Who’s Your Best Client – Creating Your Avatar

I hate marketing, and I hate marketers.” I said that over and over, much to my demise.

Marketing is to selling as mustard is to a hotdog. They are just better together.

A common phrase amongst great marketers is this: “People are not buying a drill and a drill bit; they are buying the quarter-inch hole.”

To be a better marketer, you have to know who you are trying to attract. That person is your Avatar.

An Avatar is a way to make your ideal prospect into an image you can talk to and understand their problems, desires, and roadblocks. If you want to grow your book fast, you’ll want to get a clearer idea of who is your best buyer.

Strengths

There’s a good chance that there are a few things you do well as an insurance broker. Maybe you are a workers’ compensation genius. Or perhaps you geek out on coverage idiosyncrasies. Or you could be the one that writes incredible narratives to market the account better.

Whatever it is, those are your strengths. It’s good to know your strengths. When you do, you can better define a set of problems a buyer would be suffering from that you can solve. And that is where the Avatar comes to play. The Avatar (your ideal prospect) has problems, and you have solutions.

When defining your Avatar, you can start with demographics, age, gender, and nationality. That’s the easy part. After the demographics, you can move on to psychographics.

Psychographics help you define their attitudes, concerns, and mental state. This process will help you dig deeper into their values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyles.

When you have a clear idea of your Avatar’s mind map, you can start creating compelling messages that resonate with them. You will profoundly gain their attention this way.

My Avatar:

• Owner of an independent insurance agency.
• 38-59 years old.
• Makes at least $200,000 a year.
• Has at least three producers.
• Located in a city with at least a 35,000 population size.
• 50/50 mix of personal and commercial insurance.
• Desire to grow the commercial side of their business.

Psychographic profile:

• Attitude: There’s endless opportunity.
• Desire: Wants to find a better way to stimulate their producers’ growth.
• Frustration: Doesn’t feel equipped to develop their producers into selling-machines.
• Values: Team culture where everyone helps each other perform.
• Lifestyle: Actively involved in the business, community, and family.

When that is clearly defined, it will attract your target audience and repel those that are different.

Agency owners that don’t see an endless opportunity, who think producers should figure it out by themselves and are selfishly pursuing only their desires, will turn the other way immediately because they won’t identify with the messaging.

The same will be true for you when you get your Avatar well-defined.

Imagine that you want the following:

• Owner of a construction company.
• Has 30-50 employees.
• Located within a three-county area surrounding your city.
• Male between 35-50 years old.
• Make $150,000 a year.

They build single-story mixed-use commercial buildings.

Psychographic profile:

• Attitude: Number one asset is his people, not his backhoe (although it makes him proud).
• Desire: Controlled and profitable growth.
• Frustration: Hard to hire and retain people that have his kind of work ethic.
• Values: Safe work environment so his people can get home every night.
• Lifestyle: Enjoys work, spends the week end at his lake house, and loves skiing and fishing with his kids.
• Roadblock: Doesn’t feel he has enough time to do things right and realizes he needs quality team members to make it happen.

This Avatar may or may not be what you want as a client, which is fine. The important thing here is when you have this defined, your email headlines will start to reflect a voice. Your marketing voicemails will reflect this. Every word will be tailormade just for them.

Let me give you a few email headline examples:

• Spend time at the lake and less time worrying about insurance. Here’s how.
• Your kids are #1. Stop wondering what happens if your backhoe gets stolen. It’s handled.
• Stop letting your employees get hurt. You want to know how.

You could also reflect this in your voicemails. Consider this if you will. Voicemails are just like the Verizon billboard you drive by every day on the way to work. Verizon doesn’t expect you to pull the car off the road and buy cell phone service.

Instead, it is positioning itself in your mind for the day you get sick and tired of dropped calls.

Think of your voicemails as billboards that position “you” as the go-to resource for when your buyer gets fed up with the person they are working with now.

Here are a few voicemail examples:

Hey Bob, Randy Schwantz. If you’re ready for a new boat, I have an idea that could save you enough money on your insurance to pay for it. Call me. XXX-446-3204.

Hey Bob, Randy Schwantz. When your people get hurt, you not only lose them for a day or week, you also spend more on insurance. Looking for a proven solution? Call me XXX-446-3204

When you have an Avatar, you can direct your message to them. If you don’t, you get stuck in the “generalist” zone and might not appeal to anyone.

When your message is not appealing, people don’t pay attention. That makes selling a lot harder on yourself.

By the way, are you tired of carrying the “new business” production load in your agency?

If you want to help your producers become better sellers and marketers, I’ve got a book you ought to read. Download a free digital copy here: https://thewedge.net/free-ebook-agm/. Or if you’re like me and prefer the real deal, get a hard copy for only $7.95 to cover shipping and handling.