marketing

You can trust me on this

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Photographers are often told to sell value rather than just pictures. But when it comes to value, there can be a disconnect between photographer and customer.

A photographer generally tries to sell future value: how the photos might be used and enjoyed in the future.

But a customer often sees only the immediate value: the cost of the photography today.

If cost is greater than perceived worth then the customer won’t buy.

It’s difficult for any business to sell the future because we only see the present and we only know how we feel today.

A solution is that you have to realize that it’s not about cost, high or low. It’s really about worth or the lack thereof. If a customer sees little perceived worth today then your only option may be to lower your price and even that may not be enough.

Having to discount your prices is proof that your current marketing has failed.

Once you understand that worth is related to trust, then perhaps you’ll change your marketing to build trust rather than to promote low prices.

Customers can, and want to, feel trust today.

 

Photo Saturation

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There are nine take-out pizza stores within a one-kilometre radius of my home. How did they know I like pizza so much? More importantly, how much pizza do I and my neighbours have to eat to keep all those stores in business?

If you were the only photographer in town, you’d probably be quite busy with work. If a second photographer arrived in town, would the total number of photography customers double or would the existing number of customers be somehow split between you and the other photographer?

What if the number of photographers in your town went up by a factor of ten, fifty, a hundred or more? How would that affect your business?

It’s said that competition is good for business (and good for customers). More competition can increase customer awareness of your products and services which then might increase demand for your business.
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Experience or just service?

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With many other photographers in your area, all using the same equipment as you and perhaps offering the same photography as you, how do you set yourself apart? After a few clicks of their mouse, a potential customer may think that all photographers are the same.

What can you do about it? Get a fancier web site? Offer more price discounts? Buy some gimmicky photo background or trendy lighting accessory?

None of those are long term solutions.

Instead, you have to know the customer more. Know what they’re really looking for when they search for a photographer, know their concerns and business constraints when they hire a photographer, know what they want when they work with a photographer, know how they can best use the delivered pictures. None of these have anything to do with shutter speeds, pixel counts or focal lengths.

This isn’t about customer service but rather it’s customer experience (link to PDF) and the two are different.

The short explanation is that customer experience is what a customer takes away from a business transaction. For a photographer, that transaction usually starts when the customer first visits the photographer’s web site. Customer service, which can be part of the customer experience, is what a business does to or for the customer.

Improving your customer experience by more thoroughly understanding the customer’s business can make you the photographer of choice more than any new equipment you might buy or any price discount you might offer.

 

The importance of good public relations photography

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The Globe and Mail took a look at some of the photographs that Canada’s top three political leaders use in their social media. The newspaper asked a neutral third party, a US photo editor and consultant, to review the pictures.

Without knowing the leaders, their political parties or any other backstory, photo consultant Mike Davis gave his opinions of the pictures.

Stephen Harper photos:

“It’s very linear, very simplistic, not at all dynamic or deep. … It’s all very similar, it’s very distant, very removed from the person. It kind of represents him as an entity who does official things, and that’s about all you get. … These are just official records of events.”

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Fade to Blacks

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Every Canadian news outlet today reported that Blacks, a 67-year-old Canadian retail chain of 59 photography stores, will shut down within two months.

[Update: It didn’t completely shut down. See end of post].

(To be accurate: In 1930, Eddie Black opened a Toronto radio and appliance store, “Eddie Black’s Limited,” which later sold a few cameras. In 1947, his sons opened a section in the store that sold guns, fishing tackle and cameras. The following year, in 1948, the sons took over the business and launched “Eddie Black’s Camera Store.”)

Today’s news stories repeatedly mentioned that the increased use of cell phone cameras has killed the photo store. The irony is that Blacks is owned by a cell phone company.
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Photo Psychology

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A McGill University psychiatry graduate student, Jay Olson, and his fellow researchers last month published a study titled Influencing Choice Without Awareness which examined the psychology of magic. Olson is also a professional magician. The research showed how various psychological factors are used to influence someone’s decision making especially when it comes to magic.

The use of persuasion extends far beyond magic. In fact, some photographers already know this and they use psychology to influence their customers.

1) Some wedding and portrait photographers know how to properly list their photo packages. Never start or end with the lowest priced package unless you’re trying to sell that low-priced package.
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Is your business ready for its close up?

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When a business spends tens of thousands of dollars on a full-page newspaper ad, why would it spend $0 on the photography for that ad? With the company image at stake, why would a national company get an amateur to do a quick snapshot with a cell phone?

The Globe and Mail today published an ad supplement about franchising. The online version isn’t quite the same as the print version but it does have many of the same photos. The back cover of the print version has a full-page ad for a large pet care company. The amateur point-and-shoot photo missed the purpose of the business and it also missed everything needed in good photography.

What readers don’t know is that some “normal” sections of a newspaper are also advertorials produced by the ad department and/or outsourced to freelancers. This includes sections for new cars, new homes, gardening, education, investing, travel and any other “special section.” I spent almost two decades at a Toronto daily newspaper and was involved with many advertising supplements.
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