If you’re selling photographs for a living, it’s not enough for you to shoot images that catch potential clients’ attention. You should also know how to market your photographs. Business and marketing go hand in hand in today’s overly competitive world.
In other words, you need to create a proper photography marketing plan.
In this article, we’ll look at exactly how you can do that. First, though, let’s talk about the importance of marketing for your photography business.
Importance of Marketing for Photographers
Many talented professional photographers don’t succeed because they can’t do effective marketing. Marketing is important, however, because without the proper promotion, you can’t expect to get those leads and turn them into paying customers.
Marketing drives sales because it helps you do the following:
- It helps create brand awareness.
- It differentiates your brand from the others.
- It helps ensure you have a good brand reputation.
- It helps you engage with your target customers.
- It helps ensure lasting relationships with customers.
In short, without marketing, you can’t possibly sell your photographs, however stunning they look. How else would potential clients know about them in the first place?
Steps to Creating a Photography Marketing Plan
Don’t worry. You don’t need to be an expert in marketing to create a photography marketing plan. It doesn’t matter the type of photographer you are. Just follow these steps to create a winning plan that will get you those clients. Complement the plan with your stunning work, and you’re good to go!
Know Your Audience
Knowing and understanding your target audience is essential. If you don’t know who your audience is, you won’t know how to effectively market your work in the first place. This is why you should consider getting support from marketing consulting firms, as they can conduct thorough market research. The more you know about your target audience, the more tailored your marketing strategies that will get them to take action. In this case, taking action means them purchasing your photographs.
Let’s say you’re a nature photographer. It’s not enough for you to say you want to reach individuals who love nature, then. You need to understand them on a deeper level. That includes understanding their preferences, pain points, and interests, among other things. This is where audience (buyer) personas can help you.
According to Hootsuite, a buyer persona is a “fictional person who embodies the characteristics of your best potential customers.”
But how can you create buyer personas in the first place? The easiest way is to ask your customers themselves. Ask them their demographics, their motivations, and goals. You can do this over the phone, face-to-face, or through an online survey, if you have their email addresses (more on this later).
Source: WP Content
Once you have buyer personas, you can use them as a guide when creating those marketing strategies.
Determine Your Unique Selling Point (USP)
It’s not enough, however, for you to know your audience.
As a photographer, you still need to know how to stand out. Why should people choose you over other photographers? This is your unique selling point.
Your USP is not just your niche. If you’re an events photographer, you have to have something that still makes you stand out. Think about what you can offer that’s unique. To help you, you can go back to your customers and ask them why they chose you over the other photographers in your niche.
According to Sprout Studio, here are some possible USPs for your photography business:
- Same-day proofing: You can show your portraits right after a session. That means customers can place their orders on the same day.
- No session fee: Customers only pay for each image, not the session.
- Black-and-white images: Market yourself as the expert in black-and-white pictures.
- Mounted prints: Customers don’t just get the image they want. They get a corresponding backing board, too.
- Walk-ins accepted: No appointments necessary.
- Wall portraits: How about marketing yourself as an expert in wall portraits?
Once you’ve determined your USP, you’ll have something to build your marketing messages around.
Create a Website (If You Haven’t Just Yet)
If you haven’t created a website for your business, just yet, do just that! Just make sure you get a good website host. This is something we discuss on the Hosting Foundry site.
A website can help market your brand in many ways. It can house your portfolio for all your potential customers to see. It can showcase your USP and other social proof such as awards, too. When potential clients want to purchase something from you, they can contact you through your website.
Sebastian Weiss, an architecture photographer, uses his website, Le-blanc.com, precisely for those:
Source: Le-blanc
You can see his USP right underneath his name: “Passionate about concrete aesthetics and the beauty seen in city shapes.” To convince website visitors that he’s the real deal, he includes his awards and the publications where his images were used (social proof). Potential clients can also just go to the “Contact” section to reach him for any projects.
That’s not all a website can do for you, though. When you have a website, you can generate leads. These are people who don’t necessarily know you. They just happened to search a query, and your website appeared in search engine results pages.
