Artists or for that matter even photographers are never wired to hard sell. Till the time they attain fame, it is often a string of struggle stories for survival. No, I am not inspired by any Bollywood film in particular. In fact, Bollywood films are inspired by many such real-life stories.

No, I don’t see this with a romantic twist; not is there anything to be shy about. The right price for any art product or form is the right of every creator, not the middleman. As an artist, where do you start?

Right here, right now… read on.

PART I: THE ANALYSIS OF THE MIND

WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR?

There are two critical things that will lead to the success of a business. The first is to create a marketing funnel and the second is to create lead magnets. Knowing your ‘customer avatar’ or your ‘potential customer’ is the key to getting the action at the top of the funnel activated.

HOW TO VISUALISE YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR?

To make every communication successful, one has to clearly understand who the customer is. It’s like a news anchor speaking to the camera lens. We don’t know who the person on the other side is but having a face to it or adding a character helps. We have to appeal to the target audience in a way by which respond. This can only happen if we personalise our communication. Addressing everyone only means that you will not captivate anyone.

HOW TO ZERO DOWN ON TO YOUR CUSTOMER AVATAR?

So what is the first step? Well, first we will have to have a few generic criteria in place. Ask yourself, where does your customer avatar stay, what is his/her lifestyle like? What kind of dress do they love wearing, what kind of food so they adore? What are their priorities, their age, domicile and lastly, what excites them the most? Once we have a generic bandwidth of each of these criteria, we will be able to narrow to who that customer avatar would be like. Only when we have identified how our potential customer is or behave like, can we truly address communications that will stir him/her.

KEY ESSENTIALS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

As you are now aware who your customer avatar is, the personal touch will flow in naturally. You just have to keep in mind that person – your customer avatar. If that seems difficult, download a profile picture of one of the people who fit into that criterion. Look at the picture once in a while thinking that you are writing to only this person and no one else. This exercise may sound stupid, but will really help.

KEEP YOUR WRITING SHORT AND TO THE POINT

With regard to writing, keep it direct, short and to the point. Sentences are woven together like a chain. One weak link and the chain breaks. Therefore, do re-write a sentence if you are not satisfied. Don’t hesitate to alter the line for the better. If alterations don’t help much, then maybe that line isn’t required in the first place. Powerful lines will flow in naturally and from the heart.

USE EVENT OR VISUAL REFERENCES AS A CONNECT

Personalised approach is the key to every fruitful connect. Your thought or opinion should enable the reader to visualise with the connect. No one is perfect and as you keep writing, your sense of establishing that connect with every audience you appeal to, will start coming in naturally.

PART II: KNOW YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMER VIA AN ONLINE SURVEY

UNDERSTANDING YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMER USING ONLINE SURVEY AS A TOOL

Seems like a nice idea as only the right set of people with the right inclination will respond to my call. As I was looking at shaping myself to share my photography skill sets with others, the setting up of the right questionnaire, with the sequence of the questions I thought was important. I therefore started with a very generic question and slowly went into the ones that may evoke that response that they too didn’t think of! There were only 22 responses registered, but nevertheless, they will give useful insights.

How do you click photographs? *

The answer was as expected, but my intent was to let the audience know that this is a reality. That has to sink in.

How many photographs do you click in a month? *

The answer was as expected. More than 30 was my target estimate and this too was bull’s eye. So far so good. I wanted to use this data to highlight during my session that quality only comes when you restrict the quantity. There is a difference between creating a funnel at the top and the filtering at the bottom. This was the key takeaway for me as well.

Where do you get photography knowledge from? *

Zooming in closer, I see something that surprised me too! I always thought that the Internet would win this hands down, but this was not the case. Maybe there isn’t enough content to cater to the regional audience. I would make notes on this.

Do you think DSLR is necessary to learn photography? *

This may seem like a very generic question but was important for me to be aware of. That 50% chunk of maybe is where the key to my success as a guide lies. That may need to be addressed and converted in that the reality truly is.

Will you be interested in online LIVE demos? *

Four questions through, good enough to make the person comfortable with the basic set of questions. The fifth was critical as that was the decisive factor to power my wings when I take the ‘leap of faith’ test. A magnanimous yes it was 🙂

What will you want to learn from a LIVE online class? *

By now I would have known if there is a market potential for me or not. I went on to take a step further on in the positive stride. As I can’t keep on coming back with layers of questionnaires, this was critical to know what sort of content will be well received when I start.

Preference of platform? *

Last but not the least, it was important to know which platform of e-meet suited my potential customers the most. This is important as it is I who is going out to them and not the other way around. Using my lens to scan the finer details as not required as Zoom turned out to be a clear winner.

Google Meet was a let-down as it is estimated that 85% of the e-mail users in India today use a Google account. That’s a survey for 39 million people for another time. Even though YouTube tops the list, this will not be my choice of preference as I find real-time, two-way communications more gratifying, engaging and more fruitful too. Nevertheless, a point noted, I will try to go live on YouTube if my Internet bandwidth allows me to.

CONCLUSION

Hope me trying to establish the fact as to why the identification of your ‘customer avatar’ as a pre-requisite is not just critical but how should one go about finding them has made sense. This is the first step in shaping up the boundaries that the top of the funnel. I have tried to be as transparent and to the point as I mentioned one should. Hope this helps you in creating your niche audience more enjoyable as an experience. In case you have doubts or need further clarification, do give me a shout. I am just a call away. Cheers!