Defining Your Ideal Avatar And Why It Matters

Clearly developing your ideal investor avatar (another was to say target audience) is critical to the success of your capital raising or real estate syndication business. Taking the time to complete this important step creates a cohesive brand and presents your specific solution clearly to your most ideal customers.

When you know exactly who you’re talking to, whether it be in an email, blog post, on social media or in person, your messaging connects with them on a deep level. That deep connection with your target audience opens the door for them to see your business as the solution to their problems.

Furthermore, when your target market receives clear messaging about your business idea and the solution you provide, your ideal customer is going to actually pay attention to the blogs, ads, videos, and other messages you’re producing. That solid connection draws your target audience to naturally respond to emails, comment on your social media posts, and spend more time reading and interacting with your work. Suddenly, you’ll no longer feel like you’re working to create great content only for it to get buried in the online abyss that is the internet.

In this article, we’ll help you take your broad idea of who your target customer is and make it detailed and specific. The more narrow you are with your customer avatar and the earlier you complete this step, the better, as everything else you do in your business will flow from understanding your ideal investor. 

Clarity Builds Trust With Your Target Audience

Many entrepreneurs worry that if they get too specific on who their target client is they’ll miss out on new business. In fact, quite the opposite is true.  Any experienced mentor will tell you that by niching down and getting clear on who your perfect audience is, you’re able to focus your marketing efforts and directly target your ideal customer base.

Consider this in your business; if you’re targeting everyone, you’re actually targeting no one. By casting too large of a net in an effort to gain more business, you’re inadvertently diluting your message and actually repelling people who would otherwise be your ideal customers. 

As a capital raiser or real estate syndication sponsor, you’re asking would-be investors to invest thousands of dollars with you. A key component to a successful partnership in this industry is trust. The more you understand your ideal investor, the more your content will resonate with them, contributing to the know-like-trust factor, and making you the authority in their eyes. Ultimately, raising capital will become much easier when you’re sending the right message to potential and existing customers.

When we first started out, we made the mistake of making everyone our target audience. Lucky for us, however, we quickly figured out the lack of clarity was affecting the daily operations in our business. It affected the design of our website, the emails we were sending, the blogs we were writing, and even how we showed up at conferences. 

When you get crystal clear on your target audience, you’ll rapidly discover that people do want to connect with you and your brand, they just need to hear the right message – something that really hits home and connects with them. Your avatar focuses naturally on what they can gain, solutions to their current pain points, and is consumed with their own to-do lists and busy schedules.

So, how will you get your target audiences’ attention?

How Market Research Helps Define Your Ideal Avatar

Once you know the audience you’re targeting, all of your communications can be geared toward their goals and how you’re the person to help them achieve those goals. Ultimately, you want to hone in on the challenges and pain points that keep them up at night and provide solutions to all your target market’s problems. 

Understanding your target audience, who they are, and what they want, makes your entire process of finding investors or raising capital easier. You’re able to create relevant content that nurtures your ideal avatar and guides them in making informed decisions.  

Don’t worry if you’re not quite sure who your ideal clients are just yet. It’s okay to take a broad idea about your target market and make it more specific as your marketing strategy develops. If you know you’d like to target doctors, lawyers, or busy moms, you can take that idea and expand on it. 

Keep reading to discover the 6 key categories you need to explore to get clarity on what makes you stand out and who you are and are not trying to attract as you target audience.

6 Steps To Define Your Target Market

#1 – Who You Want to Attract

It’s time to clearly define who you’re trying to attract. Maybe you know you’d like your target audience to be physicians, but that’s not specific enough, let’s break it down further. 

When you’re defining your ideal investor, you want more than just job titles. For example, if they’re a doctor, what’s their specialty? Describe their job and create a detailed profile. Get clear on what a typical day in their life looks like. Are they dealing with spreadsheets all day or scrubbing into an operating room? What types of decisions does your ideal investor make on a daily basis?

Consider the personality of your ideal avatar. What’s their personality profile or DISC profile?

What does the StrengthsFinder indicate about what your target market of perfect-fit investors does best?

#2 – Target Demographic

Look at the demographic data of your ideal avatar. Collect the following demographic information:

• Age
• Gender
• Income level 
• Education
• Marital status
• Do they have children?
• What ages are their children? 
• Where do they work?

