Photographers, why do you need a marketing plan?

Apr 28, 2013

Last week we looked at why it makes sense to focus on your photographic niche; that is to work out which small segment of the general population you want to target your photography services with.

Once you’ve decided on which niche to focus on, you’re going to give your business the best chance of succeeding if you develop a marketing plan. This doesn’t need to be a long or complicated document, but a good marketing plan helps you to coordinate your total marketing effort. It gives you a roadmap to achieve your desired business goals, by providing a systematic approach to developing products and services to meet and satisfy your clients’ needs.

When you’re writing a marketing plan you need to be clear about your objectives and how you’ll achieve them. A good marketing plan sets clear, realistic and measurable objectives, includes deadlines, provides a budget and allocates responsibilities. A plan can consist of these elements:

• Analysis of your current market
• Your business vision
• Your business goals
• Key strategies
• Steps to achieving your goals (Action Plan)
• Budget – your revenue and expenses

Some great free marketing plan resources

Business.gov.au is a great resource for new or experienced business owners, and their page about developing marketing plans provides some useful templates. One of their latest (and free) resources is the MarketMyBiz App. I checked it out on my iPad, and it looks like it would be handy to complete and keep as a document that you can refer to anywhere.

According to the App’s description;

Our planning tools were developed in conjunction with business experts and give you a clear process to follow to help you:

• Identify your target market and understand how your product or service meets their needs
• Identify your competitors and what your target customers perceive their strengths and weaknesses
• Position your brand, product and services so that your target market sees you as better than or different from the competition

The business of photography is more competitive than ever, and I’ve seen many photographers try to commercialise their work with no clear direction about who they’re actually trying to target, what their product offering is, how they should price their services or where they plan to find their next customer.

There are plenty of resources like the site and App mentioned above. Remember the saying, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Your marketing plan doesn’t need to be a work of art, but you certainly need to have a plan in place to give your the business the best chance of success!

I’m counting down to the Creative Photo Workshops: Casting Call Three

Apr 23, 2013

Photo courtesy of Creative Photo Workshops

I love photography! And I love learning about it. I love hanging out with other photogs and I particularly love shooting stuff that’s completely different to what I see everyday. So when I heard that Glynn Lavender of Creative Photo Workshops and renowned New Zealand photographer, Mike Hollman were doing one of their legendary “Casting Call” weekends in October, my husband and I had to be a part of it!

The weekend takes place in an abandoned film set, about an hour out of Melbourne, and encompasses everything from model shoots to landscape shoots, light painting, star trails and all manor of photobombing antics, if previous CPW workshops are anything to go by. I’ve been to a bunch of CPW’s 1-day workshops over the last couple of years, and I reckon I have learnt more about photography in those workshops than in any other workshops I’ve done.

Even though it’s still six months out, I’m SO excited about Casting Call Three! In the meantime I’m going to spend a few hours getting lost in Mike Hollman’s wonderfully inspiring Pinterest boards! Methinks there’ll be a trip to New Zealand next!

Why focus on your photographic niche?

Apr 21, 2013

The concept of niche marketing has been around for eons, but I feel it’s worth discussing in relation to photographers. It carries on from last week’s post about finding your photographic voice.

When you’re starting out in photography, there’s absolutely nothing wrong experimenting with photographic styles and photographing any number of things that interst you. But it’s a different story when it comes to commercialising your business. When you’re trying to market a product or service, you can either do it in a general, scatter gun approach (the “be everything to everyone” approach), or you can focus your efforts on a smaller, more concentrated group of buyers.

What is niche marketing?

The Business Dictionary defines niche marketing as “Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well defined segment of the population. Niches do not ‘exist’ but are ‘created’ by identifying needs, wants, and requirements that are being addressed poorly or not at all by other firms, and developing and delivering goods or services to satisfy them. As a strategy, niche marketing is aimed at being a big fish in a small pond instead of being a small fish in a big pond. Also called micromarketing.”

What are the benefits of niche marketing?

Concentrating your limited time and marketing resources on a select group of potential buyers has many benefits:

• Marketing this way is cheaper – when you know who you’re trying to target, you can be more selective about the marketing activities you do. If you’re a wedding photographer, it’s probably not going to make sense to advertise in parenting magazines (or even local newspapers for that matter); participating in a local bridal expo, reception venue or related wedding supplier’s newsletter is probably going to be more effective.
• You can better focus on the needs of your niche market, and set about creating products and services that they want! If you know that your target audience is likely to want to share the photos you create for them on social media for example, build that into your product offering!
• You can focus your effort on developing mutually beneficial affiliate networks. For example, if you want to develop a niche in maternity photography, consider the place where you’re likely to find mothers-to-be. Try working with your local baby supplies shop or other appropriate suppliers to get your brand in front of your prospective clients.
• Niche marketing helps you to stand out by honing your abilities. It stands to reason that if you keep practicing a particular style of photography week in, week out, you’ll improve over time.

How to build a niche?

This post from SmallBizSurvival.com provides great suggestions from Mike Klemme, a photographer who has built a global business out of photographing golf courses, about how to build a niche:

1. Pick a niche without an existing specialist, one that capitalizes on your skills and abilities.
2. Start learning all you can about it; read the trade publications.
3. Network, meet everyone involved, know the industry players and become a guru in your specialty.
4. Get beyond the obvious; develop your own perspective and your own style.
5. Slam the door on that niche by being the absolute best.
6. Find your tribe of people who are passionate about the topic. Communicate directly with them.
7. Build great partnerships. Find compatible professionals, and grow your work together.

