Once you have done the hard work necessary to craft your business concept, select your target market, and establish your marketing advantage, you are ready to clarify your market focus. The most straightforward way to do this is through the creation of three key identity components for each product line:
- A Mission Statement
- A Sustainable Competitive Advantage
- A Unique Selling Proposition
Because the market segments that a single studio serves can be so different, it is wise to create these statements for each market segment. Doing so is difficult work, but it will pay off in terms of the quality of the marketing that flows from them.
Creating A Mission Statement
The purpose of a Mission Statement is to help the business stay on course. Well-managed organizations look to the company’s Mission Statement when approaching strategic decisions by asking: Will this action be consistent with our Mission?
Most Mission Statements take the form of a brief paragraph that directly addresses three elements (in any order):
- The Purpose: What opportunities you address.
- The Business: What you do to address these needs.
- The Values: What principles or beliefs guide your work.
The best Missions Statements are those that are:
- Easy to understand.
- Free of jargon or wordiness.
- Appealing and convincing.
- Brief enough to be easily repeated by employees of this market segment.
Bear in mind that it is far easier to craft a Mission Statement for each of your major product lines if you have done a thorough job of completing the activities suggested in the first three chapters of this Guide.
Following is a Mission Statement for Persnickety Pet Portraits that includes a parenthetical explanation of each of its components:
Mission Statement
Our mission is to reflect the joy pets bring to the lives of our clients (the purpose) through personalized, decorative art and accessories (the business) that honor the compelling bond between pets and the people who love them (the values).
The Professional Photographer's Guide to Marketing Success
by Ann K. Monteith.
Categorized In:
quick marketing tips
The Importance Of Defining Your Approach To Hospitality Branding
The term “hospitality branding” has evolved from the recognition of smart marketers that quality products and competent customer service are no longer sufficient to attract and retain clients. When today’s savvy consumers purchase custom products, they expect to do so within the context of an interesting, pleasant or exciting experience. Creating a viable brand today is as much about the courtesy you provide and the appreciation you express to clients as it is about providing them with compelling products. To assure that you are doing your best in this vital service area, list specific ways that you intend to provide clients with hospitality and the ways in which you expect to create a memorable client experience through all aspects of your dealings with them. Following is an example of Persnickety Pet Portraits hospitality branding activities:
- At each session provide for the needs and comfort of the pet by offering water and providing a place to groom and exercise the pet.
- Surprise dog owners with a Persnickety pet bandana, then create a few extra images with the bandanna to post on the studio’s website or blog.
- After the session, present a goodie bag for the pet.
- Make the preview session an event by serving appropriate refreshments.
- When the order is completed, provide the client with the studio’s choice of a 4x5 portrait attached to a “Preview” note card to take home and enjoy until the finish portraits are ready.
- When clients come to pick up their finished images, present them with an unexpected gift such as wallet images or a collection of note cards featuring the pet.
The Professional Photographer's Guide to Marketing Success
by Ann K. Monteith.
Categorized In:
quick marketing tips
Whether your business has operated for many years or is just starting up, the place that it occupies in the market is based on how well you have positioned the business through your marketing activities and the word-of-mouth reputation generated by your clients. Achieving a favorable market position begins with a general understanding of your competition’s strengths and weaknesses, where you stand in the market today, and three key elements that will form the basis of your market-positioning efforts:
- Your artistic style
- Your product focus
- Your approach to hospitality branding
Assessing your Competition
For each product line that you offer begin by determining how important competition is in that specific market segment. Several key questions to answer are:
- Who are your competitors?
- Do your competitors do a good job of marketing?
- Given the competition, is this a market that you can dominate?
- If you cannot dominate the market, how do you wish to compete?
It is easier to dominate a market when there is little or no competition or if existing competition is not doing a good job of marketing. However, if your market includes one or more good photographers who do a competent job of marketing, then you must decide on the best method of competition to engage in based on the market position you wish to achieve and the time and money you are willing to spend.
Defining Your Place in the Market
Self-assessment is vital in creating a successful marketing plan, but for most business owners self-assessment is very difficult. Just as in life, we rarely see ourselves as others do, and we often underestimate our strengths and hold ourselves back because of our self-perceived weaknesses. Nonetheless, it is vital to identify and understand your business strengths and weaknesses. If necessary, invite several clients or friends to help you look at your business objectively, making sure that you do so in a way that prevents them from telling you what they think you want to hear.
Once your strengths and weaknesses are enumerated, make a list of them, then write sentences or bullet points that turn your strengths and weaknesses into selling features. These selling features will become key elements of your marketing plan, and ultimately they will be used for copywriting. You might expect that strengths would easier to develop as selling features than weaknesses, but it might not be as hard as you think to create great copy from a weakness turned into a strength. Following are some examples of both:
Strength: Excellent posing and lighting skills.
Selling feature: We make you look great!
Strength: Great reputation.
Selling feature: We are proud that our business has grown through the referral of satisfied clients.
Strength: Ability to make people feel at ease.
Selling feature: You’ll love the relaxed, homey environment of our studio. We guarantee that you’ll feel at ease in front of our camera.
