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!
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