products appeal to different customer avatars.

Each customer avatar has different motivations, goals, and objections for why buy (or don’t), so it’s important that you frame you’re messaging around each avatar’s unique needs.

That’s where your Customer Avatar Canvas comes in. With this 1-page worksheet, you’ll be able to create ads that speak directly to your best customers, so you can create a more customized campaign that resonates with your audience and drives conversions.

How Many Customer Avatars Should You Create?

In this training, we’ll ask you to choose just one customer type or segment for either your business as a whole or one of your products.

But be aware, you most likely have more than one customer avatar.

Ideally, you should create anywhere from 1–3 customer avatars for your entire business and 1–3 for each product you sell.

Before we dive into filling out the canvas, we want to make sure you understand why customer avatars are so important.

The Swiss Army Knife of Marketing

Digital marketing is composed of a lot of different disciplines.

There’s content marketing, email marketing, paid traffic, product creation, social media, copywriting, analytics… the list goes on.

Each of those disciplines has its own unique set of skills to master.

But knowing how to identify your customer avatar is one of the few skills that apply to every marketing discipline. That’s what makes it the Swiss Army knife—you can use it in every single marketing discipline.

For example:

• Content Marketing: Knowing your avatar helps you decide what blog posts, videos, podcasts, Lead Magnets, etc. you should create to attract more leads and customers
• Paid Traffic: Knowing your avatar helps you discover which ad platforms you should buy traffic from—and what targeting options you should use
• Product Creation: Knowing your avatar will help you create a product that your customer needs
• Copywriting: Knowing your avatar helps you describe your offers in a way that speaks to your avatar’s problems, making them want to buy from you
• Email Marketing: Knowing your avatar helps you get more open rates and better conversion rates on your emails… and can even be used to segment-specific email marketing campaigns to different avatars

Any part of the marketing and sales process that interacts with the customer (which is pretty much everything) will improve when you get clear on your customer avatar.

When you get clear on the characteristics of the person who is going to buy, it’s a lot easier to find and present them with the right message that moves them to action.

Download The Customer Avatar Canvas

If you haven’t already, download the Customer Avatar Canvas (found in the Resources section) to create your own customer avatar profile.

Use it to think through any new avatars that you are trying to nail down and clarify.

So, you’ve got your Canvas. As you go through this training, you’ll want to get the critical aspects of each customer avatar on just 1 page. That way, you have an easy reference that will remind you who your audience is, and how you can best market to them.

TIP: Make sure everything you need to know about your customer avatar can be found on this 1 page.

Customer Avatar Part 1: Define Your Avatar

The Customer Avatar – An Overview

Let’s get started. For now, you’ll focus primarily on the center and bottom portions of the Customer Avatar Canvas.

Once you’ve filled out this core information you’ll dig into the “Before” and “After” states.

Be sure to fill out the Customer Avatar Canvas with the qualities of your best customers—the people you want to sell to—because the way you build your customer avatar can actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy for your business.

Here’s why…

When you create a customer avatar, you’re actively choosing who you want to work with.

So your description here needs to be of people you want to attract to your business, not only of people you’ve sold to in the past.

TIP: Think of an existing customer who’s a perfect fit for your business. Build your customer avatar around this person.

Example: Who Are DigitalMarketer’s Customer Avatars?

Here at DigitalMarketer, we have 3 customer avatars:

1. Small business owners: People who buy marketing training so they can use what they learn in their own marketing (or know how to hire people to do it for them)
2. Marketing professionals: People who want to enter the marketing field or current marketing professionals who want to hone their skills
3. Digital agencies: Businesses that sell marketing services to other businesses

These are 3 very different customer avatars, and each one requires its own Customer Avatar Canvas.

These documents help ensure our entire team is on the same page when we build a funnel or promote a new product—because we know exactly who we’re talking to, what they care about, what their problems are, and how our product is going to help improve their lives.

Here’s an example of the canvas filled out for one of our customer avatars, the agency owner. Throughout this article, we’ll give you close-ups of the different sections of this canvas as an example.

Customer Avatars: What to Include

There are 5 major components to a customer avatar:

1. Demographics/Interests
2. Key Purchase Drivers
3. Frustrations & Fears
4. Wants & Aspirations
5. Before & After States

In some cases, you’ll need to survey and actually talk with your existing customers to figure out who your customer avatar is and what they need from you.

In other cases, you’ll already be intimately familiar with the characteristics of your ideal customer.

