Choosing the Right Photos and Illustrations Series: Target Audience

The imagery you choose can have a significant impact on your audience and message. In this series, we’ll explore what makes a photo or illustration a good fit for your communications piece.

Target Audience

Matching the photos and illustrations to the target audience can help you gain traction for your event or program and draw in new faces who identify with what they’ve seen in the marketing materials.

There are many ways to gather information on your target audience, and finding it is an ongoing process. Surveys, web analytics, email click rates geographical research, or simply paying attention to who engages with your events or programs in the community are all good places to start. You may be surprised by what you find!

Once you know that information, use it to help direct the imagery in the program’s marketing materials. Ask not only who the current consumers are, but also who you want them to be.

UF/IFAS covers everyone in the state of Florida! It can be tempting to say your audience is the general public and stop there, but that is often too broad to be helpful. You may be focused on rural agricultural workers, university students completing their degree, home gardeners, landscape workers, researchers or scientists in the field, families at farmers’ markets, volunteers at food pantries, or elementary school educators. Let your images reflect them!

Use your most eye catching and audience specific photos as your key art.

Use supporting images throughout your design. They could include:

Show a person using your service or program or being helped one on one by a member of your staff.

Zoom in and show a close-up of a person enjoying your event.

Show someone with props related to your program.

Show a group shot that includes your target audience.

Include photos from past events.

Add a landscape photo of your program location or product.

Need help deciding what images you’d like to use? Your ICS Graphics team is here to help. We’re happy to make suggestions or to set up a quick chat to talk through your ideas. Find us here.