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Rangefinder
Magazine
Ten Commandments
of Marketing & Self Promotion by Linda Ford
By choosing photography as a profession, you must treat it as a business, a creative business. In the beginning it may feel like it’s 90 percent business and 10 percent photography, but once your marketing and self-promotion business plans are outlined, you’ve cut that 90 percent in half. You have the technical acumen to create great images, but how do you get anyone to see them? As a foundation for my business, I created the 10 Commandments of Marketing and Self-Promotion. These will help you when you begin the process of marketing. By following these rules, you’ll be well on your way to a successful career in photography. The Ten Commandments Each new year, I take a hard look at my business and see where it is and where I want it to be. A friend of mine with an MBA once suggested I write a business plan. My friend saw the fear in my eyes and assured me this plan can be a simple timeline of how I want to market my business throughout the year. Sample of a Very Simple Marketing and Self-Promotion
Business Plan:
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
As an artist, you want to produce images that are true to you and reflect your style and personality. The quest to create images and successfully run a business leads us to set our goals out on paper. The objective of this exercise is to create an effective marketing plan that attracts the type of work you want. Highly successful photographers are constantly working on self-promotion, as well as creating self-directed personal work projects for themselves. Here’s the “Analysis” section
of your plan: Market Analysis Market size: Is the area you want to or are working in over-saturated? Is there an area you may be interested that is underdeveloped? Trends: Has the corporate casual dress filtered into annual reports or corporate collateral pieces? It is important to remember that a marketing plan covers the entire year. I have found that the more your work is in front of the photo editors and art directors, and the more you follow up those promos with a phone call, the more you will be remembered. In our business the saying, “Out of sight and out of mind” rings true. A campaign of 1000 postcards sent out once a year is not the most effective way to promote yourself. Direct marketing campaigns generally yield a return of 1–2 percent. You get better odds than that in Vegas. Targeting your market, knowing who you want to work for, and creating a manageable qualified prospect list will increase your odds in gaining the type of work you want. For example, when I first started in this business, 10 years ago, I wanted to shoot fashion, kids, editorial, corporate, travel and music. $6000 later I had boxes of promos to send out; 10 years later, I still have those full boxes. After my extremely unsuccessful first promo campaign, I regrouped, went through the exercise outlined and determined I wanted to shoot music. With my promo budget depleted, I scraped together $500, and with the help and time donated by friends I created 100 mini-portfolios of 12 images the size of a CD cover enclosed in the CD jewel box. I needed to get the point across to the record companies that my photos would work in that small format. I also needed to get their attention, so I enclosed a condom in each jewel case and inscribed in each case was, “Be safe with Linda Ford Photography.” I got a 24 percent return on this campaign and quite a few phone calls from photo editors laughing hysterically. Photo editors and art directors get hundreds of promos daily, so remember you want you be the haystack, not the needle. Web sites are a necessity and an easy and cost effective way for photo editors to view your work. Many photo editors don’t have the latest, greatest and fastest of computers, so be sure your site loads quickly. Several art directors have told me if your site takes too long load, they’ll close it and move on, never having seen your work. They don’t have a lot of free time to wait for your site to load. Don’t show everything on your web site, just enough so the art director or client can see what you do. If hiring a web designer is too expensive, try bartering. Contact your local community college instructor of the advance web design class for his or her recommendations of students who may be interested in working on this project for you. This method works well when it comes to designing your promo pieces. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership that allows you to stay within your promo budget. If you can do all this, you are on you way to a successful career in photography. Don’t expect results overnight. This is a painstaking process, but the reward is great. The first time you get that call because of one of your promo pieces, you’ll feel like all your hard work has paid off. Now you can move that person from the prospect list to your ever-growing client list. Linda Ford is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based commercial photographer specializing in editorial portraiture. Her clients range from California Lawyer magazine to the music magazine, Request. Prior to beginning her career as a photographer, Linda was a municipal bond trader for a major Wall Street firm. There she learned her business acumen that she has brought with her to her photography business. She also teaches various workshops on the art of marketing and self-promotion. She currently resides in Venice, California, with three cats and many cameras. |
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When you make the leap from photography
as a hobby to a profession, you know you have to somehow promote yourself.
You don’t
get work by hanging your shingle out stating “Photographer.” Marketing
and self-promotion is the area of photography we all know we have to
do, but least like to do. However, if we don’t market ourselves
how else are those art directors, photo editors and art buyers ever going
to see our work and assign us great jobs.