If You Aren't Using The Right Marketing Plan, You Are Burning Your Money!
For Photography Marketing to be successful, you must have an organized plan. There’s an old saying that goes like this: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” This is certainly true in photography marketing.
If you mess up this plan, or worse yet, don’t have a proven plan, you are literally burning money!
As a Professional Photographer, I use a 4-part plan. I call it the “P.R.O.S Photography Marketing Plan” Here it is:
Positioning: In photography marketing, the principle of “Positioning” means you determine exactly where you want to be in the hierarchy of photography businesses.
Do you want to be in the low price/higher volume arena; the medium price/medium volume arena; or the high price/low volume arena?
To use a car analogy, do you want to sell Yugos, Chevrolets, or Cadillacs? I want to sell the Cadillacs. So all my marketing has to go after those people who want to own a Cadillac. If possible, I don’t even want to waste my time marketing to those people who want a Yugo or a Chevy. (That’s not all that easy, but it’s good to be thinking like that all the time.)
So in my photography marketing I have found that the best way to get to those people who want to own a finely crafted portrait that has a significant investment requirement is to EDUCATE them as to the differences between my photography and that of all the other photographers in my area. This is carefully done in terms of BENEFITS to the prospect, and “Unique Factors.” (I talk about that in other areas of this blog and in my marketing E-book.)
Record – It’s crucial to your photography marketing success that you keep really good records of what’s working and what’s not working.
For example, you need to know what your average sale is by client type for this year-to-date as compared to last year at this same moment.
Plus, you need to know how many “Original Inquires” you have received, both on the telephone and through e-mail, for each client type, year to date, compared to last year at this same moment.
And then you need to know how many new clients, of each client type, you have worked with this year-to-date as compared to last year at this same moment.
If you don’t have those three pieces of information, it’s like you’re driving down the expressway in your car with a blindfold on – you have no idea where you are going – you’re blind, and the result is NOT going to be good.
Objective – In your photography marketing, the next part of the plan is to have a very specific objective for those clients you work with. For me, it is to have every client get something for the wall. It can be either a “wall portrait” or it can be a “love grouping” of several images. (Preferably both!) I set this objective years ago, and it gave me direction. You must have a direction for your business, too. It can’t just be “to make more money.” That’s not good enough at all.
Specialize – In your photography marketing, you must know exactly who you want to work with – what kind of photography you want to specialize in. For me, it’s high quality Family Portraits created at a location which is emotionally meaningful to my client. Don’t try to be all things to all people. If you do, you won’t be anywhere near as successful as you could be.
So that’s my “P.R.O.S. Plan” for photography marketing. If you’d like more details on how I market my photography business, be sure to get my free e-book “The Top33 Photography Marketing Secrets.” You’ll like it! You can get it immediately right on this page of my Blog.
All the best,
Chuck
Astonishing article . Will definitely copy it to my blog.Thanks