Getting to know your ‘beloved avatar’ well will help you succeed in the marketplace.
When I work with healthcare leaders like you to build your professional brand, a key thing we need to talk about is who you serve.
Defining who is your ideal customer or client—what we at Revealing Genius call your “beloved avatar”—may seem tricky at first. You might say, “I serve people.” But then I’m going to ask you, “Which people?”
Identifying key details about who you are meant to serve will light you up and send you on the path to doing the great work of your life. I know this because I’ve seen it happen.
OK, you say, but why do you use the phrase “beloved avatar”?
In video games and internet forums—indeed, in the coming “metaverse”—an avatar is an icon or a figure representing a person. So, as we talk about your brand, your beloved avatar is a representation of your ideal client or customer. It’s the person in your mind’s eye that you can help with a key transformation. To build your professional brand successfully, you’ll need to know a lot about people who fit this bill.
It’s very important that your avatar isn’t just your avatar, but your beloved avatar. Your beloved avatar represents people you want to spend more of your time with. People you would move mountains to serve. People you would get out of bed every day charged up to help achieve a transformation in their lives—as only you can do.
This is heady stuff. But defining your beloved avatar is a process with reasonably concrete steps. Let’s first talk about how you can develop your beloved avatar and then how you can use that deep understanding of your best client or customer to help you successfully take your brand to market.
Build Your Professional Brand Through Knowing Your ‘Beloved Avatar’
To start, try an exercise that’s likely to be familiar to you already; then we’ll do a very similar exercise directly related to defining your beloved avatar.
The familiar exercise is to answer this question: What things are on your list of ideal attributes for your ideal life partner? Get out a piece of paper (or your favorite electronic note-taking app) and jot some ideas down.
Now that you’re warmed up, try it for your beloved avatar. What things are on your list of ideal attributes for a person that you’d love to serve with your unique professional talents? Be sure to note these ideas too.
Next, you can test your early thinking by surveying people you think represent your beloved avatar. Ask them, “What’s the one question I could answer for you in my area of expertise?” Their responses will be telling.
You can also test your initial thoughts by looking at your marketing campaigns. Where do you get engagement? Follow up with a series of tests. Start with a small sample and up the ante as you see where the best results come from. Who is responding to your message?
A final way to shed light on your beloved avatar is by answering such key questions as:
- What are their goals and values?
- What are their challenges and pain points?
- What are their usual objections?
Don’t Cast a Wide Net; Go Spear Fishing
Once you know your beloved avatar well, you can go spearfishing rather than casting a wide net with your marketing. That is, you can target the people you most want to serve.
Are you using paid ads? Are you using posting content on social media? Are you developing a resume, curriculum vitae or LinkedIn profile?A website? When you’re putting these materials together, have a picture and description of your beloved avatar at your desk. Write to them. Design the ad for them. Envision the social media post for them. Create the one-page bio, LinkedIn profile, resume or CV for them.
When you focus on that bullseye client as you create these materials, you’re not excluding other potential customers or clients. Instead, you’re writing content that is deep and meaningful for—and that resonates with—your beloved avatar. Ironically, when you do this, you will attract other folks too.
For example, my own beloved avatar at Revealing Genius is leaders in healthcare. But I get calls all the time, saying, “I see you have a lot of physicians. I see you work with a lot of healthcare technology executives. I’m not in that space. Can you help me?” And the answer is yes, absolutely, I can!
In this post, I’ve given you a lot of solid strategies for how to build your personal brand through knowing your beloved avatar. But you really don’t have to go it alone. Each Revealing Genius 7-Day Summit brings many more exercises and approaches to help you excavate, tell and affirm your personal brand. Plus, you’ll attend with a cohort of supportive professionals who are also intent on being successful with their executive branding.
Won’t you join us?
