Continuing our week focused on marketing ideas for your business, Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua shares her insights on tools beyond your website, portfolio and mailers. Enjoy this video (17 min) and share with us what you are doing to get noticed.
If you haven’t yet read TRIBES - We need you to lead us by Seth Godin, today is the day to do just that, at 160 pages it is easily a weekend read. The basic tribe concept is that groups of people form tribes around a person or an idea or a product to create change. For a photographer this can lead to many opportunities, , but the one that stands out for me is that “Marketing Management is now Tribal Leadership.”
Back when I first started out as a photographer, I had dinner with very successful and famous fashion photographer. His advice to me was , “you really only need five clients in your career.” In essence he was advising me to create a small and devoted tribe. You build that tribe with your story and with images in your portfolio that confirm that story. Your Tribe wants to be “lead” by you, their leader.
TRIBES follows tribal innovators using the social networks of new media to build tribes My advice is to follow along while creating a plan for your tribe, and make it a part of your overall tribal strategy.
This week we are focusing on marketing and sales – how do you get your potential client’s attention? In this video, Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua talks about print mailers and emailers. (22 min, 59 sec)
One of the things that always amazes me about our business is the tremendous risk that buyers of photography services take on an almost daily basis.
Think about it – you’ve got a box that you have to fill. It might be a box on a screen or on a printed page but it’s an empty box and you’ve got to find someone to produce the perfect image to fill that box on time and within your budget.
That’s a lot of pressure – after all, whether it’s a magazine, an ad, a corporate brochure or any other communication, you probably can’t release it with an empty box. The box has to be filled and you, your boss and your company have a lot riding on it.
Based on viewing a handful of images and a 15-minute phone call, you’re going to hand a photographer an assignment. If they fail, you’ll almost definitely lose a chunk of money and may well miss an important deadline or lose a big opportunity. You could land in deep hot water with your boss or even lose your job.
Wow.
If it was your job on the line, what would you need to see, what would you need to hear, what would you need to know to feel safe hiring a particular photographer?
“It’s the economy stupid” was from the Clinton campaign (Bill’s not Hillary’s) and it is as true today as it was back then. On Monday, I attended the ASMP Chicago/Midwest Soup Kitchen & Town Hall Meeting “On Surviving This Economy (because failure is not an option!)” when Chicago based advertising photographer, Jim Krantz, offered the great advice, to “shoot your way out of this.” He wasn’t referring to the wild, wild west but to the attitude adjustment that we need to make, while continuing to make pictures because that is what we do. Basically “getting off our fear.” I made the point to the crowd, that as photographers much of our work is alone. This is a good time to reach out to your creative community and create real “social networks.” Maybe assemble a team to create new pictures, or get together with a designer and work on portfolios or design projects, maybe offer to shoot their new work for their portfolio. Or it could be an invitation to a group of photographers to talk about photography. Not the business, but the pictures. Remind yourself, why we do this and that shooting our way out is the way to survive.
Today we are going to focus on the business essentials specific to working in this digital age. Do you have increased liabilities? How do you use the tools available to your advantage? Judy Herrmann discusses this and more in this video. (25min, 38sec)
I spent an afternoon two weeks ago meeting with the owners of one of the largest studio and equipment rental houses in New York. Halfway through the afternoon they showed me a presentation that they give to new clients, the presentation and the accompanying conversation were eye opening.
It turns out that studio rentals to photographers creating traditional photographs is now only 20 percent of their business, and something that they support and hold onto with a certain nostalgia. No longer just a rental studio they are now a full service creative center offering everything from; full concept development, to 3D and imaging and digital support services ( they just hired one of Pixar’s best known digital technicians ), image creation for the advertising, editorial and corporate marketplace, providing photographers and staff for shoots, and more. The creative scope is mind boggling, advertising agencies are coming to them for ideas or suggestions on how to articulate and manifest the agency’s idea, as are many of the largest magazines, retail chains, and web sites.
Sorry all of you product shooters out there, but virtually all of the product work being done is with 3D rendering. They are even creating magazine covers and full spreads in 3D as opposed to taking the time to hire a photographer. Why? Cost and control, it was cheaper and easier to render the shoot than to have someone go shoot the cover. Think about that, we are talking editorial here, not advertising.
So what does this mean for you? Well, your first thoughts are probably either, “More bad news, game over, what am I going to do now,” “ Who are these guys, I want to work with them” or “Where do I learn 3D.” The second two answers may be partially right, but I want you to look at this story another way. Maybe we need to work together a little more instead of on our own, teams instead of individuals. Maybe we need to embrace the creative control and possibilities that the new marketplace offers and we have always craved. We need to become better educated in terms of idea creation and application across multiple platforms. We need to let go of old business models, add new skill sets to our businesses, and embrace the opportunities offered by running a broad based business driven from the creative side as opposed to being a service provider in a diminishing marketplace. We need to become mini versions of this rental house, work together with the designers, retouchers, and animators to form creative groups that create exciting, innovative work that can compete.
