Marketing is often the cause of business failure; either they don’t do any or are lousy at it; running Facebook Ads alone doesn’t count as effective marketing!
Marketing relies on tried and tested strategies. You don’t just act arbitrarily and hope for the best; rather, a plan must be laid out and followed through on until execution has taken place. Once that plan has been executed successfully, evaluate results, make necessary adjustments, reexecute plan – repeat process until desired result achieved.
Marketing may not be what you expect it to be; perhaps what you desire to hear is that there’s some magic recipe for marketing that, if followed precisely, will result in clients and money pouring in. Unfortunately, that simply doesn’t happen; marketing must become part of our lives; there must be bumper stickers made and worn as badges of honor everywhere we go. I work with businesspeople (not just photographers!) all around the world who refuse to accept this simple truth yet look at what we have created as examples and say: “I want that!” Well… that was accomplished through hard work combined with excellent client services, great product offerings, listening closely and plenty of marketing!
Accept this fact: No matter how talented a photographer you may be, without people knowing about your existence you will soon become bankrupt. Marketing is the art of communicating your existence to potential customers.
If you want to radically transform both your business and life, quickly acquire marketing experience and do something different – I guarantee it will make a noticeable difference!
Let’s introduce some concepts.
Awareness Ads
Are your clients aware that you exist? How will they know that you offer the highest-quality maternity photography available, and they should hire you? Can you make them wish they were pregnant just so they could hire you for pictures?
Awareness ads serve to raise public awareness of your existence. Unfortunately, awareness ads rarely allow tracking beyond “I heard of you from…” They are hard to monitor effectively but that shouldn’t matter; your goal should be for your logo to become instantly recognizable brand name in consumers’ minds.
Nobody should ever say, “I never heard of that photographer.” If this occurs, then your efforts at creating buzz are failing miserably.
Awareness ads include billboards, direct mail pieces, Facebook advertisements and movie theater ads to highlight your experience and expertise. Short videos may also help raise awareness.
Unless your brand remains visible and relevant to people regularly, its presence can quickly fade into irrelevancy. To effectively encourage people to act during special sales events, they need to recognize it first as being something worth buying into.
Call-to-Action Ads
Once your target audience understands who and why you are different, how will you encourage them to take action now? Call-to-action ads provide the answer – encouraging people to take immediate steps forward with their purchase decisions.
Utilizing your knowledge from creating awareness ads, you could hold an online sale offering 50% off fall session fees for 48 hours. By pairing this idea with marketing channels you uncovered, real customers who spend real money can be converted.
Therefore, all of the same channels remain effective: billboards, direct mail pieces, Facebook advertisements and movie theater ads as well as short videos demonstrating your expertise are still used to spread their message.
Here’s where messaging plays its part. Here are a few ideas you can tweak and adapt for immediate results (provided that awareness ads have already been conducted; just jumping in won’t do).
Idea 1: 50 percent off session fees
When I say this idea is for just the session fee. We won’t discuss products or digital files here – just this fee alone must make money on its backend via IPS (instead of in-person sales), which could also explain why you may not making much profit overall.
These methods include Facebook Ads, direct mail campaigns, billboards and so forth.
Idea 2: Refer a friend and receive a 16×24 canvas We have found this to be an effective incentive for existing clients who love your experience – now give them something tangible to refer you! One year, one of my brides referred nine friends for weddings or families portraiture shoots- and yes! she received nine canvases!
Marketing with email is easy! Simply draft an attractively designed email, send it out, and insert a flyer in every client order (this was what we did), making sure there was no excuse for unawareness from any client.
Idea 3: Do something, get something- This idea should remain intentionally vague. Both parties desire money; everyone loves a deal! So what’s your give-and-take here? Urgency and an attractive offer should prompt action with urgency – don’t mistake this strategy for some late-night “But wait, there’s more!” infomercial pitch.
Your marketing materials need to demonstrate the true value of what you offer: Book now and receive a complimentary 11×16 print ($195 value!).
Again, these are just some basic ideas you can implement quickly.
Building Your Lead List
Marketing can be costly. But building a lead list can save money. A wide range of tools on the market allow you to build, track, and engage with leads; Mailchimp is one such tool and has a free version for up to 2,000 names.
Why is this so critical? For starters, every time you try to market your business, who you target becomes increasingly significant – reinventing the wheel each time can significantly increase marketing costs.
Imagine being a family portrait photographer who already had an established database of families interested in family sessions – this would make marketing your fall family sessions so much simpler, right? Or what if your database included local businesspeople interested in new headshots?
This doesn’t mean we will abandon traditional marketing methods; rather, it is about diversifying our marketing spend. Once you have the name and email of someone on your lead list, the cost of marketing to them drops exponentially; therefore, every aspect of your organization should focus on building it; building it represents real wealth – worth hundreds of thousands in the right hands.
Here are some ideas for building your list. This isn’t meant as a set-in-stone recipe – rather, I hope to spark creative thoughts!
But how do you grow it further? Recruiting new prospects requires a strategy. Why would anyone give away their name and email?
Marketers make money through marketing. You must observe your environment to understand why and how people give away information. Consumers generally provide their contact details in exchange for education and information, such as offering families the “Top 10 Ideas for Killer Family Portraits.” By getting families to sign up, this allows marketers to market call-to-action ads such as “Save 50% off our session fees- 48 hours only!” If it seems easy, that’s because it is. We do it every single day here.
What about for businesses? Why not do something fun and quirky like “1990 is calling. They want their headshot back!”? Sure to draw laughs! Combine this with “5 Tips for a Better Headshot” or “Research Shows That Your Headshot Can Make or Break Deals”, and build up an audience interested in your knowledge so when the time comes to sell to them they already recognize your brand and will respond more readily than someone who just encountered your offer from nowhere! See how all this works?
Get out there and start taking steps; action is always better than inaction – what do you have to lose by acting?