Hi All

I’m working on a new post for the blog on the subject of online coupons, for example Groupon.

Have you, as a professional photographer,  offered online coupons through any of these types of avenues?

If so, how did it work for you? Would you recommend the method to anyone else?

Please email your material to me at info@merrickphoto.com with the subject line: “Groupon blog post material.” Credits will be given to all contributers whose material I use (please indicate in the email if you wish to remain anonymous).

Thanks and have a great day!

Do you send out a monthly email newsletter for your photography business? If so, kudos to you, this is another great way to “touch” your clients and prospects each month to keep your photography studio and your brand on their radar.

Perhaps the idea raises thoughts of, “I’d love to, but that’s all I need – more administrative work to keep me away from taking photographs!”

But then again, we need people in front of our cameras, right? In order to get those people where we want them to be, we need to market our services and get their attention. Not only that, we need to keep their attention once we’ve earned it.

If you aren’t sending out a newsletter, there are plenty of reasons why you should. Before I committed to sending one out myself, like many others, I was expecting Facebook, Twitter and my blog to do all the work that a newsletter should do. After all, it’s no big task to write a short blog entry to announce special portrait sessions. Adding a status update to Facebook is easier still and as for Twitter, well anyone can write 140 characters in their sleep, right? Plus, those things are a lot more fun than writing a newsletter – that sounds too much like being a journalist.

The problem with this approach (apart from being somewhat lazy) is that the people receiving your numerous status updates and tweets are just not paying attention to them as much as you would like them to. Your updates become lost in a continual parade of tweets and announcements that slide past your contacts glazed eyes all day long, small fish in a very big pond of other [mostly] small fish.

I’m sure you don’t need me to point out how frustrating it can be from a business standpoint to “yell” at Facebook and Twitter continually with no appreciable results. The reason people are not responding to us could very well be that we’re using social media incorrectly. Ideally, Facebook & Twitter should be used in a social way to augment and amplify our marketing message – instead, we appear to be using them as vehicles to carry our whole marketing message. Imagine if Walmart tried to deliver everything to their stores in VW Beetles, simply because everyone else thinks VW Beetles are cool. Theoretically, it could be done, but the vehicle is simply not suitable for that type of job, and it would not be the best business decision for Walmart.

So, here are 8 reasons why you probably need to send an email newsletter…

Reason #1: Concentrated Information

When someone opens your newsletter, they’re focused purely on that one thing (or at least as much as we can hope for in today’s age). They probably scan it for interesting headlines, and then an article on the benefits of wall portraits might catch their eye to read in more detail. Even if they don’t click any of the links, the amount of time they spend looking at it is enormous compared to a tweet, which now seems as insignificant as a blink.

The benefit of having your marketing information concentrated in a newsletter is that the reader has a chance to think about what you’re saying. They might read that interesting piece you wrote about your emotional approach to wedding photography. The overall message you want to convey becomes stickier when presented in a concentrated way like this, so the readers stand a better chance of remembering it afterwards.

Reason #2: Professional

A properly written email newsletter just looks more professional, and is one of the factors that can help set you apart from your competitors. When presented with a newsletter that appears polished, clean and professional, the reader will take more notice of what you have to say. In short, a professional newsletter adds credibility to you and your business and gives you more authority in your field.

Reason #3: Engaging

As long as it’s written correctly, your newsletter will be more engaging to your clients and will be much more effective than a barrage of status updates and tweets. If you are consistent (extremely important) and send one out on time every month, you will find that people become more engaged as time goes by, and will (hopefully) look forward to receiving it.

Consistency is a key factor – you do need to stick with it and keep going. You’ll find it’s exciting to send out the first one or two, then it gets more difficult and you might feel despondent at a poor response after the third or fourth one. But don’t give up. I guarantee that people are reading them and if you show that you’re in for the long haul, you will get responses.

Engaged clients, people who enjoy reading your newsletter, may also be more likely to pay attention to your other forms of marketing, such as Facebook posts, tweets etc. This is one of the huge benefits of marketing yourself through multiple channels – your name becomes more familiar and you start to become noticed and wanted.

Reason #4: Brand Loyalty

Along with engaging your clients comes the idea of brand loyalty, a powerful by-product of trust. If your clients trust you, they will buy from you again, and they will refer you to others. A good newsletter both educates and entertains your clients, augmenting their feelings of trust in you and your brand, leading to repeat business and brand loyalty.

Reason #5: Brand Recognition

Your newsletter can also help with brand recognition in your local marketplace. This is concerned more with how people perceive you and your business and how easily they recognize you. What are the things that enable people to recognize your photography business? It could be your style of photography, how you communicate your personality, the colors and fonts you use, the type of finished product you specialize in, and your logo of course.

All of these should be consistent across your whole business – including your web site, business cards, stationery, and your newsletter. By bringing your newsletter format into line with everything else, you are reinforcing your brand and improving its recognition.

Reason #6: Measurable Results

Before I get onto this one, a note of caution: If you’re sending out your own email newsletters, either manually or through a mass-mailing program, then stop! Unless you’re an IT person and really know what you’re doing, there is absolutely no need to waste your valuable time to reinvent the wheel, it’s already been done – and very effectively too. Even if you are a talented IT person, just go with those who specialize in doing this – concentrate on what you should be doing: Creating beautiful imagery!

I’m sure you already know that sending out email newsletters to anything more than a handful of people by yourself is a nightmare (probably one of the main reasons so many small businesses like photographers give up on it).

This is why I can’t stress enough the importance of using a reputable email marketing company, such as Constant Contact or iContact. They are dedicated to making sure your emails get through, provide amazing analytical metrics, and can ensure that you stay on the right side of the anti-spam regulations. The cost to you is minimal and well worth it. They even provide a wealth of templates with which to build your newsletters. One of the really great features is the ability to have HTML versions of your newsletters where others can see them directly without having to receive an email.

Measurable results includes such things as:

• How many emails were opened (open rate)
• Which email addresses were invalid (bounces)
• How many people clicked the links in your newsletter (click through rate)
• The number of times your newsletter was forwarded (forward rate)
• How many decided to opt-out (opt-out rate)

These are invaluable in giving you clues on how your clients are behaving and the kind of things they might respond to, allowing you to fine tune future mailings. For example, you can see exactly who clicked the link to a specific promotion and then further target those people with a more concentrated message.

Reason #7: It’s Not Easy To Write

This may not sound like a great reason to write a newsletter, but it’s one of the best ones out there! We already know that most photographers are not sending out regular newsletters to their clients. Some, with nothing but good intentions, start out boldly and then stop after a couple of issues because they either get discouraged at the lack of immediate results, or find that it’s harder to write than they first thought.

That, oddly enough, is great news for the rest of us. Being successful in business is not normal, nor is it easy. If writing a newsletter was that easy, everyone would do it and then it would not be as effective. But, if we force ourselves to tackle the task and get it done in as professional way as possible, I believe there are great rewards.

Yes, it takes time to write and format the email. Yes, it takes effort to think up articles. Yes, it takes a concentration of will to force ourselves to think creatively and not produce a newsletter that’s a sales letter (see next section). But, it is worth it to separate yourself from the pack.

Reason #8: People Want To Hear From You

The last reason on my list (but I’m sure there are many more) is that your clients really do want to hear from you! They like to get to know you personally a little better, find out what’s happening in your business and, more importantly, it makes them feel more appreciated.

If you keep your newsletters fresh, infused with your personality and, above all, interesting to read, your readership should grow nicely over time and your business will start to see positive results. Just don’t expect it to be an overnight success – it does take time.