Weakness: We don’t have an easy-to-find retail location.
Selling feature: Our picturesque environment offers countless settings for relaxed portraiture.
Weakness: We are brand new to the market.
Selling feature: We’re not your grandma’s portrait studio!
Weakness: No one knows us.
Selling feature: Have you heard the buzz about Smithville’s hip new portrait studio?
Defining Your Artistic Style
It is easier for consumers to recognize photography when it has an identifiable artistic style. Style is often the reason why buyers are attracted to a given art form, and that includes photography. A style usually does not develop overnight, and sometimes it’s not easy for a photographer to describe his or her style so that it can be put into words for marketing purposes. A good place to start the process is to select a collection of your favorite images, or those that clients admire, doing so by product line. Look at those images and begin jotting down words or phrases that describe what you see. If you hit a roadblock, ask clients or friends to help you complete this task. Here’s an example of the process based on the following pet portrait images created by Persnickety Pet Portraits, a division of Countryhouse Studios in Annville, Pennsylvania.
Words and phrases:
- painterly
- heartwarming
- pleasing as wall portraiture
- well composed
- well-regulated, dimensional lighting
- backgrounds and settings appropriate for the pet
Next, turn these words and phrases into sentence form to describe your artistic style, as is done below in portraying the style of the Persnickety Pet Portrait images shown on the previous page. We approach pet portraiture in the same artful manner by which we photograph people: selecting settings, compositional elements and lighting that are appropriate for the subjects being portrayed in order to achieve dimensional art pieces that serve as heartwarming decorative focal points for the home.
The Purpose of Defining Your Product Focus
As important as style is in attracting consumers, you have nothing to sell to them until you create products for them to purchase. One way to look at the difference between style and product focus is this: Style is your wings. Products are your landing gear! Your style can attract attention, but it takes products to get your style into the hands of clients in the form of something they can identify as useful or desirable. Many brilliantly artistic photographers fail in business because they don’t understand this important principle. A good way to assure that your product line has an appropriate product focus is to begin by writing down your key products categories, indicating how those products are used. Following is an example of this exercise for Persnickety Pet Portrait products:
- Individual portraits or collections of portraits that serve as decorative focal points for the home
- Composites that serve as decorative wall accents
- Black-and-white fine-art panels available in variety of sizes and framing options, including canvas wraps
- “Fun Week” specialty sessions and products for wall display and calendar collections
- Virtual paintings for featured wall decor
- Specialty products and accessories to carry, wear, mail and display
You will find that a similar listing for your major product lines will serve as a helpful reminder when performing numerous marketing tasks ranging from creating studio displays to preparing content for marketing materials.
The Professional Photographer's Guide to Marketing Success
by Ann K. Monteith.
Categorized In:
quick marketing tips
Targeting An Appropriate Market
No matter where a business is located, it will succeed only if it has access to suitable clients. Prospective clients of an appropriate market population must have the following characteristics:
- Possess a need or want that you can satisfy efficiently.
- Be willing to consider your products or service.
- Have the financial means to purchase what you sell.
When considering a target market, you should ask these key questions about it:
- Is it large enough for you to do a satisfactory volume of business?
- Is it reachable, and how?
- Is the market segment measurable in terms of the sales results achieved?
If the answer is yes to these questions, then it is a reasonable market to consider.
Defining “Ideal Client” Characteristics
Once you have decided what type of clients are likely to benefit from your business concept, learn all you can about the characteristics of so-called “ideal clients” within each market you wish to attract. For example, if you are targeting upscale parents of young children for a family and children’s portraiture business, the mother is likely to be your ideal client so you’ll want to know the answer to these questions about her behavior:
- Where does she live?
- Does she work outside the home?
- What are her favorite personal activities?
- Where does she shop?
- What professionals, such as obstetricians and pediatricians, does she use?
- What does her husband do?
- Where do her children go to school?
- What are her favorite family activities?
- Does she belong to community organizations?
- Is she active in her church, synagogue or other religious institution?
- How would you describe her personal style?
- What does she value in terms of emotional, physical, social, and material needs and wants?
The more of these characteristics you can identify, the more clues you will have to begin structuring marketing strategies to attract her to your business. The more you know about your ideal client, the easier it will be to put yourself in her position. That way you can recognize what type of products and services she expects and what types of marketing strategies are likely to connect with her. The more you can see through her eyes, the easier it is to assure that your business concept is relevant to her life and that your marketing strategies and materials will succeed.
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quick marketing tips
Selecting and Understanding Your Target Market Different
Different types of photography attract vastly different types of consumers. The interests of a bridal couple looking for a wedding photographer are poles apart from what is appealing to parents who wish to have their new baby photographed. Marketing experts group consumers into “market segments” according to specific personal, behavioral and purchasing characteristics. Market segmentation allows businesses to target ideal consumers by varying their approach to the Marketing Mix (Product, Promotion, Place and Price) to more nearly address the needs and desires of these specific consumer segments.