The articles below provide additional information about niche marketing. I hope this post inspires you to consider why you should focus on your photography niche!

Related articles

• Find a niche, fill the niche and kill the niche (smallbizsurvival.com)
• 8 Ways to Ace Niche Marketing (openforum.com)
• Useful Photography Tip #27: Specialize to Succeed” (The Phoblographer)
• Finding Your Perfect Photography Niche” (Light Stalking)
• Are You Choosing The Wrong Photography Niche?” (Expert Photography)

Finding your photographic voice; your photographic style

Apr 16, 2013

I came across a great blog post on currentphotographer.com by Chris Nitz, called Photography 101: What is Your Photographic Voice? Even though the post was written a couple of years ago, I believe it’s still incredibly pertinent for every aspiring professional photographer.

One of the fundamentals of marketing any product or service is to decide who you’re targeting and what you have to offer them. Determining your photographic voice, or in other words, your photographic or artistic style, is a critical step in determining what your offering actually is, and what makes you unique!

Determine what style you like

As Chris points out in the post, “the first part to finding your voice is to pinpoint the style of photography you like. Style is different from voice as style is the genre. Your style might be nature, animals, portraits, sports, architecture, or any of the other umpteen dozen styles that exist. For me, I found I really enjoyed macro, grunge, HDR, and landscapes. Keep in mind these don’t all really fit together as one cohesive style. I was able to finally pinpoint this by simply paying attention to the images I spent the most time gawking at.”

Your style might also include particular poses, styling, lighting effects, post-processing effects or elements of your product packaging – ultimately it’s about creating something unique (but consistently unique to YOU) that your fans, followers and potential clients can recognise in your photography.

Kirsty Mitchell, a British photographer whose work I’m constantly inspired by, created the amazing Wonderland series – you only have to look through a few of her images to see that her photographic style is very design-lead. It’s as much about styling and setting the scene, as it is about the painstaking detail of the costumes and makeup on the models in each scene. She chooses locations which compliment her vision for the scene and the costumes and props shes makes specifically for each shoot. Her images are indeed fine art, that you could imagine hanging on the walls of high-end galleries and hotels.

Of course it may not be practical, necessary or relevant to go into that much detail to create your photographic voice, but it is certainly worth studying the portfolios of photographers you admire, be they wedding, portrait, pet or sports photographers, to work out a way of achieving a particular look, in a way that is consistently unique to you.

Learn as much as possible about the styles that interest you

Chris Nitz goes on his his post to say, “The second part is to start learning all you can about the styles that interest you. This encompasses everything from looking at photos to reading up on techniques. I cannot even begin to tell you the amount of macro and HDR photos I have looked at and studied over the years. This was all part of the learning and growing process. Really, this area should be no different for you. You know what you enjoy looking at, and should work with those areas you enjoy and are comfortable working.”

So true – let’s face it, you’re far more likely to succeed doing something you love, than something which feels like a chore.

Questions to ask yourself

Whether you are just starting out, or have been in business for a while, it’s worth taking some time to reflect on your photographic voice. You might like to consider these questions to get your creative juices flowing:

– What is my photographic style?

– What do I enjoy photographing?

– If I could create any kind of end-effect on my photos, what would that look like (forget for the time being whether you know how to create that effect or not)?

– What sort of feelings do I want my images to evoke?

– Which photographers create the sort of work I aspire to create?

Keeping a visual diary

In a photography class I did a while back, they made a great suggestion about keeping a visual diary of photographs that appeal to you. With sites like Pinterest and Flickr, this is easily done online. I also use Evernote to store ideas about a whole range of stuff I’m interested in, so it’s all in the one spot, accessible from anywhere.

Honing in on your photographic voice, I believe, will actually strengthen your product offering. You can’t be everything to everyone – no business can succeed with that approach. The clearer you are about what your photographic voice is, the easier it will be to identify and target potential customers, and tailor your offering to suit.

What are your thoughts and ideas? Any advice about how you finally found your photographic voice?

Baby, you’re a firework!

Apr 14, 2013

It’s the first post of a brand new blog, and I’m super excited! As my friends will know, I’m a passionate photographer and am constantly amazed and inspired by so many photographers whose work I follow.

I’m also a passionate marketer, and have been marketing various products and services in Australia and internationally for over 15 years.

The purpose of this blog is to combine my passions and write about how photographers can better market themselves in order to develop and grow their businesses.

These days, creativity and technical skill alone do not guarantee the success of a photographer. Even having the best and latest gear won’t guarantee your success. Those photographers who clearly define their market, craft and refine their product, stay on top of their marketing and deliver great customer service, are more likely to succeed than those who do not.

From a professional and personal perspective, it’s been fascinating to watch how marketing has evolved over the last 15 years, and I have  watched with almost obsessive interest, how social media is impacting the way we live and do business.

With social media, I believe it’s easier and cheaper than ever to carve out targeted niches and create awesome businesses. On the other side of the equation, there are more people waving cameras around, calling themselves photographers – so competition is fierce, and the general public are wary.

“My mate has a pretty good camera, why would I need to hire you as a professional photographer at my wedding?” – I’m sure many photographers have come up against this line of questioning from prospective clients.

This blog is going to be dedicated to helping photographers better understand the many elements of marketing and business, and how to make it all hang together in order to grow your business! I’m going to share my own observations as well as call on professional photographers who are doing great things in their fields. What I love most about the photography community is the willingness to share ideas (and gear), and I want this blog to be the place were that happens.

If you have questions or ideas for future blog posts, feel free to contact me through the blog (see the Contact Us) page.

In the meantime, let’s get going on making your business POP!