Four-star hotel in the Atlanta market.

Kemmons Wilson’s was on the cover of Time Magazine in June 1972. He was founder of Holiday Inn and they were successful with more than fourteen hundred locations all placed about a day’s drive from each other. They owned the three-star market of hotels.

Complacency

By the mid 1980s they had more competition on the bottom and top. More two-star offerings were popping up and the number of four and five-star hotels grew rapidly. What was happening to their market was it was now a commodity in their rating. It was becoming more difficult to fill their rooms with so much competition.

Basic room in Merida, Mexico that I stayed in.

If we are talking about just having a room to stay in and something just clean and reliable then we would be just a commodity and wondering how can we compete.

Hotels are part of the hospitality industry which is huge. While Holiday Inn was loosing ground other groups were expanding. In 1999, Hilton acquired Promus Hotel Corporation, which included the Doubletree, Red Lion, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn, & Homewood Suites brands.

The brand name Holiday Inn is now owned by IHG. On 24 October 2007 IHG announced a worldwide relaunch of the Holiday Inn brand. The relaunch is “focused on delivering consistently best in class service and physical quality levels, including a redesigned welcome experience [and] signature bedding and bathroom products…“

Comparing our industry to hotels hopefully with help us realize what we need to do to be competitive.

Hotel Plaza in Merida, Mexico.

Sense of Ambiance

As you can see just from these photos of properties they give a sense ambiance unique to them. What the hotel chains have done is realize they need to know where they fit in the market and then how to leverage their place.

Today you will notice many chains have similar floor plans but the experience is so different. Hotel chains have launched different product lines. The lobbies have different colors and decorations. One industry that sprung up to meet the needs of hotels is the scent machine industry. They sell the hotels machines and aromas that help them create a distinct aroma which they hope you not only associate with them.

This concept of scent has been around a long time. The Catholic Church has, effectively, used brand fragrance on its ‘customers’ – one in six of the world’s population – for the last 2,000 years. Scent is very powerful and connected to ones emotions. In one test, altering a shampoo’s fragrance had a huge effect on how people rated its effectiveness, even though the product itself was otherwise unchanged.

Portillo’s in Chicago

Restaurants also are competitive

The restaurant industry too is overcrowded. There are places like Portillo’s in Chicago that are still thriving. Why? They have done a lot to make walking into their restaurant’s an experience and not just about the food alone.

Cafe´ 360 in Freehold, NJ. Cafe´ 360 has free internet access allowing you to surf the web while you sip one of their house brand coffees or while grabbing a bite to eat.

In 1983, Howard Schultz (Starbucks chairman, president and chief executive officer) traveled to Italy and became captivated with Italian coffee bars and the romance of the coffee experience. He had a vision to bring the Italian coffeehouse tradition back to the United States. A place for conversation and a sense of community. A third place between work and home.

Schultz help to create the third place between work and home with Starbucks. With now free Wi-fi and comfortable seating area, people have more to go to Starbucks than just a cup of coffee–they go for an experience.

Just consider lighting alone in restaurants and you can see how this can influence how you feel about a place. Just consider how lowering the lights and putting candles on a table take a restaurant from casual dining to fine dining.

Consider the use of linen for napkins rather than paper. Fresh flowers on a table can also add aroma to the experience.

I can remember when Mrs. Field’s cookies were first at the mall. I think the number one reason I bought their cookies at first was the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies alone drew me to them.

Remarkable experiences 

The best form of advertising is word of mouth. This week I received Jeffery Gitomer’s newsletter and he addresses the power of the referral and how to get them. Just listen to him talk about getting referrals.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptEOjPbhC5Y]

What REMARKable Experience are you creating? 
You just went on vacation and you had a great time. You come into the office the next day and you can’t wait to tell some of your office workers about an experience. Does this sound familiar to you?

This is what you need to concentrate on with your customers. Can you create an experience around your product that has them talking about you?

Once you create something that helps distinguish you from all the others in your field be prepared for it to be copied. Your competition will discover what you do and then not only will they copy you they will try and do it better than you.

Let’s revisit Holiday Inn’s relaunch of their brand.

“focused on delivering consistently best in class service and physical quality levels, including a redesigned welcome experience [and] signature bedding and bathroom products…“

Afterburner consulting

http://www.hlntv.com/embed/8999
Afterburner consulting helped the Super Bowl Champions the Giants attain their victory, by helping them to concentrate on excellence. They helped them to focus on consistency rather than new plays. The Giants discovered that it was the consistency in their play that would help them win the Super Bowl.

