Digital marketing friends! We need to chat.
It seems every person in the digital marketing space asks me this question. “Who is your customer avatar?” “What do they like?” “Where do they hang out virtually?”
They go on to talk about the magic bullet when it comes to knowing who your customer avatar is. Even the “manifestation-style” online marketers will say you need one.
“If you picture them reading your book, loving your product, oh then EVERYONE will come and you will be rich, rich, rich!” they say.
Ugh… Just Ugh…
I say this because if you are an Intuitive Content Creator, this is NOT natural.
What is a Customer Avatar?
A customer avatar represents your ,ideal client, aka a “marketing persona” or customer profile. It’s used to help you narrow down who your ideal buyer is and how to reach them. You could also look at it as the information you get from your market research and even from years of selling and recognizing who is a “raving fan” and who is not.
My problem is not using a customer avatar or conducting marketing research, it’s that the Creative Muse (Intuitive Information) doesn’t fit nicely into a box.
It comes TO you.
And it comes to you because you are the closest person to the person that information wants to reach (see: On The Map: How Do Spirits Find Their Mediums?).
The thing that bothers me about the customer avatar question is that it can shift your focus from “Who needs this information and how do I reach them?” to “My ideal customer is…”
And shifting the focus of the message can seal the energy off from those who it is meant for.
The Creative Muse is a form of “open channeling” and then suddenly you’re trying to fit it into a box because you enter the online marketing world.
How Intuitive Writing and the Creative Muse ACTUALLY Works
Let me tell you something about Intuitive Writing because unfortunately, it does NOT work that way and I’m truly feeling if one more person asks me this question I’m going to SCREAM!!!!
Yes, that would be great, I guess if I knew exactly who my target market was and I marketed directly to them.
Maybe it would’ve saved me 10 years of confusion and struggle and I’d be in Bali right now in my dream villa and private pool from all the passive income.
But that isn’t what happened.
And I believe, a big part of why that didn’t happen is because I kept TRYING to answer the customer avatar question and think like a “traditional” online marketer!
Honestly, not knowing WHO helped me turn inward and figure out who I AM instead of who THEY were.
Why I stopped thinking about avatars and how it helped.
It wasn’t until one day I decided “I don’t know who my customer avatar is and I don’t care!”
So far it’s people who feel a call to write (scribes who don’t yet know they’re scribes) and they show up as male, female, younger, older, and somewhere in the middle. Sometimes it could be a mom, a single person, someone married without kids, therapists, midwives, PR people, marketing firms, and podcasters.
You see how there seems to be no pattern or rhyme or reason to the people who show up as my clients and say “You kept popping in my head for some reason”?
Well… that’s because I do soul mate client meditations! And then apparently, my soul mate clients get a thought in their head and find me somehow.
Which is pretty amazing if you think about it.
Let me explain what I mean.
The Creative Muse and Marketing
I want to talk for a minute about the Creative Muse as it relates to marketing.
First, when you are “open channeling” or an Intuitive Channel for your creative endeavors it will feel as if it COMES to you.
You don’t say, “What does my customer avatar want to hear today?” No.
You are likely doing something else entirely. Taking a walk, sitting at the beach, taking your shower, waking up in the morning.
You usually aren’t asking! That’s a big key, it’s coming to you.
It feels like a calling. A quest even. A message that needs to be delivered and you have no idea what or to who.
Like those fun posts you see on Facebook that say “I don’t know who needs to hear this right now. But if you’re going through a rough time… don’t cut your bangs”.
And we all laugh because who DOESN’T need to hear that?
Here’s what I’ve learned and that I want you to know if you’re still with me here.
Don’t worry about who your customer avatar is! Someday, as your business is established and you have figured out how to niche down, and niche again, you will know.
Until then, trust that the universe knows.
The universe already knows. They know who they are writing to and you are that closest point.
When I do the soul mate client meditation, for example, I’m just saying “I’m open to receiving a new client”. Then that person’s higher self is saying to them “We’ve found the person who can help you”.
Likely that client has been thinking “I could really use help with my writing…I feel I should be writing and I don’t know why.”
The universe, or our higher selves more likely, connect us.
It works in the case if I’m also looking to outsource something. I will think “I can use help with x, who is the best person for me?” And I pay attention to what thoughts pop into my mind or when someone will “randomly” tell me about someone who does that exact same thing.
With one caveat.
I do think you can be a niche without knowing your customer avatar. If you are Boss-Moms and you target men in your advertising – good luck with that.
Or in my case, if one isn’t open to talking about awakening to your gifts, I’m not your gal either. So I do choose people who would like Hay House, Manifestation Babe, or Intuition in my marketing because they are more likely to be more open to my style of being.
It’s not my calling to convince someone they are meant to write if they hate writing. Instead I want to support them as they discover it, the same way I needed support as I was figuring it out.
We DO need to wave our “freak flag” in the places our soul mate clients are most likely to see it.
While you’re figuring it out, show up!
But what I’ve found is that if I show up, fully myself, express my feelings without hiding them or pretending that I’m not an Intuitive Channel, people connect to me who I NEVER would’ve in a million years thought of as my ideal client. Often not even in this country and I can’t figure out how they find me!
So create and avatar if you want to, but if it isn’t creating miracles in your work LET IT GO.
Just go on the quest like the Knight or Knightess that you are.