One thing I will say is that your newsletter should NOT be a sales letter. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a sale, monthly offer, or promotion by itself is a newsletter. Your readers will soon grow tired of receiving nothing but sales information and will quickly unsubscribe from reading it, leading to a damaged brand. This is probably more suitable in another article all by itself, so I’ll close this post for now.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this – if you did, please forward it on to someone else you think might benefit from it, through Twitter or Facebook etc.

Before I go, I’ve also set up a new Facebook Page for Zenologue, so you might want to check that out and join our fans.

How much do you believe in stereotypes?

Do you think you fall into any particular stereotype category yourself? If so, how do you think it might affect your success in the photography business?

A favorite radio show of mine is Radiolab from WNYC and I was listening to one of their not-so-recent podcasts this morning while out driving. The podcast in question is called “The Obama Effect” and posed some interesting ideas.

Having listened to this, I asked myself the question, how much do our subconscious stereotype tendencies affect the way we behave in business, and what bearing might they have on our ultimate success or failure?

Believe In Yourself

We’ve all heard some variation of the motivational phrase, “Believe in yourself first. Only then will others will believe in you…” Obviously, it makes sense. If we don’t believe in what we’re doing then how can we expect to sell ourselves to someone else?

It’s easy to say, “of course I believe in myself and my work” but how much do we really believe it? Do we believe it as strongly as we do that the Earth is not flat, for example, or is our faith in ourselves not quite as unshakeable as we might think?

The majority of us probably like to think our self-belief is very strong but, in reality, there are still those nagging doubts and insecurities lurking in our psyche, just waiting for the right time to whisper words of discouragement in our minds to justify why we’re not performing as well as hoped.

Monsters Of The Id

As they point out in the podcast, these inner demons and gremlins are mostly effective when the going gets particularly tough. It’s at that point that we say to ourselves, “well, we tried, but this is very hard, and the chances of success are probably 1 in a million anyway, but at least I tried…” etc.

But, what would happen if we made a very conscious decision at the outset of any endeavor to rid ourselves of as many as possible of these stereotypical tendencies? We could simply acknowledge their presence, yet choose to ignore them from the beginning. I believe that this is one of the differences in some of the wildly successful people in the world. Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Stephen King, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney and a host of others all suffered defeat and failure many times before they found success and became the icons we know them as today. Did they feel frustrated and tempted to give up at times? You bet they did! But they chose not to.

I wonder what the photography world might be like today if Ansel Adams had given in to those inner demons, and not doggedly pursued his goal of the perfect print in the darkroom. What if he, like many, had simply settled for “good enough”? If he had, we might have been robbed of some of the most beautiful and inspiring works of photographic art ever produced and there is no doubt that the art and technique of photography might have suffered as a result.

Eradicate The Gremlins!

So, today, when business seems like it might not be going the way you want, or you’re having trouble with composition, lighting, posing, marketing, selling etc. don’t give up! Become consciously aware that none of us are perfect, not even the successful ones amongst us. Take that knowledge and use it to shine a light into the dark corners of your mind to illuminate the gremlins and show them up for what they are – excuses and justifications for failure. You can do this! You can succeed…

If you found this piece inspiring or useful, please pass it on to someone else who might benefit and enjoy reading it. Click on the “Tweet” button at the top of the page and help spread the word… Thank you for taking the time to read and your comments and suggestions are always welcome…

Here are some links to the podcast mentioned at the beginning:

Radiolab “The Obama Effect” - http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/01/27/the-obama-effect-perhaps/

There is also an interview with Ray Friedman - http://www.thetakeaway.org/2009/jan/26/obama-effect/

Personally, I have a hard time fully adopting the word “Likers”, preferring instead the original and more pedestrian term “Fans”. Facebook fans, that is.

Photographers are working hard to capture as many fans as they can, perhaps feeling that having more fans (no matter who or where they are) must be a good thing. The same thing plays out on Twitter, too, where the volume of followers is [mistakenly] perceived as more important than the quality.

Anyway, I digress already, the topic of acquiring fans can be the subject of a whole other post…

The question of the moment is “How do we keep the fans we have? Especially the ones we actually want… How do we keep them happy so they won’t leave?”

Engage

First, we must provide a page that engages our fans and makes them want to come back on a fairly frequent basis. This is no easy task. For example, think of a page of someone famous that you’re a fan of. How often do you personally visit their fan page without prompting? That person is FAMOUS, yet they have a hard time getting their fans to repeatedly visit their page.

Some ideas I’ve seen that might help include:

• Running a contest (be careful, though, Facebook has rules about such things)
• Regular posting of new content (photos, videos etc.)
• Make sure your blog feed is connected through the notes import feature
• Have “fans-only” special offers
• Post interesting questions and run an occasional poll
• Post “featurettes” about specific clients you’ve worked with
• Keep everything professional and avoid politics and religion
• Keep your posts positive – never talk about how bad business is for example

A Simple, Old-Fashioned Thank You

Secondly, take the time to thank your new fans for connecting to your page. As small businesses, we have a great advantage over larger ones in this area, and a personal touch can really set us apart from the competition.

We have less fans than larger businesses, but we have the advantage of being able to invest a little of our time to connect personally with each and every one of the people that “like” us. For example, I have the text of an email that I keep in a Word document. When acquire a new fan, I simply send them an email (as long as their privacy settings allow it) by pasting in the text. It takes but a few seconds to do, and I often receive replies from my fans saying how they appreciated the contact. Some of them even turned into “friends”, making them even more valuable.

Think about it for a moment – when was the last time you received a thank you for “liking” someone on Facebook? If you did, how did that make you feel? The bottom line is that your fans will like you more if they feel that you are a real person who cares about them and values the connection, rather than just seeing them as another faceless “liker”.

I hope you found this useful. If so, please take a moment to pass it on to someone else who may enjoy it, or simply hit the “retweet” button at the top. Thanks for reading and I appreciate you taking the time to stop by. As always, comments and suggestions are most welcome.

There’s one thing that every file on your computer has in common – they can ALL be lost, and they will ALL face the ultimate demise of deletion one day…

Okay, I’ll put up my hand first and say that, yes, I’ve accidentally deleted files from my computer before now, and I’ve had hard drives bite the dust. It can happen to all of us, and probably will, at some point!

To protect ourselves against accidental loss, if we’re smart, we backup our files (especially those all-important photos) to DVDs, external hard drives, RAID disks or even tapes.

All of these are great ways to protect our precious data, but they’re all subject to possible degradation over time. DVDs can become unusable after only a year or two, external hard drives fail (far more often than internal ones). Not to mention that any of these can get lost, stolen, destroyed in a fire or flood etc.

This is one reason why online storage is gaining ground these days. Now that most people have access to relatively fast internet connections, it’s not too much of an inconvenience to upload your files to a server where you know that it will be taken care of, and can also be backed up regularly by the data center.

What Are The Choices For Online Storage?

When it comes to online storage for your photography business, there are two basic options:

• Specialized online data backup services (Mozy, iDrive, Carbonite)
• Special areas of your own web site as backup locations

Online Backup Services

If you want the convenience of automated backups and encrypted storage then an online backup service might be the best option for you. Setup is easy, you don’t have to manually back up your files most of the time, and your files are easy to retrieve if you need them. The service does have a low cost, starting around $55 per year, depending on how much space you need. Some companies charge more for business use than home use, so make sure you read the fine print and understand what your getting.

The only downside I can see to using this type of service is if the company were to go out of business. In that situation, you may find that you can no longer access your data. I would also avoid using any service whose data centers are not in your own country.

DIY Storage

If you’re comfortable with using FTP and/or manage your own web site, you could also use a dedicated sub-domain on your own web site to store your files. From a security standpoint, you can set the sub-domain to redirect back to your main web site in the event someone finds it, so your files should be fairly safe from theft.. It’s also possible to password-protect access to specific folders. Having said that, I might think twice about storing financial or other sensitive data in this way, but I have no problem with storing photos, word documents or other non-personal information.