In any case, move forward.

Don’t wait for surveys or interviews to be conducted to create your first draft of an avatar.

Make assumptions where you have no data or feedback and put it on your shortlist of to-dos to complete your research when you can.

In the meantime, you’ll benefit from having an avatar already built—even if you have to go back and verify/validate a few of the assumptions you made.

Either way, you need to get it all on 1 page where you can see it and begin testing those assumptions.

Now, let’s dive in and build out your Customer Avatar.

Name Your Customer Avatar

First, choose a distinct segment of your customers. You’ll want to:

• Identify the segment
• Give it a name

For instance, let’s say you sell to freelancers. This is a distinct group of people who have common goals, struggles, and needs. You might name this customer avatar Freelancer Fran.

Using our example, we named our avatar Agency Eric.

This step’s simple. Let’s move on to the next.

Fill In Their Demographics/Interests

This section of the canvas is where you should enter all the demographic information you have on your avatar. The goal here is to make your customer avatar feel as human as possible by giving them a name (as we did in the previous section) and filling in details that will help them come to life, such as their…

• Age
• Gender
• Marital status
• Number/age of children
• Location
• Occupation / job title
• Annual income
• Level of education
• Quote that sums up their feelings related to the problem/goal most closely related to your product
• Brands or influencers they follow or engage with
• Where they get information (books, blogs, forums, conferences & events, etc.)

None of this is meant to be a definitive description. It’s simply a way to make your customer avatar REAL. Then, when you target your marketing to your customer avatar, it will appeal to the living, breathing people in this group.

How do you decide on the details to use?

Think of a customer you already have who is the perfect example of this customer avatar. Pull the details from what you know about that person. (Remember, you want your avatar to represent all the people in this segment of your customer base.)

Try to really get inside the heads of the people you know who fit this profile. What’s a statement they might say?

Using some of our avatars, an agency owner might say: “I surround myself with people smarter than me.”

Whereas a freelancer might say: “If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.”

Like the demographic information, creating a quote is meant to help you picture this type of person. So, think generally about this group of people and choose a quote that captures the way they think and talks.

You should also use this section of the Canvas to specify where your avatar gets their information.

What books and blogs do they read? What events do they attend? What thought leaders do they follow?

This information will not only help you understand your avatar, but it will also help you target your ads, so take the time to get it right.

Here’s are some tips on how you can go about collecting this information.

4 Ways to Gather Your Customer Avatar’s Sources of Information

1. Talk to People in This Customer Avatar Group
Your best bet for filling out this section is to talk to people who fit this customer avatar profile. Figure out where they go for information and fill it from there. Forums and communities are a good place to start.

2. Pull from Personal Experience
In some cases, your customer avatar is you, either now or in a previous time in your life. Fill in what you know from personal experience.

That said, don’t solely use your gut to fill out this canvas. You need to validate your ideas and assumptions by checking with other people who fit the profile. Rely on real data that are current and make sure the things you’re listing represent the majority of people who fit this customer avatar.

3. Do a Google Search
Another way to find this information is to do a Google search. Here are a few search terms to get you started:

• “Top books for [whoever your customer avatar is]”
• “Best [customer avatar] conferences”
• “Top [customer avatar] blogs”
• “Best [customer avatar] groups”

4. The “But No One Else Would” Exercise
To separate this customer avatar from everyone else on the planet, you need to niche down. Look for the things they read or do that “no one else would.”

For example, pretty much everyone thinks of Tony Robbins as a source for self-help books. But “pretty much everyone” isn’t your ideal customer. Let’s say entrepreneurs are. No one but entrepreneurs would think of the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.

The idea is to get niche enough that you aren’t including anyone outside your customer avatar’s circle.

Why does this matter?

You’re trying to weed out the people who aren’t a perfect fit for your offers. When targeting your ads, you need to be able to build an audience that’s made up of your customer avatar only.

So you’re going for books, events, and other information sources that only your customer avatar would care about. To do that, you have to cast a narrow net.

Choose thought leaders only your customer avatar would recognize off the street: Mari Smith and Michael Port, for instance. Not Tony Robbins or Oprah.

You get the idea.

Use this template to identify sources of information that perfectly fit your customer avatar (but no one else):

• My customer avatar would read [book/magazine] but no one else would
• My customer avatar would visit [name of blog or forum] but no one else would
• My customer avatar would go to [conference or event] but no one else would

When you’re all done, the “Demographics/Interests” section of your Customer Avatar Canvas should look something like this:

Now it’s your turn.