Questions you can ask instead
If you don’t know who you customer avatar is or how to do market research yet, try asking questions like “What would you like me to share today”? and then write it down. Or “How do I reach them?” And write it down.
“What should I write about in this moment?”
“What does someone need to hear today that I can help them with?”
“What skill do I have that I can share and someone out there will find it beneficial?”
Letting go can be more POWERFUL than honing in on your imaginary person.
And even if you LOVE this whole “customer avatar” thing, just stop asking me about mine!!!
No matter what, as I heard Dana Malstaff say “Marketing is a bit of a mysterious fig” no matter how you look at it.
Attracting customers with your strong energy to the point where they want to know more, is also a good strategy. And who wouldn’t want to hear what you have to say?
Look at WHO is showing Up
One other thing I’d like to mention. There are clues for your marketing that support your creative muse in the feedback you receive.
I get emails that say “I booked an appointment with you and I just started writing again”. They will tell me how they used to write and stopped and how just booking a session with me they found themselves typing away and emailing me about it (amazing, right?!). I’ve even received pictures of writing in other languages from ferry trips where she was inspired to write again and sent it to me.
Pure Gold receiving feedback to help you understand how this channeled content is helping those it reaches – if you just ALLOW IT.
I want to make sure you don’t misunderstand me and think that I don’t believe in passive income, digital marketing, or creating a living online.
I just want this notion that everyone NEEDS to know their customer avatar to get out of my conversations because it doesn’t allow for us to experiment, grow, and get there when we get there.
IT CAN BLOCK YOU FROM MOVING FORWARD!
If your customer avatar is working for you…
If this idea of a customer avatar is working for you and you are getting great results knowing all about them and who they are – then keep doing it!
If ANYTHING works for you then you should be doing it, no questions asked.
I’m mostly speaking to online marketers who have this as their stock question for anything you are working on. “So who’s your customer avatar? Where do they hang out? How old are they and what do they do?”
I’ve heard it so many times I could cry.😭
I just don’t think we’re all supposed to spend time figuring this out on the front end, instead of just letting our SOUL SPEAK AND SEEING WHERE IT TAKES US. Good old fashioned trial and error.
What would we write and share if we didn’t think we would be criticized or ostracized? If we had all the money in the world, what would we write then? How would we share it?
There’s more than one way to do business my friends.
Think of someone who has a physical product, something like the Elf on the Shelf. It started with an idea to write a book about a family tradition she had growing up.
Here’s what Christ Pitts, the co-creator of Elf on the Shelf said about it:
“It was during that time at home that I looked up and I saw our elf that we grew up with sitting on a shelf,” said Bell. “I was like, ‘Mom, why don’t we write a story about the elf on the shelf?’ I can tell you honestly, at that time, there was no ― and I do mean zero ― intention of starting a business or really doing much of anything other than a fun project for mom and I to work on together.”
This has grown like wildfire and I can’t say for sure, but I doubt she was wondering who her customer avatar was when she developed it. Likely, she had a passion for her product and wanted it out there for KIDS. Not only for one little girl, ages 3-10, who likes to do x, y, and z.
There are many ways to be in business and to create quality digital and physical products. Once they catch on and start selling, THEN you can begin to figure out who your customer avatar is by looking at the demographics of people who are responding to your offer and clicking on your links.
Without your demographics, it’s the cart before the horse.
You need to be passionate about your offer, get out there and market it, and THEN figure out who is buying it and how you can reach more people like the ones who love it (scale it).
I’m telling you, if someone says they don’t know who their avatar is, just leave them be to go forward and figure it out their own style of digital marketing.
Not everything in business is all neat and tidy or one-size-fits-all.
Online business is hard, messy, and exciting all at once!
Plus, the universe will hook you up if you show up consistently like my clients who say I pop into their head. If you think about it too long that will seem impossible and yet, it happens! All the way from sunny California to Australia and Norway.
I’d love to hear from you if you’ve been able to create an online business WITHOUT using a customer avatar? Or, if you have felt stuck when trying to come up with one? Let me know in the comments if you too if you are sick of people asking you this!
XOXO,
Hey Nicole! I so agree with this. I’ve found working with Healers, that more often than not- their “ideal client” is.. very similar to themselves. They are Attracting those clients when they are putting themselves out there speaking on their struggle, the journey and the solutions they know the best. As we’ve talked in the past, Temperament work offers that understanding of ones core design- motivations, preferences and drives -which then flows towards clients- motivations, preferences and drives.. So if one Must do an Avatar- it’s quite likely similar to yourself- the story you know the best- especially as you get started in your business.
Hi Stacey. Yes I love this! I often write to the version of myself who really needed this info. Like the Avatar! When I completely let that go more of my soulmate clients showed up 🙂
OMG thank you for this! I have always struggled with this idea of an ideal client. I just write. It just comes through me and I have no idea who I write for!
P.S. The fields for a comment on your website don’t say anything, so I have no idea why I put my email address there twice and what should have been put in the fourth field, lol
But this post resonated sooooo much!
Yes! It comes through me too and I have yet to see a pattern in who it’s meant for as far as age and that kind of thing. It’s definitely based on their struggle and where they’re stuck over who they are. Thanks for letting me know my comment field is acting wacky and I appreciate you sticking it out to share this 🙂