The beauty of using your own web site is that it doesn’t cost anything additional to what you might already be paying for the hosting. Many hosting plans come with a lot more bandwidth and storage space than a single web site can take up, so why not make use of the remaining space by storing your photographs? For example, my hosting plan includes 500GB per month of traffic and 50GB of space – way more than I can use for the web site alone.

All you need to get started is to set up a separate area of the web site (preferably a new sub-domain, but it could be a protected folder) and a suitable FTP program (for example, FileZilla).

Conclusion

Whichever option you choose for backing up your files, one thing’s clear – you need to back them up somehow. Don’t leave it to chance that everything will be fine without a backup. It might seem like a chore and an overhead now, but you’ll be thanking yourself for it when you need to recover something!

To lead into this post, let me ask you a quick question. Do you, as a photographer, have a system in place to really find out from your clients how satisfied or thrilled they were with the experience of working with you?

If the answer is “no” then you could be missing out on a vital piece of the “success puzzle” for your photography business.

A necessary component of most complex systems is a feedback mechanism to either keep the system in check or to make a process more efficient over time. Without feedback, we can’t learn and it makes improvement harder.

For example, if a child touches something hot, the feedback of pain provides the necessary information for her to learn not to do that again.

It’s the same with our business – we need feedback from our clients to understand how well we’re doing. By feedback, I don’t mean a passing comment when you hand over the prints (“I love these”, “these are awesome”) and basic things like that. I mean a systemized approach to information gathering that can really tell us over time how we’re doing, but that also allows the client to say what they really feel without worrying about upsetting us or hurting our feelings.

If you’ve shied away from doing something like this because you feel your clients won’t respond or, worse still, that all they’ll do is complain, then you need to get over it and understand that if you don’t know a problem exists, how can you hope to fix it?

Your Web Site To The Rescue

So how do we go about getting this valuable feedback? We could call them on the phone or email them, which might be better than nothing, but it’s not very consistent or organized, and the information is difficult to collect and store. This is where your web site can come to the rescue. All you need is a single web page with a form on it, which your clients can fill out at their leisure, which sends you an email with the captured data, together with a “thank-you” email to the client.

It’s as simple as that. You can either code the form yourself, have your webmaster do it for you, or you could handle it through www.wufoo.com. It doesn’t matter how you do it, it’s the information you extract from it that counts.

If you want to take a look at the form I use, you can find it here. I’m more than happy to share with you how this is coded, and what happens after they click the “submit” button. If you have a web server that supports PHP, the code that delivers the emails with the form responses is pretty straightforward. If you need help with that, email me, and I’ll do what I can.

Some Observations

My observation so far is that clients are more likely to be honest when they’re typing their answers into a form on a screen than they might be if you talked to them on the phone or in person. The web form makes it a little less personal and they probably feel more comfortable being forthright with you.

This is also the perfect place to get a testimonial from your client (if you haven’t already done so). I get most of my client testimonials this way, and they come across to the reader as much more genuine-sounding than any testimonials we may write for the client (which they approve, by the way – never use a testimonial that a client hasn’t seen or agreed to, if they didn’t write it themselves).

This system is fun to use and it’s a great morale booster when you receive the results and see how much your clients really do care about you and appreciate your work. Just because they’re not burning up your phone to tell you in person, doesn’t mean they aren’t thrilled.

It also helps to strengthen feelings of trust in your clients towards your brand. By demonstrating that you care about them and their experience with you, their sense of loyalty towards you can be multiplied.

What To Ask

The sky’s the limit here, and you can ask almost anything you want to know the answer to. Don’t be afraid of asking too many questions. As long as the answers can be simplified and the form can be completed in about 5 minutes, you should be okay. Here’s a list of the questions I have on my form, for example:

• Name…
• Adddress…
• Phone number…
• Email…
• What type of photography did we do for them…
• Are they a “fan” of our Facebook page?
• Please tell us why they hired us in the first place…
• Overall, how thrilled were they (on a scale of 1 to 5)…
• What was the major factor for the answer to the above?
• Would you recommend us to friends and family?
• Tell us how we did (this is what we use as the testimonial)…
• Would you be interested in our newsletter?
• Any other comments or suggestions…

I’m sure you can think of others to add to the list.

For questions with simple multiple answers, use radio buttons. Text boxes are great for extended responses (testimonial, comments etc.). Otherwise, simple text entry fields work just fine.

If you’re a true professional who cares about your clients and the quality of your work, I promise you that you’ll be surprised at some of the responses you receive and you will be emotionally touched by the things people say about you and your work. I can’t think of a better confidence booster right now than knowing that someone out there truly values and loves what we do.

What Do We Do With The Unhappy Ones?

On those few occasions when someone isn’t 100% happy with the way things went, then learn from the lesson, take what they have to say impersonally and work to fix the problem. Then, call that client on the phone (don’t be tempted to take the easy way out and email them) and explain to them how useful their feedback was, thank them for helping you, and offer to do something for them that would make them feel better about you and your services. Under no circumstances would I advise calling them up to argue the point or attempt to justify the problem. If you behave in a professional manner and treat your clients with kindness (yes, even when you think they are being unreasonable), this will set you apart from your competition by miles!

I’m sure you can recall more than one bad experience with a company or service where they’ve asked for your feedback and you really let them have it! How many of those companies took the time to personally call you to thank you for helping them to improve and to ask for the opportunity to give them another go? How would you feel if they did, and how might it affect how you felt about them?

Just Do It!

In closing, my advice to you is as simple: just do it. It’s easy to set up, very straightforward to implement, and the results will speak for themselves.

Good luck with it, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the photography profession is not in the best of shape right now; in fact, it’s been ailing and sick for quite some time. The end of the so-called Great Recession notwithstanding, business still appears to be slow or non-existent for many photographers, and recovery is taking a very long time to materialize. Many of you possibly doubt that a full recovery is even likely or possible.

Personally, I feel that recovery is certainly possible and that every professional photographer can enjoy success, if only they would treat their business with the seriousness and attention it deserves.

We have an industry with few, if any, barriers to entry, no real code of ethics, pricing is anything but simple or organized, quality standards are all over the place, fly-by-nights come and go, and seasoned veterans are left scratching their heads in puzzlement at the sad state of things.

Maybe there are parallels elsewhere, but right now I can’t think of another profession where such anarchy and chaos prevails.

How Did We Come To This?

Is the professional photography industry dying? Is this the beginning of the end for us? I, for one, steadfastly refuse to believe so. But sadly, I fear that many amongst us do believe it and have become resigned to it. Worse still, there are some in the ranks who really don’t care about the future of the photography industry, perhaps even enjoying the chaos and squeezing whatever [temporary] benefits they can from it before the bubble [as they see it] bursts and the industry suffers irreparable harm.

The last decade has been a rough and painful ride for the professional photographer; with change progressing at rates one normally sees only in the computer industry (although digital cameras technically are computers, so I suppose that’s no real surprise). It’s as though we’re on a storm-tossed sea, being thrown from one giant wave of change to another and on to the rocks.

The Digital Revolution – Death To Film!

First came the digital revolution as new technologies swept away many of the old-school methods, replacing them with a poisonous cocktail of convenience, mainstream accessibility and the ability of our own clients to not only do what we do, but also to actually replace us.

As I write this, the photographic world is anxiously awaiting the photographs taken on the very last roll of Kodachrome – if that doesn’t tell you that film is finally dead as a mainstream medium, then I don’t know what will. Having said that, there might be a small market for professional photographers to distinguish themselves from their competitors by offering retro-style film photography – at least, for as long as film can be had. For how long that will be, who knows?

