Engagement Strategy: Consider The Age Of Your Avatar

Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan, and you are

listening to the Course Building Secrets® podcast. Whether you're

a coach or a CEO, the success of your team and clients is based

on your ability to deliver a consistent experience and guide

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Hey, everybody, welcome to this week's episode of the Course

Building Secrets® podcast. In this episode, I want to talk

about how to design for the age of your avatar. Because there

are some considerations that you need to remember for younger

audiences and older audiences and sort of everyone in between.

And so this is a question that I've gotten a lot lately because

we're talking about engagement. How do you engage your

customers, your members so that they show up? They participate?

They stay and they get results? That's sort of the million

dollar question. As you're building your experience, right,

you've got to first get some people in once you do that, now

you can figure out like, okay, so how do you get them engaged?

How do you get them to stay and participate? And and making sure

that you're designing the right thing for the, for your specific

avatar is very, very important as part of this whole

experience? And, specifically, as you're getting an online

experience, like how does the age of your avatar interact with

technology, as you know, there's you kind of the younger set are

digital natives, right? Like they use their phone as if it

were an extra hand. And it's something that they are always

grabbing always in. And paying attention to the way that they

consume content is totally different than someone in their

60s or 70s. And so I wanted to kind of outline a little bit of

that for you today.

So you can have a couple of things to think about as you're

Okay, so the very first rule I have is make sure that no matter

putting together content. So the very first thing is there's a

what you do, you're staying on the path. So regardless of of

the age of the person that you're working with, you are

leading with your signature methodology, right, like you

number of sort of rules that apply to all. And I want to lay

those out first, and then I'm going to share with you some

have your unique and intellectual property, that

kind of tips and tricks for how to think about your audience.

helps give them the fastest path from point A to point B, right

from their problem to a resolution, that's always where

you lead from, that's where you start is you own the solution

that you can give them to that problem. And, and so that's the

Overall, the one that I do 100% recommend is to have a focus

very first thing, a lot of times I see people start to get

distracted. They have their core methodology, they've sold their

core methodology. And then once they produce their content and

group with your your audience, ask them, you know, specifics

start putting it into a membership site, or a course

platform, or, you know, online experience, platform, whatever

you're using, is they start getting distracted. And there,

all sorts of extra things end up in there, which dilutes from the

about how they want to consume what you have for them within

actual success path. So that's my first rule is just make sure

that you're foundationally putting in the right content.

Which is, is that million dollar roadmap, right, like getting

some parameters.

them from point A to point B?

Then the second rule is, nobody wants a boring experience,

regardless of age, right? Like nobody wants to be bored out of

their mind. Nobody wants to be watching something or, or trying

to interact with something and being so bored that they fall

asleep, right, like nobody wants that doesn't matter how old you

are. And, and, and to just keep it clean and focused and clear

in terms of how somebody navigates through what you have

to offer. So in every age group, those are sort of the general

rules.

Now I want to break down kind of the differences in four

different buckets. The first one is the amount of content that

you can serve at at one time. All of us have a really short

attention span like less than a goldfish at this point, which is

frightening. But the older somebody gets, the more of an

appetite they have for longer form content, the younger they

are, it has to be quick and short and to the point. And so

as you're kind of figuring out, the general age group of your

avatar, that's something to keep in mind is, is shorter bursts of

content are better for a younger audience, you can get away with

longer stuff with an older audience. So that's the first

thing is think about the amount you're serving and the timing,

how long are you having them sit without doing an activity or an

action that plays into into how you're creating your content.

The second thing is your materials. So I'm specifically

talking about your workbooks, and worksheets and, and whatnot,

that you may have around your experience. But there are a

little, you know, you can come up with some additional

examples. But the rule of thumb is, you're always gonna have

people who want to print out the workbooks, again, older audience

tend to want the paper more than a younger audience. And so you

can kind of, you know, pull your people like, who wants this in

paper, who wants to have it as a interactive PDF. But typically,

I include both options for for the majority of the audiences.

So unlike the paper, some like to print it out, other people

like to do with the interactive PDFs, which you can do, like get

a tablet, or iPad, you know, with your, your Apple pencil or

whatever, and they like to interact and do the activities

on the screen themselves. And then, then that's kind of the

third way. And again, this is great for younger people who are

used to using their phones, their tablets, and devices, to

just do their work is, is to create an interactive activity,

meaning instead of having it be like a worksheet style, it's

just an actual, like, you know, click on this to do this thing,

or type in your response. And so so you're using the technology

to have them interact with it, instead of thinking about it in

a paper format, like a workbook. And so those are sort of the

three different ways right like and, and I always recommend

having all three as an option. But you'll find that depending

upon who your avatar is, they'll have a preference one way or the

other. So a paper workbook, or a workbook that they can print, or

buy or whatever, an interactive PDF, which allows them to fill

it in, and and save it as a as an electronic document, or

interactive activities, meaning you're creating interactions

that they can do straight in your platform, and track and get

feedback and all that kind of stuff. And so that plays into

again, who your audience is and what they're used to doing.