ACTION ITEM: Fill in your customer avatar’s demographics and interests.

Know Their Frustrations & Fears

Next, we recommend jumping to the bottom-left box on the Customer Avatar Canvas and filling out the “Frustrations & Fears” section. This section will help inform later sections, so it’s important!

In this section, focus on the negative. The problems. List the things this customer avatar is moving away from. The things that frustrate or scare them.

The thing they want to ESCAPE from.

Remember, only list things that are relevant to your offers. For example, wanting to switch careers would be relevant to business opportunities but not offers about improving their health.

Some questions you can ask to uncover more insights here include:

• What keeps them up at night?
• What annoys and/or frustrates them?
• What challenges do they face daily, big and small?
• Who or what is standing in the way of their success and happiness?
• What are some key systems in their life/job that frequently fail?
• What’s something they’re forced to interact with that’s difficult to manage or to understand?
• What feature (or lack of features) do they regularly complain about in related products or services?

Here’s an example of some of our avatar’s fears and frustrations:

ACTION ITEM: Fill in your customer avatar’s frustrations and fears.

Understand Their Wants & Aspirations

You’ve dealt with the negative. Now it’s time to switch gears and think about the positive: what good things does your avatar want? What things are they striving to ADD to their life?

In this space, name several things your customer avatar wants that they don’t have yet.

Here are some questions that can get you started in the right direction:

• What do they want for themselves?
• What do they want for the people around them (family, friends, coworkers, employees, etc.)?
• What do they aspire to be?
• What goals have they set for themselves?
• What values do they hold dear?
• What are their “secret” desires?

TIP: These things should relate to the product you sell or the offer you’re making. Don’t get distracted by unrelated goals. For instance, if they want to lose 25 pounds, that’s relevant to a weight-loss shake but not to digital marketing services.

Keep in mind, most people, though they want things, have values that keep them grounded. So while you think about their goals, try to get in their heads and think about what they value as well and how their values affect the things they want and the goals they set for themselves.

Here’s an example of the “Wants & Aspirations” section of our Customer Avatar Canvas for Agency Eric:

Now it’s your turn.

ACTION ITEM: Fill in your customer avatar’s wants and aspirations.

Identify Their Key Purchase Drivers

Now that you’ve dealt with your avatar’s problems and goals, you’re ready to approach the center section on the canvas: the avatar’s Key Purchase Drivers.

In other words, why would this avatar buy? What things are most important to them?

In this section, you want to think about what your avatar is trying to escape (Frustrations & Fears) and achieve (Wants & Aspirations), and use those insights to think about what is most important to them in your product or service.

Here are some topics to think about:

• Must-have Features
• Expectations of service
• Quality expectations
• Are there any known deal-killers?
• What are some common objections that must be overcome?
• Any additional stakeholders or decision-makers?

At this point, it’s also worth thinking about common objections—AKA, reasons why they might NOT want to buy.

Keep in mind different avatars may have different objections. Let’s compare DigitalMarketer avatars; a freelancer probably wants to know how he’ll recoup the money he spends on a training program or event. But an agency owner doesn’t have that objection. For her, a $500 certification isn’t a problem.

You need to understand what the hot buttons are for each of your customer avatars so you can address their objections in your marketing.

Finally, get more clarity on your avatar’s role in the decision-making process. In some cases, your customer avatar isn’t the person controlling the money or approving the purchase. If that’s the case, you need to know it before you start writing sales copy.

For instance, while marketers typically buy our products at DigitalMarketer, they aren’t the ones making the purchase. It’s their boss who’s making the purchase. So we need to market to the professional, but we need to get them to lobby within their organization so the decision-maker is willing to buy our certification programs and memberships.

There are three main decision-making roles. Your avatar will probably fit into one of these categories:

• Decision-maker: This person/role has the final say in the purchase decision
• Advocate: This person lobbies within the organization for the product/offer, so the decision-maker is willing to say yes
• Champion: This may be the end-user or someone who supports the Advocate, swinging the decision-maker toward a yes

Here are the “Key Purchase Drivers” for our avatar, Agency Eric:

ACTION ITEM: Fill in your customer avatar’s key purchase drivers.

Tips To Find More Details About Your Customer Avatar

If you’re stuck on how to fill out the previous parts of the sheet, Google is a great source to learn more about your customer avatar and ensure your canvas is fully fleshed out.

