Getting Your Prospects' Attention: Create A Character

When you are marketing and selling a product or service, it's key that you understand who you are talking to.

Keywords:

target audience, clients, marketing, marketing plan

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When you are marketing and selling a product or service, it's key that you understand who you are talking to.

Who is your ideal customer?

Who has a problem that you, your product or service can solve?

Who would be most interested in your product or service?

Who is most likely to buy your product or service?

Once you identify who the best customer or ideal client is for your product or service, write a description of that person.

How old are they?

Are they male or female?

Where do they live?

What kind of work do they do?

What do they do for fun?

What is the problem your product or service can help them solve?

Are they affluent or is money tight?

You may not have all the answers to these questions, but do the best you can to write a detailed description.

Once you have completed the description, take it one step further: Create a character.

What exactly do I mean by that?

Picture in your mind, a single person who embodies all of these characteristics. Once you have a picture in your mind, begin to think about who this person is.

Here's an example

Let's say you are a wellness coach or fitness professional and your ideal client is a middle-aged, overweight woman who does not currently take very good care of herself, but wishes to drop a few pounds and get healthier.

First, here's a description

She is a woman between the ages of 35 and 50 years old; she's married with school-aged children; she works full- or part-time; leads a stressful, busy life trying to manage her family and work responsibilities; doesn't take very good care of herself because she's always caring for others; is 20-30 pounds overweight as a result; and doesn't eat very healthfully.

Now, here's how we create a character

First, we give her a name: Mary Smith

Then we imagine how her typical day goes, as follows:

Mary gets up at 6:00am and fixes breakfast for her two elementary school-aged children. She helps them get dressed and ready for school. She makes their lunches. She kisses her husband goodbye as he leaves for work, and proceeds to get ready for work herself.

Mary loads the kids in the car, drops them off at school, and heads to work. She works in a busy office, and rarely takes time off for lunch. Because she usually doesn't make time to pack her own lunch, she often runs out for fast food or another quick take-out lunch, and returns to the office to eat at her desk while she works.

At about 3:00pm, Mary needs a pick-me-up so she grabs a soda and a sugary snack from the vending machine.

Mary leaves the office at 5:30 and heads to the babysitter to pick up the kids. They arrive home between 6:30 and 7:00pm, tired and hungry.

Dinner is often fast food, frozen pizza or another quick meal, usually lacking in solid nutrition.

After dinner Mary helps the kids with their homework, gives them a bath and puts them to bed.

She sits down to relax in front of the TV with her husband around 9:00pm and has some ice cream f:00am to start this routine all over again.

Now, let me ask you a question

Do you feel like you know and understand your prospective client better based on the general description (age, family status, etc.) or based on the detailed 'character' description about Mary Smith and her typical day?

Which description would best enable you to create effective marketing messages?

Which description would enable you to select places to put your marketing messages to reach this ideal client?

If you're like most people, your answer is the detailed character description because it turns a generalized description of your ideal client into a person you can understand. A person who has very clear challenges and issues you can help solve.

Yes, you will be making some assumptions and generalities when you do this. That's okay. Just consider you are creating a character that represents the type of client you would like to reach with your marketing. This character is merely a representation.

Combine the character description with a photo

To further identify with your ideal client, you may even want to post this character description along with a photo cut-out from a magazine to represent him/her, as a reminder of who you are marketing to.

Creating a character brings your target audience to life

It allows you to market and speak to people. It enables you to create messages that touch those ideal clients and truly address the challenges they face in their daily lives. It allows you to see how you, your product or service fits into their lives as a solution to those problems.

It enables you to market more effectively

I challenge you to look at your target audience description and take it one step further and create a character. Then make sure all of your marketing is designed to speak to that person in language that resonates with them and helps them see you understand their issues or needs.

Try it. I think you'll find that your marketing becomes much more powerful and effective as a result.

(C) Copyright 2005 Debbie LaChusa

Character Education and its Benefits to our Children

Good character education is one of the most important things our children will learn in life. The benefits are positive and the outcome will lead our children into successful lives, as well as becoming a good citizen.