If you are struggling now maybe you too became complacent like Holiday Inn. Maybe you need to find a way to create a niche´ like Howard Schultz did with Starbucks. But remember the key to all of their success was first by being consistent in their service.

Do you provide an experience that is remarkable?

Do you have an archiving system

http://www.google.com/reviews/polls/display/8163092177108161582/blogger_template/run_app?txtclr=%23666666&lnkclr=%232288bb&chrtclr=%232288bb&font=normal+normal+12px+Arimo&hideq=true&purl=https://picturestoryteller.com/Please take a moment and take the poll above, then check back in a day or so and see what others also checked. I predict that if everyone I know took this toll that more than half of all the companies would have no archiving searchable database for their photography.

Are you adding value to the company?

Take a moment and see if you can put your hands on the last couple of projects that you used photography. Where did you look?

Did you look in your top drawer of your desk? Did you go to someone and they pulled the Disc of images from their desk?

Maybe your office is really organized and they were in a project folder in the filing cabinet.

Historical Photos

Does your company have a place that all the historical photos of the company reside? Do you have copies of the ground breaking for the first building? Do you have the ribbon cutting photos from the grand opening? Do you have photos of the CEO and the board?

Back in the early 1980s Georgia Institute of Technology was planning their centennial celebration.  They wanted to do a coffee table book of all that had happened since 1885.

So they started digging for images. They were going everywhere and finding very little.  They didn’t have a central location for their images.  This sound familiar?

It was this process that led them to create a department that had photography. Up until then, most all the photos were from the students and an occasional freelancer hired by the school.

When I started with them some 10 years later, I was assigned the task to create a searchable computer database.  We used the Cumulus software and shared the images on our internal network.

IT Department Lost it all: TWICE!!

After about 5 years of scanning slides and negatives we had a disaster.  The IT department was in charge of the server and backing it up.  They backed it up on a tape system. Well that system was corrupted and we lost 5 years of work.

You see we had the original file and a backup.  You need three to be safe and they only had two.

We hired a new person that all they did for one year was to rescan and help us rebuild the database. 

Five years after that disaster the same thing happened again. My trust of IT departments was at an all time low.

Cost of online storage

All electronics have a life expectancy and do not last forever.  Today you can buy an external hard with 1TB of storage for around $100.  Using the formula that you need a minimum of 3 different places for a digital file to reside for it to be safe would mean you need to spend about $300 for three 1 TB hard drives. 

You can spend for just the storage alone from about $9 per month or $108 a year.  They do the backups for you.  So, for the price of a hard drive you can store all you need online for the same price as just 1 hard drive.

Click on this link [photo] and get $15 discount. I also get a small fee back to help support this blog.

Sharing on-line

The best solution today is to have not just your images stored on-line, but searchable on-line. I would highly recommend PhotoShelter for most companies and individuals. There are different levels of service. You can signup for an individual or corporate account.  The advantages of the corporate account is having many photographers, editors and more working all at the same time on the system. This is important on the back end where the posting the images to the system and organizing them takes place.

On the front end to those searching there is little difference between the two. You can give access to search your images based on three basic approaches. First, you may choose that anyone can see your photos or just you. Second, you can make it viewable by those with passwords or third they can see them by logging in with an email and a password just for that email. 

Now there are many variables of those basic three concepts of access to the photos.

Search is King

The best part of having an online presence is the ability of people to search your images. Of course the key is you must put text with each photo. We do this through metadata.  This is text that is buried in the image in code. Using software like Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Lightroom, PhotoMechanic and other photo editing software you can embed photos with caption, keywords, photographers name, company name and more.

Most likely today you are working with images that were shot on a digital camera which also puts searchable information on every image in the metadata as well. They put things like date, time, f/stop, shutter-speed and things like even GPS into the metadata.

PhotoShelter makes this simple to search giving you some fields to help narrow down the search like keywords, city it was shot in and is it model released or not.

When you find an image

What can you do once you find an image–that depends on how you set it up. You can make it that they can only see the image, can download a low res or high resolution images, or they can order things like prints or items like a coffee mug with the photo on it.

Reuse

The key to all this online storage is that now your images that you had paid to have created are not just accessible by you, but you can easily share them with the rest of your company or even the world. 

