Find your audience by being really different.
What sets you apart from the other guy or gal, whom you’re competing against, when you’re out there looking to find your audience? How do you stand out in this vast sea of photographers…
…who all have their portfolios online?
…who all send out email blasts?
…who all are active on social media?
…who all mail direct mail pieces to their clients?
…who all advertise in some way online?
Being different is good. Being ridiculously unique is better.
What makes you memorable? What makes you different? What gets you from the “old-whats-his-face” photographer to the first person your clients thinks about when he or she needs a photographer? (Actually you can apply this to all entrepreneurs.)
“You got to drive people to your website.” says Daniels. He goes on to state that the top of your sales funnel must be as big as you can make it: go to workshops, portfolio reviews, do something out of the norm, think outside the box and then you must have a process in place to qualify leads quickly.
You create photographs and (maybe) video as well. What do you do to make yourself a more interesting and memorable person in your online and real life worlds? Do you teach, volunteer, write, review, guest blog, …
CASE IN POINT
I’m leveraging one of my personal/volunteering projects to help me stand out from my competition. “On Wings of Hope” has won awards, been screened at film festivals, given me opportunities to speak about video at national conferences, let me teach workshops and most recently gave me the opportunity to give a TEDx talk on “The Art of changing Minds.”
I just landed a new photography client today. You know the two things they said that influenced their decision to hire me? [Of course you have to be able to do the work – that goes without saying], but they told me that the reasons they hired me where: 1) You we’re number one on our Google search and 2) We loved how fast and efficiently you responded to our inquiry. My sales funnel in this case was so big, that my audience found me. BTW if you want to go through the online CRM (Client Relationship Management) system I use following this example of today’s new client, check out ASMP’s online course called “Focus on your Business” Richard Kelly, Judy Herrman and I talk about my CRM workflow from a new lead contacting me via my website all the way through completing photography for them.
How to pick a likely project that helps you find your audience:
So how do you produce ridiculously unique content that helps you find your audience? Let me go back to my project I talked about earlier:
Why did I pick this project? Well, for one, it’s filmed in Afghanistan–which means there’s not much competition to it, since not many other photographers have traveled there (or want to).
Secondly it’s a documentary, that showcases the humanitarian mission of an organization–which means a potential client could watch it and think “I want our company’s story about our service, product, mission… told like this.”
Thirdly it’s a short film about an NGO that provides flight service to many organizations that are helping the Afghan people–and who doesn’t like a nice story.
And finally it answers a potential clients “Do you think you can produce a video for us …” question–if I can film an award winning documentary film by myself in Afghanistan, yeah, I’m pretty sure I can handle your video project.
This post is the third in a series of five exploring how you can find your audience. Going old school to help finding your audience is tomorrow’s topic. This blog series started with a roadmap to help you find your audience. This series on is born from a post I wrote for the American Society of Media Photographer’s Strictly Business titled “Find your audience: It’s easy and really complicated“
