Marketing and the commercial photographer

Marketing is a crucial part of any commercial photographers business. Gone are the days when ‘hanging a shingle’ would guarantee enough business to keep your family fed. In today’s busy, information fuelled and technology driven world a commercial photographer needs excellent technical skills, great networks and a strong marketing plan to get their business noticed and to generate work.

Marketing 101

Marketing begins with knowing what you want to sell and to whom. Once you know these two things it’s much easier to work out when and how to do it.

Who

Who is your audience? Who do you want to hire you? For a commercial photographer creating a list of desired and potential customers is crucial. It helps to direct your messages and avoid a scatter-gun approach.

You could choose to market yourself direct to local business and industry, to the marketing/PR departments of larger organisations, or to advertising/PR firms who hire talent for advertising and publicity campaigns.

What

By clearly defining your audience it’s easier to identify what it is about you, your business that would interest them and set you apart from the competition. It might be superior technical skill, expertise in a specific area of photography, creative flair, individual style, It could be something to do with the way you run your business, deal with your clients or even a quirk of personality. There are a lot of commercial photographers in the market giving consumers a lot of choice, setting yourself apart from the competition comes down in part to successful marketing.

When

They say timing is everything, and it couldn’t be truer with marketing. Getting the right message to the right people at the right time is the difference between the success and failure of any marketing campaign. It all depends on your audience but for example, Annual report time is potentially ideal to market direct to PR departments in large organisations when they are keen to source imagery for reports and presentations. Timing promotional activities for the start and end of the financial year when company budgets are being sorted and projects planned could also work. Targeting customers at holidays and special events eg Valentines day, April Fools day, Christmas etc can allow for a creative approach and help keep your business top of mind.

How

Firstly it’s important to remember that marketing incorporates every touch point you have with your clients and potential clients. Yaffa Publishing’s Capture Magazine has a great article titled ‘Expose yourself to the world-legally’ in the Jan/Feb 2010 edition. In the article the author Julian Watt states that professionally designed business cards, a great portfolio and an up to date website are an absolute given in the marketing mix of any professional photographer. The article then goes on to explore some of the other ways professional commercial photographers promote themselves to generate business. Including advertisements, direct mailings, promotional gifts, sourcebooks and PR activity including blogs and social media. I’ll look at each of these in a bit more detail over the next few weeks.