Top 7 takeways from class two (including a customer avatar)

As a batch 3 intern, I attended the second class. These are the following things I learned:-

1. Marketing is all about having a good conversation.

If you are able to make a good 1:1 conversation then you can easily do 1:many also.

You have to do a good conversation as you converse to your good old friends. For eg- whenever I talk to my college friends, I usually can talk about anything under the sun without being judged.

And come to think about, that’s how you really should be talking in marketing also.

2. Be authentic to communicate better.

Most of the time our society always tries to tell us the “right” way of doing things. Like never talk back, always respect your elders. Never fight, think about your reputation., etc.

But somewhere along the line, you build up your own fake personas to follow those so-called “rules” of the society.

This comes in the way of communicating your real self.

Plus people are already tired of fake people with social personas. So, they don’t feel that connection from you.

So, be authentic in communication. Try to show your true self.

For eg – I really felt a connection with Deepak when he joked around the engineering part and having “girlfriends’.

Because he was being authentic and showing his true self.

And as an engineer, I had also experienced that sitting in the backbench part while having no girlfriends,  even though I was from Computer science.

3. How to be a better marketer?

Unlike any other profession, marketing is one profession where you don’t need to have a formal professional experience. You can be a better marketer just by having more life experiences.

This may include Traveling anywhere in the world, or Learning new languages, or maybe trying social work or Joining new meetup groups.

Do new things all the time.

Read all kinds of books including feminism, religion, etc., especially on a topic you hate the most.

In the end, try not to have a strong opinion of any subject. Be open to change your mindset.

4. About target audience

Always define your specific target audience.

This includes their goals and values.

Their demographics (name, age, gender, marital status, age of children, etc.), challenges or pain points they are facing, their main sources of information, and possible objections they might have with your product.

Then think of your target audience as a single person, while writing for them.

At the end of the day, everyone is alone with their device. So, try to join the conversation already having in their mind.

That’s why email/messaging is the most powerful way to communicate.

5. Say no to complex words or jargon.

Simple words appeal to the masses. And that’s what you want to do to build MassTrust.

Maybe, that’s why Donald Trump won the US election using his “make America great again” speeches.

So, the quickest way to join the conversation already having in your customer’s mind is to always use simple words.

6. Grow your business profitable and predictably using the Law of Large Numbers.

During the internship class, Deepak sir also introduced an interesting theorem, called – Law of large numbers.

So, what is the Law of Large Numbers? And how it’s connected to growing your business?

Well, according to Wikipedia, “According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value and will tend to become closer to the expected value as more trials are performed.”

In simple terms, you can predict your revenue growth in your business, as you collect a large amount of sales data.

Let me give you a simple example.

Suppose your team of 100 salespeople make 10,000 calls per month.

And out of 10,000 calls, only 10% gets converted into a client.

So, if you kept the number of salespeople constant in the coming months, then your salespeople will always convert around 10% of clients only, for every 10,000 calls.

The same thing applies to your Facebook and Google ads campaign metrics.

And this is how you can predict your revenue growth.

For more information, read this awesome article from DigitalDeepak.

7. Customer Avatar

Being an eCommerce enthusiast, I decided to survey an average online buyer.
And from my survey, I got 10 responses.

Out of which, 50% of the online buyers are aged 25-30.

60% of online buyers are male.

Most of them (30%) are from Bangalore, followed by Kolkata (20%).

And 40% of them don’t check anything after waking up. But 30% of them do check email. So, email is still the best medium, I suppose.

90% of them shop from amazon. So, Amazon’s investment in India is paying off, I guess.

And 50% of them use an app to shop online.

While Cash on delivery is still being preferred by 30% of the buyers, online buyers are also preferring debit card more (30%) to make payments.

60% of the buyers shop for electronics, followed by clothes (50%).

On average, online buyers prefer to spend ₹1000- ₹5000 per order.

And 60% of them expect to ship in 2-5 days.

And lastly, reviews (30%) and brand (30%) is the number one reason for influencing the buyer’s decision.

So, my customer avatar is as follows:-

Ramu is a 25-30 years old male, from Bangalore city. He checks his email first in the morning.

He got an email from his favorite shopping site – amazon, regarding the limited time sale on trendy clothes.

He then opens up his amazon app to shop. After checking the brand and reviews, he bought ₹2000 jeans using his debit card. He expects his jeans to ship in 2-5 days.

Conclusion

In class 2 of the internship, I learned a lot about customer avatar and how it’s useful to know your customer before planning literally anything.

Before leaving, please feel free to comment below your learnings.

And check out my survey here.