The third thing is gamification. And this is how you reward and

recognize people's progress through the program. So it's not

about a bunch of badges and trophies and whatnot, that are

randomly put within your program. But it's intentional

movement in a particular direction. Like for us, it's,

it's are they taking the steps that we need them to take to get

closer to solving their problem. So younger audiences, again,

you're gonna do shorter pieces of content, more gamification

elements. To get them moving forward, you're going to be able

to, to do some different, maybe some more advanced gamification,

because they're going to be ready for by like they're used

to having some sort of gaming or progress indicators. as they're

going through an electronic experience. Your older audience

maybe doesn't need as much, but they still like to be rewarded

and recognized for hitting certain milestones. And so look

at that, in terms of how you're dealing with, you know, all the

different ages. But again, it's a great strategy for engagement

for any age. Again, nobody wants to be bored. But the way that

you are going to use it is going to be a little bit different. My

favorite example, of game of gamification, if you're looking

for one is Duolingo. And those are short daily lessons, that

each time you do a daily lesson you're recognized for doing it.

And you, there's some, you know, sort of sophisticated

gamification in there. But it's a great thing to model for any

age. And you can see how, if you're going through it, you

there are some things you'll like some things that maybe feel

like they're, they're over the top or too juvenile, though,

that's a good indication that it's for a younger audience. And

so you can look at that as some indicators for how to start to

structure that.

And then the last big factor that I just want to cover for

kind of figuring out the age of your avatar, and what they need

is how they're consuming your experience. Nine out of 10

times, if you have anyone under I don't know if I shouldn't say

an age, but under I don't know, let's just say 30, maybe 35,

they are primarily using their phone first, and then using

their desktop or the depending upon your audience and where

they are, are they primarily at a desk? Or are they primarily

out and about doing different things? You need to consider how

they're going through your experience. They're using the

phone, you need to make sure that you're designing for

So those are the four big things that I look at, and kind of

consider when I'm helping people think about the different age

mobile, right, everything that you're doing is going to be

groups that they are serving. Now, some people are serving all

of the age groups, which we can argue that maybe you need to

like, can they read it? Can they see it? Can they go through the

specialize in your avatar, but that's not this conversation.

But if you're serving a really wide range of avatars, then my

recommendation for you is to split them up into different

experience? What does that look like? If you're asking somebody

different membership types or audience types. So that you can

so you can create content specifically for how they would

go through the journey. So for example, like I was saying, I

to fill out an interactive PDF on a phone, that's very, very

was just going back and forth with someone who had a whole

curriculum for 10 to 18 year olds. And within there, some of

difficult, because it's, you know, really, really little. And

it was teaching them how to get a job in a specific thing. Some

was to get them to be able to do I don't know it was just do a

specific technique. And other things was just like, hey, we

so they have to transfer over to their desktop to do that, if

just want them to get involved and get to know all of the

different things. And and just have general excitement around

the topic. All three of those have really different needs in

you're asking them to go and get a bunch of links in a bunch of

terms of how the content is structured, how people are going

through it, the experience that they have, and how they're

different places, and save things. Again, that's difficult

learning what you want them to learn to get to the resolution

to the problem. And, and so if you can segment those, so your

you know, 10 to 12 year olds have one experience your 13 to

to do on a mobile device. Because it's not set up to do

15 year olds have one experience and your 16 eight year olds 18

year olds have a different experience than what you're

that, right. So it, you know, if people are at a desk all day,

doing is you're giving them the experience that matches their

age matches how they are going to consume what you've given

them and to be honest, it's more age appropriate Right? Like I

desktop may be the way that they're going through the

don't know if you would be teaching a 10 year old the same

way you would an 18 year old and you probably shouldn't be but

experience. So really think through that some of that is

the way you're organizing the content, if it's all the same,

would definitely be different. And and you can do that all In

situational in that age. But again, your digital natives,

one, one experience and make it really, really effective to

attract all of those different ages. It's just in how you

organize it. And so that's why, you know, thinking about how

your younger crowd, nine out of 10 times are doing almost

you're organizing by age and what they need. Those 10 year

olds probably don't have a way to, you know, work on an

everything on their phones, as as certainly as much as possible

interactive PDF, they would probably want to have little

activities that they could do that are in the program itself,

so that they can do that and move on.

on their phones. And so the experience you're designing

So there you go. There are some tips for you on really thinking

about the age of your avatar and what they need, and how each age

group may have some different needs as you go through and

needs to be able to start there and then look at like, how would

design your experience. All right, there you go. If you love

this episode, give us a high rating. Give us a thumbs up

subscribe, all the different things so we will see you on the

they do that on a desktop.

next episode.