Every company and organization that I have worked with almost always says this is one of the hallmark services they now offer their organizations. Having all the images online helps them with using the material over and over.

They can now use the images: on their website more often, their social media, send access to the media to download images, to their employees to use in their presentations, and more places.

While the initial cost of hiring a photographer to shoot for your organization may seem costly, having this material used in more places to help promote your company makes the images worth a lot more to the brand.

One Use or Less

Are you using the photos one time that you hired a photographer to produce? What about all the similar shots that were not used. Do they go to waste or does your company use them in other places? 

Two things will happen if you choose to use an online system that is accessible to your people no matter where they are in the world as long as they have access to the web. First of all you will start to get phone calls and emails from more and more people asking for access to your database of photos. Second, you will get emails saying people are not finding photos.

I can’t find something

People will start to think that their are photographers shooting all the time for this database and surely there is a photo of something they need. You will soon be saying, no we don’t have that image in the database, no one has shot that.  Would you like to pay to have that done?  Maybe you have the budget and say we can get a photographer to shoot that for you.

The demand will go up and your value to the company will rise as well. Make your companies brand stronger by making images available.

This is my actual gross sales numbers from the time I started out full-time shooting freelance back in 2002.  I started in April of 2002.  My wife was working full-time and it wasn’t until about the second or third year I was making enough to fully support our family.

If starting a business with perfection is your dream then it will never happen.  It takes time to become successful.

Six to eighteen months

If you do everything right to market yourself, from your first contact to the first sale can take easily 6 to 18 months for you to close the deal and get paid.  This is why almost experts advise to have at least 6 months of money for living and business expenses on hand before venturing out.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Announces Three Countries Left in Guinea Worm Eradication Campaign: Nigeria and Niger Honored as Most Recent Nations to Halt Disease Transmission.

Event photography

A client hires a photographer once a year for an event. They have a photographer booked for that event. You introduce yourself and they not only love your work but want to hire you.  They have already signed a photographer with a contract in place for this year.  That means that the earliest they can hire you is a year from the date of the event. If the event for this year is 6 months off then you can see how it is 18 months before you see any money from a perfectly executed presentation.

Kid Rock signs an album cover for Alisha Mullen of Point Pleasant, WV, at the Waffle House restaurant in Duluth, Georgia on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 for local non-profit charity, Nicholas House, Inc., a homeless Family shelter in Dekalb County.

Editorial Photography

You get a meeting with the editor and they love your work.  They expect you to have story ideas. Your ideas were just done by the magazine.  In this scenario it will most likely be 5 years before they do those stories again.  You now need time to come up with more stories.  This takes some time.  You did an almost perfect presentation–they like your work, but need some ideas as well.

They may add you to their list of freelancers. Most editors give those who have served them well first shot at assignments.  Until this photographer or photographers are booked they will not be calling.  However, if they think your style is a better fit for an assignment they will call.

Sports photography has changed more for me than any other segment in my business.

Industry changes

One of the biggest changes for me has been sports. When I started to freelance I had numerous teams that would call and have me cover their games.

Today those same people are having parents and alumni calling them up to shoot on the sidelines. The difference is today’s cameras will let anyone get sharp in focus and well exposed photos. These photographers all have other jobs that allow them the resources to buy they latest cameras and lenses to cover the game.

Most of them started shooting their kids playing sports through high school and then realized they would like to stand on the sidelines of college and pro games.

While most of their photos are not on the same level as Sports Illustrated, they are good enough that for the price of “free” the sports information directors of the teams will use them and help save their club money.

While I depended heavily on sports when I started out freelancing full-time I have had to grow other parts of the business to make up for this which actually plummeted in sales volume.

Change in management

You have a great meeting with a client and then when you check back with them in a month or so about some possibilities you find they either were promoted or moved to another company.  Either way they no longer hire photographers. You have to start over with the new person that replaced them.  You loose a few months just figuring out all the changes.

Monthly I send out an eNewsletter. Each month I have numerous emails that did not go through because of changes of employment. Many of my contacts have changed companies. This is very common with agencies. It is easier for a person to go from agency to agency and increase their income than it is for them to stay with one agency and get the same increase in salary over time.

While many people are moving around in order to move up, recently many of the emails I had returned were agencies failing and going out of business. 

