Rangefinder Magazine
November 2005

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Business Savvy Ira Gostin
To Plan or Not to Plan (Part 2 of 2)

THIS ARTICLE concludes September’s “Business Savvy” column with an example Marketing plan.

Sample Marketing Plan Outline

Acme Photography We Expose Good Film to Light Marketing Action Plan
1.0 Introduction to Acme Photography
1.1 Business Summary Info
1.2 Management Team

This section introduces your business. It should tell what the focus of your business is, that is, what type of photographic work you are pursuing. You should also have a business summary page, which outlines the type of business (corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship) and basic information like bank contacts, insurance contacts, etc. You should also have a brief section introducing your “team.” (Your team includes you, your studio manager, all of your contract people such as assistants, accountants, lawyers, etc.)

2.0 Mission Statement/Business Philosophy 2.1 Marketing Message “Acme Photography is dedicated to providing studio photography for business…”
This section should also list your marketing message or messages depending upon your different marketing strategies.

3.0 Summary: Past Year
You should summarize in two or three paragraphs the previous year. Did you hit your goals? Did you develop the kind of client list you wanted? Did you keep the business going in the direction your plan had anticipated?

4.0 Current Year/Next Year Objectives
4.1 Market Segment 1
4.2 Market Segment 2
4.3 Market Segment 3
I recommend organizing your marketing plan into specific pieces of time in which to actually build the plan. I recommend a two-year plan. After nine months or so, you can revise the plan a little to keep things simple, but remember the first one will be the most difficult.

A market segment is each area of photography you are pursuing. For instance, if you do special event photography in addition to the studio work, that would be a market segment. In this section you are breaking down your objectives into each category of photography. As an example: “Market Segment 1: To increase the amount of 4x5 product photography for advertising and brochures.”Remember to keep it simple.

5.0 Market Analysis
5.1 Market Segment 1
5.2 Market Segment 2
5.3 Market Segment 3…
The market analysis is where you analyze each market, as outlined in 4.0. Who is buying this type of photography? Who is your competition? Identify any potential challenges.

6.0 Differential Advantage Analysis
In this section take those challenges you have identified in 5.0 and, in a paragraph or two, identify how you have an advantage over those challenges. The differential advance analysis basically provides you with positioning information. Where do you fit into the marketplace?

7.0 Action Plan by Market
7.1 Market Segment 1
7.2 Market Segment 2
7.3 Market Segment 3

Using those same market segment identifiers from 4.0 and 5.0, outline your action plan of marketing. For instance, if Market Segment 1 is architectural photography, an area you have done some work in but want to do more work in, the action plan will say something like this:

“Market Segment 1—Architectural Photography. I will contact local associations of architects and obtain their mailing list, as well as referencing Chamber of Commerce lists, phone book, and any other lists I can obtain. At that point I will telephone each of the contacts, finding out who at each architect’s firm handles marketing. I will mail that person a cover letter, a promotional piece featuring one or two architectural pictures, and I will follow that mailing with another mailing approximately four weeks later. I will start a telephone campaign to make portfolio appointments. I will follow the same through for commercial builders and interior designers.”

8.0 Marketing Campaign (by marketing discipline)
8.1 Public Relations
8.2 Direct Mail
8.3 Advertising
8.4 Special Projects

In this section you break down each of the market disciplines and write a one-paragraph plan for each. These small plans will then plug into the marketing schedule providing you with a breakdown of market activities for the year(s).

9.0 Goals
To be truly efficient, a written goal must have the following: a clearly identified objective, a clear and concise plan of action, and a realistic deadline. A proper goal must be specific. A goal of “make more money this year” doesn’t work. A goal of “increase architectural photography gross billing by 18 percent in the year or increase by five to seven percent per quarter to be analyzed at the end of each quarter using computer-generated data from QuickBooks” would certainly be more reasonable and easy to obtain.

10.0 Marketing Schedule
Take all of the goals and the action items from the previous sections, and assign them dates of implementation. List those dates by calendar month. This gives you a master calendar that can be posted, put in your planner, or utilized in some fashion that you would follow and implement.

Overall Marketing Plan Comments
I have provided you with some basics of how to structure your marketing plan. An efficient and workable marketing plan can be written in the course of a day or two. The key to writing a marketing plan is to build your outline and then start filling in the blanks.

One of the other major factors is that once you write the plan, don’t put it on a shelf and forget about it. Refer to it regularly; put it in your calendar to look at once a month. It will help keep you on track and provide you with a road map to the success you desire.

Good Luck!