all right so the first step in understanding people and preparing yourself as a copywriter to help people is you have to pick who you're reaching out to and who you're helping in the first place uh we're going to be talking about Target markets and what's called an avatar now these are the people you're going to be writing to um I have a saying that I like to repeat and it's whoever impacts the reader at the deepest level wins of course that's me I came up with that saying but it's true in the Market out there in the world whoever can impact whoever can can connect or persuade uh a person the deepest out of anyone in the world that's the person who wins their trust who wins their who wins their business who who they'll pay for for their products and services so specificity gives you power if you try and help everyone or sell a product to everyone in the entire world you'll end up helping no one um but if you're able to focus your efforts and communication on a defined group of people you can impact them significantly significantly higher level right um now when you're sitting down to figure this out your target market that's the defined group of people who will get the most out of your product or service if you focus on them and their specific problems or dreams and roadblocks you can communicate in a way that allows you to impact them on a deeper level than anyone else in in the market right so when you're sitting down to write copy for a specific product the first step is to sit down and ask yourself you know who's the ideal Target marker for this product who is going to be the person who's going to get the most out of this product or service once you've got that figured out then you're going to use the following trick to make sure you write in a way that resonates deeply with them and you do that by creating what's called an avatar now an avatar is a single person that embodies the characteristics of your target market they're the person you picture in your mind the single person you picture in your mind as you write and I like to imagine that they're like sitting in front of me and I'm speaking only and directly to them through the words that I'm writing so for example let's run through this process let's say that the target market for the copyrighting campus is 19 to 25 year old men who are hungry to get wealthy and live free from The Matrix that's a really basic level I'd get a little more defined my target market but let's say that that's the target market right let's say now if I want to create an avatar to help me imagine this target market here's what that might look like in this example so we'd create someone i' call him Steve i' say St this 20-year-old young man living in Dallas Texas he said to go back to college later this year but he's dreading it right now he lives with his parents binge watches tape videos etc etc I'd go into more more detail right you could even like pick a picture to help you picture this person right like a literal picture I went found this on pexels.com it's just some some website where you can get stock imagery and this is this is who I might imagine my mind when I think of Steve right so now if I were to sit down and write copy to persuade people to join the copyrighting campus or if I was let's say putting together a set of slides for new copyrighting students I could imagine Steve and address all my words to him and everything that I say as if I was you sitting across from me right now and I was talking with him now what that does is that that gives my writing a personal Edge when I can imagine a specific person it's easier for me to communicate in a way that feels natural and connects with that kind of person on a deeper level right so it resonates well with Steve you know if someone comes along that's the exact carbon copy of my avatar resonates perfect with him plus almost everyone else inside that kind of larger target market it also resonates really closely with them because Steve is an embodiment of those people right the target market is is the kind of The Wider group of people that is a good fit for your product and Steve or your avatar is the one specific version of like the embodiment of that it's a single instance it's one person he might may or may not be real but he's just he's a tool I use to think clearly about him and his life and that specificity gives me power it gives my brain and enough reality to latch on to that it can come up with the rest of the information I need to know so what do you need to include when you're creating an avatar you need to understand um at a bare minimum you need the name age and a face is helpful right that level of detail makes it easier for you to imagine them as a real person individual person it's really helpful and then you can kind of ask your questions well how would Steve think about this what would Steve say that and it's funny you can ask your brain questions your brain can give you answers but it's a lot easier when you have a name their age and their face right and then you're Al also going to want their background in a mini life history you don't need to go crazy overboard like you don't need every single thing that's ever happened to them entire life like I don't need to know what January 23rd was like when they were in third grade you don't need to know that right but you need to understand the general context of Life their previous experiences um what has happened to them up to now you don't have to be terribly detailed but you need to have a general feel for what that's like the other thing that's really helpful is if you can come up with a day in the life if you get a rough idea or or an image or a movie in your brain of what like a day in that life of that Avatar is like he wakes up here he gets up he moves around he does this he does that goes here he dreads looking at that he's excited for this he sits there he watches this video if you can create a rough day in the life that gives you a lot of Rich context to draw from when you're working to to working with him to help him change the other thing you need to realize you need to pay attention to you need to see if you can identify what are his values like what do they believe in is most important what do they believe in what do they believe is most important what do they despise it's extremely important um their value system is going to be informative when you're speaking to them you need to understand it so you don't violate it when you speak with them and instead you can go either you can shift the things to be shifted or at the very least you can go with the current of his current value system and direct him um using using that information so it's important you understand their values right the other thing you need to understand is what outside forces are acting on his life so most people have in many cases mistaken belief that outside forces control their lives right School parents um other family members religion blah blah blah all these other things control or influence their life now you need to understand if your avatar has placed undue power on these outside sources because that's going to be important you can either use them as a source of blame um or as something it's it's a fact you're going to have to need to adjust if they really really value the opinion of their parents you might be able to change the the way that their parents perceive them and use that as an indicator or sort of a carrot that you dangle in front of them hey do this and your parents will be so proud rough example but you need to understand the outside forces that's an important part of like the terrain of that person right so these are five things there's a lot more you can include um but there just sort of a general idea some things you want to look for when you're creating an avatar now normally if you're sitting down to do this for an established product you'll be looking at the person's website their social media their web page the product page for the product you're trying to help them with um and usually you can get enough information from a product page you can tell kind of by the context clues who they're talking to kind of you can get most the information for who their target market is least right and then kind of based on that those context clues and and even if you have to make your best guess about some of those things um you can create an avatar from that and again you might have to kind of guess what their values are maybe what a day in their life is like you're gonna have to imagine some of this but the power comes from getting getting specific here if you get specific and you make this Avatar into a a real flushed out person person in your brain it gives you an ability to write on a on a deeper more personal level so um you're going to get what information you can from your research and then you have to make your best guess about the rest but it's less about being right and more about being specific and being real in your own brain so if you're working with an established client um instead of like completely inventing the Avatar just like pulling them out of thin air you're going to instead sit down with your client and identify their most loyal highp paying customers and basically you're just going to clone them they will become your avatar so when you sit down to write you'll just think oh this guy's a really great client Tim has experienced all these benefits I'm going to write to Tim but I'm going to write to Tim basically the version of Tim that existed before he started using this product or service so that's the the Avatar you can create the having an existing client makes it a lot easier to sort of supercharge or speed up this process so defining the target market figureing out who who are the ideal customers for this product who is going to get the most benefit out of this who's going to pay the most who's going to be the best ideal customer for this product that's step number one it's extremely important and then taking that and synthesizing out and and creating one single Avatar that you can use in your brain a specific single embodiment of that Target Market to give your brain the specificity needs if you if you do that it will allow you to focus on them and it will give your writing the power of specificity and allow you to impact them on a deeper level and win in a Marketplace this is one of the things that will give you this is one of the things that separates good copywriters from bad copywriters good copywriters and excellent worldclass copywriters are all really good at defining and speaking to one specific Avatar when they write it's what gives it gives them an edge over the competition it gives them an ability to influence people on a deeper level um this is an extremely important step when you're setting out to decide you know to help someone sell a product or to just help people in general you need to First Define who you're going to help and that's how you do it with this target market and the avatar