Recession and budget cuts

The company you have been in talks with about a project has frozen their money and have decided not to do any new projects and any projects not already started are killed. You did everything right, they just now do not have the funds to pay you for projects.  You decide not to walk away completely, because they may start back in the near future.

You were again successful in your marketing, but things beyond your control continue to happen.

Experience (the unmentionables)

You are a big risk when you first start out in this business.  Your first job is a major risk to the client.  You have no track record and they have no way of knowing if you can do what you say and if you will deliver on time.

Think of it this way, would you have bought a Kia or Hyundai when they were first on the market?  Would you have been like many people and decided to go with something more reliable like a Toyota or a Honda?

It is difficult at first not because of how good your work is or your ability to meet your obligations, but people’s careers are on the line if you don’t deliver.

How long you are in business affects how much more business you can get.

For a long time it was said that 50 percent of businesses fail in the first year and that 90-95 percent were gone by the fifth year. Good news those are not the real numbers being reported now. According to the SBA, about two-thirds, or 66 percent last past the first two years, leaving only a third of businesses that fail within these two years. Extended to four years, the number of surviving businesses decreases to only 44 percent, meaning that about 56 percent of businesses fail at the five-year mark, a far cry from the 90 to 95 percent previously claimed. http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5212542_many-businesses-fail-first-year_.html

For my business I can point to a few points where I could feel the difference in the response to my marketing.

Since I had been working on a staff as a photographer, when I went full-time freelancing many of these clients used me right away. They knew me and trusted my work. However, for the most part all the new clients while impressed with my work were not jumping at using me.

This was a time when I had a hard time sleeping at night. I was constantly worried about paying my bills and I believe this stress is noticeable to clients and potential clients.

I could honestly say there was a change in attitude about the second year. My postcards had been going to these potential customers now for two years. They were getting my eNewsletters and occasional phone call from me now for a while. I was a known photographer and was more established.

This is when I became more comfortable with freelancing. I was sleeping more than I did the first five years. I was not as worried about the jobs coming in. I felt like I was in the flow of things.

Funny thing is that this was true for me when I was on staff. I always remember that around year five I was confident and those around me treated me as a senior employee and not the new kid anymore.

This confidence is what I think helped me get bigger clients.

Tony Messano created my first logo that I started to use in 2001.

Year Seven

They say to most store front photographers that at year seven you most likely have enough presence in the market that you could now move your place of business and your clients would follow.  Earlier than this you risk much more and most likely will be starting over.

I was now being asked to speak more often at industry events and to my colleagues. This was when I knew I was doing something right, because I was getting phone calls from so many wanting to be photographers.

Tony Messano designed this logo for me my seven year being a full-time freelancer

Tony Messano, a creative director friend of mine, recommended I change my logo. He had designed my first one and thought I needed a new one.

He recommended a bolder font to reflect the confidence he was seeing in me.  I think Tony was right, I felt so much better than I did when I started.

Looking back over all these years I am amazed out how blessed my family and business has become. When I started out we were in debt and I went further in debt to buy some equipment.  I don’t recommend doing this, but we had no choice. I didn’t plan to start in 2002 freelancing, I lost my job and had to do something.

Freelancing full-time isn’t for everyone. There are major risks you must take. Not knowing from day to day what you are doing can be very stressful. 

While I did everything I knew and worked very hard to get where I am today–I know that everyone of my clients had other choices. There are many better photographers than me in the market place.

I see much of where I am today as a divine thing. I don’t think I could have done nothing and God would have made it all happen for me, but I don’t think I did it alone with out God.

I frankly would have jumped off the cliff long ago had it not been for my faith. I also had an incredible support system. My number one support comes from my wife Dorie. Her father was an entrepreneur.  She grew up in this lifestyle, I had not. Dorie new things would be fine when I had no confidence we would be paying our bills the next day.

Today the business is still growing. We are debt free except for a mortgage payment for our house.

While I grew up going to church every Sunday and even went to seminary later in my life, it is freelancing full-time that made me grow in my walk with God. I could not think of nor looking back can I see much more that I could have done to be successful. I was frankly working very hard.

For me my faith played a very huge part. I believe it helped to give me hope. I know it helped in keeping my sanity. I drew a lot of strength from biblical characters like Jacob who overcame many adversities.

Just like you would give a presentation at a meeting, put similar effort and thought into your estimate sales pitch.  You may write it in an email rather than having face time with the client, so do your best to persuade them.