Personally, I loved film [having started in photography long before digital came along] and I’m sad to see its demise from a nostalgic perspective – but we can either resist the inevitable or embrace the change. Digital came, it conquered, and it’s here to stay whether we like it or not.

No Anti-Socialites Allowed!

Then, just when the breakneck race for megapixels slowed to a more manageable pace, we were forced to run in the all-new social media marathon. Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Mixx, FourSquare and a host of other social media systems have sprung up that demand and compete for our attention. How many of you feel a true sense of “being cut off” when away from your iPhone or Facebook for more than a couple of hours?

Facebook, the 800-pound gorilla of the social media world, can be seen and felt all over the web. Even if you’re one of the very few without a Facebook account, it’s still there on an ever-growing number of other web pages, with their innocent looking “Like” button, just begging you to click it and become a convert.

Twitter, Facebook’s younger sibling, is changing the face of personal communication 140 characters at a time by making us tweet all hours of the day and night. The “Retweet” button is right there alongside Facebook’s “Like”, with the same purpose in mind.

How are we supposed to keep up with all this nonsense?

The simple answer is that we can’t – at least not without going insane in the process. The slightly less simple answer is that we shouldn’t even try. Which elements of social media we embrace depends almost totally on where our prospects and clients go, and they certainly don’t have the time or energy to be everywhere either. If your target market doesn’t use Twitter then why waste precious time and resources on it? If you market to high-school seniors then Facebook is a probable must, whereas LinkedIn is probably not the best fit for you, so why waste time on it?

I see too many photographers, with no clear plan of action, struggling to keep up in the social media race, and spending all their precious time trying to mass-market to people who are either not there or not listening. This leads to frustration and ultimately to a form of marketing panic where they resort to the worst kind of marketing possible: trying to compete on price alone.

Choose your social media outlets carefully, through consideration of where your target market spends their time. By the way, if you think your target market is “anyone with a face” then you might need to refine your scope a little – one of the biggest lessons I learned is that we need to narrow down our target market to specifics. We can’t market to everyone, nor should we try to.

The point I want to make here is that most photographers have hopped onto the social-media bus with no clear destination in mind, in the mistaken belief that if they don’t get on now there won’t be another chance. I get the feeling that many think along the lines that if they post a lot of photos, have as many friends as they can, and tag everyone they can think of, that this will lead to referrals and bookings. Not true at all – people love to see you being social, but they still need a reason to use you or recommend you.

What Makes A Professional Photographer?

Okay, out comes the big elephant that no one wants to eat…

Owning a flashy camera and a few lenses does not make you a professional photographer! No more so than my bread-maker turns me into a baker, or my “Mr. Coffee” machine will turn me into the next Starbucks. As many of my friends will attest, I know how to make a really good pizza, but I’m realistic enough to know that I will never own a pizza restaurant (nor would I want to). I can tell a headache from a cough, and a cut from a bruise, but it takes more than that to be a doctor or a brain surgeon.

In my opinion, the lack of barriers to entry into the photography industry has caused more problems than anything else. Not because I think photographers should be forced to go to school or have degrees in the subject. Not because people are untalented, nor because they can’t make great photographs – many of them are talented and they do produce very good work. It isn’t even because I think they should somehow have a license to practice.

No, the technical skills of these people as photographers are not in question, since the really bad ones probably (hopefully) won’t make it in the long term anyway.

The real issues are ignorance and a lack of understanding of what it really takes to be a professional photographer, as opposed to a talented amateur. They have no grasp of what it takes to create a successful and profitable photography business and they mistake their talent for producing wonderful photographs for the essential ingredient for success.

I, myself, was guilty of the same thing when I started out. I simply wasn’t smart enough to understand the things I didn’t know I needed to know.

Such thinking can be fatal if not treated as soon as possible.

The first thing any prospective professional photographer should learn (far more important than f-stops or shutter speeds) is the 80/20 law:

80% of success comes from the marketing, selling, client relationships, business management and your own personal business education.

The remaining 20% comes from the photography

If you’re spending more than 20% of your time on your photography (capturing, editing, retouching, post-processing etc.) then it’s too much! This means less time is available for the things that will really make you money – marketing, selling, developing good relationships with clients and other vendors, investing in your education and managing the day-to-day running of your business.

By the way, the 80/20 law shows up everywhere when you start looking for it. 80% of your profits come from only 20% of your clients, and so on.

If your response to reading all this is “I became a photographer to take pictures, not to be a salesman or marketer” then my advice is get out of the business right now! You can’t hope to call yourself a professional photographer and yet refuse to deal with the elements needed to act and work as a professional just because you don’t like them. Strong words, I know, and I’m sorry if you don’t enjoy reading the plain truth of it, but that’s just the way it is – deal with it or get out of the kitchen as Gordon Ramsay might say.

There’s no denying that we must start with a passion for photography – it’s essential – but it’s only a beginning. There’s nothing wrong with loving the technical aspects of photography (cameras, lenses, Photoshop etc.) but we MUST be able to deal with the business side of things too, whether we like them or not!

My mentor, the great Charles Lewis, taught me this valuable lesson:

“The successful photographers are the ones who force themselves to do the things the failures just won’t do.”

That means learning how to become a creative marketer, honing our sales skills, being good on the telephone, working on cultivating our relationships with clients and other businesses, and many other things that photographers generally find less enjoyable than playing with Photoshop.

As right-brained visual artists, it’s natural for us to love the photography more than the business side of things – marketing & selling etc. are just not fun for us (at least to begin with). But we need to get over that hurdle if we’re to succeed.

Our cameras, lenses, computers and software programs are only the tools with which we perform our jobs, nothing more. Our personality, business philosophy, integrity, creativity, and a sincere desire to provide what’s best for our clients are the things that will make our businesses thrive and prosper in the long term.

Essential Ingredients For A Successful Business

So what can we do to improve on things? How can we take our love and passion for photography and turn it into a respectful bona-fide business? Here are what I consider to be some of the essential ingredients to start on the road to a successful business:

• Planning
• What makes you unique?
• Business education
• Marketing skills
• Sales techniques
• Services and products
• Pricing
• Smart networking
• Client relationships

These are all HUGE topics, and I could go on forever about each of them, but here’s a short treatment of each to at least get you thinking… and hopefully doing. Don’t procrastinate on this – knowing what to do is not the same as actually doing it.

Planning

There is a rather cute saying that goes something like, “Don’t Plan To Fail”, with its obvious double meaning. But it’s very true. Planning is absolutely essential and every business should have at least a business plan and a marketing plan. The mistake most people make is not having either one of them because they feel they’re too hard to produce or that their business is too small to have them.

My response to that is “Any plan is better than no plan at all.” I don’t care if you write it in a notebook in red crayon, at least it will tell you where you want to go and spell out your goals and how you plan to achieve them. It’s still better than no plan at all.

Keep it simple – not only will it be more comprehensible to you, it will be more fun to create.

Just do it, okay?

What Makes You Unique?

Photographers are popping up all over the place like weeds and the consumer has a huge choice of who to use. The question they want the answer to (even if they don’t verbalize it) is, “why should they choose YOU?”

Think about this for a minute. If a client actually asked you that question right now, what would your answer be? What separates you from all the other photographers in the area? Hint: the answer is not that your photographs are better or that you are cheaper.

The factors that make you different are more intangible than that. They are much more personal and intimate, such as the way you work with children, or the time you spend with people to make them feel comfortable in front of the camera.

Also, and this is very important, the question is not what makes you better than the rest. It’s what makes you unique. These unique factors don’t make you a better person or a better photographer – but they do make you a better fit for your client based on her personal connection to you and how similar you are in your thinking.

