The Eyes of Portland Monk :: Official Blog of Award-Winning Commercial Advertising Photographer Benjamin Reed

You wrote a solid business plan and showed it around to some friends and colleagues and you have your bases covered. Now you’re ready to construct the most important document you will ever write for your business.

Time and time again you’ll hear established pros tell you it’s not how good your photography is, but it’s how strong your marketing practices and business acumen are. There are excellent photographers out there who struggle making it and not so great photographers doing very well. Use this as a cursory guide on how to think about promoting yourself.

There is no right or wrong way to make a marketing plan but there is a right way to think practically about the brand you want to project and how to go about getting noticed.

In the simplest terms, your marketing plan helps you identify your target clients, understand what problems they have, how you communicate your ability to solve their problems and how you maintain your relationship with your clients.

Follow this outline to help you develop your plan:

1. Set business goals – If you’ve already made you business plan, this is a simple copy and paste line. You want to be specific in your objectives. Explain what you want to accomplish in the next three years.

2. Identify market segments – Many of you (will) work in different areas of photography, editorial, corporate, weddings, etc. These areas represent different slices of the photography pie. Within each you might have more segmentation. Law Firms and Food Companies might make up two distinct markets you target in the corporate segment.The more refined you make your market segments, the better off you’ll be at targeting and marketing to them. For each segment you shoot for, or want to shoot for list the following:

• Type of Business
• General Product Lines
• Size
• Industry
• Sales Information

All of this information is publicly available except if the company is private. But you should be able to find 90% of the information above. The goal here is to find commonalities among customers in your target markets. You’ll learn more about the industry and be able to relate to them better if you understand the general dynamics of your customers. When you have your segments distinguished you can also figure out if your target markets are large enough to support your business.

Once you determine your segments, take note of what’s available to you in your target area and start making a list of these potential clients and how you can solve problems for them, i.e. help them create some promotional materials by taking portraits or creating images that will go on their promotional materials. Break these segments up into percentages on your list and even better if you can find out how much money they bring in.

This information is usually publicly available except for the ad agencies because they operate privately. For example, magazines make up 10% of your market, Non-Profits 5%, etc.

3. Determine Segment Needs – What will your market segments need and how can you provide this to them? You can find this by studying the promotional materials they distribute. Their customers should be in your pictures. Also try to quantify the need. For example, if you want to shoot advertisements research industry publications like Ad Age and you’ll find stuff like this: “According to the 2/11/08 issue of Ad Age, Eighty-four percent of agencies surveyed predicted growth of advertising revenues of 8% to 10% in 2008.” That’s great information to include in your plan because it shows you understand where your industry is going. If you belong to a public library, they can provide you access to these materials online through EBSCO Host.

4. Establish a core brand to convey to your segments – Your customers don’t care about you. They care about themselves. How you can help them achieve their desired results? By understanding what they want. You can do this by branding yourself to sell more than photography services. Insurance companies don’t sell policies, they sell piece of mind. Apple doesn’t sell products, it sells culture, Doctors don’t sell medicine, they sell relief. You’re not selling your skills; you’re selling a style, a solution, a relationship.

Your brand is how you want to project yourself to the world. What are you going to sell in addition to the same set of photography skills everybody else has? What message tells your audience your brand? As part of developing your brand, write down this message and stay on it. It should always be in the back of your head…ask yourself, does this fit my brand message?

There’s an argument out there on whether it’s better to specialize or become a Jack-of-all-Trades (JAT). In my opinion, specialization makes it easier for you to brand yourself and convey a clear message. You want to be the photographer someone thinks of when they need to solve a specific problem. “We need someone who can shoot sports in a retro style.” “We need someone who can shoot food with energy behind it.”

For many photographers the brand is reflected in the style alone, but the point is to develop that style of shooting and become an expert in it…at least with respect to how you project yourself to the market. With so many photographers out there doing many different things, you’ll be remembered better if your name is associated with a certain style. Here are two photographers who I think do this very well:

Lo-Fi photographer David Emmite & Surrealist Dave Hill. You’ll see each of these photographers has a core message in their promotion.

When you decided how you want to convey yourself (brand yourself), you’ll need to write down what message gets that out there and write it down. Write it down so you’ll remember it and return to it over and over again.

