Marketing Posts

Negotiating Needn’t be Scary (Video)

30 09 , 2011 1 Comment

Last month I had an opportunity to do an interview in the form of a webinar with Photoshelter co-founder Grover Sanschagrin on the topic of negotiating. He asked great questions and at the end of about 45 minutes the listening audience of more than 1,000 photographers was invited to submit questions. It was my first webinar and judging from the feedback, I think it went well. If you have questions, please ask them in the comments and we’ll get a dialogue going. Thanks for watching!

[vimeo clip_id=”27036957″ height=”” width=”580″]

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(Written by Detroit People Photographer Blake J. Discher)

Networking? Have a Kick-Ass Business Card

29 09 , 2011 1 Comment

If you are going to take the time to develop a networking strategy, one of the first items you’ll need is a drop-dead gorgeous business card. I mean a card that when you hand it to someone, they say, “Wow, that’s a really nice business card.” If you’re not getting this response, you need a new business card.

First, photographers are not designers. Hire a designer to do your card. If money is tight, maybe you could trade services with a designer. They know what’s current as far as design styles go, understand and are aware of papers, and will help you to create a better looking card that you probably could.

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Network Even Amongst Your Peers

28 09 , 2011 1 Comment

handshakeI presented my program “Stop Grumbling – Get Out There” to a group photographers in New Orleans. (The New Orleans chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers.) It’s a roughly two hour seminar on networking and negotiating techniques.

Usually the doors open about an hour before I speak and I use that time to introduce myself to people as they arrive, exchange business cards, and to get a rough gauge of where the audience is in terms of networking experience. I always ask the question, “So tell me about what you do,” and from a person’s response I can tell a lot about what stage of their career they’re in and how much experience they have in handling a first-time face-to-face meeting with a stranger.

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Book Excerpt: “The Art and Business of Photography”

08 08 , 2011 7 Comments

Susan Carr is the Education Director of ASMP, the American Society of Media Photographers. Her latest book, The Art and Business of Photography, has received critical praise from both photographers and scholars for its candid look at the changing photography industry. It’s quickly become required reading in many university photography curriculums and I consider it an essential read for both emerging and established photographers.

Susan spoke yesterday to a standing-room only crowd at B&H in New York and answered questions from the audience. If you want to purchase a copy for yourself, it’s available at Amazon. I have it on my Kindle and I refer to it frequently. Her publisher, Allworth Press, has graciously permitted me to publish an excerpt from the book. I’ve chosen a few paragraphs from chapter four, “Where Are the Clients?”

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Chris Anderson’s controversial book Free: The Future of a Radical Price created quite a buzz in the professional photographic community when it was released in 2009. The gut reaction by many photographers was negativesurmising that Anderson was pitting free against paid to the detriment of the professional in any field. Anderson actually does a masterful job of outlining a history of how businesses have used the “free economy” to build products and services people will pay for. Anderson writes, “The way to compete with Free is to move past the abundance to find the adjacent scarcity. If software is free, sell support. If phone calls are free, sell distant labor and talent that can be reached by those free calls (the Indian outsourcing model in a nutshell). If your skills are being turned into a commodity that can be done by software (hello, travel agents, stockbrokers, and realtors), then move upstream to more complicated problems that still require the human touch. Not only can you compete with free in that instance, but the people who need http://purchasepropecia.net these custom solutions are often the ones most willing to pay highly for them.”

Like it or not, the photographs licensed every day and, in many cases, even the service of photography are now commodities. Generic photographic subject matter will no longer produce substantial financial rewards nor will it be possible to build a career taking corporate headshots. I return to [Seth] Godin who always seems to concisely hit the nail on the head. “Your organization is based on exploiting scarcity. Create and sell something scarce and you can earn a profit. But when scarce things become common, and common things become scarce, you need to alter what you do all day.” Godin further offers that spare time, trust, and attention are things that used to be abundant and are now scarce. Remember these when formulating your business strategy; potential clients do not have extra time, have trouble giving things attention, and are skeptical as a default. Turn those challenges into assets by saving clients time, being easy to do business with and building trust through quality and professionalism.

Photographs in general are definitely not scarce. We cannot compete on price when seemingly endless images are available for free or nearly free. We cannot compete with mediocre imagery when there are loads of one-click options for obtaining mediocre photographs. Photographers must define what they can bring to the table that is rare and that brings us back to creativity. A specific vision, style, or point of view directed towards a particular passion or interest is our one true unique offering. As a photographer, you need to develop a vision in your imagery, but that same creative thinking needs to be applied to how you run your business. Make it a package, so that all components speak to the same
core message of genuine quality and value.