Spend some time on this one – there should be at least 10 things that make you different to every other photographer.

Business Education

Learn, learn, learn. And then go learn some more. Contrary to the thinking of most teenagers, our education doesn’t stop when we graduate from high school or college. Invest time in yourself to learn from other successful business people (not necessarily just photographers). We are blessed in this industry to have many people willing to share their knowledge with us, so make the most of those opportunities.

Here are some of my personal favorites (by the way, none of these people pay me anything to say nice things about them, nor are they connected with me or this blog in any professional sense. They have simply earned my deep respect through the ways they’ve helped me):

• Charles Lewis
• Photovision
• Sarah Petty & The Joy Of Marketing
• Sandy Puc’
• David Ziser
• Bruce Hudson
• Dane Sanders
• John Hartman
• Kirk Voclain

These are just a few of the many photographers out there willing to share their knowledge and experience. There are many more, so go out and find them.

Marketing Skills

This might be hard to believe, especially if you’ve never really been involved in marketing before, but marketing is fun! Throw away any preconceptions you might have about marketers, and start afresh.

Many of the photographers mentioned above have many great things to say about marketing, so make the best of it and LEARN! I promise you that you will grow to enjoy marketing when it’s done properly. It’s the lifeblood of your business, it’s that important!

Sales Techniques

Selling has a terrible reputation amongst those who aren’t sales people! Even the phrase “used car” can bring to mind some pretty nasty images! But it’s time to cast aside these notions and forget everything you thought you knew about being a sales person.

Selling is simply the act of helping someone get what they want. It is not about manipulation, tricking people or winning at the expense of someone else. A successful sale is a win-win situation.

Start with Zig Ziglar and other great sales people, and you will soon learn that sales techniques involve a great deal of ethics and a true desire to help people. Again, the resources listed above are a great source of information on this.

Services and Products

What kind of photography do you do? What products do you offer? The answer should not be “everything”. Specialization is a key factor in success, whether it be weddings, portraits, kids, animals, nature etc.

Just because your favorite print lab offers a million sizes and finishes doesn’t mean you have to as well. Choose a well-rounded selection of finishes and sizes and arrange them into easy to understand collections that won’t confuse your clients.

Pricing

What to charge? Oh dear, where can I start on this one? Most photographers are charging far too little for their services. If you aren’t at least a little nervous that you might be charging too much, then there’s a good chance that your prices are too low.

You are a professional and an artist, and your prices should reflect that.

Never try to compete with other photographers on price alone, this can only lead to the spiral of death through perpetual discounting and sales, leading to an erosion of profits and ultimate burn-out and failure. Not only does price-cutting devalue your work, once your clients associate you with discounting, it’s very hard to get them to buy from you unless you’re having a sale, so don’t do it!

Smart Networking

We are in the people business, they are at the heart of what we do, so why do we spend so much time stuck in front of our computers instead of with people? Networking is important in helping us grow our business, from generating new leads to spreading the word about what we do.

But there is a right way and plenty of wrong ways to network… The right way is to learn about others first and do things for others first before expecting them to do something for you. Showing up at a networking meeting, armed to the teeth with business cards, blitzing the room, and then expecting everyone to hire you or recommend you is comical at best and simply impolite at worst.

People work with us or recommend us based on how much they know and trust us. You need to demonstrate a genuine interest in others and a desire to help them achieve their goals before they will return the favor.

So go easy on those meetings and know that it takes time to cultivate relationships and recognize that consistency is also a big factor. You might have to attend a networking group regularly for a long time before the benefits start to pay off, but it’s worth it.

Client Relationships

How many of you ignore your “past” clients with the excuse that “well, they already have a portrait, so why would they want another one?”

Do you treat your clients like family or simply as people who have bought from you? If, like most photographers, you run a small business, then you’re in the wonderful position of being able to treat your clients like royalty, and to spend time nurturing the relationships you have with them.

Not only will they buy from you again, they will be more likely to recommend you to their friends as someone they respect and trust.

There are many ways to be kind to your clients: send them a thank-you card, holiday cards, a letter, chat to them on the phone now and again, involve them in your business by asking for their feedback and suggestions. Send them newsletters, but don’t subject them to a constant barrage of sales letters and offers. Treat them the same way you might your cousins and friends.

Conclusion

If you’ve read this far, then kudos to you – I know this has been an unusually long post (even then, some of these topics could go on forever!). I care very much about the photography industry and believe that everyone has the right to be professional photographers if they have the desire, talent, drive and passion for it – providing that the professional status of the industry is protected in the process.

Dealing with economic troubles and changes in the social and technical landscapes are one thing, but I can’t stand to see the industry being brought down and abused through either simple ignorance or willful harm by those just in it to make a quick buck.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. As always, any and all feedback and comments are appreciated. I’ll close this post with a simple statement that I feel sums up my sentiments:

“Please – don’t just be a professional – be professional…”

All photographers need inspiration – unfortunately, it isn’t something that magically drops out of thin air, and if we sit around all day waiting for our muse to slap us in the head with a new idea, we could be waiting for a long time!

Techniques, poses, interesting perspectives etc. are all things we constantly look for help and inspiration with, and the Internet is a huge help in this area with all the blogs,web sites, professional pages etc. to choose from.

Today, I was browsing around Flickr and came across the group Inspirational Wedding Photography, a set of “invitation-only” images designed to give us that little jolt of inspiration we need. Check it out, and absorb what you like the most.

However, avoid trying to exactly replicate other people’s photographs or ideas – instead, use them as a spring board, a starting point for your own ideas. This allows your unique style to show through and can help in your efforts to remain distinct from your competition in the wedding photography market.

In my previous post, I mentioned a book I read recently that has really altered not only the way I see the world, but also how I operate within it. “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek is a must-read for everyone and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The tenet of the book is simple – so simple, in fact, that it seems almost obvious. But, like many “obvious” things in life, it’s not obvious until someone smarter than us takes the time to point it out. Put in its most fundamental form, the idea is that successful individuals, leaders, brands and companies are successful because they have a common way of thinking, which is the opposite to most everyone else. Instead of communicating “what” they do, they articulate “why” they do it first.

Here, I believe, is a great example from the world of photography, someone we photographers are very familiar with. 

“Ansel Adams”

I chose him because most people know the name and can recognize his images. He became so famous that many folks who aren’t photographers are familiar with him. Posters of his prints appear everywhere – I’ve encountered a McDonalds restaurant decorated with nothing but Ansel Adams posters. In essence he became a household name.

But why did that happen? He wasn’t the only person with a camera or the opportunity during his working life. He was a fairly humble fellow with no real thirst for fame, and spent long hours in the darkroom in preference to the spotlight. Although held in the highest regard, to say he was the “best” photographer of his time is not a very meaningful statement – what does “best” mean anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I love his photography, but I’ve witnessed [with shock] modern-day images that were technically as brilliant as Ansel’s get tossed out of a distinction panel at the Royal Photographic Society.

Reproduce The “Why”:

Many photographers struggle to emulate Ansel’s work without success. I understand that Yosemite and other locations are often abuzz with hundreds of photographers all attempting to recreate one or other of Ansel’s iconic images, often racing to be in just the right spot – all without success. The problem isn’t that they’re poor photographers or have inferior equipment. The problem is that they are copying Ansel’s “what” without authentically reproducing his “why”.

Although he wasn’t a marketer, Ansel Adams knew the value of starting with “why” (even if he didn’t consciously realize that himself). Here is what a modern-day clone of Ansel Adams might say by way of self-promotion:

“I’ve spent many years studying the techniques of photography, understanding light, film, filters, optics, developing & printing to the point where I’m considered an expert. I endure long and difficult treks through the wilderness to visit beautiful locations that I then capture with my state-of-the-art camera. I’ve become a great photographer and am proud of the work I do. Would you like to buy a print?”