For instance, a Google search of your competition can help you learn more about your customer avatar. Here, type into the search bar: “[competitor] vs.” Then let Google populate a list of competitors for that brand.

Let’s assume you sell a help desk solution, Zendesk would be a competitor. You’d start by typing into Google: “Zendesk vs” and look at Google’s suggestions for how to complete that search.

Repeat this process again and again to create a list of competitors. Then visit their websites, read their sales copy, and look at who they’re targeting.

From what you see, you can glean all sorts of useful information about your customer avatar:

• More sources of information
• Objections you haven’t thought about
• Things they’re striving for
• Things they’re trying to move away from
• Who the decision-maker might be (and possibly how to address them)

Use this information to fill any gaps in your canvas.

TIP: If all your competitors are hitting the same pain point, it’s definitely a pain point for your target audience. Add it to your Customer Avatar Canvas.

And here’s another tip: do this regularly!

This exercise shouldn’t be a one-and-done project. It should be continuously updated with new data and realizations about your customers.

Be prepared to update your canvas in these two circumstances:

1. You’ve learned that an assumption about your customer avatar is wrong. Update it so your marketing is always on-target.
2. You’re pivoting your business or product line. If you’ll be marketing to a new customer avatar, create a new canvas so you know how to market to this group.

This will help keep your customer avatar current and relevant.

ACTION ITEM: Regularly check in on your Customer Avatar Canvas to make sure it’s as up-to-date as possible.

Customer Avatar Part 2: Before and After States

Introduction To Before & After States

You’ve come a long way. You now know more about who your avatar is, what’s motivating them (both positively and negatively), and what their key purchase drivers are.

The final step to completing your Customer Avatar Canvas is to define your avatar’s “before” and “after” states.

What is your avatar experiencing before purchasing your product? And what are they experiencing after purchasing your product?

In other words, how will your product transform their lives for the better?

As you’re going through this process, keep this marketing truth in mind:

People don’t buy products or services…

They buy transformations.

For example:

• People buy a gym membership to transform their bodies.
• People buy clothes to transform their appearance or elevate their social status.
• People buy marketing certifications to transform their careers or business.

See how that works?

Right now, your avatar is in an undesirable “before” state. They might be in pain, bored, unsuccessful, frightened, or unhappy for any number of reasons.

That’s where your product comes in. It solves their problem so they’re free of pain, entertained, successful, unafraid, and happy.

A good product or service will deliver the “after” state your avatar wants. And good marketing will articulate that transformation from before to after.

Needless to say, getting clear on the desired outcome your offer delivers is fundamental to the success of your business.

And that’s exactly what the next two sections of this article will help you do. You’ll learn how to pinpoint the value you bring to the market by understanding the transformation of your product or service offers.

You’ll do it by asking these 10 questions:

1. What does your prospect HAVE in the before state?
2. What does your prospect HAVE in the after state?
3. How does your prospect FEEL in the before state?
4. How does your prospect FEEL in the after state?
5. What is an AVERAGE DAY like for your prospect in the before state?
6. What is an AVERAGE DAY like for your prospect in the after state?
7. What is your prospect’s STATUS in the before state?
8. What is your prospect’s STATUS in the after state?
9. What is an EVIL that is plaguing the prospect in the before state?
10. How does your prospect conquer it and bring more GOOD to the world in the after state?

Average marketers only articulate what a customer will HAVE if they purchase their product or service.

Great marketers speak to the transformations around how the customer will FEEL, how their AVERAGE DAY will change, how their STATUS will elevate, and how they will solve an EVIL in the world (making them a real-life hero).

So get excited. Because by the time you’re done with this part of the Customer Avatar Canvas, you’ll know how you move each of your customer avatars from their unhappy “before” state to their desired “after” state. Knowing this will help you hone your marketing message and lead to more sales and satisfied customers.

Let’s get started.

Define Their “Before” State

You’ll start by digging into all the things that are making your avatar scared, bored, tired, afraid, or otherwise unhappy.

Fortunately, you’ve already started thinking about some of this information. For clues to your avatar’s “before” state, take another look at the Frustrations & Fears section of the Customer Avatar Canvas:

Keep that information in mind as you answer the next 5 questions.

What Do They HAVE In Their “Before” State?

Start by asking the most basic question: what does your avatar HAVE, right now, that they don’t want?

