I deal with people regularly whose marketing is not working. Their prospects are not becoming customers. Their current customers are not buying or not buying enough, and their past clients are not buying.
Here are several reasons why most studio's marketing is not working:
• Who are you marketing to? Who are your clients and prospects? You need to know specifically with each product who is your market and what problem your product or service can solve! Yes, they have problems that you can solve. You can capture and preserve memories. You can let them re-live special events in their lives.
• Why do your customers buy? Remember, people buy for their reasons. People buy for what I call Prime Benefits and Advantages. Prime Benefits include your prospects desire for; security, family, love, prestige, money, time, belonging, health, friends, memories, etc.
Advantages include such things as; less expensive, faster, more convenient, more creative, etc. Advantages are usually comparable. Whereas Prime Benefits are something you can devote your life to. For example, preserving the memory of a wedding is something a family will always want, but they could easily be persuaded to change their commitment to a particular photographer because the new one is comparatively more convenient or more creative. Your job is to find out what your clients want in terms of Prime Benefits and show them how your products, with their clearly defined advantages, enables them to achieve the Prime Benefits they want!
• You are not client-centered! Usually when you describe your products you focus on yourself and on what you are selling and not on your client and why he/she is buying. You need to know what their problem is. Know what they want to accomplish. Know why they want to accomplish this. And show them exactly how they can get precisely what they want with your work. When writing advertising or marketing words, don't write about you and your photography, write about your client and their wants and needs.
• You have no marketing plan! I can't believe an entrepreneur, a business person, does not have a marketing plan. I can believe a photographer does not have a plan! Which are you a marketer or just a photographer? A marketing plan needs the following:
• a exact dollar goal for each life cycle or product in your business.
• which marketing tools you will use, how and when.
• techniques for converting prospects to clients, present clients to upgrade & past clients to return.
If your plan does not include all of these points, you cannot expect to succeed.
• You are not persistent! Do you really think that your marketing pieces are so great that one exposure to it will bring the people out in droves. I don't think so! Use the rule of 7. Usually people have to see your information 7 times before you will get the results you want. That does not mean 7 mailing pieces, but 7 total times. For example: One - a display in the community, Two - newspaper ad, Three - your first mailing, Four - your images at other merchants, like florist or bridal shop, Five - your second mailing, a color post card, Six - your photographs at their neighbors house, Seven - your web site or third mailing.
It is up to you, how successful you want to be?
Why are photographers so bad at marketing? Because they are photographers, not business people! Entrepreneurs are not bad marketers because that is what they do. Entrepreneurs run businesses. Their job is to have a successful business. I believe that you should change your thinking. Realize that you are a marketer whose product is photography! Realize that your reason for being in business is to make a profit. I hope your photographic skills are sufficient enough to create very nice portraits and wedding photographs. But remember, if your don't make a profit, you won't be in business to provide those photographs.
I talk to photographers who are so excited about the new technologies of electronic imaging. "Look, I can take an eyeball from here and put it in the middle of your forehead!" "So what?" I ask! "How will that make you more money?" They respond, "If I buy thousands of dollars worth of equipment, I can retouch my own negatives and make prints for less than $3. I can do it my self!"
I'm sorry, but right now I can send a negative to Burrell Professional Lab, they can scan in my negative, retouch blemishes and out-put a negative for $5. Also, they can replace the head from one negative to another for about $40. All with NO investment on my part and NO time invested by me, learning the programs. If you want to be an EI specialist, sell your studio and open a lab. Let the specialists do their job. Remember, you are an entrepreneur, not an EI retouch artist. In my opinion, your time would be better spent working on your marketing plan, rather than playing on the computer. Do the things that will make you more money!k:+kB0