What is a Customer Avatar?
If you haven’t already guessed, a customer avatar is your ideal customer - not your average customer - but the perfect customer who will want to purchase from you again and again.

Once you have discovered your customer avatar you can build a strong marketing strategy and improve your user experience.

Why you need a Customer Avatar

• Tailor your marketing - email marketing will be so much easier once you know ‘who’ you are writing to. No more generic, soulless chit chat - you will be able to adjust your tone and voice to engage with your customer and create campaigns that they can’t resist!
• Improve user experience - Whether that means a slick app for shopping at your store or choosing different social media platforms.
• Product development - Once you know what makes your Custom Avatar tick, you can develop products and services that they need.
• Write relevant content - Coming up with interesting content is always a challenge if you are blindly targeting the masses but once you’ve established your target customer you should be able to come up with plenty of insightful, helpful and engaging content.
• Paid Advertisements - Your customer avatar will help you decide where you should run paid adverts. You will also know which demographics you need to be targeting which will tell you what wording you need in order to get the best return of investment.

How to Create Your Customer Avatar

Do your research - If you are an established business then you have a great starting point as you can ask your customers for feedback:

• Set up polls
• Send out surveys or questionnaires
• Interviews
• Analyse data from third party analytics

Build Your Customer Avatar - Give your fictional customer a name and try to get a picture of them in your mind. Think about their demographics ie age, gender, income etc.

• Try to envision where they get their information - Online search? Word of mouth? Instore? Books?
• What are their goals? What are they trying to achieve?
• What are their values?
• What are their pain points?
• What challenges are they trying to overcome?
• Why do they buy from you?
• What might stop them from making a purchase?

It’s likely your business will have more than one ideal customer, depending on the services and products you offer. If this is the case you will need to repeat the steps and create an avatar for each one.

Short Term Pain for Long Term Gain!
If you are willing to put in the hard work now and create your customer avatar(s) you will have much higher success with your marketing and sales. You will be able to focus your marketing spend to the right areas, improve engagement and build a strong, loyal customer base.

Need help building your avatar? Contact Creative Remedy for more information.

1. Give Away Branded Treats
Give away branded treats with every purchase or order. Cupcakes and treat bags are always popular but think a little outside the box… it might just grab you a bit of attention!

2. Hold a Halloween Event
Be part of the Halloween spirit and if appropriate make it a dress up day at work.

3. Halloween Themed Graphics
Create spooky or Halloween themed graphics and add a funky graphic to your branding... this can used on your social media and website.

4. Get Creative with #Hashtags or Voucher Codes!
You can brainstorm a bespoke hashtag or voucher code for your customers to use to promote how they use your products or services or to save money on products and services just for that day. #Halloween2021, #Boo, #FindTheSpider, #TrickOrTreat

5. Hold a Halloween Competition
Hold a Halloween competition with public voting on a specific theme e.g. For a veterinary practice… best spooky dog costume. You will need to advertise this through your website or social media.

Treat by the way!... Happy Halloween!

Hopefully you’ve already got email marketing set up as part of your marketing strategy for your business- if not then we recommend you read ‘Email Marketing For Small Businesses’ to find out why having one is an essential part of your marketing plan.

If you already use email marketing as part of your marketing strategy then great, but it’s important to update your email marketing strategy regularly in order to get the best results for your business. It’s no good just planning then leaving it for a few years. Over time your business changes and so do your customers. If your products or services have changed in order to meet demand, then your customers or your customers’ needs will most definitely have changed too.

Update Your Customer List
It’s so important to make sure you have an up-to-date customer list. If you’re using old contacts the chances are there are several incorrect details as well as subscribers who are no longer interested in your products or services. You need to be tough and cull any contacts that are no longer interested. Finding out who to keep and who to delete might seem like a bit of a task but it’s vital not only for your engagement but also to keep on the right side of the law with GDPR.

Email marketing services such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor will help you weed out the old customers and see which customers might just need a bit of a push to re-engage with your business.

Organise Your List
Once you’ve decided who to keep and who to throw out it’s a good idea to organise your customer list, whether that’s by the service they are interested in or behaviour such as previous purchases. Once you’ve got your groups sorted it makes it easier to tailor personalised email campaigns and hopefully increase engagement.

