Reinventing the Entrepreneur: Turning Your Dream Business into a Reality

Chapter 4

Your Subscriber Avatar: Knowing Your Ideal Customer

After you’ve selected your market, know that it’s big enough, and looks like it will be a lot of fun as a great hobby or lifestyle business, the next step is to create one, two, or even three subscriber avatars. A subscriber avatar defines the customer who embodies the most common characteristics of the market you’re targeting. In other words, who is your who?

First, pick a name that makes the most sense to you. You don’t need a last name, but you need to give your average customer, the person that you’re thinking about, a name. Now when you’re considering creating a product, writing copy, or writing an issue, you can ask yourself, “Is Julie going to be interested in this? Is Ron going to find this useful? Is Ben going to be able to act on my advice?” You actually want to think along those lines.

Remember, you’re not just building a list of names and e-mail addresses. You’re building a community of like-minded people who are going through the same challenges or have the same experiences, interests, and hobbies. Ultimately, they are looking to you for help. When you identify with a single person, you’ll write to someone specific so your end result will be better and more distinct.

You might actually have more than one customer avatar to represent both men and women on your list and in your community. If that’s the case, you want to make sure that you deliver a message that resonates with both of them.

However, most markets ...