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Assuming you’re the head OR Vice President of marketing or founder of a startup, you must have come across the terms like “customer avatar“, “ideal customer profile,” or “customer persona” at some point in your career.

Maybe YOU created it or someone else created it for your company, “customer avatar” is a concept that every marketer knows and uses.

Now what does “customer avatar” has anything to do, with podcasts?

It’s simple, just like you use your company’s customer avatar while creating any marketing campaign, you use your “Podcast Avatar” to decide what your podcast is about.

Let’s see who this mysterious “Podcast Avatar” is, learn how to create “A Podcast Avatar” for your business, and how it can help you decide what episodes to produce. Plus a bonus at the end.

Let’s GO!

This post is the 5th in a series of “Podcasting Mastered” chapters designed to help you launch and grow an enterprise lead-generating podcast.

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To be precise, a Podcast Avatar is your ideal listener. A B2B podcast, just like your business cannot be for everyone, not everyone is your customer, right?

Most of the B2B businesses target 1 or 2 specific customer avatars, and their products, services, messaging and marketing, all focus on catering to these avatars.

Your podcast is no exemption. You have to target your ideal listener, and create episodes that cater to their needs.

To create your podcast avatar, all you have to do is to take your existing customer avatar, and add 4 extra podcast-specific parameters.

Those parameters are:

1. The topics they’re interested in listening to.
2. Their mood while listening to your episodes.
3. The time they can allocate to listen to your podcast, and
4. How often they can allocate?

Let’s discuss these 4 parameters one by one, using my own company’s (PodcastBuff’s) Customer Avatar.

PodcastBuffs’ Podcast Listener Avatar.

Here’s our customer avatar.

OUR IDEAL CUSTOMERS ARE:

 

• People in marketing. In the roles of Vice President or Head of Marketing.
• Their age ranges from 35-40,
• Usually married,
• With an annual income of $175,000+/yr.
• Their education is a bachelor’s degree (some masters too),
• Located in business areas like San Francisco, New York, New Jersey, California, etc.
• And their companies are in industries like technology, finance, or Fortune 500 companies.
• Not only that, this person’s focus is on enterprise lead generation.

What kind of GOALS would a person like this have?

Let’s call our customer avatar Robert. What goals does Robert have?

Well, there are 2.

1. To build relationships with their target enterprise prospects, and convert them into leads.
2. To hit their quarterly and annual goals of generating enough leads for the sales teams.

To hit their goals, what kind of CHALLENGES do they face?

2 Challenges.

• Finding the right strategies to build relationships with enterprise prospects.
• Executing those strategies.

What are their PAIN POINTS?

1. Finding the right plan and a team to execute these strategies.
2. Generate results within the given budget and time.

Now, let’s say I found this person and pitched the idea of starting a podcast for their business, what kind of OBJECTIONS do I get?

I can think of 3.

1. They might not know about the full potential of B2B podcasting, so they might assume that podcasts cannot help build relationships with hard-to-reach people (that is, their enterprise prospects.)
2. The second Objection might be that, Podcasts cannot generate leads.
3. The third one might be, Podcasting cannot produce the ROI they want.

With all the information I have, I now know this person better, I know their goals, challenges, pain points, and potential objections.

Quick Tip: You can also add more details like “Sources of Information”, to really understand where to promote your podcast.

Let’s Figure Out the 4 Podcast-specific Parameters.

Parameter #1 – The topics they’re interested in listening to.

This is simple, one of Robert’s goals is generating enterprise leads, so he’s obviously interested in success stories, case studies, methods, and educational information around generating enterprise leads.

Parameter #2 – Their mood while listening to your podcast.

Robert and most of the people similar to his profile (VP of Marketing) are health-oriented, they work out every day, and have a car to commute to their offices. These are the spots in their day, that they might pop into listening to a podcast.

Parameter #3 – The time they can allocate to listen to your podcast.

These people are VERY busy, and they have to make sure they’re on top of the marketing trends, news, and changes.. So using the spots I’ve mentioned before to do all these, means that they can’t spend more than 30 minutes listening to a podcast.

Parameter #4 – How often can they allocate?

Tying this to the last parameter, they must check on many things during their spots. So I’m assuming their frequency of listening is like twice a week.

So with the customer avatar and the 4 parameters, here’s what my podcast might look like.

A podcast with around 30-minute episodes, released twice a week, talking about enterprise lead generation, interviews with other CMOs, and marketing directors, their success stories, failures, and journeys.

Now adding my niche of B2B podcasting, my podcast episodes will be a mix of Enterprise Lead Generation + B2B podcasting + Interviews.

Here’re the topics that we should talk about in our podcast, to reach our podcast avatar.

• Launch plan on lauching a high quality B2B podcast.
• Interviews with other Heads of Marketing on how podcasting helped them build relationships with hard-to-reach enterprise prospects.
• Methods, tools and plans to connecting with their target enterprise prospects and inviting them to guest on their shows.
• Tips on how to convert these guests into leads.
• Methods, tools and plans to promote their podcast to reach new audiences.
• Discussions on the latest trends happening in the B2B marketing space and how they can capitalize on those trends.

I hope this gives you an idea of how to think about creating your very own “Podcast Avatar” and planning out your episodes to help your ideal listener.

You are not restricted to the 4 parameters that I’ve mentioned here, they’re just the starting point, feel free to add in your business-specific parameters and go as in-depth as possible.

Remember, the goal is to help your ideal customer. It’s all about your customer, not you.

Please feel free to use my own company’s example, you can download the “Podcast Avatar Worksheet” here and use it to build yours.

Quick Tip: if you have multiple customer avatars, go ahead and create multiple podcasts each targeting a unique customer avatar, do not target 2 different customers with 1 podcast, those things rarely work.

Bonus!

Now for the bonus, if you’re not sure what to fill into those 4 podcast-specific parameters, I can help you, for free.

Schedule a free session with me and I’ll take you through the process of filling the 4 podcast-specific parameters for your business. This session is completely free and you’ll not be sold into anything.

If you have any questions, please ask me in Facebook Community and I’ll personally answer them.

Don’t know where to begin? Get started with our free B2B Podcasting course.

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B2B Podcasting Mastered

Learn how to launch a revenue generating podcast for your business in just 10 minutes a day, for 2 weeks.