In my last post, I introduced you to the concept of the Ideal Client Avatar, or ICA. This is a powerful tool that any business owner–including ed consultants–can use to focus their marketing and their offers so that they appeal to and establish authority with the right clients.
What I didn’t get into in that post was that you may (in fact, most likely will) need more than one Ideal Client Avatar.
So, today, I’m going to break that down for you a bit and talk about when having multiple Ideal Client Avatars is a good thing and when it’s a bad thing.
The Bane of the Ed Consultant: The Two Audience Problem
The “two audience problem” is the term I use for the situation in which a typical educational consultant finds themself–they have one audience that is the “end user” of their offer (teachers) and a second audience composed of the people who can actually hire them to work in a district and write the check to pay them (an administrator).
Clearly, you as the consultant need to speak to BOTH of these Ideal Clients in your marketing materials.
You need to speak to teachers in such a way that they know you understand their challenges and you can help solve them.
You also need to speak to the administrators and effectively sell them on the fact that you can serve their teachers and solve a problem that the administrator wants solved concerning their educational program.
If this situation describes you, then that means you will need two (at least) ICAs–one for a teacher avatar and one for an administrator avatar (unless the training you offer is for administrators, in which case you might just need one avatar, as the end user and the person who can hire you would be one and the same).
It can be a tricky thing for an ed consultant to write website copy and other marketing materials that simultaneously speak to both of these avatars, but it’s doable if you’re very clear about who your two avatars are.
Is Having Multiple Ideal Clients a Good Thing? Or a Bad Thing?
Now, let’s address other situations in which it might be good to have multiple Ideal Client Avatars, as well as when having multiple avatars can be bad.
One reason to have more ICAs is that you legitimately offer benefits for multiple teacher groups who are different enough that they need to be spoken to differently.
When I was doing workshops on brain-compatible teaching topics, I didn’t have this problem because the concepts I was talking about (teaching for long-term memory, managing students’ attention systems, etc.) applied to all students, K-12 (as well as adult learners). All I had to do was make sure that I included examples for different grade ranges so everyone could see how what I was sharing would look at their grade level or in their content area.
But most educational consultants teach content that’s more specialized than that.
Determining Who Your Ideal Clients Are: An Example
Let’s say that your background is as a science teacher at the high school level and that you developed some expertise about how to teach science in an engaging way through hands-on activities, which is what you now teach as an ed consultant.
You would obviously have as one of your Ideal Client Avatars a high school science teacher avatar, in addition to an administrator avatar such as a Science Curriculum Director or high school principal.
The question is, would you also have a middle school science teacher avatar? Would you have an elementary school science teacher avatar?
It depends. How comfortable are you working with teachers of grade levels at which you have never taught? Also, how well do the strategies you teach translate to these other grade levels?
Maybe you believe that your material would work just as well for middle school science teachers as for high school science teachers. In that case, it would make sense to create an ICA for that audience.
But maybe you decide that you don’t want to work with elementary teachers because you don’t think your material translates as well to those grade levels–or maybe you would just feel uncomfortable sharing with elementary teachers–in which case, you probably don’t want an elementary avatar. Creating an elementary level ICA would just be a waste of time in this scenario.
The bottom line is this…
If you have one or more offers for a specific group of people, you need an avatar for that group. If you have a different offer that applies to a different group of people, you probably need a different avatar for that group.
That’s the rule: One avatar per specific audience.
Make sense?
So, your action step, should you choose to try it, is simple. Look at each of your offers (workshops, keynotes, consulting and coaching packages, etc.) and think about who the ideal audience is for each of them. How many avatars are you going to need?
And don’t forget to have a separate ICA for the person who writes the checks!
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about different steps in creating a great Ideal Client Avatar. Just understand that you’ll want to go through all of these steps for each ICA you need to address in your business.
To Your Success,
Willy
P.S.–Getting clarity on who you serve and developing Ideal Client Avatars for those audiences is such a crucial part of your business development that it’s a key step we work clients through in a number of our services.
For example, if we help you create your Master Marketing Message, we have to know who you serve in detail in order to write that for you.
If we revise your website to be more persuasive to your audience, we have to work with you to get clear on your ICA is so we can speak directly to them in our copy.
And obviously, nailing down the avatars you serve is part of what we do in our work with our 1-on-1 coaching clients.
If you need any of these services, just realize that we will work hand in hand with you to develop the Ideal Client Avatars you need and that you will be able to use them from then on to guide your business growth.
Want to talk about it? Just hit the link…
