Or why briefing your designer needs to include your ideal client avatar as well as a Brand guide with your brand colours, logo, font and usage rules (Also known as a style guide).
Personalised design is worth the effort: A successful design starts with your ideal client avatar.
So how do you design for successful online business sales? You create your client avatar. Personalising the design, by creating an avatar for the business you are working with and getting to know the people behind it, will increase the chances of the client being happy with the design.
A ideal client avatar is a digital representation of your ideal client. It is a tool that helps you create a design that appeals to your ideal client. Your ideal client avatar is a combination of your ideal customer as well as your ideal client.
Most businesses don’t know what their ideal client avatar looks like, much less know how to describe them. That’s because many businesses don’t realise that successful marketing is not just about volume of sales. It is about creating a long-term relationship with your ideal client avatar.
If you’re in the business of selling services, you know that a great first impression is the difference between getting a second look and having someone walk away and never come back.
You’re not just trying to fill seats. Your goal is to build relationships and nurture your network, and having a clear understanding of your ideal client avatar is a major part of that.
Save time and money by using a Brand Guide Manual
Having a Brand Guide Manual that includes your Ideal client avatar is one of the best ways to make sure that your website brand and marketing is going to look just perfect for your ideal customer.
A Brand Guide Manual is a professional and efficient way to communicate with any designer or team member. It will also save you time and money in the long run, because you will be able to make sure that everyone knows your exact brand colours, logo, which fonts to use and usage rules.
Things such as why is the logo needs to be used certain ways is important. It ensures that your everyone on your team understands your brand, and what you value. So that the final designs will be true reflections of your brand.
A Brand Guide Manual can be created by both you and your designers. With one easy to access storage point, accessing a comprehensive Brand Guide will help all your team deliver their best work.
Briefing your marketing team or content creators is an often overlooked part of the design process. But if you want to get the best possible outcome, all your creators need to understand your business goals, and in turn be able to create designs that are more likely to grow your business.
Why you need to brief your designer around your ideal client avatar.
A customer avatar or ideal client avatar is more than just a visual representation of your target customer. This is someone who you can picture as a person, with a name and a face. Your avatar will help you to understand what kind of personality your customer has, what is important to them, and what is not.
It helps your designers and marketing team know how to talk to your client. What language to use, as well as how to sell your clients on the idea of your business and it’s values.
It’s the person who is going to love your product or service. Your avatar is a representation of your ideal customer. It’s important to note that this doesn’t have to be a real person. Your avatar may be based on your ideal customer, but in order to create a persona that you can use to design for, you may want to consider including traits from a few different people.
If, for example, the avatar is a young woman, the designer should use words and images that appeal to young women and make the site look pretty.
A fitness coach who is starting a group training program for stay at home mothers would create an avatar who embraced healthy eating, fitness and family. But might avoid images of women doing difficult yoga positions because they may seem too sporty.
When things go wrong
When I have had projects go wrong it is most often when my clients don’t have or provide me with a Branding Guide. Or haven’t nailed down their ideal client avatar.
For example, one client only forwarded me an email signature graphic. To extract their logo and pull out the colours for their branding on their website, graphic elements, and their professional newsletter templates.
I pulled out a floral sketch element from their original graphic. I didn’t want to copy someone else’s work without license. So I spent hours recreating something similar to use. I thought it complimented their email signature perfectly. Only to be told my matching designs weren’t on brand for their clientele.
The idea is to figure out who your ideal client is. To imagine what they look like, what they like to do, and their personality. If you can nail down your ideal client avatar, you will be able to write better blogs, emails and create better marketing materials. Plus your marketing team and your designer will be able to create better designs for you.
If you’re a life coach in New York, you might have a picture in your head of a fifty-something cis-male with a paunchy stomach, who rides the Subway, He may have just lost his wife to cancer. You may not think that small details like this matter. But they do.
Your website is the first impression people get of your business and it’s important that it’s a good one. If your designer knows your avatar before they start, they’ll be able to produce a better website for you.
While building your brand, it’s important to always keep your target audience in mind. The time and effort that you put into creating a brand guide, which includes your ideal client avatar, will translate into more sales and better customer satisfaction.