9 May 2023
The world of photography has a lot in common with digital marketing for photographers. If you think about it carefully, knowing which element to focus the lens on and how to give the final touch to the photo in the editing process so that it conveys a feeling responds to one of the fundamental principles of marketing, which is to convey a message and not a product.
So, if you want to make a living from photography, it’s time to develop your own digital marketing strategy for photographers and from Arcadina we want to give you some keys to help you in this process.
Thanks to digital marketing for photographers your photography business will be much more visible on the Internet.
Contenido
What is digital marketing for photographers really for?
To sum up the answer to this question, we could say that digital marketing for photographers is mainly about getting your ideal clients to find you on the Internet before your competitors do. Because as you well know, there are many photographers who offer a similar service on the web and achieving a better position on Google will be the star tool to improve the income of your photography business every month.
Marketing can help you promote your photo shoots to reach a wider audience, increase your visibility, reputation, generate quality leads, increase sales and establish a solid and professional online presence. Thanks to digital marketing strategies you can also build a much more professional brand image and differentiate yourself from your peers.
Digital marketing for photographers is a very powerful tool that if you know how to use it well will help you grow and succeed in your digital photography business.
Steps to improve the marketing strategy of your photography business
If you want to make photography your long-term job and livelihood, you need a well thought-out marketing plan. To do this, the first thing you need to consider is your goals, and these need to be realistic and specific. It is not enough to say “to be the best photographer“, “to get more clients” or “to make more money“. These answers are very generic and can be achieved as a consequence of the (more specific) goals that you set yourself from time to time.
Examples of more realistic objectives could be: “to increase my profits in the next 6 months by 10%” or “to get 30% more customers for my main service“.
When setting your goals, you have to differentiate the objectives that you are going to tackle in the short term from those that are more medium to long term. In this way, and by breaking down each goal into small tasks, you will see much more clearly how you are progressing little by little on your way to success.
To help you better set your goals, we’re going to give you some guidelines on digital marketing for photographers that you can follow to make your goals much easier to achieve.
Identify your target audience
One of the first things you need to do to improve your digital marketing strategy for photographers is to correctly define (and then identify) your target audience.
We have already told you this on more than one occasion but if, for example, you do fine art sessions for children in Murcia, you cannot target all the families in that autonomous region because:
- Many parents will not like the style of children’s photography you do.
- Other families will find your services expensive.
- Some of them will look for a photographer who is even closer to the area where they live.
- Etc.
For this reason, and so that all your marketing actions have a greater reach, it is important that you first define the profile of your ideal client, which will be the group of people who will be willing to hire your photography services.
Keep in mind that if you do several types of photo shoots, your ideal client may be different in different cases, so this research work will have to be done for each of them.
In the following article we talk more in depth about this important topic.
>> Do you really know the profile of a photographer’s ideal client?
Analyse what your competitors are doing
When establishing what kind of marketing strategies you can follow, it is important that you take a look at what is working for your competitors, not to copy but to discard actions that are not effective and to keep in mind those that do succeed in attracting new customers.
Some of the points you can look at in your competitors may be:
- Website. Look at what kind of information they are promoting on their website and improve it, both in terms of written content and your portfolio.
- Blog. This medium tends to give a lot of visibility if you know how to use it correctly. Research your latest articles and find out what keywords you are using to position them.
- Social networks. Study in which networks he is most active, what kind of posts he makes and how often. In these posts, the comments of your customers can be very valuable and can give you very interesting business ideas.
- Paid advertisements. Look at their positioning in Google and if it is organic or if they are paying to appear in the first positions.
- Etc.
By relying on his ideas, you can make an even better strategy that will make you even better known and boost your digital photography business.
Create a list of the marketing channels you want to promote
When developing your marketing strategy, it is important that you decide which media you want to focus on. At the beginning you can choose 2 or 3 until you have them ready and then expand the list. This way you will achieve a greater reach gradually and you will not saturate your marketing calendar with marketing actions.
To help you with this process, here are some ideas to help guide you:
- Website: if you have an Arcadina website, you can update its design, renew the image galleries and expand the information on the services pages. Take advantage of the SEO section on each page to improve positioning, use keywords and make it clear: where your photography studio is, what style you work with and what type of sessions you offer.
- Networks: select 2 or 3 at the beginning to keep a more weekly follow-up when it comes to uploading posts, replying to comments and following reference photographers. It is important that when choosing the networks you take into account which ones your ideal clients will be on. You can use the Instagram galleries on your Arcadina website to connect these 2 important sales channels for your business.
- E-book: you can create a small guide with tips, recommendations or any other information of interest to help you attract more customers. In Arcadina you can create a hidden page in the menu (Landing) that you can then share with whoever you want by sharing its URL.
Start with one or more of these actions, find your own, and as you complete one you can revise the rest or add new sales channels.
Plan your digital marketing strategies for photographers in advance
Another action you have to start implementing in your day-to-day work, not only to organise your marketing but also the rest of the tasks to be carried out in your studio, is a good planning: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly.
Although it may seem like a lot of work, if you spend some time, especially at the beginning, planning each of the digital marketing strategies for photographers that you are going to follow, the result will be much more productive.
If, for example, you want to “increase my profits in the next 6 months by 10%”, writing this sentence in your diary will not increase anything at all.
To get results, you need to look at what actions you can take to increase your income and write down all the tasks involved in carrying out those actions. Once you have each goal broken down into small actions, it is important that you transfer each of them to your work calendar. This way, when you go to check what you have to do this week, you will see that you have to carry out small marketing tasks and that will encourage you to better meet your goals.
Measure the results obtained with each marketing action
After so much effort, it is important to know what the results have been. Therefore, for every small marketing action you set your sights on, find a way to be able to measure the results.
Either through professional tools such as Google Analytics, by asking your customers where they heard about you or by counting how many emails you have received through the contact form on your website.
This way, if you know where your customers are coming from, you will be able to promote those sales channels and try to improve those that are not working so well. Or you can even discard the latter, at least temporarily, and try other options. But to make all these decisions it is important that you have a real knowledge of which actions are working and which are not.
Learn how to get the most out of digital marketing for photographers
As you can see, digital marketing for photographers can bring you a lot of joy if you know how to make the most of it.
- Set your objectives for the medium to short term.
- Create a profile of your ideal customer.
- Research what is working for your competitors.
- Choose the marketing channels you are going to focus on.
- Create a marketing plan with dates and actions to be carried out.
- Measure the results obtained in order to improve your next strategies.
- And always have an entrepreneurial spirit. Even if you are doing well in the photography business now, don’t stagnate or get comfortable because your peers will be on your heels.
Today we would like to share with you an interview with a great friend and Arcadina affiliate, José Barceló.
>> Interview with José Barceló, a great friend and member of Arcadina
And to finish this article on digital marketing for photographers, we would like to ask you a couple of questions: What marketing actions have you been doing so far? Are they working for you? We’d love to read about your experiences in the comments.
Headache for your photography business? Take an Arcadina
Headache for your photography business? Take an Arcadina
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