Do it now, get up from your chair, walk slowly away from the computer and look outside your window. Be brave, move away from the inkjet printer and out of the cube that we all call a studio, it will all still be there when you return, only when you come back you may have a fresh perspective.
Call a few friends or business associates, set up a meeting at a coffee shop with a designer, art director, gallerist or artist that you know and begin to find synergies, and put together your own creative team. Be flexible and work together to find new paths to success.
Today we feature Blake Discher’s video on “Negotiating Basics.” (10 min) ASMP is offering Blake’s full two lecture on Negotiating at chapters around the country. The in-person show includes small group role playing that puts these basics into practice. I know most of us hate role playing, but it really does improve your ability to negotiate effectively with clients.
I forgot to add this to Judy’s post yesterday. Gail Mooney and Paula Lerner are presenting a seminar on Multimedia and Video in Seattle this Saturday. Go here for the details. More of these presentations will be traveling in the Fall, so check in with ASMP to see when and where.
A few months ago, I had a great conversation with ASMP NY member, Gail Mooney. Gail is a still photographer who began working with motion imagery about 20 years ago, first with film and then with digital video. When I asked Gail about this transition, she said something to the effect of “Well, I wasn’t a visionary or anything. I got into photography because there were stories that I wanted to tell and one day, I realized that I could tell some of them better if I incorporated sound and motion.”
Gail may not see that as visionary but I give a lot of credit to anyone who takes the time to question their own assumptions. You see, Gail didn’t get into motion because it was the hot thing or because it was marketable. She got into it because it furthered her goals – she wanted to tell stories and this was just another tool.
I encourage you to grab a sheet of paper and answer the question “Why am I photographer?” All of your answers should begin with the word “To” and each of your answers should take you to a deeper level of understanding your true motivation for choosing this career path.
Understanding where your passion really lies frees you to explore other avenues, other media, and other ways of looking at your career, that will allow you to redefine who you are in broader terms and explore new markets. The ultimate goal, after all, isn’t to live within some preconceived notion of who you are and what you do, but to figure out what you find truly satisfying and find ways to earn a living doing as much of that as possible.
A sometimes overlooked, but very important factor in any negotiation is making sure the person to whom you are speaking is in fact the decision maker. If he isn’t you ideally need to get that decision maker involved in the negotiation.
One method I use to tactfully determine if the person I’m talking with is the decision maker is to ask him, “Is there anyone else I should email samples of my work to?” Or, perhaps, “Can you suggest any other persons in your company I should send a few samples of my work to?”
Your goal is to try to get the ultimate decision maker involved in the negotiation. If you still can’t get to that person, then it’s best to “empower” the person to whom you’re talking with “talking points” or “bullet points” so they can talk about your value and essentially sell you to the person hiring the photographer.
Remember, that initial phone conversation is the time when you have to talk about what it is that makes you different from your competitors. How do you differentiate yourself? What do you “bring to the party” that others may not? What I’m really saying is what value do you provide this potential client?
The inability to show your value will only put downward pressure on the total price of the job. Only with differentiation can you command higher fees, primarily because you will be providing a look, or style, or service that is not easily found elsewhere.
Then take the time to review and update your website and portfolio. Leslie Burns-Dell’Acqua discusses these two core marketing tools in today’s video … (25 min)
Scott Rogers, a lawyer turned career consultant; teaches a seminar about career satisfaction for lawyers. Yup, lawyers.
In it, he points out that most of us spend the vast majority of our time thinking about all the ways we’d like to change the past or what we can do to control the future. The reality is that we have no control – zero, zip, nadda – over both these things.
Instead, he suggests, imagine what would happen if we focused our energies on learning from the past and developing strategies for navigating through all the different possibilities – good and bad – that the future might hold.
With the rapid changes hitting our country in general and our industry in particular, this is the perfect time to take that advice to heart.
There’s a lot of scary stuff happening right now, but there’s also a ton of really exciting opportunities and possibilities out there. So learn from the past but let it go. It’s time to look to the future, embrace change and figure out how you can leverage your skills and maximize your potential.
Copyright and licensing together are the business backbone of our industry. Both are rapidly evolving. Changes to copyright law are soon expected and the licensing model, as we once knew it, is under siege. It is important to note that as the process evolves, the premise is still here.
We now market our businesses via blogs, web sites and emails, but we are still marketing. And, to price your work appropriately, you still need to understand the basics of copyright and licensing. So watch this … (11min, 30sec)
The other day, in CivPro class (in case you didn’t know, I’m in law school), one of the students couldn’t seem to understand why the professor wouldn’t help him find a way around a basic rule of discovery. The student couldn’t accept that he should give up anything that might hurt his case! He might not win then! The prof pointed out that he might think he’d win this way, but he’d more likely get disbarred and sued by his client for malpractice. Short term = maybe win, long term = ruin reputation & career.
Besides, the prof pointed out, the Law (cap L), like most things, is not really about winning. It is about doing the best thing for your client–and sometimes, most of the time, that is settling a case. It is through an open give-and-take that both sides end up with a fair and equitable solution to their problem, and if you can do that without ending up in court, great!
