Wednesday Wisdoms

Photographers come from the training to be a photographer. I get it, but we must treat it as a business for this training to pay off. 24/7, you are now a business owner with a Marketing Mentality, always by your side and ready to go. What company can exist without marketing and self-promotion? We have to open up our sights, taking this where we want to go. 

BID PREP STEP ONE:

Being ready to go with a solid inventory of crew + producers based on different bidding scenarios and locations can help you (me) avoid the regretful danger zone of losing a job we didn’t need to lose. Be ready to reach out without relying on only a few contacts because it could be too late by the time we hear back. Some jobs are pressure-cookers where the fastest one wins! Building a comprehensive crew and producer list has to happen way before the bid requests come in.

What niches we fit into and what titles we call ourselves are beneficial but not the only part of our business path decision-making process.

Our business minds alone cannot always run the show. The challenging piece is where one direction or opportunity may take us, which must be the guiding force. We can’t get too stuck on our business titles when we are in a creative career like this; growth and opportunity lead the show

How do Photographers Get Started?

3 Step Formula for All Photographers:

1. PORTFOLIO RESEARCH

Regular education and research of our imagery industry will help you master the “Objective” eye, giving you the skills to edit your work. 

2.  CHOOSE THE STYLE

The constant honing-in forward growth of what your style is about will bring you the control clients can depend on. 

3.  ATTITUDE

Owning who you are, finding ways to express it allows clients to know what they get by hiring you. 

What’s out there helping you run your photo business?

Let’s share our favorite resources.

Here are My Top Five:

1. www.pixsy.com – get paid when your images are being used without your permission.
2. www.hunter.io – valuable email formats for every company.
3. www.aphotoeditor.com – loaded with today’s industry info.
4. www.adweek.com/agencyspy – find the updates on the companies you want to work with.
5. www.adsoftheworld.com – know who has worked on which ad.

Marketing Tip = Timeliness

Immediate follow-up is one way to secure your position in a client’s memory. 

Use the open door at the moment to open the doors of your future through LinkedIn, IG, a handwritten card, send a plant, an email or any type of old-fashioned follow-up whether you get the job or not. Go with what works by using the moment to your advantage.

The California law states that for a photography sale to be non-taxable, you cannot supply any form of tangible personal property, including Hard Drives. You can only upload the photos to a computer owned by the customer or send them via electronic transfer. 

Five ways to protect ourselves from the vague Sales Tax laws for Photographers:

1. Change “Hard Drive” to Image or Digital Management. 
2. Have your retoucher electronically send images to the client directly. 
3. You digitally transfer all the images. 
4. Out-of-state clients with no offices in your state don’t require sales tax. 
5. Uploading all images to the client’s business computer is the official legal procedure.

Don’t waste all that you put into your Marketing by looking like another mass spam junk email.

Here are some simple ways to have potential clients take our marketing to that next level by clicking to see more. 

Easy ANTI-SPAM Checklist:

• Send your emails only to the correct contacts. 
• Sound like a human to human with real words as if you are talking. 
• Email new images without repeating yourself
• No need to sound “sales-like” as they know why you are contacting them. 

I get asked a lot about how photographers can get their first jobs. 

Let’s call this the INTRO stage as you are meeting the right people in the right places. 

Get experience finding opportunities in the areas you want to be working in, and with your confident demeanor, the people in your circles will know who to call when they are hiring. 

We can’t be spending our time doing estimates on information we don’t have. 

I’m hearing a ton of complaints from photographers wasting useless time on estimates that don’t turn out to be the real deal. I hear you! With no bid spec sheets, I get many of these requests that won’t reveal the budget upfront, so I focus on the points that help me see if this client is even ready for an estimate. Our goal is to quickly open up the communication doors, giving us a clearer sense of what we are dealing with.

My quick first step estimating questionnaire:

• What is the Usage?
• What is the specific Shotlist?
• Do you have a creative deck with the layouts + mood-boards?
• What are the talent rates?
• Do you have stylists you like to use?
• When is the creative call?