5. Establish a marketing budget – There’s really no rule of thumb here, but you have to spend money to make it. I’ve heard of photographers spending anywhere from 5% – 30% of their gross income on marketing. You’ll be testing a lot of different strategies to determine which has the best benefit with the lowest cost for your business so adjust your marketing budget based on what you have to spend based on your priorities. If you’re just starting out, you might spend a little more than a seasoned photographer.

6. Revisit the past - List what you did last year and how will you change it based on what worked and what didn’t. Simple step, but make sure you understand why something didn’t work. Marketing works if you target the right audience with the right strategies.

7. List marketing objectives – What outcomes do you want to achieve by when? List at least three objectives for each of your segments. For example, I want to increase my sales by $10,000 in my corporate portraits and grow my number of clients by 2 this year.

Each objective should have at least one strategy of how you will achieve the objective. For example, you want to grow your editorial business by promoting to the 5 best fashion magazines by spending $X per company on advertising. Another example might be, I want to establish 5 new solid agency contacts in the first quarter of next year by attending networking events and showing my book to these 15 agencies. I will also send out promotional mailers on this schedule.

Market Segment A
Objective 1; Strategy 1; Deadline
Objective 2; Strategy 1; Deadline
Objective 3; Strategy 1; Deadline

Market Segment B
Objective 1; Strategy 1; Deadline
Objective 2; Strategy 1; Deadline
Objective 3; Strategy 1; Deadline

8. The Timeline – Finally, create a calendar to track your progress. Use your outline from the previous step and write in your dates of completion to keep yourself on schedule. This will also be helpful when you plan out future years. The timeline also acts as a diary. Write down what worked, what didn’t and why.

For a visual guide and a slightly different approach, you can visit this outline I also want to regurgitate some points I made in getting your work noticed.

I want to re-emphisize the importance of face to face time, networking and referrals.

Focus your energies here. These will be keys to your success in your business future. Here are some more ideas from below:

• Join associations like APA and ASMP to network with other photographers and attend meetings where you get direct access to buyers and directors.
• Send business to other photographers you meet there and they’ll respond with referrals as well.
• Meet face to face with buyers and directors to show your portfolios. Your response rate is higher and you get to meet your maker. While many argue they hate cold calls, the odds are in your favor they will agree to hold a quick meeting to review your work. It happens every day in the major ad cities like New York and Los Angeles. Another benefit is you have your work critiqued right there. To increase your chances, and this is very important, give a time-line of your availability. In fact, Lisa Oropallo at Digitas says she is more likely to sit down with someone who calls and says, “I’m only in town for a week…or I’m in from Europe.”
• Get listed in the sourcebooks online. Times have changed. The world is faster and needs everything now! Workbook, PDN’s Photoserve, Communication Arts’ Creative Hot List are all services that buyers check when they need talent. While expensive, there’s a reason. It usually keeps out the crap and buyers can search directly what they need. Why go through a box of promos if you can search online for exactly what you want?
• Get a rep to partner with you and market yourself. If you’re new to the advertising world, this is a great way to add legitimacy to your work. In all honesty, the chances of you being picked up when nobody knows who you are, are small. Prodigies excluded. First, accept that email and direct promos aren’t going to get you there. They might, but again the cost benefit is extremely lop-sided towards cost. So what can a rep do? It gives your maker a warranty. When you buy a car and you don’t know much about the brand, what get’s you to buy it? 100,000 mile warranties, free tune-ups, etc. A rep is your warranty to a buyer. They need to know you can produce a shoot…that you’re a good person to work with and you are consistent. Photographers have a terrible reputation for being cocky and difficult to work with.
• NSS. Never Stop Shooting. I’ve heard it so many times before. “How can I get more work? Why don’t they call me back? I can’t improve my portfolio if I don’t get work.” It might be because you’re sitting and waiting around. Get out there and shoot! You don’t need money for that. You have friends and they have friends and those friends know people. Shoot them. People love to be photographed. You can practice producing your shoots and put the images on a stock site and in your portfolio. There’s no downside to NSS. You’re improving your style and there’s a financial upside. And guess what? The people you NSS will tell their friends you’re a photographer…one of them will know someone who will call you up to photograph something that pays you. It’s another form of marketing and it’s more powerful than your e-mail campaign would’ve been.

The Monk