In our talks to THE BUSINESS OF VISUAL JOURNALISM WORKSHOP held at the Grady School of Journalism on the campus of University of Georgia, both Allen Murabayashi, CEO and co-founder of PhotoShelter, and I talked about converting people at each stage of the “Marketing Funnel.”

Move people down the marketing funnel.

If you create enough interest someone will call you for an estimate at some time.

You want to close a deal.  You have worked on your estimate and you are ready to give them the estimate. 

You quickly put together an email and send them the attached estimate. 

A couple days later you find out you lost the job to another photographer.

This may go on for a while for many photographers. They inquire as to what was the difference in their estimate and other photographers.  They generally find out one of two things—they lost the job to someone who was less expensive or they loose out to someone who was more expensive.

I have a few suggestions for you if you are finding yourself in this predicament.

Just like you would do in someone’s presentation, standup and ask your question to clarify the message.

What is the need?

How well did you listen to the client? This is a very tricky question and requires you to know more than the client is telling you. You need to be thinking big picture even if they are not.

Just like your doctor hears about your symptoms and looks for a root cause (strategic) you too need to understand how what the client is asking fits into the system.

How will your photos help the client improve their business? Think about this in context of what they are asking you to shoot and bid on.  You thinking this way may not change how they need to think about it. You need to think this way in order to serve even the needs they don’t know they have.  If you just go with what they ask then you are just a commodity and will loose out the the lowest bidder.  You will also loose out to the photographer who is thinking strategically.

There are two possible answers to the question it will help or it will not.  If it will help them you need to understand how your photography can make a difference in them achieving this goal.

Remember you are not the only one listening to the client and giving them an estimate. This is like being in school and being graded on a curve, except in this case the one at the top passes and everyone else fails.

Maybe it will not help them.  In this case I suggest trying to understand how they see the photography serving the company.  There are many ways to ask, but you will understand their reasoning. One good reason to them is this is something they want documented because they worked hard on the project and want photo more for themselves and helping them feel good about what they have done.

By understanding the need the photos will fill for the organization you are now better equipped to see how you can meet and exceed their expectations.  You also will do a better job of giving them options that they haven’t even thought about for the project.

You may even offer another type of coverage than what they are asking. You discovered in the process of establishing the need they have an even bigger need that you could help with.  This could be something you see as a way to help them look even better and accomplish greater things.  You will most likely rethink how you give them a proposal.  Maybe you give them the option of a lower price on what they need with a guarantee of helping them work on this other project.

Ask your questions that help you know what they are trying to accomplish. Sometimes your questions alone can help them see you as someone they want on their team.

Listen by asking questions

Just listening to everything they client is saying isn’t really listening. Good listening will require you to ask clarifying questions. Good questions gets them to reveal more information that will help you understand their need better and help you to craft a proposal they will have a harder time turning down.

Many times a good question reveals more about what you know than a statement about what you know. Often you may know the answer to the question you are asking, but this is a more tactful way to pull the information out of them rather than telling them what you know. It will make it appear more as their idea and you supporting it than if you tell them everything and come off as a know it all.

Here a VP for marketing at Coke talks to an audience about their new dispenser. It uses medication-dosing technology to create some 125 Coca-Cola products, many of which, like Orange Coke and Vanilla Sprite Zero, aren’t available in bottles anywhere. They are creating options for their clients and creating new possibilities for them and therefore getting their drink machines in where others now loose out.

Give the client options

Too many people prepare an estimate that only has one price for a project. By doing this they have a take it or leave it offer on the table. However, the estimate that gives the client different options show them that you are flexible and are thinking of different solutions for them. You are giving them different price points to do business with you.

While you may not shoot wedding, think like a wedding photographer when it comes to pricing.  Think in packages.  Have a cheap, low, middle and high price packages.

For an event you may offer limited coverage of your time to not just more time, but other items. You may offer DVD or the images, prints, an online gallery, a slide show and other options as you raise the price of packages.

Before you present this to the client you need to practice your presentation and be ready for some negotiating. You will need to try and up sell them to the nicer packages.

You need to smile throughout your presentations even if you are on the phone. It must also be genuine.

Smile 

In an earlier blog post on “The Windows to The Soul” I talk about genuine smiles and fake smiles.