Marketing to Women
Market research suggests that businesses get a higher return per customer when they invest their marketing dollars in promotions directed specifically to women. Even though women make up 51 percent of the population, financial experts suppose that they represent roughly 80 percent of the country’s purchasing power because they strongly influence decisions that affect household spending.
A 2006 survey conducted by Professional Photographers of America echoed what most savvy portrait/wedding studio owners have always maintained: Women represent at least 80% of the market for portrait and wedding photography. They are, at the very least, the initiator of the decision to purchase photography. More often than not, they also are involved in the final purchase. Since women represent the largest segment of consumer–driven photography purchasers, it is important to understand that women react to marketing messages differently from their male counterparts. In her 2001 landmark book, You Don’t Understand, Dr. Deborah Tannen brought gender differences in communication style to the forefront of public awareness. Two of Dr. Tanner’s key findings are that “Seventy percent of women learned about a product from someone who owns one,” and “Women consumers speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy, rather than a competitive language of status and independence.” Obviously, this understanding must play an important role in how you market to women. Your first task, however, is to identify important characteristics of your ideal consumer—male or female—within the market segment(s) with which you wish to do business.
Defining Market Segments
The practical implication of identifying and understanding specific market segments ultimately is expressed through the marketing strategies a business adopts and the style of marketing materials it uses to execute those strategies. In the marketing materials shown, created by Jeff and Julia Woods of Washington, Illinois, you can see clearly the stylistic difference between the mailer they use to attract prospective wedding clients and the one they direct to high school seniors.
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The Link Between Image Marketing and “Want Photography”
Portrait/wedding photography can be broken into two categories: Need Photography and Want Photography.
Need Photography products refer to those that satisfy the requirements of lifestyle situations such as weddings, graduations, and even school activities and sports. You need a wedding photographer in order to document and relive the grand occasion; and you need to purchase pictures of your child’s team so that he or she is not the only child left out when the picture-day photos arrive.
Want Photography comprises those types and styles of photography that budget-minded consumers might consider to be luxury products. Even though photographers might argue that all families need to have pictures of their children and of the family itself, these needs can be fulfilled by mass-market studios and low-price school picture packages. For families to be persuaded to pay much more for portraits of their family and children requires more intensive marketing—marketing that presents a compelling message about why they should give you their business. This is the mission of image marketing. While action marketing can be very effective in promoting need photography, industry experience shows that it takes much more image-building promotion to be successful in creating a demand for want-photography products.
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Creating a Focused Business Concept
How do you assure that your business concept is compelling enough to attract the clients that you desire? Here are some fundamental branding principles to consider:
- Your business concept should be instantly understood by consumers, so keep it simple.
- Don’t try to be all things to all people. Today’s consumers are looking for experts . . . specialists in specific fields. While most businesses will have to offer more than one product line, consider marketing each independently, so that you don’t confuse your marketing message.
- When you market yourself as an expert in a given field, you will be easier for consumers who are looking for that expertise to find. When you are known as an expert, it is easier to create community buzz, and it’s a fact that consumers are willing to pay more for the work of experts!
- Smart marketers know that it’s better to do a good job of marketing one single product line than a sloppy job of marketing several. So if you are new in business, consider marketing one product line at a time; get that segment up and running, then move on to the next. If you have an established business that needs to refresh its marketing, consider restructuring one market segment at a time so that you can do a proper job of each. Start with the product line that you enjoy most, providing that it is—or can be—a good profit center for your business.
- Keep in mind that even if you market only one product line, you will still do business in others. When you achieve market recognition through a successful marketing effort that promotes a single area of expertise, consumers will assume that you have expertise in others. So don’t underestimate the value of a single successful marketing project.
- One of the big advantages of limiting the number of product lines you offer to the public is that your business will be much more focused, therefore much easier to manage. When you offer too many product lines, the marketing alone can be exhausting.
The two collections of promotional post cards shown below are excellent examples of how to present a clearly articulated business concept. In marketing both family and senior portraiture, Cedar Creek Photography, located just outside of Kansas City, Kansas, makes it very clear that its primary business is creating “lifestyle portraiture.” The studio’s blog reinforces this with the following statement: Cedar Creek is a lifestyle studio that believes in capturing people as they are: beautiful, unique and true to themselves. That is precisely the concept that these marketing materials portray, which makes it very likely that their message will connect with consumers looking for this style of photography.
Targeting a Niche Market
If the size of a photographer’s market area is large enough, it is possible to create a specialty business that targets one specific market segment or “niche.” A niche is defined as a market population that has similar interests and/or buying habits. Given sufficient population density, a photographer might consider creating a niche business such as wedding photography or children’s portraiture. Or the studio could emphasize a single artistic style, such as black-and-white photography that applies to all types of subjects. The marketing cards shown below, created by Tot Shots Photography, in Simi Valley, California, are quite likely to catch the attention of parents in search of children’s portraiture because it is so clearly a dominant focus of this studio’s business.
For photographers who work within a limited population base, a niche business usually is not practical; although some small-town, studios that offer a variety of product lines do emphasize one specific niche area as a means of focusing special attention on their business.
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