by Heather Bookout
Does Marketing Ever Stop?
When your marketing stops it causes a chain reaction that will eventually bring your business to a grinding halt. It’s kind of like a contagious disease. Your marketing stops and pretty soon it spreads to your phone - it stops ringing. Then you wonder why your phone stops ringing. You may even dial your business line from your cell phone just to make sure its still working. Next the epidemic spreads to your bank account. You wonder why the deposits have stopped. Help! It’s The PLAGUE! No, you’ve just stopped marketing. I want to talk about a few of the reasons that we as photographers sometime fail to market adequately. And I want to share with you some ways that I have found to overcome these obstacles.
The reason “The Plague” happens to some photographers is that the effects of “not marketing” don’t happen immediately. You don’t see the results until a month or so later. Marketing is very important, but it is not urgent. It’s what Steven Covey calls “a Quadrant 2 activity” in his wonderful book: First Things First. When things are urgent, they are sure to get done. Like when a client shows up at the door - there is an urgency. You immediately welcome her to your studio, help her in with her things and begin the shoot. But sending out a piece of direct mail to get the client to show up at your door? – there is no urgency (even though it’s just as important). What else is not urgent? Planning out your week . . . Coming up with promotion ideas . . . Building synergy with other businesses . . . Learning new shooting or editing techniques? All important stuff . . . but there is no urgency to doing them.
To overcome this problem, I set a whole day of the week aside that is just for planning and thinking. All the leadership gurus do this: John Maxwell, Stephen Covey, Napoleon Hill. It was very hard for me to do it at first because I felt like I was giving up a whole day of work. But in reality, if you do not set up adequate planning time you will be working on the wrong things throughout the week. Would you rather get a lot of “things” done, or would rather take the time to come up with beneficial ideas for your business? It’s all about my favorite rhyme: “Work Smarter – Not Harder”. We use Monday as our planning day. We have a creative meeting with the staff and then we spend time thinking and planning on our own or in specific teams. The results of the planning time turn up activities that can then be put on the calendar (in stone) and then they are assured to get done. And equally important as setting aside a complete day is using the first hour of every day to focus and plan the rest of your day. This concept has so totally revolutionized my business that I cannot stress the importance of it enough. All of my best ideas, all of my best marketing strategies and all my staff’s great ideas have emerged as a result of the planning time, and has taken the business to a “whole . . . nother . . . level”.
Another thing that happens to us is that we think, “If only I offer the highest quality work, I will have tons of business.” Not true at all. The best marketer, not the best photographer, wins every time. It doesn’t matter how good of a photographer you are if no one is there to take a picture of. Taking pictures is a great hobby, but if you want to have a successful business, you have to give up the hobby. Don’t get me wrong, I still love, love, love to take pictures – actually NOW more than ever. But that is a small part of what I do. Like my husband’s hero, Chuck Lewis, always says about going from hobbyist to business, “We are no longer photographers. We are marketers of Photographic Services.” It’s so true. Probably 5% of my time is spent doing shoots. And marketing is where I spend the majority of my time. But I love it all. It’s not always fun, but I have learned to love the challenge. So, my advice is that you should have a realistic expectation of what you should spend your time doing if you want to have a successful studio.
The next obstacle that I have observed in marketing is something that happened to me rather recently. I got so comfortable with my word-of-mouth advertising, that I laxed in other areas of marketing. We get in danger of succumbing to this one after we have built a large database of clients. But the majority of our marketing should be to attaining new clients. Even as much as 80% of our advertising needs to be toward first-time clients. Referrals from clients are important and will continue to be our #1 source of bookings, but we can’t lose sight of creating new clients or our business will eventually fail. Our goal, and this should be every studio’s goal, is to build up as much demand for our business as possible. Then we can set our prices higher and limit the amount of clients we take. So if we get so comfortable that we stop marketing, we will not be increasing our demand and therefore will not be able to eventually raise our prices. In a nutshell, market the heck out of your business to new clients, create a huge demand, charge high prices, and you’ll have to do less work. (P.S. We raise our prices 2 times a year. )
I hope you enjoyed me sharing what I have learned about marketing in my short 7 years of business so far. Remember to take the time to plan. Think about which day you will set aside for planning right now. Remember that you are a marketer first and then a photographer. And remember to never stop marketing to new clients, creating that huge demand. Well, I’ve got to go do some marketing. I am outta here . . . . .