(Obviously, this thing should be as relevant to your product or service as possible.)

For our avatar Agency Eric, the undesirable thing he has right now is a disorganized team.

How Do They FEEL In Their “Before” State?

Next, think about how that thing makes your avatar FEEL.

For Agency Eric, having a disorganized team makes him feel frustrated, scared, and overwhelmed.

Describe An AVERAGE DAY In Their “Before” State

Next, describe how this affects an AVERAGE DAY in your avatar’s life.

For Agency Eric, the fact that he has a disorganized team means he has to spend his days “coaching up” under-performers when he’d rather be working on big-picture business strategy.

Describe Their STATUS In Their “Before” State

How does this undesirable thing negatively affect their STATUS?

Agency Eric feels disrespected because he’s behind the times. It feels like his agency is always playing second fiddle to other agencies that are more up-to-date on the latest marketing tools, trends, and strategies.

Determine The EVIL They Face In Their “Before” State

Lastly, think about their before state from a moral standpoint. Is there some greater EVIL in the world that you can use to tie into this “before” state?

Agency Eric might feel like he’s a victim of the traditional university model, which is unable to train college graduates in the cutting-edge marketing strategies that really work.

And that’s all there is to it! If you followed along, you’ve now defined your avatar’s undesired before state, and your Customer Avatar Canvas should look something like this:

ACTION ITEM: Fill in your customer avatar’s “before” state.

Determine Their “After” State

Now that you’ve described all the ways that your avatar is miserable, here’s the fun part: it’s time to do a deep-dive into all the ways that your product will make them happier, healthier, more successful people.

Once again, you can refer to the “Wants & Aspirations” part of the Customer Avatar Canvas for help getting started:

You’ll be answering the same 5 questions, only this time, focus on the positive “after” state.

(HINT: Keep your answers from the “before” section handy, because you’ll be referring to them here.)

What Do They HAVE In Their “After” State?

To find out what desirable thing your avatar HAS in their after state, just take the “before” state and flip it.

If their before state involving having a beer belly, their after state might be having six-pack abs. If they’re before state involved having credit card debt, their after state might be having zero debt and plenty of money in their bank account.

Make sense?

In his before state, Agency Eric had a disorganized team. But after training his team with DigitalMarketer, he now has a well-oiled machine.

How Do They FEEL In Their “After” State?

Same thing here: take the way your avatar FEELS in the before state, and flip it.

Agency Eric used to feel scared, frustrated and overwhelmed because of his disorganized team. But now that he’s got a well-oiled machine, he feels confident and in control.

Describe An AVERAGE DAY In Their “After” State

Next, how does your product or service improve your avatar’s AVERAGE DAY?

Agency Eric no longer has to spend his time coaching up under-performers. He no longer has to focus on the details, leaving him free to focus on big-picture strategies to grow his business.

Describe Their STATUS In Their “After” State

Think about how your avatar’s STATUS is elevated from the before state to the after state. (Remember, social status is a hugely important psychological driver for people!)

Agency Eric used to be disrespected because his team was behind the times. But now his company is more successful and respected than ever.

Determine The GOOD They’re Doing In Their “After” State

Last but not least, think about the evil from the before state. Now, describe how your avatar can overcome it and do GOOD for the entire world.

In this step, you want to literally make your avatar a hero!

Agency Eric used to be victimized by the traditional university model. But now that he uses DigitalMarketer to train his team, he’s actually helping train the leaders of the future.

And that’s it! You’re now finished with your Before & After states, and your Customer Avatar Canvas. At this point your “After” state should look something like this:

Hopefully, you can see how powerful these questions are. They give you a quick and easy document you can reference to remind yourself of the highly motivating transformations that your product or service will deliver to your avatar.

Print out your canvas and tape it in several important places. Think about these avatar insights often, and they’ll prove to be worth their weight in gold.

ACTION ITEM: Fill in your customer avatar’s “after” state.

Build Multiple Customer Avatars

So what’s next?

You’ve already built out your first avatar—but don’t stop there. Your business almost certainly has more than one ideal buyer, so build an avatar for each.

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll start churning out multiple avatars representing the different segments of your market.

Any lucrative market segment with a distinct set of goals, information sources, pain points, etc. is deserving of a customer avatar.

By creating more avatars you’ll empower yourself, and your team, to create more targeted marketing campaigns and messages that resonate with your market’s pain points/goals.

The result? More leads & sales for your business.