What can a personal avatar do for you? Here is a technique to ace your sales and create the best tribe you can dream of…..
I wanted to talk to you about Avatar.
So Avatar not the movie obviously you know remember that movie with these like blue creatures and stuff. So it's not the movie I want to talk to you about. Even though it was a very good movie. It's creating an Avatar to make your life easier. So what are Avatar avatars for?
So the reason an avatar is so useful is because of the blank paper syndrome. I don't know if you call that like this in English but basically you know when you're with your friends, you can talk about the subject you love like day and night. You can talk about it for hours and stuff but the minute you have to sit and write something then you just can't. And this is a problem.
I have the same problem as well. So I'm very comfortable in the podcast now. But if I have to write a sales letter or something, it gets really complicated. So this is when the avatar comes in.
So the avatar is basically your ideal customer or your ideal audience. So who do you want? What are you talking about and who do you want to hear your message? The mistake is trying to talk to everybody at the same time. So you're trying to please everybody because you want three and a half million clients right.
And as we've already seen together you don't need that many clients to have a good living. And you actually need to select a specific group and target that group instead of trying to please everybody because you're going to do something wishy washy and nobody is going to adhere to your cause and your message.
So what you're trying to do is to build a tribe. OK. What's particular about the tribe? So a tribe or group or community. The good thing with a community or tribe or a like VIP group, is by definition, some people will be in and some people will be out. So for example there is this nightclub. You actually hate the manager you hate the bouncer yet you hate everybody there.
But the fact that they're bouncing everybody out, kicking and screaming and stuff, makes you want to get in because it's very selective. Right? And the fact that some people are allowed to go in and other and are not able to go in makes you want to get in and you want to create the same thing with your message.
So you don't want everybody to get in there. So you need to create a sense of belonging. So people will feel very lucky to be there and very grateful. And so you need to exclude some people.
Your Personal Avatar Blockbuster
So how do you do this? OK. So how do you create this sort of like VIP status and sense of belonging? One, for example is Apple. So Apple really wasn't in the MP 3 business. If you remember correctly there were hundreds of other players doing like MP3’s and stuff. And you know Apple was nowhere to be found.
And how did they overtake everybody and took over the MP 3 business? With the iPod and then the iPhone.
I think Steve Jobs was a genius. So he wasn't the one creating the whole thing. He just knew how to talk to people. And he knew how to create this tribe. So if you look at Apple today it's the biggest crowd on the planet and I really can't understand how people are queuing for three days to buy a phone that costs like five times the price of another phone which is sometimes actually better. Right? They created this tribe. It's this crazy! Apple fans are insane! But how did they manage to take over the whole business?
So before, what used to be the norm was that you had this MP 3 player and you had these Giga areas of this and then you have the hard drive of blah blah blah! Some technical mumbo jumbo that people don't understand. And Steve Jobs. He made like one sentence that changed everything for them. So that was 50 percent of the job. The sentence was:
“A thousand songs in your pocket”.
It's just as simple as that and it resonates way more than the other mumbo jumbo that people were saying. But if I tell you can put a thousand songs in your pocket then, well you know it makes sense for you. So that was the first thing that catapulted iPods on top of the charts. And eventually they ended up taking over the whole market. But the other thing they did. And I mean people don't notice. Right?
But it was brilliant. And it's simple when I tell you. You don't need to like reinvent the wheel. You need to take something that already exists and you change it slightly. And it was so brilliant. I don't understand how people didn't think about it. And even today I'm very amazed at how well it worked.
So basically what happened is that all the manufacturers used to get their headphones and headsets from you know the same distributor or whatever. But they were all black and white. Well Apple and Steve Jobs created white ones. So basically what happened was that when people were in the underground or whatever.
When you were looking around, you could see some other dude or some other chick with white headphones. And people used to wave at one another being like “dude I know you're an Apple fan”. And that created a community just by changing the colour of the damn headphones! Right. People were able to recognize one another and have this sense of belonging. That creates a super powerful brand.
So this is what you want. You want to be able to create this kind of synergy in your brand that gets some people so passionate about it. And people outside hate them and you know some people want to get in because you know think the rebels are cooler.
But here's what the Avatar is going to do. So what you're going to do is that you're going to create three different avatars. Usually people create one, which is clients. The typical client is everybody, right? Whereas in this case you have three categories. First category is going to be the people you want in your tribe. So people who are like you and your or are going to be absolutely in love with your message. So this is your bread and butter actually. So these are the ones you need to focus your message on.
Then you will have a second category which is the people who you don't necessarily need. So if they get in your tribe then good, but if they don't get in then fine. So the message for them is going to be quite mellow.
And the third category is the people you don't want in your tribe. You need to make sure to tell some people “dude I don't want you my tribe” because again that will create this thing where some people are on the inside and some people are on the outside. And that creates a sense of belonging.
So technically, what is an avatar? What is it going to do for you?
So now when you're creating this avatar, so the first one as I said is going to be the person you want. And you write everything about the person. So you know his or her name. How old that person is. What kind of school that person went to. What kind of hobbies that person has. What kind of job that person has. What do they like? What do they fear? And stuff like that.
So you write all that stuff down and then afterwards it becomes very easy for you. So ideally what you want to do to take it to the next level what do is that you create a sketch of that person. And you end up with a picture of someone. So you just you have that portrait. And when you're writing for that person, you know exactly what that person wants to hear. OK. And it makes it so easy. It makes it 10 times easier than having to write for complete strangers and trying to please everybody.
And you're going to do the same thing for the Second category and then the third category. For example when I'm recording this podcast, I have a mental image of someone who corresponds to my ideal target.
And it makes it so easy for me to talk without looking for my words and stuff.
So hopefully that was useful for you guys.
