Give a photographer a promotion...
“Give a photographer a promotion…”
Business for Photographers
Lucrative Lumens Volume 2
Hi everyone, and welcome to the second volume of Lucrative Lumens, the Business For Photographers newsletter.
Today’s edition is about the mechanics of a successful promotion (specifically, a promotion for portrait clients).
Photographers are always looking for new promotions that they can use to get more people into the studio. You know the proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life?” I think the same applies here, thus the title of this article. So here is the strategy and rationale behind many of my most successful promotions. Every single one has really worked well beyond my expectations. I believe the reason is that my promotions are not all about how much photography they get, packages, etc., but are about my community. I work hard to make sure someone (or something) else benefits from them too.
To start off with, I don’t want just any promotion. I want a promotion that will accomplish two very specific goals.
1. I want a promotion that doesn’t just pull in anyone. It has to appeal to the right people. People with some discretionary income that can be spent on luxury items. This requires some preliminary research. I have to find out where those people go and what organizations they belong to.
2. I want a promotion that also acts as a PR piece, helping to get my name out into the community among the right people.
With those two goals in mind here are my criteria:
1. I have found that my most successful promotions are those where I tied into some kind of charity organization.
Or, in some other way associated myself with my community and its institutions.
Or, created a show around interesting groups and organizations such as those named below.
2. I only get involved with things that I personally care about.
3. I have to like the people that I will be working with.
4. It had to offer photographic subject matter that I could get enthused about.
After making a list of all the charities, institutions, groups, clubs etc., I picked the ones I felt best met the above 4 criteria. Yours may be different due to location or interests but here are the ones I came up with:
United Way
American Cancer Society
No-kill animal shelters
And while these next groups are not charities, they are here for the protection and enrichment of our community. Also, they make for very interesting subject matter, and therefore are fair game.
Emergency medical personnel
Nurses
Policemen
Firemen.
Independent artists
Dancers (from local dance schools)
Musicians
Symphony Orchestra
Ballet companies
Those of you who are subscribers to this newsletter (rather than just reading it on the site or getting it via RSS) will probably recognize that the “marketing idea” that you got for subscribing was a .psd file (that you could use as a template) of a direct-mail postcard from one of my promotions of this type: a no-kill animal shelter.
The idea is to pick things that can pull at people’s heartstrings and offer great subject matter and allow you to advertise it as “Local businessperson giving back to his/her community.”
Make contact with the charity/organization you picked and lay out your plan to create a series of images to promote them. Enlist their help with getting publicity and lining up the people you are going to photograph. Prepare a news release that you can give them to send out to all newspapers, TV, Radio stations in your area.
Find a venue where you can have the grand unveiling of the show. The charity/org. should be able to help you with this. If worse comes to worst and you just can’t find a brick and mortar location for your show do a virtual show on the Internet. I use ‘Lightroom’ to put up a virtual gallery and also publish a link to it on my social media pages (in my experience, a link with an image/graphic—or a link that is an image--works best. i.e. a thumbnail of one of the images).
You should have virtual galleries up even if you have a physical location. Don’t forget, have your web person design a simple squeeze page so everyone viewing the photographs on the Internet has to supply their name and email address before being allowed to enter.*
There you have it. Exactly what you need to know to create great promotions in your community.
Fiscal Focus members can post questions and comments in the “Give a photographer…” post that will be in the marketing forum in the Photon Fortunes forums. Or, email me your question at Greg@BusinessforPhotographers.com and I’ll answer it during the monthly conference call.
See you next time when we will talk about how to overcome competition.
*If you don’t have a “web person” don’t worry, you can do it all yourself without having to learn any code (or at least very little code). The service that I use is AWeber [http://aweber.com/?384761]; they provide email marketing, auto-responder, and database service. Or, in plain English, you can go there and follow their very clear, simple steps (basically, just filling-out online forms) and they will produce really nice-looking forms based on their templates and you can just copy and paste the code into the file for your webpage. If you decide to use AWeber and you use the link above to subscribe my “web person” has graciously agreed to help guide you through the process…if needed (AWeber has excellent customer service, lots of downloadable documentation and tutorials, and makes the process very easy by providing step-by-step instructions that are supplemented by graphics like big arrows pointing at the part of the page that needs you attention.).
And even if you don’t want to (or can’t, for whatever reason) alter the code for your webpage, AWeber will host the form for you as well and you just tell them where to send the person (presumably to the gallery) after they fill out the form. It’s surprisingly simple.