As a real estate syndicator or capital raiser, your target audience needs to fit the demographic needed to be an accredited investor. When looking at demographic characteristics, ensure their stats match or exceed the accredited investor requirements. For instance, it doesn’t make sense if the income level of your ideal avatar is $100,000 when to qualify as an accredited investor, your target audience needs to make at least $200,000 consistently for three years. 

#3 – Psychographics of Your Target Market

Psychographics is another important factor to explore when defining your ideal customer avatar. It’s crucial to discover their values, attitudes, habits, interests, and hobbies. What does your target audience wish they had more time to do? Who are their friends and what things do they enjoy doing with them?

Look deeper in this area and determine how your target audience defines legacy. What are they striving to instill in their children? Do they have one shining north star for their family, if so, what is it? 

#4 – Goals and Challenges Of Your Customer Avatar

To develop a clear understanding of your customer avatar, you need to know what their primary goals are. More importantly, what stands in the way of your target audience and their goals? What’s their business plan? What are their pain points? Determine what they worry about, and what challenges keep them up at night. 

When your ideal customer avatar is on vacation, are they worrying about work-related issues, are they dreaming up a new idea, or are they able to disconnect and focus on engaging with their family? 

#5 – Objections From Your Target Audience

Deciding to invest in a real estate syndication is a big decision. If your ideal investor has a significant other or spouse, do they need their approval before moving forward in a deal? If so, what does that process usually look like? 

Maybe your target audience needs to review their business plan or consult a particular person before signing on the dotted line. Find out if they make their CPA, estate planner, business coach, or financial advisor a part of their decision-making process. If they do, how long does that process usually take?

You want to gather this information and understand this process to know how you can simplify it for your target audience. This data is essential in creating buyer personas. Simply put, when you know where the barriers are, you can help to remove them.

#6 – How Your Target Audience Uses Media

Take a deep look at how your target audience uses media. How do they prefer to consume their information and where do they find it?

Conduct market research to gain valuable audience insights. Find out about their favorite websites, podcasts, and news outlets. What books do they enjoy reading? If you’re not sure, ask your audience; create a survey or a poll for them to complete.

Another great way to really get to know your avatar and their pain points is to look at Google Analytics or the analytics tools on your personal website. You can also keep an eye on social media analytics. Most social media platforms have their own built-in, but there are multiple tools available for tracking analytics and gathering key insights.

Using a custom audience pixel on your website or a Facebook pixel is a powerful way to track engagement with your brand. Use the Google search console to find out what keywords and phrases your ideal audience is searching for. Also, look at your competitors’ keywords and customer behavior using Google Analytics. Targeting tools like Semrush and BuzzSumo make keyword research easy by giving you a high-level overview of what content, keywords, and research your ideal client is looking for.

You can also gather data and perform audience research by reading industry blogs, quarterly reports, and monthly market reviews. Follow industry influencers on social media. Don’t only pay attention to what they’re posting, pay close attention to what’s being said in the comments by your target audience.

How to Use the Information You’ve Collected About Your Avatar

After you conduct your market research, collect all the data and go through the list of everyone you know. Determine who meets the criteria of your customer avatar, and see who’s on the fringe. This specific group of people who check all the boxes are your potential customers.

Compare the characteristics of your ideal avatar with the actual people you know. Nail down the individual personality quirks and create a personalized graphical illustration of your virtual avatar. Take this along with the data points, ideas, and other details and share it with your management team. 

Create an Exclusionary Avatar

This may seem strange at first, but the next step is to create an avatar for who you do not want to attract. Determining your exclusionary avatar helps you get even more specific and weed out those uncomfortable clients who drain your time and energy.

You know the type of person we’re talking about, even though you may be successful in converting them to a client, it just isn’t worth it. Creating an exclusionary avatar allows you to repel them before they ever get close to becoming a client. 

Naturally, when you speak to your target audience and post things that resonate deeply with those you’re intentionally connecting with, you’ll disconnect with those who are not your ideal investor. This is a good thing!

Raising Capital and Building Your Real Estate Investing Business

Creating an ideal investor avatar, or multiple avatars is crucial in setting up your real estate business for success. For where to go next, visit Goodegg’s full library of valuable industry resources to help you establish your real estate syndication or capital raising business. 

If you’ve already established your syndication business and want to be raising money faster and more easily, we can help you hone your branding and marketing strategy. Leverage world-class marketing automation, have our expert team provide branding, and enjoy done-for-you marketing content creation inside our Real Estate Accelerator program.

Believe it or not, taking your growing business to the next level begins with clearly defining your target audience.