How Stand out in the Competitive Photography Market Without Having to Pay for Ads, Hustle, or Do Work You Hate!
This month on the podcast, we've been talking about impactful questions to help you start thinking strategically about your photography and business.
Hopefully these question have helped you figure out what you want for yourself this year and you've been able to set some goals, get in-touch with your WHY, and you've made some intentional decisions about your mindset, and when you are going to commit to doing this work.
Now that you know the what, why, who and when, I’m going to ask you the last piece of the puzzle, which is how.
HIGHLIGHTS
How?
How are you going to turn your goals for your photography business into a reality? What is your strategy? What is your plan?
I started my business like many photographers do. I LOVED photography but didn’t know the first thing about how to find clients and market my business.
I thought that being a talented photographer was all I needed to have a successful photography business, and quickly I realized that was wrong. I desperately wanted to make a living as a photographer so when I wasn't getting the clients I needed to make my business work, I panicked and made a lot of mistakes.
I lowered my rates, thinking that it was a pricing problem. I chased trends and tried to do what the “successful photographers” were doing. I almost quit...but instead, I got curious.
I asked myself, "What do I need to do so that I can stand out in this saturated market, connect to the kinds of clients I want to work with, and start making the money I need to make in my business?"
I needed a way to market my business that was simple, easy and effective and that didn’t depend on me spending a ton of money I didn’t have on ads. I needed to know how to build a solid marketing plan that would stand the test of time—not something that was built on ever-changing marketing trends and outdated sales tactics.
I studied, took my findings, and created a method for marketing that I still use in my business to this day and have gone on to teach hundreds of photographers around the world inside my coaching program, The Six-Figure Studio!
The Six-Figure Studio Method
This method enabled me to take my business from a place of struggle and frustration to six figures and then multiple six figures. Building out this method took years of research, study and trial and error, but now it works. Best of all, it’s easy!
My marketing method is built around what I call the "Three Cs of Business", which are clarity, communication and consistency.
Most photographers have an idea of what they want their business to be like. They want their business to feel fun and creative instead of a stressful, unpredictable lottery with lots of hustle required and inconsistent results. Implementing my method can create this fun, creative business for you. It can give you SO much freedom!
Clarity is the branding piece. To build a successful, profitable business, you want to make sure you are creating a brand for your business that makes it an easy YES for your ideal client. Once you have that kind of brand clarity, you need a communication plan in place that enables you to create a marketing machine that will get you paying clients coming to your inbox each and every month in a consistent, predictable way.
Then to keep your marketing machine adding more clients and more money into your business, you need a set of consistent, predictable routines and automation to establish consistency. This ensures you have a steady steam of traffic coming into your business!
When those pieces are all working together, you have a solid brand that helps you stand out from the crowd and a marketing system that works for you with minimal effort on your part.
Clarity
Clarity is the foundation that your entire business is built upon. When you have clarity, you know exactly what it is that you do and who your ideal client is, resulting in a strong brand that is represented on your website, in your portfolio and on your social media.
As a visual artist, you are the only person on the entire planet you can see and capture something the way you do. When you are constantly looking at your competition, chasing the trends and doing what you think you should do instead of doing what you were called to do, you and your work begins to look like everyone else’s.
However, when you know what it is you do and what special qualities you bring to your work, your work will begin to look different. It will become unique! Because it's unique, it becomes instantly recognizable. This leads you to becoming trustworthy, because your clients know what they'll get when they hire you.
You've gone from being one of many to being unique, desirable and trustworthy! That is how you build a strong brand, and having a strong brand is the only way to stand out in a saturated market.
A strong brand attracts and repels. It is designed to be an easy yes for some and a clear no for others and eliminates a lot of the problems photographers have like price shoppers and ghosting!
Communication
Communication is the marketing piece. Marketing and selling are not the same. Marketing is an activity that involves identifying your client’s wants or needs and then pointing out how you can help meet their needs. It's a journey you take people on that teaches them about you and your business. It establishes a relationship before you actually ever meet the person. Marketing is just a fancy word for communication!
There are two different marketing techniques: traditional marketing and modern marketing.
Traditional marketing is what most of us know and think of when we hear the word "marketing". It focuses on the sale as the end goal. This is why so many people confuse marketing with sales.
Traditional marketing works, but it can feel aggressive to the client and lead to burnout for the photographer. This is because it puts you in the position of having to be selling and places value on the price, product and time.
Modern marketing is about service and connection. It's client centered instead of sales focused. Instead of trying to coerce people into a sale, modern marketing focuses on providing value for people by answering questions, solving problems and educating them in some way.
Modern marketing positions you as an expert at what you do. It creates trust and likability, and that always leads to sales! People want to do business with people they know, like and trust.
When you’re using your marketing channels to educate, inform and serve, you end up creating marketing content people want to engage with. That leads you into creating what is know as “high-quality content” on your website, blog and in your social media feed.
High-quality content is content people read, like, comment on and share. When people engage with your content in that way, it tells the algorithm that you have content people like!
The more people ready to engage with your content, the more it signals the algorithm that you have content people care about. It's essentially a content boost, which helps improve your SEO and presence on social media.
This is how you create a marketing machine that brings in a steady stream of qualified leads each and every month.
Consistency
The final piece is consistency.
Marketing magic comes when you create systems for automating your content so that you are never NOT marketing your business. That means consistent traffic, bookings and consistent, predictable income month to month!
You may be wondering if this is a ton of work.
My answer is no, it doesn’t have to be. I teach the photographers I coach a system that I call the reduce, reuse and recycle method for content creation. Based on modern marketing best practices, you create a core piece of content that speaks to your ideal client, and then you reuse and repurpose it for other platforms like on your blog, social channels and email!
I also teach a simple method for batching and automating so that you can spend a little time once a month or once a year on your marketing, and that's it. If you are creating the kind of high-quality content that you learned about today, the marketing you put out into the world is going to keep working for you long after you publish it. This is how you get big results from your marketing efforts!
Marketing always works, but it requires consistency.
If you take one thing away from this episode, I want it to be this: creating a photography business that predictable, profitable and fills up your creative soul is 100% possible! In fact, you can get there in just a few months!
If that is something your want and would like help with, I invite you to check out my group coaching program, The Six-Figure Studio. This program is like a done-for-you, plug and play marketing blueprint.
When you sign up for program, you get instant access to the three core phases of the program—Clarity, Communication and Consistency, as well as the lessons in each phase.
In Clarity, you'll learn how to uncover the unique qualities only you can bring to your work. You'll define your signature style, identify your ideal client and walk away with a website and a portfolio that is a crystal clear representation of your brand.
In communication, you'll learn how to craft your messaging. Learn the art of speaking directly to your ideal client, boost your SEO, turn your social media followers into paying clients and build long-term marketing strategies that you can use year after year!
Lastly, you'll create your systems and automations in Consistency. We'll cover the reduce, reuse and recycle method for content creation, onboarding, my signature sales solution, pricing, and more.
There is also plenty of community support from me and my team and lots of networking opportunities with photographers from all around the world! Not to mention, we have two LIVE coaching calls a month and a personalized website and portfolio audit.
You can sign up for The Six-Figure Studio here. Have any questions? No problem! Book a discovery call with me here, and if you prefer speaking with a past student of the program, you can connect with a student ambassador here.