You can do this through content marketing. Rachel Burt, a documentary wedding photographer based in Liverpool, for instance, uses informative articles to get people to her website. So, when someone searches for “how to plan a wedding in Liverpool” along with her wedding venue business plan, comes up:
You’d need to create great content to get your article on SERPs. You’d also need to know a bit about SEO. The good news is, there are many resources you can read for that, like this one from Wordstream.
Burt also uses her website content for her email marketing efforts. The idea is to build relationships with prospects and, hopefully, turn them into paying customers.
On her website, she has an opt-in form for anyone interested in getting a brochure.
Source: Rachel Burt Photography
Once a website visitor gives away their email address, Burt would start sending them occasional newsletters. So even if they don’t immediately avail of her service, she’ll stay top of mind with them when the time comes they need a wedding photographer.
In other words, a website is critical to any photographer’s marketing strategy. It needs to be in your marketing plan, too!
Pick Your Marketing Channels
Your website is not the only channel you can use to market your brand.
Nowadays, social media, for example, is something you can’t ignore. According to Statista, in 2020, there were over 3.6 billion people using social media. Even if you reach just a portion of those social media users, that’s still a lot of potential customers.
Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be on all those social media platforms. Your choice should depend on your target audience’s social media preferences. That makes sense. If your target audience isn’t active on Twitter, why should you post your work on Twitter in the first place? That would just be additional work for you.
To determine your social media platform, then, go back to your buyer persona. What social media platforms are your target buyers using? Maybe they are active on Facebook?
Source: Jody Miller Facebook
Maybe they prefer Instagram. Instagram, in particular, is a popular platform for photographers because of one reason: It’s a very visual platform. Since it’s very visual, people who are interested in photography are more likely to be on the platform, too.
Source: Dylan Furst Instagram
Apart from social media, there are other marketing channels you might want to consider. Direct mail, for instance, is something you can leverage to send those posters or postcards to potential clients. Email is also a great channel for building relationships with prospects (see our Rachel Burt example in the previous section).
The idea is to choose the platforms where your potential customers are found, and the ones that work for you.
Set Goals
Now it’s time to set your marketing goals. Your marketing goals, after all, will determine the type of content you will come up with for each marketing channel. They will also determine your key performance indicators, which you will use to evaluate if your marketing strategies are actually working.
Let’s start with your objectives. Your objectives need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound or SMART.
Let’s say your goal is to increase leads. Your objectives could be to increase your number of organic website leads by X% in a month, and to increase the clicks on your website link on Instagram by X% in a month. Those are your KPIs right there: website leads and clicks on your Instagram link leading to your website.
Since your objectives are SMART, you can now craft marketing strategies that can help you achieve those objectives.
For instance, to achieve those specific ones, you determine in your plan that you will do the following:
- Create great content related to your niche to drive leads to the website (see our content marketing example).
- Post some of your best work on Instagram, where most of your potential clients are found based on your buyer personas
- Include a link on your Instagram bio leading to your website.
Check out this example from Mario Testino, a fashion photographer. Since he wants to generate leads, he fills his Instagram account with his best work. He also includes a link to his website on his Instagram bio, so all those interested in availing of his service can just click on it. Or they can send him an email on printsales@mariotestino.com:
Source: Mario Testino Instagram
The more specific your marketing strategies are, the better.
When creating those marketing strategies to include in your plan, make sure you take into account your audience personas and your USP, too. The effectiveness of your marketing strategies depends on this. All your brand messages, regardless of the platforms you picked, should reflect what your target audience wants.
Conclusion
If you’re running a photography business, unfortunately, having the talent and passion is not enough. You need to know how to market yourself to stand out. This is where a photography marketing plan can help you.
The good news is, you don’t need to be a marketing expert to create one. In this article, I shared with you steps on how to create a marketing plan that will help your company grow. Know your audience and determine your unique selling point. Create a website and pick your other marketing channels. Finally, set your marketing goals and specify the corresponding marketing strategies.
Follow these steps and you’ll have a winning marketing plan. Now all you need to do is implement the plan, assess what works and what doesn’t, and make adjustments if needed.
Good luck!
About the Author:
Jayson David is the lead writer, editor, and researcher at Hosting Foundry, which helps businesses find the best web hosts for their needs. A web hosting savant, he checks and publishes all the content on the site.