According to Dr. Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness, there are two kinds of smiles, the “Duchenne smile” and the “Pan American” smile. Here is how Seligman describes the two smiles, “The first called Duchenne smile (after its discoverer Guillaume Duchenne) is genuine. The corners of the mouth turn up and the skin around the corners of your eyes crinkles (the crow’s feet). …The other smile, called the Pan American smile (after the flight attendants in television ads for now-defunct airline), is inauthentic.”

You need to smile when you present your estimate.  Even if you are on a phone you need to smile.

Why Smile on the phone?

o       Research indicates that over the phone, your tone of voice is 84% of the message.
o       Your tone of voice is closely linked to your facial expression. A frown on your face will make your voice sound harsh and cold. But a smile will warm up your voice, making it sound warm, inviting and enthusiastic.
o       When you’re smiling, people can tell that you enjoy the work you do.

You cannot fake authenticity. One thing that helped me to develop this authenticity was fear. I had a family depending on me and not paying your bills and letting down your family was something I didn’t want to go through.

Whatever I could read to help me be a better storyteller and take care of my clients I devoured.

To get people to be on the edge of their seats listening to you, you had to have been there first. Learn to listen carefully.  Ask thoughtful questions that help you think strategically for the client even if they are not thinking this way. This is how you will end up taking care of them.

How you present your prices

Using a wedding for example if you did a good job listening and asking questions the bride and groom may have told you all their plans for the next year before the wedding.  You realize you can offer to cover all their important showers, teas, cookouts, engagement portraits, rehearsal dinner and the during the day of the wedding starting from breakfast to that last things of the day. 

You now pitch to them how you would like to cover all their events for them through the year.  You talk to them about putting together the their first chapter in their life and would like to celebrate this with a coffee table book with not just photos but a story of how they met up to the time of the wedding.

You may pitch this first with a very large price of $75,000.  When they gasp you then help them scale back by helping them eliminate things like the teatime with grandmother.  You are not cutting out photos; you are cutting out emotional moments.

Nobody wants to eliminate grandmother, but they will cut $1,000 for some photos. It makes it more difficult for the client to shop price only when you are offering things they now need.  You listened and presented a package that covered what they really want–they want to document the most important event in their lives up to now and most likely major milestone it their lives.  You understand your real purpose and not just a package of photos.

While you may have to send your client the estimate rather than talking to them in person like you might do with a bride in a consultation session, learn to present your dream of how you would love to cover the event if their were no limits. Then scale it in stages so that each stage is something that helps them achieve their goal.

Choose your words wisely so as to always address the needs and dreams of the client.  We know that getting married is once in a lifetime plan and we want to help you record these precious memories so you can relive these moments for the rest of your lives.

You may be covering an event for a foundation that is honoring their largest donors. Here you may say that you will help them find the best photos of each major donor from the event, print them a 5×7 print with their logo on the print.  You will then put it in a special thank you card with the photo where you will have a message written in calligraphy for them thanking them for their gift and you wanted to have something from the event to help them remember it.

You may have an upscale version where they get two photos, one from the event and one showing how their funds are being used. Maybe it is an orphanage and you have a child they are sponsoring photo thanking them for their gift as well that is framed for them to put in their office or home.

Try your best to think the way the Ritz Carlton does for their guests—they anticipate ways that will make their stay a remarkable one.

REMARKable

Your goal is to create a package that when they pick it they will be REMARKing about their experience with you and what you did.

While you listen you may discover that with just a little modification to your pricing you could get more jobs. Just because you have always done it this way is a good indication that you need to think of changing. The economy is going through the biggest changes in a century–are you changing with it?

Experiment with your pricing

If you have been pricing things the same as you did before this recession—that may be your problem.  We have gone through a major shakeup of how business is done. Put on your thinking cap and see if you can lower your prices and increase your services.

Maybe you offer just a few more perks than you did a few years ago.  You may give web usage as part of your bottom package. The key is not just lower your prices, you may have to, but figure ways to offer services that you didn’t offer in the past.  Try to find ways to up sell to maybe talk the client up to something that helps them woo their clients.

Mark Johnson, Senior Lecturer in the Grady School of Journalism, welcomes everyone to the workshop.

The first speaker was Allen Murabayashi, CEO and co-founder of PhotoShelter, who covered fundamental web marketing tactics, essential website design requirements and critical features (plus some advance concepts) that helps photographers better utilize their website as a business and marketing tool and grown their online presence to best generate new business.