Does Marketing Ever Stop?
When your marketing stops it causes a chain reaction that will eventually bring your business to a grinding halt. It’s kind of like a contagious disease. Your marketing stops and pretty soon it spreads to your phone - it stops ringing. Then you wonder why your phone stops ringing. You may even dial your business line from your cell phone just to make sure its still working. Next the epidemic spreads to your bank account. You wonder why the deposits have stopped. Help! It’s The PLAGUE! No, you’ve just stopped marketing. I want to talk about a few of the reasons that we as photographers sometime fail to market adequately. And I want to share with you some ways that I have found to overcome these obstacles.
The reason “The Plague” happens to some photographers is that the effects of “not marketing” don’t happen immediately. You don’t see the results until a month or so later. Marketing is very important, but it is not urgent. It’s what Steven Covey calls “a Quadrant 2 activity” in his wonderful book: First Things First. When things are urgent, they are sure to get done. Like when a client shows up at the door - there is an urgency. You immediately welcome her to your studio, help her in with her things and begin the shoot. But sending out a piece of direct mail to get the client to show up at your door? – there is no urgency (even though it’s just as important). What else is not urgent? Planning out your week . . . Coming up with promotion ideas . . . Building synergy with other businesses . . . Learning new shooting or editing techniques? All important stuff . . . but there is no urgency to doing them.
To overcome this problem, I set a whole day of the week aside that is just for planning and thinking. All the leadership gurus do this: John Maxwell, Stephen Covey, Napoleon Hill. It was very hard for me to do it at first because I felt like I was giving up a whole day of work. But in reality, if you do not set up adequate planning time you will be working on the wrong things throughout the week. Would you rather get a lot of “things” done, or would rather take the time to come up with beneficial ideas for your business? It’s all about my favorite rhyme: “Work Smarter – Not Harder”. We use Monday as our planning day. We have a creative meeting with the staff and then we spend time thinking and planning on our own or in specific teams. The results of the planning time turn up activities that can then be put on the calendar (in stone) and then they are assured to get done. And equally important as setting aside a complete day is using the first hour of every day to focus and plan the rest of your day. This concept has so totally revolutionized my business that I cannot stress the importance of it enough. All of my best ideas, all of my best marketing strategies and all my staff’s great ideas have emerged as a result of the planning time, and has taken the business to a “whole . . . nother . . . level”.
Another thing that happens to us is that we think, “If only I offer the highest quality work, I will have tons of business.” Not true at all. The best marketer, not the best photographer, wins every time. It doesn’t matter how good of a photographer you are if no one is there to take a picture of. Taking pictures is a great hobby, but if you want to have a successful business, you have to give up the hobby. Don’t get me wrong, I still love, love, love to take pictures – actually NOW more than ever. But that is a small part of what I do. Like my husband’s hero, Chuck Lewis, always says about going from hobbyist to business, “We are no longer photographers. We are marketers of Photographic Services.” It’s so true. Probably 5% of my time is spent doing shoots. And marketing is where I spend the majority of my time. But I love it all. It’s not always fun, but I have learned to love the challenge. So, my advice is that you should have a realistic expectation of what you should spend your time doing if you want to have a successful studio.
The next obstacle that I have observed in marketing is something that happened to me rather recently. I got so comfortable with my word-of-mouth advertising, that I laxed in other areas of marketing. We get in danger of succumbing to this one after we have built a large database of clients. But the majority of our marketing should be to attaining new clients. Even as much as 80% of our advertising needs to be toward first-time clients. Referrals from clients are important and will continue to be our #1 source of bookings, but we can’t lose sight of creating new clients or our business will eventually fail. Our goal, and this should be every studio’s goal, is to build up as much demand for our business as possible. Then we can set our prices higher and limit the amount of clients we take. So if we get so comfortable that we stop marketing, we will not be increasing our demand and therefore will not be able to eventually raise our prices. In a nutshell, market the heck out of your business to new clients, create a huge demand, charge high prices, and you’ll have to do less work. (P.S. We raise our prices 2 times a year. )
I hope you enjoyed me sharing what I have learned about marketing in my short 7 years of business so far. Remember to take the time to plan. Think about which day you will set aside for planning right now. Remember that you are a marketer first and then a photographer. And remember to never stop marketing to new clients, creating that huge demand. Well, I’ve got to go do some marketing. I am outta here . . . . .
