Creating Multiple Customer Avatars

by Penny Webb, Publisher of Lift Magazine

When I became the owner of Lift Magazine six months ago, I worked with a Business Coach to really get my head around exactly who was reading Lift and more importantly, WHY they were reading Lift.

Not only did this serve to drive the editorial and content creation side of the magazine, it also helped me explain who our readers are to advertisers. The more specific I could be about exactly who our readers are, what they do, when they do it, what solution they're looking for and where they are looking for that solution, the more impact our media kit had.

We used the Digital Marketer's Customer Avatar Worksheet from the Digital Marketer Increase Engagement Series as the foundation for creating our Customer Avatars. From a selection of focus groups and an online Facebook survey, we surmised we had four types of readers. Four types of Customer Avatars at different stages of their single parent journey:

• Overwhelmed
• Healing
• Empowered
• Moving On

The survey allowed us to understand exactly where our readers were. It was helpful to note that 40% of our readers were in the Healing stage and 30% were in the Empowered stage. As 70% of our readers were sitting in amongst these two phases, the majority of our content focused on those areas of Healing and Empowerment.

But it was when we followed the Customer Avatar Worksheet that we became super clear about our four types of readers. Based on our customer research, we created specific avatars. We gave them names, ages, kids, jobs and got really clear on the solution they were searching for. We even gave them a mantra!

Having an Avatar like this became incredibly useful when talking to advertisers (and if you run a business that has products or services that could help our single mums heal and empower themselves, you can download our media kit by clicking here ). We could tell the advertisers what our mums were searching for. And these business could tell straight away if it was a match for their own target market or not.

So, let's look at an example. This is Sam. She is in the Empowered phase and is ready to fly!

See what I mean? From that Customer Avatar, we can tell potential advertisers that 30% of our readers are looking for information on dating, education and travel.

Or they may be a match for our other avatars:

• Jess is in the overwhelmed phase and looking for legal and financial help. She's also navigating a house move so is looking at real estate, storage and moving companies.
• Laura is healing and focusing on her health, wellness, mindset and daily routine.
• Rebecca is kicking single mum butt and moving on. She is focused on asset building, financial independence and blending families (she's moving in with her new partner).

Straight away, a potential advertiser can look at these Customer Avatars and know whether they are a match to their OWN Customer Avatars or not.

It's such a worthwhile exercise to go through for any business owner. I have become very clear on the challenges our readers face and what they are looking for. Not only does this allow me to provide solutions for them through the content we create, I can help them find companies that can actually assist them with those solutions they're searching for too.

You can check out the Digital Marketer's Customer Avatar Worksheet and process here.

To read the Lift Magazine Media Kit in full and to get to know Jess, Sam, Laura and Rebecca a little bit more, click here. We are currently taking advertising and editorial bookings for our Spring issue, to be published the first week of September. You can make an online advertising booking by clicking here.