If it were possible to have Ansel Adams stand up and say those words, all of them true, it’s doubtful that his message would be very effective.

What Ansel could have actually said, given the chance, might be more like this:

“I was fortunate to grow up in an age of exploration and progress, punctuated with the strife of a depression and the conflict of world war. I say fortunate, because I’ve learned the value of preserving those things that are of immeasurable importance to the world, such as the treasures of our natural wilderness. I believe that conserving the beauty of our national parks, such as Yosemite, and other natural wonders is vital. I can help achieve this by using my technical skills as a photographer to bring these places to the attention of the masses, so that everyone can understand the benefits of preserving them for future generations. By studying photography and perfecting my techniques I can try to capture as much of the natural beauty as possible in my photographs. Through my efforts, I’ve become good at what I do and am very proud of my work. Would you like to buy a print?”

Although Ansel Adams probably never said these actual words (if he had, I’m sure he would have been much more eloquent than I), he broadcast the same important message in everything he did throughout his life.

Technical vs Emotional:

Yes, the photographs are technically brilliant; they are perfectly exposed, beautifully composed, well seen and exquisitely printed. But their success has nothing to do with film, cameras, f-stops, shutter speeds or filters. It has much more to do with what the photographs stand for, what they represent and how they make people feel when they look at them with the icon of Ansel Adams in the same mind-space as the image.

People love his photography because they believe in the same things Ansel did; they understand his “why”, his passion not just for photography, but also for the beauty and conservation of the world around us.

Inspiration Beats Manipulation:

As photographers, it is our responsibility to inspire, while the purpose of our marketing should not be to manipulate but to communicate the elements that inspire us to do the things we are so passionate about. When our prospective clients understand “why” we do what we do, and they believe in the same things we do, then we have the perfect match. At that point they are not customers, or simply clients – they become our collaborators.

I just finished reading one of the most inspirational and truly useful books I’ve read in a long time – “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek.

If, like many, you’re finding business difficult or you have that nagging feeling that you might have lost focus on what you’re doing… If you’re struggling with how your business life can find a new purpose… If you can’t understand why some people and businesses are successful and others aren’t… then you are going to love this book.

Simon clearly takes us through the idea that it is not WHAT or HOW we do things that make people want to follow us or buy from us, it is WHY we do it that counts – the underlying philosophy and principles that drive us, if you like.

This book is easy to read, entertaining, enlightening and, above all, inspiring. The principles in themselves are simple, yet profound, and affected me on a very deep level that has changed the way I think and feel about my own photography business.

I buy all my books at Amazon and it helps me a little if you do too. But, wherever you choose to get this book from, I urge you to get it NOW – it will change your life.

I came across something the other day that truly changed what I believed about how the business world works.

It also answered a lot of questions that had been buzzing about in my head about why some companies are successful and others are not so successful. Why is it that some businesses enjoy far more success with the same resources and time as their competitors? Why do some brands enjoy loyalty to the point of fanaticism?

Check out this video of Simon Sinek, the author of “Star With Why” to find out the [simple] answer:

The week ending March 13th 2010 was an apparent and important milestone in the world of social media networking, when Facebook surpassed Google in the count of most site visits in a week in the United States (full story can be read here. This was not the first time that Facebook overtook Google, but it was the first week-long victory, and it has the potential to become permanent.

As the number of subscribers to Facebook continues to grow, with the “population” of Facebook being compared to that of actual countries, it may be no surprise to see it become the most-visited site on the web. After all, the “Google” population is able to grow only as more people gain access to the internet, whereas Facebook still has a large pool of currently unregistered internet users to draw from. Eventually, the two populations might stabilize, but then the war really starts about who will attract the most visitors.

However, at the present time, it is possible that we could be near a tipping point where social media and the power of peer-to-peer marketing really do begin to take over from organic searches. Instead of asking Google for a list of local photographers, we can now poll our Facebook friends for testimonials and recommendations of photographers they’ve worked with in the past in order to find a good fit. Such peer-based endorsements are surely much more effective than a PPC ad or a search engine listing, no matter how relevant Google thinks they might be.

I’m sure many businesses are actively trying to figure out how to leverage this trend and tap into this new source of business referrals. Facebook fan pages, tweets and Foursquare check-ins, shout-outs etc. will all no doubt all play their parts.

But this doesn’t come without its own peculiar set of problems. For example, the annoying fact that we have to use a multitude of apps and web sites in our social networking activities. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, Plaxo and a host of others all attempt to make the web a social place, but at the expense of  having to maintain profiles all over the place and spend [waste?] time trying to keep them all current and up to the minute.

But, the biggest issue I see right now, though, is that of signal-to-noise. Typically used in science and engineering to measure the quality of an electrical signal, signal-to-noise is the ratio between the useful part of the transmission (the signal) to any artifacts such as random background noise. In email, for example, the signal can be thought of as those emails we want to receive, whereas spam would be considered as unwanted noise.

If the level of noise is allowed to rise too high, compared to the signal, then the quality of the item being measured can be corrupted or degraded. This is why spam is such a nuisance; left unchecked, it would reach levels that make reading our actual emails very difficult, or even render email itself useless as a mode of communication.

Unfortunately, I believe this degradation is also happening with social media. The level of noise (spam, nonsense, pointless posts, meaningless tweets etc.) appears to be growing on a daily basis. I’ve already lost count of the number of dumb applications I’ve had to block from my Facebook profile that would otherwise fill up my news stream with pointless garbage about mob wars, idiotic quizzes and other nonsense distractions.

No doubt the problem has been present from day one, but if the noise is allowed to surpass the signal, the system could be rendered unusable for anything useful, such as promoting a business.

As business owners in a marketplace, it’s unclear what options we have to combat the problem of increasing noise. Unlike spam email, the noise found on Facebook, for example, is cleverly disguised as “fun” in the form of games, quizzes, pointless comparisons to celebrities etc. The population of Facebook as a whole doesn’t seem bothered by this noise, and many even embrace it willingly. Is Facebook doomed to become nothing more than a mob war with 400 million players? In the middle of all that might remain a few “survivors” who plaintively try to sell their wares to what is essentially a world of zombies, but they would be in the clear minority and ineffective.

How are we supposed to cope with the ever-increasing number of social media networking sites that we positively “have” to join simply because everyone else is there? I view myself as fairly restrained and conservative in the world of social media – a newbie if you like. Yet, I still have to juggle Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Foursquare in order to be considered even a minor citizen of the social media world.

In the sense that Google effectively took over the internet search niche, I wonder if there will ever be a single social media giant that will completely dominate the role. The “where are you?“, “what are you thinking?“, “what’s happening?“, “what are you feeling?“, “what do you want?” do-it-all place where we have one profile that covers everything.

Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch this great social experiment unfold, and I’m sure the eventual outcome will be a lot different to anything we can imagine right now

Anyway, thanks for reading. I do have to go now, since my Facebook farm animals are starving and need me…

Sometimes I’m not the most organized person in the world (well, okay, more than sometimes), and I actually ran out of business cards a few weeks ago. Since we recently moved the studio from our home to a retail space late last year, I needed to redesign the business card anyway, and have been trying to get around to it.

So, this week, I sat down at the computer and produced a new design that I was fairly happy with (it looks pretty, has all the right information on it, no spelling mistakes etc.), fully intending to send it off to the lab to be printed.

Then, this morning, I opened up the files for one last check, but a single thought stopped me in my tracks:

“Is the business card, as we’ve all come to know and love it, dead or dying?”

What could prompt such a thought? After all, everyone is supposed to have a business card, right? Where would society be without those credit-card sized pieces of paper that we love to swap like trading cards?