You can also download a PDF about email marketing, “squeeze pages,” online forms, and auto-responders etc. (from AWeber but the information holds true regardless of if you use them or not) from us through this link [www…]
Business for Photographers
Lucrative Lumens Volume 2
Hi everyone, and welcome to the second volume of Lucrative Lumens, the Business For Photographers newsletter.
Today’s edition is about the mechanics of a successful promotion (specifically, a promotion for portrait clients).
Photographers are always looking for new promotions that they can use to get more people into the studio. You know the proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life?” I think the same applies here, thus the title of this article. So here is the strategy and rationale behind many of my most successful promotions. Every single one has really worked well beyond my expectations. I believe the reason is that my promotions are not all about how much photography they get, packages, etc., but are about my community. I work hard to make sure someone (or something) else benefits from them too.
To start off with, I don’t want just any promotion. I want a promotion that will accomplish two very specific goals.
1. I want a promotion that doesn’t just pull in anyone. It has to appeal to the right people. People with some discretionary income that can be spent on luxury items. This requires some preliminary research. I have to find out where those people go and what organizations they belong to.
2. I want a promotion that also acts as a PR piece, helping to get my name out into the community among the right people.
With those two goals in mind here are my criteria:
1. I have found that my most successful promotions are those where I tied into some kind of charity organization.
Or, in some other way associated myself with my community and its institutions.
Or, created a show around interesting groups and organizations such as those named below.
2. I only get involved with things that I personally care about.
3. I have to like the people that I will be working with.
4. It had to offer photographic subject matter that I could get enthused about.
After making a list of all the charities, institutions, groups, clubs etc., I picked the ones I felt best met the above 4 criteria. Yours may be different due to location or interests but here are the ones I came up with:
United Way
American Cancer Society
No-kill animal shelters
And while these next groups are not charities, they are here for the protection and enrichment of our community. Also, they make for very interesting subject matter, and therefore are fair game.
Emergency medical personnel
Nurses
Policemen
Firemen.
Independent artists
Dancers (from local dance schools)
Musicians
Symphony Orchestra
Ballet companies
Those of you who are subscribers to this newsletter (rather than just reading it on the site or getting it via RSS) will probably recognize that the “marketing idea” that you got for subscribing was a .psd file (that you could use as a template) of a direct-mail postcard from one of my promotions of this type: a no-kill animal shelter.
The idea is to pick things that can pull at people’s heartstrings and offer great subject matter and allow you to advertise it as “Local businessperson giving back to his/her community.”
Make contact with the charity/organization you picked and lay out your plan to create a series of images to promote them. Enlist their help with getting publicity and lining up the people you are going to photograph. Prepare a news release that you can give them to send out to all newspapers, TV, Radio stations in your area.
Find a venue where you can have the grand unveiling of the show. The charity/org. should be able to help you with this. If worse comes to worst and you just can’t find a brick and mortar location for your show do a virtual show on the Internet. I use ‘Lightroom’ to put up a virtual gallery and also publish a link to it on my social media pages (in my experience, a link with an image/graphic—or a link that is an image--works best. i.e. a thumbnail of one of the images).
You should have virtual galleries up even if you have a physical location. Don’t forget, have your web person design a simple squeeze page so everyone viewing the photographs on the Internet has to supply their name and email address before being allowed to enter.*
There you have it. Exactly what you need to know to create great promotions in your community.
Fiscal Focus members can post questions and comments in the “Give a photographer…” post that will be in the marketing forum in the Photon Fortunes forums. Or, email me your question at Greg@BusinessforPhotographers.com and I’ll answer it during the monthly conference call.
See you next time when we will talk about how to overcome competition.
*If you don’t have a “web person” don’t worry, you can do it all yourself without having to learn any code (or at least very little code). The service that I use is AWeber [http://aweber.com/?384761]; they provide email marketing, auto-responder, and database service. Or, in plain English, you can go there and follow their very clear, simple steps (basically, just filling-out online forms) and they will produce really nice-looking forms based on their templates and you can just copy and paste the code into the file for your webpage. If you decide to use AWeber and you use the link above to subscribe my “web person” has graciously agreed to help guide you through the process…if needed (AWeber has excellent customer service, lots of downloadable documentation and tutorials, and makes the process very easy by providing step-by-step instructions that are supplemented by graphics like big arrows pointing at the part of the page that needs you attention.).
And even if you don’t want to (or can’t, for whatever reason) alter the code for your webpage, AWeber will host the form for you as well and you just tell them where to send the person (presumably to the gallery) after they fill out the form. It’s surprisingly simple.
You can also download a PDF about email marketing, “squeeze pages,” online forms, and auto-responders etc. (from AWeber but the information holds true regardless of if you use them or not) from us through this link [www…]
