Clarifying who you serve aids with executive personal branding.
Building your personal brand using the process from Revealing Genius includes a key step that’s different from other approaches.
Revealing Genius does executive personal branding using the time-proven ETA™ process—with its key steps of excavate, tell and affirm. Plus it helps you find full clarity about who you serve and how they will be transformed by working with you. In other words, we help know your “beloved avatar” well.
What exactly do I mean by beloved avatar? I’m glad you asked. To answer that question in this post, I’m first going to tell you the story of one person—my mom. Next, I’m going to define beloved avatar in marketing terms. And, finally—while I could write an entire book about the importance of knowing your beloved avatar as an aid to doing personal branding—I’ll wrap up this post by describing some key reasons you need a beloved avatar.
An Example of Building Your Personal Brand Through Knowing Your Beloved Avatar
My mother is an accomplished keyboard player who is rare in that she plays either piano and pipe organ. As the music director at her church, Mom has been serving her beloved avatar, her congregation, in her rural Pennsylvania hometown for more than 40 years. Parishioners are known to schedule their vacations and weekend activities to align with when Mom is scheduled to play. When she is at the keyboard, holiday masses are standing-room-only. Many couples have paid well in advance to hold a date on Mom’s calendar so she will be able to play at their weddings. And, she’s been told that she’s the only person families would consider having play at the final celebration of a loved one’s life.
Mom says that when she sits down to plan out her music for any occasion, she is thinking only about her beloved avatar. In her mind’s eye, she visualizes the people sitting in the pews and what’s on their minds and hearts—the burdens they are bearing; the fears they are facing; the hopes they have for their families and themselves. Mom believes it is her sacred duty to help her parishioners transcend their problems so they can find peace, even if it’s just for a half hour a week. She says she spends her energy thinking about how they will respond to music that touches their souls.
This is what Mom knows for sure: “Through my music, I enable my congregation to peacefully pause and reflect so they can tap into what makes their spirits soar.”
Mom knows her audience. This helps her go the extra mile to ensure every touchpoint they have with her (and her music) is memorable and exemplary.
A Marketing Definition of Beloved Avatar
In marketing and branding thinking, a beloved avatar is a research-based profile that depicts the bullseye client or customer within your target audience.
When you’re building your personal brand, everything comes down to who you very most want to hear your message, who you want to serve and have in your orbit, who you want to attract into your world.
I call your best target customer your beloved avatar because the word “beloved” is very precise. You want to attract someone you are going to love, someone you are going to do anything for. Think about someone you already consider beloved. You are going to go the extra mile for that person. You will think about them all the time. You are going to want to serve them as best as you possibly can while you’re alive on this earth. It’s that kind of energy.
Some other words that marketers use when they’re talking about your beloved avatar include buyer persona, marketing persona, ideal customer profile and ideal client.
To help you better define and serve your beloved avatar, ask yourself questions like: What do they experience on a day-to-day basis? What challenges do they face? How do they make decisions?
Some of my clients have asked me if they can have more than one avatar. The answer is yes. Here is an example of why I recommend having more than one: The avatar of one woman is the decision-maker at a nonprofit organization—the CEO or a C-level executive. After all, those are the people who sign the checks! However, she’s delivering her leadership training to up-and-comers—20-somethings who just got out of school and are working their first jobs. These are two very different beloved avatars, and being attractive to both helps her draw in new training engagements.
Why You Need a Beloved Avatar to Help You With Building Your Personal Brand
Without question, you want to attract right-fit opportunities. Our time on this earth is finite, so knowing who you want to serve can help you figure out the answers to such key questions as “Who do I want to attract?” and, frankly, “Who do I want to avoid?”
Your beloved avatar is just that—beloved. These are the people you want to spend more of your time with. So clearly discerning who that is can be life-changing.
Defining your beloved avatar is a core component of building your personal brand, which in turn will help define your next milestone and enable the transformation you can help people make—which in turn can transform the world.
Are you looking for a new job or a board seat—or to start a business, attract more clients, launch a new product or write a book? Whatever your goal, defining your beloved avatar is the ultimate exercise to help you gain clarity so that you can attract more of what you want into your life.
The process of clarifying who that avatar is a key part of the ETA process from Revealing Genius—and what helps make our process so unique. Get started by downloading the complimentary resource from our website—and by signing up for our free e-newsletter; simply add your email in the box at the bottom of this webpage.
If you’re an on-purpose healthcare leader in transition, you’re my beloved avatar. I look forward to hearing from you.