The vision I had that stayed my hand was simply nothing more than handing someone a card and watching it vanish into a pocket or bag, never to be seen again.

What possible use is a business card that can be forgotten about so easily?

Then I thought more about the purpose of the card itself. Why give it to someone in the first place? Is it to encourage them to call us to create a family portrait, photograph a wedding or their high-school senior? Or, is it to lie in wait until they decide they need a photographer and it can magically influence their thoughts to call us?

Thinking back, I think I can honestly say that I believe the number of jobs I’ve received directly from the act of handing out a business card has been about zero.

Why is this? Are my business cards that bad? Did I put the wrong phone number on them?

No (at least I hope not)…

Is it because photography is an emotional purchase? There’s nothing emotional about hiring a plumber, for example, (except for the feeling of panic one gets at watching gallons of water pouring through a ceiling), so we can easily grab the nearest business card or scan the Yellow Pages to find someone (let’s face it – anyone!) that can serve our immediate plumbing needs.

But (with a few possible exceptions), photography is not an emergency need. Emotions and other intangible forces come into play when someone decides they would like to hire a photographer. A business card that fulfills only the function of giving name, rank and serial number doesn’t do anything to encourage someone to call unless they are already familiar with our work.

So, I’m trying an experiment…

Instead of a standard business card, I’m going to try something a little different. The new “business card” is now really a bookmark, about 2×8 inches in size. Now, with all that extra real estate, I can include an emotional personal message about my approach to photography and what it means to me, as well as some sample images.

It should be interesting to see what happens when I give this thing to people – it’s too large to slip into a wallet and is not so easily forgotten. Maybe it will make it to that most hallowed of places where useful information is stored – the door of the family refrigerator!

I’d be interested to hear of other innovative approaches to the standard “business card”. I’m sure there are many indeed, most of them far more inventive than the one I’ve described here. Please feel free to share them via comments.

One of the biggest, but less often considered, challenges we face as photographers selling our work is the choice between selling images straight from the lab or as finished framed pieces ready to hang on the wall.

It doesn’t seem like a big challenge on the face of it, just another of the many business decisions we have to make.

But, there are consequences that stem from either choice – consequences that truly affect how we’re perceived in the market place.

So, we’ll start with a quick question…

Do you sell framed photography, loose prints or a mixture of the two?

Like many photographers, I started out by selling loose prints only – framing to my mind seemed like a whole different kettle of fish entirely and wasn’t something I was ready to jump into.

Heck, at that time it was hard enough to convince the client to purchase an 8×10, let alone have to go through the extended process of having them purchase a frame with it! So, before I knew it, clients were taking away 8x10s, 16x20s and even larger prints just as they were when they came back from the lab – mounted, but no frames; “naked”, as it were.

Whether or not “unframed” or “framed” is the “right” decision for your own business is a question only you can answer, but I began to feel that somehow I was letting my clients down. I would find myself worrying about what became of those precious photographs – were they given appropriate frames and hung proudly on the wall, or left in their bags in a lonely corner until the owner could get around to framing them? I imagined 8x10s lying at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, never to see the light of day again.

More importantly for me, here I was trying to sell photography at a premium but then allowing it to walk out the door in an essentially unfinished state. There was an apparent disconnect between my business philosophy and my own actions that I felt needed to be rectified.

So, I made the decision that no photograph larger than a 5×7 should leave the studio as a loose print. Everything 8×10 and larger should be in a frame and ready to display. I was even uncomfortable with sending out loose 5×7 prints – I would rather them go out in a small album than in a simple packet. This is really moving into the area of merchandising, a whole topic of conversation all by itself.

The main problem with this “everything must be framed” approach, of course, is that the cost to the client of the finished work goes up accordingly, making it a little more challenging to sell – but by no means impossible. Then we do hear some of the usual objections:

• “I don’t want it in a frame…”
• “Framing is a hobby of mine…”
• “A friend has their own framing business…”
• “I want a larger choice of frames…”
• and so on…

All of these objections can easily be dealt with at the initial consultation stage and even at the time we qualify our clients, if not at the actual sales session. If the clients are aware up front that we only sell finished artwork, but they don’t want to abide by our policy, then we can politely send them away.

Another, more subtle yet equally effective way, is take to advantage of the fact that we sell what we show. If the client sees only framed wall art in the studio, with no loose prints of any kind anywhere, that sends a very clear message to them that this is what we expect them to invest in.

Just as importantly, projecting the images into a framed canvas sends another powerful signal to the client.

To keep things very simple, I offer only a basic selection of frames – three different color tones (light, medium & dark) in each of three styles (slim, medium & deep). The frames are chosen to complement the style of work I do and there is usually one that suits both the finished piece and the location where it will be displayed. The choice of frame is only made after the client has made their portrait selections, so as not to put too many decisions onto them at any one time.

I’m not saying that everyone should adopt the exact same approach to this, far from it because every photographer and photography studio is unique. But, if you feel something nagging inside you every time you hand a client a “naked” 11×14 print, you might want to consider testing out the inclusion of frames in your sales.

“Location, location, location!” – the often-touted necessity for a successful business. But how true is that statement really? I’m not really talking about the fine detail of location here; after all, common sense would dictate that an office located between the city dump, county jail and the water treatment facility might not be a great choice. I’m referring more to the perceived differences between one city and another, or between different parts of the country.

Any photographer that studies or learns from other successful photographers eventually hears or even speaks the objection, “that won’t work in my town!” It’s very tempting to think that most marketing tactics that work in one part of the country simply won’t work in our own locale, for a variety of (false) reasons:

• Our town or city has no people with money
• People are different here
• I live in a bad market
• There’s too much competition in my area

The truth is that this is just the lazy and negative part of our own minds trying to rationalize our lack of effort or belief in what we’re doing. The lizard part of our mind, that primitive part that doesn’t like change, is simply attempting to convince us that it’s no use even trying.

The reality is that the successful photographers are not magically living in some enchanted place of abundance. They’re simply applying tried and tested marketing methods to attract their target market.

If you think you don’t truly believe this, try a simple thought experiment…

Imagine for a moment a photographer whom you admire as someone successful. You can see them in your mind’s eye running their studio, being busy and enjoying the successes of operating a great photography business.

Now, imagine that they’ve just opened up a new studio across the street from you. How do you imagine they will do? Can you see them being successful? Can you imagine them making the same excuses for lack of clients? If you met them in the local coffee shop and talked to them I doubt they would be saying, “man, this town stinks, no one has any money, there are no clients, it’s a crummy market, and there’s too much competition here. I think I’m going back to Magic City where the grass is always green…”

Don’t allow your own mind to limit you and keep you constrained by what you “think” you can or can’t do. People are basically the same everywhere, all over the country, because they are governed by the simple rules of human psychology, which is how marketing and sales work after all.

Photography is an emotional business – that is what we sell. It’s not about pieces of paper or which neighborhood someone lives in. It’s not even about how much money they have, although they should have enough to buy from you, but even then it could be on a payment plan or layaway. It’s all about how you and your photography make them feel. It’s about the value that a captured smile, a fleeting expression or a simple look can have for someone.

Emotions are a very human thing, and there are humans everywhere, no matter which “market” your studio happens to be in.

Like many photographers, I enjoy looking around the web at other photographers’ work to take in all the different approaches, styles, web site designs etc.

Today I came across the web site of Angie Arthur, in Northeastern Ohio. The site has a lovely fresh look, and her work is wonderful.

You can check out the site here: Angie Arthur Photography

So many photographers (myself not excluded) have made the mistake at one time or another of ignoring their current clients. Some even make the worse error of referring to them as “past” clients.

