Marketing - MPN

Marketing can be a challenging juggling act for a photographer. Your intentions are good, you aim to make some sales calls and update your blog, but then it all goes out the window when you become too busy on shoots. To give yourself a better chance you need a plan.

A marketing plan is a plan to the success of your business. There are two main things to think about: Your objectives, strategy and tactics.

Your objectives

Where is it exactly that you're trying to get? Do you simply want to earn a certain amount of money from your photography or does it go further than that?

Perhaps you want to work for specific magazine, shoot a certain amount of jobs, be accepted by a particular photo agency or be recognised in a particular award.

Objectives you might aspire to achieve include:

• To earn a certain amount of money from your photography

• To raise your profile in industry

• To develop your knowledge and skills

• To increase the hits on your website or blog by certain percentage

• Increase your search engine rankings (SEO)

• To receive a certain number of enquiries from potential clients

• To be able to arrange a ‘go see’ with a particular agency or magazine

• To be asked to estimate on a certain number of shoots

• To have a certain number of new images worthy of adding to your portfolio

• To add a certain number of new contacts to your database

Your strategy and tactics

How are you going to reach your objectives? A marketing plan should include a breakdown of the marketing activities you intend to undertake and when you plan to undertake them: your strategy and tactics. The marketing ideas above should give some inspiration here.

Start by preparing a month by month marketing plan over a year. You need to plan your year realistically according to what stage you are at and how much you can afford. If you write your own plan down you are more likely to stick to it; crossing things off the list each month is also quite satisfying if you are just starting out or have been neglecting your marketing recently.

Your first month might look something like this:

When you are up and running, a typical month through a commercial or editorial photographer might look something like this:

Tip: Review your marketing plan every couple of months to check you are on track

My journey with marketing so far

Website: One of my first steps towards marketing and getting myself out there as a photographer was to create a website. With my budget I couldn't afford a professional graphics designer to build my very own unique website, so I used an online user friendly website builder for that. While there is less creative freedom and ownership of the website (and lets not mention the fact that there is probably thousands of others with the same website template as me), it was a great start on boosting my image on a low budget. My website has become my primary tool of promotion and marketing. It has most of my latest best images, curated into their own relevant category, and organised in a fashion I find most appealing. To me, it was important that my website looked clean and professional, was user friendly, and showcased my photos in a way that they'd stand out, after all the website is supposed to be like your own virtual gallery (see what I did there). Ever since I started my website, I have since continuously changed and perfected it to reach a higher standard. Aside from the aesthetics, I also wanted it to be a source of all the relevant information, where everything you needed to know was all in one spot, that's including my socials, my contact information, the services I offer and even a short bio to introduce myself.

Social media: Social media has quickly become one of the most vital tools of promoting yourself. My first ever step of promotion was by creating a dedicated instagram account to my business. That's where I had to come up with a name, and I wanted to make sure it didn't go under the radar or risking it being forgetful (for example, 'xyz photography, or photography by xyz). I ended up opting for some alliteration and came up with the now, Gabriela's Gallery. Once the instagram account was made, that was my main source of marketing at that time, but it slowly became ineffective once I realised it was my only one, and my images couldn't be shown to their fullest potential. That's when I plugged my website in my bio and promoted it on my account, from there, I noticed more sparked interest from my targeted audience. However instagram is extremely saturated with a multitude of different photos and businesses trying to get their engagement, that's where I needed to put some money aside for marketing to push my work a bit farther through ads. Once I invested some money on ads for some of my photos, the engagement significantly increased on those posts and even on my account. https://www.instagram.com/gabrielasgallery_/

For a while instagram was my only social media account dedicated to my photography, which was suitable at the beginning, until I realised I wanted to take my marketing a bit more seriously and branch out to different social media sites where I'll reach wider audiences. My next choice was Facebook, with its recent upgrades in marketing and promotion tools I thought it would be the next best bet on taking my self promo to the next level. Fortunately, it reached a much wider range of people that could potentially benefit my engagement. Facebook has also allowed me to find other photography communites, specifically in my area to work with, creating spaces ideal for collaborations and networking, which I will go into next. https://www.facebook.com/gabrielasgallery/

Networking: Now networking could mean a lot of things, but in my case, I decided to start virtually by signing up to a couple of sites that purpose for the exposure of my photos. As I mentioned above, Facebook offers good networking spaces where photographers can join and work with each other and other creators such as makeup artists, stylists, models etc. It has been a great tool of not only marketing and promotion, but networking too. Now for instagram, although you can't join specific groups, the location function allows you to find people in the same area, thus making it easier for others to find you and for you to find them! Also hashtags are a great way too in categorising you and your work, and I always make sure I add location and a bunch of hashtags. Now for non-social media websites, I have joined a couple in hopes that it would benefit my work. Eyeem being one, this website is a community full of talented photographers who show off their work and in turn get noticed by other photographers, or even big companies such as Getty Images, who give you the opportunity to gain commission from your work. Another networking site I've been using has been purpleport, which has been significantly useful in finding other photographers in my area to collaborate with, and even models who want to build their portfolio. This particular website has made it easier for me to find people who work within my area and that are also looking for work, whether its TFP or paid. It also allows you to interact with each other, making it a great place for networking.

Assisting/shadowing is also a good way of creating relationships while also gaining experience, once you work with different photographers that are more experienced in that realm, you'll walk with away with more knowledge and skillsets, but most importantly a new relationship-because if there's one thing that will get you somewhere is knowing people in the industry, that goes by the popular saying that its not what you know, its who you know. So we need to get social! I have only had a couple experiences with shadowing and that was with a sports photographer at a football club. That not only helped me understand different parts of the industry better, but I gained recognition from other people that work there, therefore later giving me other opportunities to shoot similar work.

Other marketing strategies I have adopted is making a separate business email. Google has an option of creating an account purely for your business, it offers an array of ways to boost your business like optimising your websites chances of appearing when people search for your type of services. It's just another way of deeply establishing yourself digitally, because that's where people will most likely find you and learn about your business. Ultimately, for a wide range of people to find you, paying for ads will be necessary in making sure your work gets farther than just your mutual friends or followers, word of mouth will only get you so far, but you also need to lay a good foundation of consistency and opportunities, which will only happen if you take digital promotion seriously.