Create Your Ideal Client Avatar to Attract More Clients Who Appreciate What You Do
You’ve identified your big idea to become a professional photographer. You’ve discovered your photographic niche - portraiture. Now you’re ready to create your avatar.
What is an avatar? An avatar is one single individual. Your avatar is your perfect customer, your model client, and the ideal consumer of your photography products and services. Creating your ideal client avatar is a crucial step, yet it’s one of the most ignored. When you know your avatar with absolute clarity, you can operate your photography business with confidence and speed.
The problem is most photographers think “everyone is their customer,” and they fail. Everyone is not your customer. In fact, most people are not your customer. And that’s okay. What you need to do is know your avatar inside and out.
Let’s put together a snapshot of your Ideal Customer Avatar. It’s beneficial to visualize the type of person or community you’re creating for and to have an idea of what they believe, think, experience, and feel. The goal of this exercise is for you to become VERY clear on who it is that you’re serving and what you can do for them.
When you are thinking of who you want to serve, how does your ICA identify? Female, male? What age range?
What do their families look like? How many children? What stage of life are they in? Do they have extended families that are part of their core families?
Where do they live? How do they value photography? When do you think they last worked with a professional photographer?
Where do they spend time online? (Instagram, Facebook, Email, Pinterest)
Would your ICA attend if you created a podcast or did a Facebook live show?
What 5-7 keywords best describe how your ICA thinks and feels right now? Think about what frustrates them, their fears, challenges, where they feel stuck, what they want but don’t yet have, and what feels hard or heavy for them.
What is their most significant pain point regarding how you will serve them?
Now come up with 5-7 keywords to best describe how your ICA WANTS to think and feel after working with you. Think about what they want, need, desire, dream about, the goals they want to reach, and what they value most.
What does your ICA need to understand, be aware of, or believe before they are ready to book your photography services?
If your ICA is hesitant to book you, what are the top 3 objections that are holding them back right now emotionally, physically, or demographically?
What specific transformation and results does your ICA want to achieve after investing in your products and services?
After you’ve answered the above questions, it’s time to write out a short bio of your avatar. Use your imagination here and have some fun.
As a photographer, you must take the time to clarify who your ideal client is. Why? Because understanding who your ideal client is will help you to…
Better understand what they want and need from you.
Write marketing messages that speak directly to them
Attract more of your ideal clients
Provide a better customer experience, resulting in happier clients and higher sales.
By clarifying your ideal client, it’ll help you determine which social platforms to be on, which messaging strategies work best, and where you should spend your marketing budget to attract them.
Defining your ideal client is critical to your photography business. As a business owner, you’ll be faced with thousands of decisions. Those who haven’t created their avatar spend time, energy, mental bandwidth, and money trying to make these decisions. The worst part is that they often choose the wrong path and struggle yearly.
So if you haven’t done so already, now is the time to sit down and really focus on who your ideal client is. Once you have a solid understanding of who they are, you can start working on attracting more of them.
From this moment on, every step you take on your entrepreneurial journey is with your avatar by your side. Without your avatar, you’re stumbling in the dark.
Let me know in the comments how this exercise worked out for you. What have you learned from this newfound clarity, and how will your future marketing efforts be adjusted based on what you discovered?
