You may be reading this article because you have just started out as a professional photographer or thinking about becoming one. Perhaps you are interested in reading this because you have been running your photography business for a while now and are looking for further growth. In this article Dutch photographer Vincent Hartman will try to give you some general advice and will share some of his own experience. First of all it is good to realise that a photography business is actually exactly what is written on the tin: a business. Everyone involved in photography, or any other creative industry for that matter, will tell you how important passion is in this field. And of course it is. You will need to have a constant drive to develop your skills and field of work constantly to become successful, but that applies to any other business. The most important passion and drive you need here is that you want to be successful in running your own business. In this article I will limit myself to the marketing side of running your own photography business.
Your marketing mix As an old school marketeer I will categorize the marketing mix into 4 different fields: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Your Product here is your offer on photography and the niche(s) you choose. 1. What is your photography offering? There will be a few disciplines in your photography that you like most. The general rule is that you are best in what you like most, because you will automatically develop you skills in this field. In the professional photography business you will need to add to this, the market or demand side for it. Are there people who want to pay what you like most? How many photographers offer that discipline and how are the doing businesswise? Over the years I have seen photographers come and go. In some disciplines there is an oversupply in offering of photographers and most newcomers will not be able to survive. It is true that a modern digital DSLR makes the entry into the field of photography relatively easy and affordable, but do realise that you will need to come up with a product that is considerably better and different from what people can do themselves before they will be willing to pay for it. There is a continuous discussion in the professional photography scene if specialization or diversification is the way to choose. Some very successful photographers have a very strong drive in a certain field of photography or subject and specialization already starts at art-school or photography academy. The advantage is that the graduation can be used to generate publicity and that it may be picked up by talent scouts, magazines or art-directors looking for new talent. Downside is that this route may be limiting your development as a professional photographer and you will become more of an artist. This will be different for every individual. As I re-entered the market after being absent for 13 years, I decided to develop as a versatile Photographer in most photographic business services without being average and with a upper middle market pricing structure. First you need to decide who you will be selling to. The private market or the business market? Photography for private individuals The quickest way to get going is to offer you photography skills to the people in your own network. This will give a an instant growth of your portfolio and it will generate the much needed cash to live on and expand your equipment. When I started out, the photography for private use was certainly the biggest percentage in the first year, but not enough to survive on. This will be different for every photographer and the power of your marketing communication and publicity will be a determining factor.
Commercial photography Due to my training in marketing, the photography for businesses has always been the majority of my activities. Today 75% of my turnover comes from business customers. Although it may seem that the entry in this market is more difficult due to higher investments in equipment and technical requirements, there are many examples of photographers who started very successful in a certain niche shortly after their graduation. This is often documentary photography, fine arts or fashion.
2. Place, from home, studio or travelling? Do you want to be the woman or man turning up with a camera at the customers location, or do you want to welcome your client in your own or rented studio? There are a lot of things to consider, but you will find that most things develop naturally. For group familyshots you will need a large studio and the same applies for the photography of certain products. Also you will find that certain corporate customers expect a professional looking place where they can meet the photographer and his or her team to discuss their needs. You will find that tjhis will develop over time. 3. Pricing The most important thing here is that you realise that your pricing is part of your marketing mix and must be in line with customer expectations. There are a lot of articles to be found on the internet where you can learn how to calculate your hourly rate. The most important thing here is that not a lot of hours are actually spend behind the camera. A lot of work is done in post-processing your images. So you have to take that into account. An industry average number of 24 chargeable hour’s are spend taking the actual photographs. So other hours need to come from selling prints, rights or hours spend on post-processing. Don’t forget that you not only need money to live on but also to maintain and renew your equipment, software, computers, data storage, insurance, marketing and transportation. This is all a very complicated matter and I have personally outsourced all my financials and business administration to a local accountant. 4. Promotion or Marketing Communication You may have expected that the majority of this article was spend on this subject as the word ‘to market’ or ‘marketing’ is often misunderstood as only talking about marketing communication or what used to be called ‘Promotion’. Marketing however also comprises your product, place and pricing as you read above and everything is very much interconnected. There are a lot of different tools to make your photography business know to a wider audience and it depends on your target market and the stage your business is in what media is the most suitable for your specific needs. As you will have found this article through the internet, we will discuss internet marketing first:
About the author: Vincent Hartman has a Bachelors degree in marketing and is Bachelors of arts in Photography as well. He studied marketing in the early nineties when his photography was merely a hobby. His contacts in marketing and communication led to his first assignments for commercial photography. After graduation he ran a small photography studio in Zwolle for four years before returning to the field of marketing and sales. 13 years later he decided it was time to start again and after completing a study at the Dutch Fotoacademie in advertising photography he set up STUDIOVHF.
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https://www.studiovhf.com/en/about |