I am a dedicated online marketer, but I am originally from a traditional – offline marketing background. I suspect there are a lot of other people like me that have fallen head-over-heels in love with the flexibility and instant gratification ‘online’ provides…
That said – I will never stop giving credit to offline marketing techniques and the wisdom traditional marketing has to offer. Frankly – if you want to be anything in marketing – the building blocks are what you should focus on before you choose your ‘forte’.
So, it will come as no surprise when I draw yet another online to offline correlation with this post 
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There is a very effective and not so well known technique in marketing – where you would make up your typical target audience members – Eben Pagan calls it Avatar building – yes just like in games…
I have to admit I only heard about this technique about a year ago (blush), but have not stopped using it since and it is one of the BEST tools in my marketing toolkit (yes I do like a little bit of DIY).
I will describe how it works in a very short few words, and then I’d like you to go and listen to an excellent 22 min video of Rand Fishkin and Ian Lurie that describes exactly how to go on about creating those.
Basically, if you are running a marketing campaign of any kind, you need to be very clear about who you’re marketing to. Gone are the days when you could just ‘patch-up’ a sales letter and make money without having a real clue about your target audience.
By actually taking the time to build a profile of the one to three audience types that would be your potential customers, you are forcing yourself to take them seriously and to understand their motivations and their circumstances.
Having built a virtual character, you can now tailor your campaign or campaigns to specifically appeal to your customer… And yes – you guessed right – all that so that your conversion rates improve.
The special twist in the tail for us – internet marketers – is that you can test and tweak your virtual avatars to perfection – pushing your campaigns to conversion rates you’ve never known before.
Well, I can go on forever about this as I am a great fan. All I can say is that it might seem time-consuming. You might think it’s not THAT important and it’s a bit fluffy around the edges… But you should try it at least once! You’ll never start your campaigns otherwise.
I realise this post ain’t so much of an original content, but the video is soo good – I don’t see the need for me to try and say it better. I’m just the messenger… For those of you who have already seen this (post is a few days old ;o) – why didn’t you share?
Here’s the link again: Creating Personas 101, with Rand and Ian Lurie
Oh, you may want to take notes… Enjoy!
