It’s a huge mistake.

And yet, I see it happen all the time.

A marketer or business owner gets so focused on WHAT they’re selling that they forget to think about WHO they’re selling it to.

This is the kiss of death for a marketing campaign, and sometimes even an entire business.

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.

That’s also why we created the Customer Avatar Worksheet (that you can download for FREE), to help you document everything about your customer avatar.

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

• WHO your ideal customer is
• WHERE they’re hanging out online
• WHAT their challenges are

But how do you actually do all that?

Don’t worry—I’ll dig into the details later on in this post. First, I want to make sure you understand why customer avatars are so important, and why I refer to them as the “Swiss army knife” of marketing.

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 applies 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 and compels them to want to buy
• 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 “touches” 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 your products and services, it’s a lot easier to find and present them with a message that moves them to action.