Your current clients may not be your ideal clients. We want to work with people who want to work with us. I’d argue that we want to work with people who are fans of what we do, who love what we do, and who want us to have a positive impact on their lives.

It’s why we need to define our ideal client and create work for the people we want to help and make sure we focus on reaching those people. But who are they?

How to Determine Your Ideal Commercial Photography Client

From a commercial photography perspective, you can look at individual entrepreneurs or business people, if that’s your target market, or you can look at company profiles. For my commercial work, I have a list of companies that I would love to work for, and it consists of companies in industries I want to work in, such as outdoor lifestyle clothing, and companies that have ethical business practices that I support.

My suggestion for you is to make a list of 50 companies, magazines, personalities, etc., that you would love to work with. You don’t have to stop at 50, but get at least 50 on that list. My list includes companies like Roots Canada, Fjallraven, American Eagle, RW&Co., and Eddie Bauer.

Once you have your list, start grouping the companies by industry and other common traits. Your brain likely will already have started doing this because our brains naturally make connections between things. You probably wrote down one company and that made you think of another which made you think of another.

Look at your list. Look at the categories. Where my list consists of mostly outdoor apparel companies, yours might be financial institutions, motivational speakers, or even humanitarian organizations.

So, now, instead of having a list of specific companies, you have more of an outline of the type of company you want to work with. It could be an entire industry or vertical, or it could be a company in any industry but that shares a common set of values such as working with renewable energy sources.

Write out, in bullet points, the list of traits you are looking for in your ideal commercial client. And then take that list, pretend you are that client, and write out a company profile. Think of it as writing the About Us page for their website, or their mission and values statement.

How to Determine Your Ideal Consumer Photography Client 

For consumer photography, we want to dig a little deeper and be even more specific. There are two areas you want to examine when building your ideal customer profile: their demographic profile and their psychographic profile.

Demographic Information

In a consumer photography business, some demographic questions to ask yourself:

• What is their age?

• What is their gender?

• Are they married?

• Do they have children?

  • Do the children live at home?

• What is their level of education?

• What type of dwelling does this person live in?

  • House, Condo, Mansion

• Urban, suburban, rural?

• What is their ethnicity?

• What is their income?

• Are they self-employed?

Demographic data are what I call hard data. They’re fixed and not very flexible.

Psychographic Information

Psychographic data are what I would call soft data. They can be flexible and change over time. Despite that, we’re looking for clients who meet our criteria at the current point in time that we are serving them.

The questions we want to ask ourselves about our ideal client’s psychology have more to do with taste and opinion and can depend on what kind of photography business you run. 

Looking at it from a consumer photography perspective, some questions to consider might be:

• What kind of car do they drive?

• What brands do they prefer to buy?

• What is the one thing they can’t live without?

  • iPhone? Frequent flier card? Motorcycle?

• What are their favourite TV shows?

• Who are their idols?

• Do they prefer to attend the symphony or kickass action movies?

• What is their relationship with their immediate family?

• Do they value photography or is it just a function of their business?

• Do they prefer albums to wall art? Collections to single pieces? Or would they rather spend $10,000 on a single, massive framed image to go above their fireplace?

Think of these questions more like a wish list of the kind of clientele you want to work with. If you want to sell $10,000 pieces of stunning wall art, then your ideal client persona should be of someone who also has the capability to spend $10,000 on a piece of wall art. If you want to sell albums, then you could indicate that your client is someone who values family heirlooms and family legacies.

Summary

So take the time to define, update, and refine your ideal client. Identify who it is you want to work with, who can help you elevate your business, and ultimately help you live the kind of life you want to live.

That’s it for today.

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