Photography Marketing Huge Secret: You Are Not Your Target Market!

If You Don’t Know Exactly Who Your “Target Market” Is, Your Marketing Will Not Be As Effective As You’d Like It To Be!

Portrait photography marketing is difficult. Indeed, marketing photography is one of the most difficult things we professional photographers have to do.

Here’s a MAJOR secret that almost no photographers realize, that is important to improving the quality and effectiveness of your photography marketing.

You are not your target market!

You and I love photography, yes – but we are too close to it. We work with it every day. We almost “take it for granted,” and forget about just how very valuable what we do really is to our clients.

So we think small.  We keep our prices too low.  We tend to create marketing that will attract people like ourselves.  We forget that there are a bunch of people in our town that will LOVE what we do, and who will HIGHLY value it!  We just think way too small.

The real secret to photography marketing is to realize that YOU ARE NOT YOUR TARGET MARKET.

You’re not going after people who understand photography as well as you do.

You’re not looking for people who just want a “quick photo” and won’t highly value what you do.

You’re not trying to “get your name out there” to everyone.

The job of your photography marketing is to appeal to your TARGET MARKET – those people who highly value photography, are emotional people who want a beautiful, well done series of images that capture the emotions and personalities of their family members at this moment in their lives.

Your target market is not you!

Here’s my “Target Market:”

1. Female (in fine portrait photography, the actual buyer is almost always a female!)

25-55 years old (for example – for high school seniors, your target market is the mom, not the senior!)

2. Warm Fuzzie person (a “warm fuzzie” loves her family, cries at movies, is very emotional almost all the time, and loves what you do.  A “cold prickly” doesn’t like anything, you’re never fast enough, you’re too much money, etc.) You do NOT want to spend your life working with the Cold Pricklies of the world!

3. Values fine photography & is willing to pay for it

4. Has some discretionary money (she doesn’t have to be “rich” – she just needs to have access to some discretionary money.).

5. Is willing to do business my way.

Stop thinking that everyone in your community is only looking for the cheapest photographer in town.  There really are people who will highly value what you do.

Stop thinking that all anyone in your community wants is a CD with all the images on it – and it has to be cheap. There are people who want some very emotional and special.

Stop thinking that the folks in your area just want something done that’s fast. There are people who instead, want something that will bring tears to their eyes when they look at it.  They just don’t know where they can get something like that.

From this day forward, stop thinking that everyone is like you! Stop thinking that everyone only wants cheap, fast photography!

Realize that there are a bunch of people in your area who will truly value what you do, and give you good money for it, if you talk to them on that level, instead of always talking about the prices, how fast you are, and that you’ll give them a CD!

There’s a better way – and there are many professional photographers who are earning a great living, by realizing that they are not their Target Market!

Always remember that YOU are NOT your “Target Market!”  Decide exactly who your Target Market is, and be sure your webpage and all your other marketing is carefully created to appeal to that group of people.