Are you selling to a person or a statistic?

Don’t make the mistake of selling to a vague avatar

It’s easy to fall for the trap of selling to an avatar that seems clearly defined on the surface but doesn’t actually translate to anything meaningful. These deceptive avatars simply state an age range, sex, and income level that makes it near impossible to gain any insight into your target market.

Your audience is a lot more than a sentence that states: “single male, aged 28-36 years old, living in an urban environment".

Demographics are sexy but buying decisions are often more emotional than logical. This means that your brand must resonate with your target buyer’s aspirations, lifestyle, and values. 

And this is what smart marketing is all about…

Targeting a specific audience profile

Successful brands categorise customers into differing segments 

According to social scientist and consumer futurist Arnold Mitchell, consumers can be defined by their values and lifestyle (VALS). People fall into categories such as innovators, thinkers, believers, achievers, strivers, experiencers, makers, and survivors.

But consumer tastes, income levels, and preferences change over time

Your market is dynamic and ever-changing

In his book How To Write Advertising That Sells, author Clyde Bedell makes the important point that it is more important that an advertiser knows their customer than it is for them to know their product. This is especially important when you consider how quickly life can change. 

Think about it like this, older people die and leave your market, newly weds buy houses and start families, which then changes their priorities, and fresh graduates with new ideas join the workforce. All these factors change the way messages are accepted by a target audience that sees your ads on their feed.

People entering and leaving a market is a natural cycle 

If you’ve read Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, you’ll notice how this links to the five levels of product awareness and how it influences a market’s sophistication levels.

To put it another way, your messaging will have to evolve the more aware people become of your product and its substitutes. 

Target personality traits that remain consistent

To overcome the friction that comes from marketing to a constantly evolving market, smart brands build an audience strategy that identifies people based on their values, lifestyle, interests, and beliefs.

These traits tend to remain constant and span over a wide range of ages.

Approach your audience as individuals

Your audience can be grouped through a variety of characteristics. But at the same time, you should still advertise to them as individuals rather than a group. 

The reason for this is because people have their own  individual interest that often differentiates them from others within the same group. For example, a facial cleanse brand can attract women who have opposing political interests, different relationship status, and geographic locations.

In conclusion

Be specific in your offers

Identity is fundamental in the success of your offer. As mentioned above, a wide range of people can be attracted to the same product and what drives this audience diversity is people’s innate ability to see themselves in the product. 

This happens when brands focus on solving a specific issue - and in the example above, it would be blemish reduction. Focusing on a specific problem will make an offer evergreen and would align in a wide range of customer lifestyles.