Beating the Competition
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Business For Photographers newsletter ~ Lucrative Lumens.
Competition, it’s everywhere. There’s hardly a business or service in existence that there isn’t more than one providing the same service or product.
It wouldn’t be so bad if you only had to compete against one or two. Unless, of course you are in a really small market and don’t have a lot of people to sell to. But for most of us in the photography business there are a ton of people everywhere you go trying to sell their service as a professional photographer.
Here is an interesting statistic that we have to live with everyday.
In any market on any given day there are only about 3% interested in buying what you have to sell. That goes for tires, jewelry, clothing, dry cleaning, photography, anything you can think of. With perhaps two exceptions, medical and groceries.
Now when you take that number and subtract those who can’t afford what you sell you have a much smaller number indeed. Depending on the affluence of your market this may be a really small number.
Now, couple this with how many companies or people that are selling the same thing you are and the number gets downright abysmal.
With this knowledge in mind you can see why marketing becomes “all-important.”
So, just how do you go about becoming the go-to guy/girl for photography in your market?
Two things immediately come to mind. First, what makes you so special that I will want to come to you instead of going to another. This is really a biggie. If you don’t have a clear, concise and dramatic answer to this question you are going to have a really tough time of it marketing wise. If you can’t answer that question, or if your answer is weak, then the only leverage you will have is price, and that’s a very bad place to be.
This is such an important question that you need to devote whatever time and resources it takes to come up with an answer. Many companies have spent month’s and even years coming up with that all important positioning statement. You may need to develop a survey and poll your market about what the most important thing to them is when they consider hiring a photographer. Then build a description of your company around the answer.
The second thing you have to accomplish is, become a household name in your market when it comes to photography. In other words if you or one of your associates was to walk up and down the streets of your market and randomly ask “if you were going to hire a photographer, who are the top three photographers that come to mind?”
Would your studio be in the number one spot, or at least among the top three named?
Now let’s get a little more specific. Let’s only consider those who you want to do business with. How many of those folks would name your studio first?
Now, here is where we can really start to separate ourselves from the competition. Instead of sending out advertising to the whole community, for example High School Seniors, instead of mailing to all the seniors in your market, which is really expensive, break it up and concentrate on the areas where the people you want as clients live. I recommend you pick areas of higher income. Now you have a much smaller number of people to work with, which allows you to advertise much more frequently for much less money.
You should have by this time figured out what’s so special about you that would appeal to this market that you can build a campaign around it. Remember Domino’s Pizza. Their slogan was “Fresh hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” This slogan has gone down in advertising history as perhaps the finest example of a unique selling proposition that ever existed, and it practically, all-by-itself made Domino’s owner a multi-billionaire.
So what do you have to offer that others don’t or won’t. You really need to put the time into this one.
As much as I hate to say it, the fact is, photography, in the minds of most people is a r commodity. They see photographers as being pretty much all alike, with the only difference being that you may have more appealing packages than the guy down the street, which puts us into a price variation.
Rather than thinking like photographers who think in terms of packages, prices, props and other gimmicks to lure in clients, we need to think like the artist, painter, or book author. These folks have a following, a crowd, a herd, a group of people that like them and what they do so much that they can’t wait or them to come out with their next painting, or book , so they can be the first to own it.
Granted, this is not easy but believe me, it is what separates the successful studio from the one that is just getting by.
Well that’s it for this time. But I will be publishing more on this subject in upcoming newsletters. In the meantime if you would like in depth help with this subject or any other photography related business subject join the members area of Business For Photographers.
