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As a business owner, there are a number of ways that your business can fail if you don’t plan properly. One of the most common ways for your new endeavor to fall through is by not planning marketing the right way. When you first set out to begin a business, one of the steps to creating a business plan is considering marketing. This means so much more than just considering how you will want to design your advertisements. It’s a shame to see so many businesses fold up for lack of clients when all it takes is a few extra steps at the beginning before you get everything up and running.
Mistake #1: Not Choosing a target market
When you are planning your business, you need to take time to consider what type of client you are wishing to attract. It may seem easy…. You want any client that is willing to pay for your services. While this may be true, you may actually be losing potential interest by trying to accommodate everything all at once. A woman who is very wealthy and is planning her wedding is going to look at a website and advertising differently than someone who is looking for a great deal for her child’s senior pictures. The woman planning her wedding is going to have a mindset something to the effect of, “I want the best of the best, and I am willing to splurge on this if I have to.” While the mom trying to find someone to do her kids senior pictures may be thinking, “Back in my day we had one shot and that’s it. All this new fancy stuff is for the birds. I want a basic session that is affordable.”
How could you possibly please both clients? The answer is that you shouldn’t have to. You should pick which demographic you want to serve. Do you want to book 10 high-end clients for the year and make a larger amount per person or would you rather attract more middle to lower end clients and pride yourself on a good deal. Some of this is up to you, but mostly it depends on your skill level and the quality of service you provide. But understand, you can’t please both ends because you’re going to lose the wealthy lady if she thinks your prices are too low to be anything of the quality she would be looking for and you’re going to scare away clients who don’t think they could afford your services.
Mistake #2: Wasting money on ads your target market will never see
It may seem like a no-brainer to sign up for Facebook and Twitter Ads when you launch your website, but do some research first! A lot of online advertising is shown to potential site visitors based on their current web browsing statistics. That being said, let’s look at an example. If seventeen year old, Tracy, is looking online to find a photographer in her area (we will say that’s Pittsburgh for sake of argument) that is willing to do portfolio shots for models who are minors, she would probably search, “Model Photographers Pittsburgh.” There will be TONS of websites for local photographers that will pop up in the advertisements along the sidebar.
You can actually use free SEO tools to see what popular searches are and how many tags are linked to the searches. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to have an online presence in this day and age. I just personally think it is a waste of money in the photography market to pay to use Facebook and Twitter Ads because the likelihood of actually attracting business from it is so small when you have a billion amateur photographers out there clogging up the SEO goldmine searches with their websites. It’s more profitable to make sure your website is well distributed across the web, for instance, list it with Google Local, add it to the Yellow Page listings, all of your local hometown websites, on your local newspaper websites, etc. Get it into databases so that when someone searches “Model Photographer Pittsburgh,” your website is so distributed that it’s rated higher and has more traffic than others who may have paid for ads, but don’t have as much traffic. It seems kind of silly, but the more places your business is listed across the web, the more likely it is to pop up in a raw search. You don’t NEED to pay for many of these listings! Save your advertising money for print ads in your local circular when you want to run a campaign.
Mistake #3: Trying to do too many things at once
Pick a niche and stick with it! Become really great at one or two types of photography and advertise those services in your print and online ads. It will help your business if people know that you are the foremost authority on Pet Portraits in your area. I’m not saying to exclusively offer one type of photography, but to only pour your advertising money into the niche you would specialize in. Verizon didn’t become a media monopoly by offering the best deal for everything all at once, they started off small and provided a service unmatched by any other competitor. If it worked for them, it can work for you too!
There are so many other ways photographers make mistakes with advertising, but it really all boils down to a phrase my mom drilled into my head from the time I was young, “Pre-planning prevents poor performance.” It’s so true. Just take extra time to sit down and think about your business and where you would like to take it beyond just monetary goals.
