There is not a single photographer out there, who is consistently booking and thriving in their business, that doesn’t know exactly who their ideal client is and how to serve them.

If you’re struggling to grow your business and book clients, you might be targeting the wrong audience or producing ineffective marketing efforts. Before we can even talk about booking, we first need to do a deep dive into identification.

Here’s the thing, you can’t market if you have no idea who the heck you’re marketing to. On the flip side, you might be serving an audience that isn’t your ideal audience. For example, if I am an elopement photographer that loves working with adventurous couples and I am getting inquiries and reaching audiences in large weddings, I am most definitely not targeting my people. Knowing who your ideal client is, is crucial to targeting and booking your people! But you also need to know that not everyone is your ideal client or your ideal person.

Who is your ideal client

This is very literal. Ask yourself, “who is my ideal client?” “Am I currently serving that client?”

Is this person or couple adventurous? Are they more buttoned up? Where are they located? What do they enjoy? How old are they? What is their education level? What does their income look like?

There are so many different groupings of people out there. So who do you want to serve?

Take a look at your audiences demographics and psychographics.

In marketing, demographics break down things like family size, religion, age, education, income, gender and ethnicity. Demographics play a key role in identifying your people but two people can have the same income, be the same gender and age but have different interests. Psychographics take a look at that persons interests, hobbies and even values. Where this comes into play is if these two people have similar demographics but one values the tradition of a bigger wedding while the other is more adventurous and wants to elope, and I only shoot elopements this is really going to help cater to my ideal clients interests more.

If you’re struggling to book shoots that resonate with you and your ideal audience, dip your camera in styled shoots and only share what you want to shoot.

Key elements that play a role in attracting your ideal clients

1. A quality website
2. Showing your audience who you are
3. Your overall branding
4. Your voice and how you show up in your business
5. The quality of your work and the feeling it gives
6. The experience
7. Consistency

Diversify & Apply

Your audience can be found in so many places and if you’re relying on just Instagram or just Facebook to find them, it’s time to diversify your platforms. You should never put all your eggs in one basket, either.

Now, you might thinking “that’s so much work”. Let’s briefly talk about repurposing content which means creating one long-form piece of content and breaking it down into short-form pieces of content that can be dispersed across multiple platforms. You can see an awesome representation of this in Garyvee’s Content Model.

Long-form pieces of content are things like blogs, podcasts, vlogs, etc. Short-form pieces of content are platforms like instagram, Pinterest, newsletters, Tiktok, etc.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry, I’ve got you! Get your hands on the Content Pillar Mind Map! Identifying your audience and how to target them can be tricky. Before becoming a full-time photographer, I worked with businesses for years helping them hone in on their voice, identify their audiences and create measurable goals to reach them. The mind map will help you visually outline your voice within your business and create content pillars and topics (WOOO say goodbye to being mentally stumped when trying to post). As an added bonus, I am going to help you create your audience personas so you can take your voice and apply it through 3 extra work pages.