Any dispute is, at its heart, about one core issue. That issue is shared by both sides. It is the metal of the coin, and each party is one of that coin’s faces. In photography, for example, a client wants images for its website as inexpensively as possible and a photographer wants to make those images but get paid a high fee for it. Same issue, two sides. If either side focuses on winning, they BOTH lose. If the client pushes for cheap, it will likely get images that aren’t as good as they need to be for the purpose (and probably from another photographer). If the photographer pushes to getting $X, the client will bolt. But if they focus, together, on finding a good spot they can both live with, in the middle someplace, the problem disappears. No one “wins”–the problem just vanishes and both sides get what they need (and some of what they want). You can’t get “there” without taking the risk of being fully open.
Okay, that sounds fine in theory, but we all know that clients can be very pushy about their side (btw, so can photographers!). That is understandable–there is a lot of pressure on the buyer. What this often means is that it is up to the photographer to take the lead, and to lead well. The photographer must look past the games the buyer may try. The best way to do this is to listen to your client more than you speak, especially early on, and to offer solutions rather than drawing lines in the sand. Let them be jerks but don’t react. Like a therapist once told me, when someone else is pitching a fit, that is about them, not you.
Basically, I’m suggesting you kill ‘em with kindness. Learn the communicative technique of mirroring, also really listen, commiserate, and try to get them to say what would work for them. For example, try “Let’s work together to find some way to limit the usage so that I can get to the price you need” and “Would it help you if we did this project for one year usage and I guarantee the relicensing prices for the future?” Talk about their feelings (“I know you are afraid I might jack the prices up on you later–I want to make sure you feel secure that I won’t do that”) and acknowledge their worries as legitimate. That technique will help build trust.
And that trust will help you both end up in the best place for both of you. Then you can get on with the real work of making great images (for a fair price) and your client can feel secure they are getting great work at a fair price.
Trying to decide how to change your business? Thinking about how to find new clients and reach into new markets? Stop for a minute. Walk over to your book shelf, dust off your books and look at the pictures that you love. Go online and look at pictures from contemporary photographers that you have never hear of. Look at imagery that you don’t really like or understand. Go to a local museum, or sit with a few friends and talk about creating and not about making images for clients.
Maybe the way to revitalize your business is not with one more e-mail, phone call, or mailer, maybe it is time to let your work grow and change a little. Maybe it is time to put the heart, love and passion back into your work that brought you to this profession in the first place. Take some new pictures, make some mistakes, shoot things that are not perfectly resolved, fail, and find new paths within that failure. Think about why you chose this profession, and why you still need to do it beyond the need to make a living. Remember your desire to create and let it run free again, but let it happen in a way that you have not done before.
Over time you may be surprised at the reaction you receive when people begin to see your new images in addition to your current work. How people will react to imagery that feels more personal and connected. More important, how your clients react to a photographer who is positive and passionate about his or her work in all the best ways. We all love to work with someone who is caring and creative.
Maybe this is the time to change your business, but maybe that change needs to start inside of you instead of out in the world. Maybe it is time to remember why we do this, create some images for yourself, and challenge your friends to so the same.
We now begin sharing our series of videos based on the Strictly Business 2 lectures. In this first video (9 min, 57 sec), Richard Kelly shares his personal experience on small business basics.
When we hear the word “portfolio” most of us immediately think of our “book” or the body of images that we use to market ourselves as photographers. But the portfolio I’m talking about is the collection of skills and services that you market to your clients.
Most of us don’t like to think about this but skills have a life cycle of usefulness and to retain value, we must constantly renew and update the skills that we’ve mastered. We also have to recognize that only those clients whose needs match our skills are going to be willing to pay a fair level of compensation for the services we offer.
The rapid changes that have hit our industry have left many of us feeling like the rug’s been pulled out from under us. Answering the most basic questions – What am I good at? What skills do I currently have? How can I build upon those skills to increase my value? Who needs what I want to do? – is a great place to start building (or rebuilding) your vision for your career.
This final segment of our “SB2 Interviews Videos” focuses on marketing. Take a look and pull some ideas for your business. (13 min, 6 sec)
Like many photographers, I started my professional career by charging a “day rate” for my services. Rather than considering the scope of a project or the use of the images, I simply set a “day rate” or “half day rate” and applied those numbers to each request. I realized quickly this wasn’t working. One day I would be run ragged with a client piling on the number of images they wanted me to generate and the next a client might ask me to reduce the fee because I finished early. With no specifics in my paperwork except “one day on site,” I had no recourse. Today, every estimate I calculate is specific to the job and contains; a detailed description of the project, the number of images being commissioned, the license to use the images and my price. If anything changes, my price changes.
Here is some food for thought …
* Day rates punish efficiency.
* One size fits all pricing does not work in this business.
* The creative process does not work by the clock. Sometimes the elements to achieve a fantastic image come together quickly, sometimes the process takes longer than expected.
* By charging “per image” or “per project,” I take into consideration the time needed to create the work, but more importantly I consider the specifics of a job and the client’s use of the images.