The truth is that when someone becomes a client by allowing us to create photographs for them, we ought to treat them as though they are clients for life. They are now an integral part of our business family.

The only way to make sure that these people feel valued and a part of our family is to keep in constant contact with them – but without committing the sins of spamming or making them feel as though we’re constantly trying to sell them something.

So how can we keep in touch with our clients in order to remind them we’re there for them the next time they might be in need of photography services?

There are actually many ways, some of which might be obvious, others more subtle, but nonetheless extremely valuable:

• Newsletters
• Emails
• Phone calls
• Facebook and other social network interactions
• Birthday cards
• Holiday cards
• Anniversary cards
• Thank you cards
• Referral and reward programs
• Special studio events

With all of these methods, don’t consider them as marketing in a traditional sense, but think of them more like “touch points”. If all your newsletters are simply sales letters in disguise then your efforts may result in the client unsubscribing because they feel they are being sold to far too much. Keep newsletters to a more general or personal level with only the briefest mentions of special offers etc.

Cards in the mail, especially handwritten ones, are an amazing way to give your clients a feeling of personal attention. Send a thank you card after a consultation, when a client books, after a sale etc. If you photograph weddings, then a card on their anniversary says that you remember them – you can even include a complimentary portrait session as a special gift to encourage them to come back to the studio.

Occasional phone calls are also valued and very persona in nature. Everyone is busy these days and nothing says that you value your client more than giving up some of your valuable time to talk to them on the phone, perhaps to follow up after a sale or to simply check on them and pass the time of day.

Make it a point to cultivate your current clients and you will reap the rewards. After all, we know that it can be many times more expensive to find new clients than it is to keep the ones we already have. Don’t be misled into thinking that people will only buy from you once!

To sum up the intent of all this communication – in my opinion, I feel that people are best sold on you when they feel they are not being sold to.

Wedding photography is not an easy service to sell – we have to work hard at attracting prospective clients before we even have a chance to try to book them. Bridal shows, advertising, marketing campaigns – and many more avenues – all require huge amounts of effort just to get brides to notice that we’re there.

Then, the really hard work starts.

If we’re lucky enough to get a living, breathing, talking bride on the telephone we have the chance to find out as much as we can about their wedding plans, the kind of client they might be and whether or not they would be a good match for our business.

After all that hard work, we arrive at the end of the conversation and suggest that they meet with us for a consultation only to hear the response, “I need to talk to my fiancé or parents about this and then I’ll call you back to set up a time…”

Many of us at this point say, “Oh, okay, no problem. Talk it over and then call me back. I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye.”

Of course, it’s more than likely that we’ll never hear from her again.

For a long time, I thought there was no solution to this problem. I assumed that I was being nice by not pressuring the bride and that they really would talk it over and call back.

Little did I realize that what they’re really saying is something like this: “I like what you’ve said so far, but you haven’t established a real connection with me or convinced me that I should hire you. There’s also another reason why I’m not sure about this, but I don’t know you or trust you enough to tell you what it is, so I’m going to make up an excuse to get off the phone…”

Knowing this, we can now see that the fault is entirely of our own making. Maybe we didn’t take the time to build enough rapport with her, or perhaps we forgot to find out what the most important thing about her wedding is. Did we educate her about the factors that separate us from the other photographers in the area?

Did we ask enough emotional questions? Did we show true interest in her and her wedding? How excited and passionate did we sound? Did we take the time to find out what the most important buying decision is for her?

More importantly, who was in control of the conversation? Usually, that’s the person asking the questions, which should be us. Even more importantly still, ask questions and then listen to the answers. It’s a fact that successful sales people spend more time listening than talking.

Now, when asked to arrange a face-to-face consultation, if they respond with, “I need to talk to my fiancé or parents about this and then I’ll call you back to set up a time…”, there are ways to find out what they really mean.

For example, you might reply with something like, “I understand what you mean. But, if I may ask, what do you feel they will say when you talk to them about what we’ve discussed today?”

This gives them the opportunity to voice whatever real concerns they might have. For example:

• The price is too far outside our budget
• You don’t offer something that we really want
• We’re looking for something very specific
• I’m not really ready to book yet

Now you have a chance to either address the problem or let them go based on the fact that they might not be qualified clients. I’ve come to the conclusion that every phone consultation I have should either result in a definite face-to-face meeting or a mutual agreement that I’m probably not the photographer for them. This eliminates all the frustration of waiting for people to call back, or having to chase them up with fruitless phone calls that waste both my time and theirs.

This can all be achieved without resorting to aggressive sales techniques or being pushy. Simply talking to the client, asking appropriate and emotionally based questions, and listening to the answers are all it takes 

Remember, though, that we can’t work with every single person that calls us – we have to send some people away for one reason or another. Just knowing that puts us more in control of things and takes away some of the pressure we put on ourselves to be successful.

If you’re a wedding photographer, you don’t need to be in business very long before a prospective client comes back to you with something like this: “I have an old friend who wants to get into wedding photography and has agreed to photograph my wedding for a great price… 

What can we say to this? Is there anything we can do to win this client back? Or is the sale lost forever? Worse still, can we rescue this client from the possible dangers of working with a non-professional?

I believe the best solution to this issue is to be proactive and deal with it before it happens. This can be achieved through the process of educating our prospects about the reasons why it’s a good idea to hire a professional rather than a friend, family member etc.

But, if they do come back with the news that a friend or family member has offered to photograph their wedding, is there anything we can say to counter it?

To start with, the one thing we don’t want to compete on is price. Don’t make the mistake of turning this into an issue about price by offering them a big discount to try to win the sale back. Just as importantly, don’t make the equally bad mistake of criticizing the other photographer’s work – this does your image no good at all.

If you feel that this client is a good fit for your business and that they’re simply making a genuine mistake (probably because they don’t want to hurt their friend’s feelings), then there are ways to attempt to persuade back into your camp.

The key is to emphasize those points that set you apart from the casual or “friend of the family” photographer, which make the choice of working with you more beneficial to the client.

For example:

• Your guarantee
• Your status as a full-time professional photographer
• Your legal status (proper business licenses, sales tax registration etc.)
• Your liability insurance coverage
• Experience in the business
• Membership of professional bodies (PPA, WPPI, RPS etc.)
• Your policies on delivery times
• Easier for them to be honest with you than with a friend in the event they’re unhappy with the photographs
• Backup equipment
• Assistants
• Access to professional print labs
• Professional backup of the finished images

Will this work every time? Of course not. But it might occasionally save a sale that would otherwise have been lost. Better still, you will have helped your clients make the choice that is right for them.

In order for us to remain in business as professional photographers, we need paying clients. Convincing prospects to turn themselves into paying clients is where most of us experience difficulties, and we feel forced to become salespeople.

I’ll be honest; I used to hate the idea of being a salesman of any kind. Unfortunately, my thinking had been colored by incorrect stereotypes of the “typical” salesperson, and I saw it as a black art involving trickery, manipulation and dubious integrity.

Now that I’ve undergone an appropriate attitude adjustment over the last couple of years, I can safely say that I enjoy being a salesman, and I aim to become a better one all the time, following Zig Ziglar’s advice that a good salesman simply helps his clients to get what they want.

There is no trickery, manipulation or deception involved in good sales, and the sense of satisfaction gained when a client makes the educated choice to buy from you is truly wonderful. This is how we build great and lasting relationships with our clients that keep them coming back time and again.

Since selling is an area that many photographers are constantly struggling with, I thought it might be a good idea to share some of my own limited experience and thoughts here, and I would encourage anyone reading this blog to add anything that’s appropriate.

Over time, I plan to add specific articles on dealing with the myriad situations that come up again and again, with ideas on how to handle them effectively.