Keywords:

home business ideas, work-at-home moms, mom work-at-home idea, moms, stay-at-home moms, ideas, top 10, home business, virtual assistant, va, career kit, business opportunity, kids and character, character education, benefits, children and character, children and education

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The Definition
Character education involves teaching children about basic human values including honesty, kindness, generosity, courage, freedom, equality and respect.

The goal is to raise children to become morally responsible, self-disciplined citizens. Problem solving, decision making, and conflict resolution are important parts of developing moral character. Through role playing and discussions, children can see that their decisions affect other people and things.

Inclusive Concept
Character education is an inclusive concept regarding all aspects of how families, schools, and related social institutions support the positive character development of children. Character in this context refers to the moral and ethical qualities of persons as well as the demonstration of those qualities in their emotional responses, reasoning, and behavior. Character is associated with such virtues as respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, fairness, caring, and citizenship. Broadly, character education encompasses all aspects of the influence that families, schools, and other social institutions have on the positive character development of children. Character Education is the deliberate effort to help people understand, care about and act upon core ethical values.

What Does Character Education Look Like?
Character education looks like young people learning, growing, and becoming. It feels like strength, courage, possibility, and hope. Giving life meaning, purpose, and a future is the collective message educators are sharing with youth in a curriculum that ultimately says, "Together we can."

We need to practice moral education by means of explanation — not simply stuffing students' heads with rules and regulations, but engaging them in great moral conversations about the human race. The very existence of this dialogue helps make us human.

How can Children benefit
Embedded in character education are guidelines for successful living. The language of respect and responsibility navigates the journey to ethical fitness. Children explore education as life and life as learning positive approaches for setting and achieving goals.

Children learn that living each day to its fullest means more than waiting for moments here and there. Character education presents life with context, inviting them to listen, share, explore, and reflect. Cultivating knowledge for purposeful living, students learn through literature, art, humanities and throughout the existing school curriculum the benefits and consequences of behavior. They learn the power of choice. They learn to appreciate the qualities of being human and to share their appreciation at home, in school, and in the community.

Finding Time
Many stories in children's literature, for example, reflect lessons in morals and virtues; we can read and discuss these moral lessons without taking time from core subjects. Character education also fits well with social studies and health topics. Accepting individual differences, showing courage, developing citizenship, taking responsibility for oneself, and making positive, so the hurdle of finding time for character education becomes less intimidating. Also, talking about good character traits fits naturally into the scheme of setting up a successful primary classroom. When we introduce games in math, we could review the ideas of fairness and cooperation.

Practicing Cooperative Learning Techniques
Partner and small-group learning activities are natural complements to character education, providing children with opportunities to practice cooperation, respect, teamwork, and responsibility. Children usually enjoy cooperative activities, and working with peers is a brain-friendly technique that enhances learning (Jensen, 1996).

School staff members serve as troubleshooters between students and the individuals or agencies in need of assistance. Such service programs teach valuable humanitarian skills. Through these activities, abstract concepts like justice and community become real as students see the faces of the lives they touch. Children begin to appreciate the need to couple moral thinking with moral action.

Does It Work?
Can character education really make a difference? Teaching about character is just as important as teaching the basics of writing, math, and reading. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education" (1947). Educators should work in partnership with families and communities to give children every opportunity to grow into people of good character, and especially to counteract society's potentially negative influences. Character education cannot cure all the world's evils, but it can improve and influence children in positive ways, giving them the skills that they will need to be successful adults.

Expectations of Excellence
Children need standards and the skills to achieve them. They need to see themselves as students engaged in a continuing pursuit of excellence. These standards of excellence in school work and behavior will encourage students to develop qualities like perseverance and determination, and those virtues will affect every aspect of the children's lives as they mature.

Academic studies change rapidly; what we discuss in class today becomes passé tomorrow. But the values, moral influences and noteworthy characteristics we model and discuss will outlast academic facts and figures. We can leave our children a legacy that will remain constant throughout life: to know the good, love the good and do the good.

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