Do you know what the only thing better than having nailed your avatar is?
Turning her back into 3 avatars!
Ok, ok, I know that sounds crazy; before you label me as a heretic, let me explain.
What makes having a really clear avatar so powerful? It’s the fact that you speak to a particular person in a particular situation. You stop being vague and inclusive, you talk to this new friend you’ve discovered and you figure out how to relate to her and to provide value to her life.
And then you discover there are thousands – or more – women in the world who relate to her, and you! And that is exhilarating when they first discover your blog.
But the fact is, you’re not just writing to her, you’re writing to the thousands of women who read your blog and identify with your avatar. But they are not all your avatar. They have their own unique life situations and, most importantly, are at various stages of the journey you envision for your avatar.
A Goal
What is your avatar’s goal? We don’t always think about it this way, but every blog has a focus, right? You have a topic or challenge or life situation that you are helping your avatar to learn, deal with, thrive in, etc. You have a goal for your avatar to achieve, which creates a need for you – and your amazing content, resources, services, etc. – in their life.
And where there is a goal there is a journey.
What is the journey that you are taking your avatar on? If you’ve heard successful bloggers talking about leading from ahead or beside, they are alluding to the journey. Are you closer to your goal than your avatar, or are you at the same stage as her? Some bloggers start their blog at the beginning of the journey and over time they pay off their debt, become better parents, learn how to decorate their house, etc – and their blog represents the various stages of their journey.
If you can identify the journey of your avatar, and then segment that journey into stages, that becomes a much more powerful foundation on which to build your blog, and especially to turn your blog into a business.
Here is the easiest way to do this. Pick the primary goal you are helping your avatar with, and then list three stages that basically represent them 1) being interested in or aspiring to the goal, 2) working toward the goal and experiencing obstacles, and 3) achieving some measure of success in achieving the goal.
What does that look like for your avatar? Once you have acquired any significant amount of traffic, you certainly have readers who fall into each of your three new stages or categories.
Which readers have you talked to that fit into those different stages? Take time to jot down some notes about what each stage looks like.
For more on this watch How to Create a Journey for Your Avatar
Let’s talk about what you can do once you have identified who your avatar is at each stage in her journey.
Using 3 Avatar Stages
Having a single avatar is crucial for maintaining focus when you are creating your site identity, mission, tagline, site design and core content. This ensures the pieces are cohesive and will appeal to that single person you are speaking to.
But segmenting that avatar into 3 versions of that avatar into 3 stages will let you do things like:
- Segmenting your opt-ins, targeting each stage with a different lead magnet
- Segmenting your initial follow up campaign – speaking to new subscribers further about the very topic that convinced them to join your list
- Incorporate tags that allow you to pitch:
- Affiliate products that are most relevant during the early stage
- Your own products that are most relevant for the middle stage
- Your services to those in the advanced stage
- Segmenting your nurture campaign to keep your list engaged, improving open and click rates
- Tracking their journey and identifying those who have done things like
- Advanced through the stages
- Engaged your emails
- Recommended you to their friends
These are some of the many benefits of segmenting your audience – which in turn allows you to tap into the power of tags, trigger links, rules, workflows, and various automations available in many email marketing systems.
Alicia Eichmann