Some of the points that Murabayashi covered were very similar to my topics, but a little different perspective.  Hopefully by the end of it all people are realizing that if a few people are mentioning similar things then maybe it is something they should pay attention to.

Allen Murabayashi is very vivacious speaker and kept everyone entertained and informed.

One of the things that we were trying to do in our talks was to help those who are starting out or struggling on what we are doing with our time.  Earlier I wrote a post about how I spend much of my time.  Here is a link to that blog post.

It doesn’t take long before you start to see some common themes when you try to apply marketing to any industry.  First of all you must realize that not everyone is a candidate for your services. When you run the numbers it is more likely in the 10% range of those who are interested in hiring you.

You need a large fishing net to be successful when fishing for clients. In that earlier blog post I talked about this process of the Marketing Funnel.

This is the process I talked about earlier.  The idea is to get as many people in the first stage of being aware you are there in the marketplace. At each step you improve that area to help increase the likelihood of people choosing you.

Allen Murabayashi also used the marketing funnel.  He was also letting everyone know that the first thing is to make people aware of your services.  It is very important that you define your niche because otherwise your awareness group has to be even larger than if you are more defined in your niche.

Allen Murabayashi talks about the marketing funnel and how to get people to visit your website and then to use your website to help move them to becoming a client.

Freshman vs Senior Social Networking Skills

Since most in the audience were college students I felt like the best illustration I could use was for all of them to remember what it was like as a freshman.  How when they went to parties they had to go around and introduce themselves and meet folks.  They were proactive and needed to find some friends.

I contrasted how they went to parties as a freshman to as when they are a senior. As a senior you go and usually meet with your friends and just enjoy each other.  You are not looking for more friends you have them.

I challenged the class to act like freshman again and never loose this perspective–looking for friends.

What happens your senior year is graduation. After you leave you discover that many of those friends you had move on and you loose touch.  You are forced to be a freshman again–you are new at your first job and have to make friends again.

Old School Social Networking

I highly recommend getting off your computer where you are on Facebook and Twitter and try the old style of social networking.  Go to meetings, parties and social mixers in your community.

Join an organization and get involved. As you serve you will meet more people. If you have done a good job in defining your niche then it will be easy to identify those organizations where your potential clients are already.

Get involved and serve. One of the best ways to meet everyone is to volunteer to work a registration desk.

How do you grow your business?

The first step in that marketing funnel, after defining your niché, is creating awareness of your services to those who need them. How do you grow your business, grow the numbers of people you come into contact with.

There have even been converts in this battle over camera brands. You will find many photographers have switched when their brand of camera fails them after a few times. You would switch too if you photos were no longer in focus.

I watched one photographer years ago get so frustrated on the sidelines of a Georgia Tech football game that he just threw the camera after game across the field. 

These are the photographers who often feel the need to convert and once converted are on the street corners preaching.  They want to help others to join them and not go through the hell they had to go through to get their camera to make pictures the way they wanted.

I shoot with Nikon cameras. This is one of my Nikon D3 cameras I am selling since I am upgrading to the Nikon D4.

One of the main reason professional photographers upgrade their gear is to be sure they have all the competitive advantage they can.  You cannot loose a job to another photographer because they are able to deliver something that you cannot, just because of the gear you have. 


True Pro Photographers aren’t that Religious

Professional photographers know that it is the photographer more than it is the equipment that determines how good a photograph turns out.  So they are less about equipment than most amateurs think we are. 

It is OK to have faith in God and practice your faith. However, when your religion of camera gear comes into the discussion, it will more than likely have the pros realizing you think it is the camera that makes the photo and not the photographer.

Confession Time

While it is true I understand that it is the photographer that makes the photograph, the camera can fail you.  If it fails and another camera will be more consistent–then it is time for this photographer to convert.

My confession is that I changed camera systems a few times for not the right reasons.  I just wanted the latest camera and I could have kept my last camera and the quality of the images I was giving to the client wouldn’t have changed.

I must also confess that I have tried to get by with off brand lens just because of how inexpensive it was rather than about it’s performance.

The Nikon P7000 is the camera I carry all the time.

If St. Peter is a photographer

When you get the gates of heaven I think the question will not be what camera you shoot with, but let me see your camera. I think St. Peter will judge you a true photographer based on if you have your camera on you more than what camera you own.