As a photographer/videographer, you are in sales. You are selling your portrait sessions, prints, corporate profile videos, etc. One key part of the sales process is understanding your target audience and what interests them. You should know the usual demographics, such as age range, gender, income level, education level, etc. And not just what services you have that interest them, but also what else they like. What magazine or TV show do they watch? Which restaurants do they like? What sports teams do they cheer for?

With all this information, you can craft a solid Buyer Persona. A Buyer Persona is a representation of specific segments of your target market. Your persona should have a name, age range, occupation, hobbies, income level, education level and more. All of it is representing a key segment of who you want to sell to. We will go over Buyer Personas in another post soon.

In the mean time, you need to better understand your target audience. One great way is to talk with your current and past clients. Ask them questions and listen. But what if you are just starting out, or you have just moved to a new city, then what? Well, that is where we can leverage social media.

Facebook Graph Search

Chances are, you have heard of Facebook’s graph search. What it allows you to do is to conduct research on your target audience in Facebook.

Example 1:

A photographer shoots women and/or baby lifestyle portraits in Los Angeles. She has a good idea that Parents Magazine is popular with this type of buyer, so she opens Facebook and types this in the top search bar:
Favorite interests of fans of Parents Magazine who live in Los Angeles, California

The results will be the interests of the fans of Parents Magazine’s Facebook page. Here she can get some insights into what these women are interested in.

Another useful search would be:
Women who like Parents Magazine and live in Los Angeles, California

Using the right side filter function you can filter these results even more. There are tons of options there such as relationship, education degree, age range and more. And then clicking on the little magnifying glass icon at the bottom right of a profile card, you can even see that person’s likes and interests. More insights. I hope you are getting the idea here.

Some things to know about Facebook search.

• The search phrases are preset. Unlike searching in google, in Facebook, you need to type the correct search phrase or else you won’t find any results.
• Type slowly and let Facebook give you suggestions on the correct search phrase.
• Other good search phrases:
  • fans of [insert page name]
  • people who go to [school name] (and use right side filters to filter for school year = senior portraits)
  • people who visited [store, restaurant, attraction, location]

Use this neat tool to understand your buyer. Also, for when you are thinking of what topic to blog about, what to have as a prize for a giveaway promotion, what themes or ideas to use to create ads, and so on. Also, if you are using Facebook ads, this will help you find the right people on Facebook to show your ads to. The better you understand your target audience, the more relevant you can be to them and understand what they really want, which will mean more sales for you. Yay!

So give it a try and let me know how you use Facebook graph search!