Make Privacy a Priority
You want to build trust with your customers and one way of ensuring that is by letting the customer know that their privacy is paramount to you. Keep on top of all legislation regarding privacy and make sure your customers are aware of the things you are doing to keep their data safe and secure - this can be detailed in your privacy policy. Finally, ensure it is easy for the customer to unsubscribe- make it clear and simple.

Make your Customer Feel Valued
Personalised email marketing is bound to have a much more positive effect on your customer engagement than the scatter-gun effect of just random content that might not resonate with all your subscribers. If you sell a product, you could consider sending out personalised birthday emails with discounts or for services- let them know how you are there to help and support them. You could also look at what's happening in the world currently- many businesses offer discounts to NHS staff or Key Workers in thanks for their continued hard work.
 
Book a health check if you need any support reviving your Email Marketing or Marketing Strategy.

Business Support
This week we have been supporting businesses with:

• Advice on managing the situation
• Coronavirus statement writing
• Website content writing and blogging
• Graphics to support website content
• Email marketing to notify employees, customers and suppliers
• Training to help businesses manage their digital content

 
Creative Remedies
If you have had to self-isolate; close down your office, classes, services; or had difficulties distributing products due to reduced contact with your wider supply chain, here are some digital marketing platforms that can help your business thrive through these difficult times.

• Email Marketing
• Social Media
• Blogging
• Video
• Landing Pages

Free online tools to facilitate your communication:

• Skype
• Zoom
• AnyDesk
• TeamViewer
• WhatsApp groups
• Facebook groups

We are here to offer support in any format you need. Whether that is advice, developing creative ideas to gain exposure in this unpredictable time, creating content or delivering final solutions.
 
Treatments & Cures
Here are some proactive tips to help you achieve and stay positive:

• Marketing is usually one of your largest expenses and the first thing to be pulled when you don’t have the budget. Question what you need to continue operating successfully and think of new channels to reach your customers.
  
• Don’t cancel plans for new products or services, adapt… think of different ways you can deliver these.
• Make your marketing plan or learn how to use a new social platform.
  
• The internet and digital marketing will be your close friends, learn new skills if you don’t have the budget to out-source.
• Communication is key, well informed customers will stick with you through the tough times.

Regular email marketing is one of the best ways to connect and build trusting relationships with new and existing customers. This digital marketing tool allows you to communicate and convert leads into sales.

If you’re looking for an email marketing service you might be wondering which one will be best for you and your business. You might be confused or have been put off by all the digital and marketing regulations. The fact is you need something that is intuitive and easy to use and that will let you track the performance of your email marketing campaigns. Here are some of the best email marketing services available to help you make your decision:

Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers. The software is easy to use with a free plan that allows users to send up to 12000 emails a month to 2000 subscribers. Mailchimp has a substantial range of integrations and apps to allow you to make the best use of the marketing tools you already use and it gives users insight on how successful previous email marketing campaigns have been and suggestions to make the next one an even greater success.

Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is an email marketing app that allows users to quickly and efficiently create their own email campaigns with a strong emphasis on design. The software utilises a drag and drop feature to create personalised emails and lets users easily automate their campaigns. With the basic package starting at just £9 a month Campaign Monitor is a cost effective tool that allows you to send 2500 emails across campaigns. Insight Analytics gives users all the vital information on the success of their email campaign.

Constant Contact
Constant Contact’s pricing is on a sliding scale depending on the number of subscribers starting at £15 a month for up to 500 contacts for the Email plan or from £30 a month for Email Plus. Both plans come with some great features including list management, template building and audience segmentation. Constant Contact offers fantastic customer support and a huge library of resources.

Sendinblue
Fantastic for anyone who is new to email marketing, Sendinblue is simple to use and has some truly brilliant tools to help users create amazing email campaigns. Sendinblue pricing is quite different from other Email Marketing apps in that it all depends on how many emails you send. Their free plan allows up to 300 emails a day but all your emails will have the Sendinblue branding on them.

Drip
Best for e-commerce, Drip allows users to personalise emails based on visitor behaviour. The intelligent customer data allows businesses to create bespoke content such as price drop information and unique discount codes.

Newsletter Remedy
Creative Remedy offers an email marketing service called Newsletter Remedy which is on the Campaign Monitor platform.

In 4 simple steps you can create positive side effects for your business!

1. Create Content
2. Upload Contacts
3. Send
4. Track

Need urgent medical assistance?

• Do you need to revamp your template design?
• Do you need help creating content?
• Do you need full account or campaign management?

Creative Remedy can support you whatever your diagnosis. Book a FREE health check here: