How To Create A Marketing Avatar And Increase Your Sales Ten Times Over

Before you begin a marketing campaign for your personal training business or fitness center or any business for that matter, do you establish EXACTLY who it is that you're going to target your product or service toward?

Promoting yourself can be expensive and time consuming; time and money that could be better spent doing continued education courses (CEC's) or purchasing new equipment or going on a well deserved holiday. So why not make sure every cent of your marketing investment attracts the most relevant prospect enquiries and conversions by creating a personal training client avatar?

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What Is A Marketing Avatar?

A marketing avatar is the process of distinguishing exactly who it is that you want to do business with by listing characteristics, hobbies, trends etc. of a specific type of consumer.

For example, if you own a ladies only gym and you're establishing your niche, the first characteristic of your target market's avatar would be that they are female, then you may consider age, income etc.

The avatar that you create with this process should give you a very clear idea of:

a. Exactly who your target market is.

b. How/where you can best promote yourself or your business to appeal to your target market.

There are two types of marketing campaigns in my opinion; 'hit and miss' marketing, like personal trainer profile plaques in a gym and avatar specific marketing like facebook advertising for example.

The Problem With Personal Trainer Profile Plaques

They both cost about the same, but the results differ significantly.

Think about who reads a gym profile plaque. EVERYONE! Sure you'll get a few clients from it, but are they the clients you REALLY want to train?

On the other hand, with facebook advertising (just one example) you're able to systematically eliminate people you don't want to see your advertisement by narrowing down your viewing  field by location, income, gender etc. This essentially qualifies every single person who sees your ad to your target market i.e. people you WANT to train or do business with.

Why Do You Need An Avatar?

• You can create targeted marketing campaigns specific to the person you want to attract based on their habits and demographic.
• Establish measurable results for your marketing budget.
• Forecast your marketing plan more accurately based on seasonal variations.
• Develop your personal branding to appeal to your target market.
• Client retention will improve because you're motivated and equipped to help them achieve their goals.
• Businesses built on hit and miss marketing cannot last, they devour too much time and money.
• You become viewed as an expert in your field when all of your clients fit a certain mould.
• You can set your pricing structure and EFT more accurately.

The way to create your avatar is quite simple, though I do recommend spending some time considering who you wish to train.

Think about your experience and specialty. If you're a competitive bodybuilder for example, solely training overweight people will get pretty boring pretty fast. But if you want to focus on muscular development or contest preparation then you have a start to creating your avatar.

How To Create Your Marketing Avatar

1. Grab a piece of cardboard or open a new word document and call it 'My Avatar'.
2. Find a generic picture online (no blue people) or in a magazine of your ideal client (gender, approximate age etc.).
3. Put this picture at the top of your avatar page and then give them a name. It doesn't matter who it is or what you call them, but make them real.
4. How old are they exactly?
5. Where do they live?
6. Give them a job (or don't if you're after housewives/househusbands)
7. What do they like/dislike?
8. Where do they shop?
9. Are they online (facebook, twitter, myspace)?
10. Do they train currently?

There's 10 to get you started; try and think of 50-60 more characteristics to describe this person.

You can modify and add to their profiles at will. If one avatar isn't working, maybe you're marketing in the wrong channels or in the wrong places. Make several avatars to compliment your range of services but target each one specifically when you're promoting.

I always find making avatar profiles to be a lot of fun, in fact, I have several avatars for my business is fitness, I wonder if I got it right?

Ben

Additional Reading:

The Problem With Personal Trainer Profile Plaques
Half A Tonne Of Fat And Counting!
How To Brand Your Personal Training Business
13 Ways To Improve Your Personal Training Client Retention Rate