A lot has been said about how ads should tell stories, but there’s also a lot of storytelling happening in the actual process of making an ad.
When we think of customers, we don’t think of heroes in their own epic tales, but perceiving them as such can actually help you find a way into their consciousness and, hopefully, into their wallets.
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Here, we’ll take you through the steps you need to create a customer avatar, and how you could possibly use it in developing your ads.
Build your customer
The concept of a hero’s journey has become as legendary as the myths that follow its structure, but in terms of advertising, it’s used to enhance our understanding of our customer and their path to purchase. And as with any hero’s journey, it starts with a hero.
Your hero is your consumer—or at least, a personification of the common attributes of your product target market. This entails a process of translating data into story. Using whatever information you have about your audience and painting a character based on it. It even helps if you give this persona a name!
Like any hero, your customer has goals and things that they value. Likewise, they also face challenges and obstacles in achieving their goals. Reflecting on what these things are will help you get into your customer’s headspace. Doing so will help you find the best way to appeal to them–through their wants and needs.
Build the conflict
As with any hero’s journey, there should be conflict. But instead of a three-headed dragon or an enchanting witch, the conflict that your customer will face are the objections they may have in purchasing your product. Why would your customer hesitate? What kind of competition would steer your customer away from you? What would hold your customer back from making that purchase?
It’s a lot of negative thinking and self-criticism on your part, but doing so will actually help you make a more solid argument to sell your wares.
Build the sell
All of this pre-work is done towards the goal of answering the question, “how do we sell the product?” After building our customer avatar, getting into their mindset, and preparing for the objections they might have, we take all of these things into consideration and build a sell–an angle or messaging that we feel would best appeal to our customer.
This could be either an emotional appeal or a functional one. Better if both. What kind of feelings do we want to feel through our product? Why would the product make the best sense for them?
Think of this as the climax of your customer’s hero’s journey: the will they-won’t they part of the tale.
And of course, we all hope for a happy ending for you and your customer.