LinkedIn: A Photographer’s Guide, Part 2

21 03 , 2011 6 Comments

Jorge Parra continues his two-part article (part one is here) in which he shares how he leverages LinkedIn in his marketing and to help him identify potential clients. Jorge is a commercial and fine art photographer based in Miami, FL, his work can be seen at www.jorgeparra.com.

Three of the most powerful tools in LinkedIn are the Groups, the Answers, and what I call the Research Engine.

Groups

Belonging to groups in which your potential clients might roam is a critical step for your LinkedIn presence. Just point your browser to the “Groups” tab in Linkedin and start researching for the thousands of groups already established. Joining groups is sometimes instantaneous, but sometimes they are moderated and you’ll need to be approved as a member. The idea is to join groups and participate in some of the discussions there, share your knowledge and expertise, and bring alternative points of view to what is under discussion. Of course, your goal is to start building relationships.

The greatest collateral benefit of belonging to groups is that you can actually ask all (or selected) members of a group to join your network. LinkedIn considers this a valid method of connecting. Once in your network, a person’s contact info is accessible. Of course, this information is not meant to be used to just spam those contacts; you should build relationships first!

You may recall I mentioned in part one of this article that there is no benefit for photographers to join photographer’s groups, (stop preaching to the choir, etc). A fews possible exceptions would be for educators, presenters, seminarists, and workshop instructors, as most of the photographers in those groups could become their customers. You want to roam where your potential customers roam!

Answers

An equally powerful tool is to commit to answering the myriad of questions posted by an endless list of people looking for specific advice. This is, to me, the most interesting part of LinkedIn. Look for the “Answers” tab in LinkedIn. You provide feedback in your areas of expertise, helping people in their quests, who then, often immediately, want to become part of your network. All of this happens outside the groups, so responding to queries will help you in your research to find good groups to roam in as well!

The amazing additional benefit of providing “answers” is that those who asked the original questions will be tagging and rating (first, second, third) the quality of the responses received. Both LinkedIn (in its internal research search engine) and Google take note of those tags and quality answers will help you rank better in future searches. This is like good Karma coming back to you, thanks to your original input. Seems to be a natural law in this universe.

LinkedIn’s “Research Engine”

As I said above, I consider LinkedIn’s search feature a “Research Engine” which is more than a simple search engine. This is because you can get deep into researching the companies you specifically want to target, and it is difficult to think of any relevant company that is not listed, in detail, in LinkedIn. If you don’t want to go into “Groups” or “Answers”, then learn to get deep into “Research”, but I need to emphasize, all three tools mingle perfectly well.

You can do things like “Follow this Company” and receive notifications about news and updates related new people entering the company, new projects underway, and much more. Using this information you can start identifying specific people you want to make contact with, and use the tools described above to help in your effort to make contact. Right now, I am waiting on some initial contact attempts I have initiated to Victoria’s Secret, as one of my plans is to eventually have them as a client. With the Linkedin’s “Research Engine” capabilities, there is no need to think small.

Something worth mentioning is your LinkedIn profile, you NEED to polish what people are reading about you. Everything I written above depends, in large part, on this one item, so start by puttin gin place your best looking profile and explore all possible profile settings ASAP. There is always more than the basics in LinkedIn.

On a side note, I should add that Facebook also offers segmentation into Groups, and there are hundreds of groups indeed, but I have never got the quality feedback or established as many positive contacts with potential clients in Facebook as I have in LinkedIn’s groups. Others may have better luck, so I encourage everyone to explore this option too (assuming, of course, you have already set up your Business Page in FB!)

Care to share how LinkedIn is working for you?
Thanks and good luck!

LinkedIn: A Photographer’s Guide, Part 1

09 03 , 2011 9 Comments

It’s “Guest Post Wednesday” and we’re fortunate to have an excellent essay by Jorge Parra, a commercial and fine art photographer based in Miami, FL, whose work can be seen at www.jorgeparra.com. In it he shares his thoughts about how photographers can best leverage LinkedIn.

One of the biggest mistakes made by photographers with regards to LinkedIn is joining photographer’s groups, since you will be preaching to the choir, and no marketing effort will have any value at all.

The main reason to showcase yourself in LinkedIn is to reach the people who may eventually become your clients, and usually, those do not spend any period of time in photographer’s groups or simply, never join them in the first place.

Put yourself in your client’s shoes and make educated guesses about where would they roam in Linkedin, then join those groups.

My database so far is well over 500 people in LinkedIn, and well over 400 are potential clients: creative directors of advertising agencies, owners of marketing boutiques, editors at nationwide and local magazines, and key people in the luxury markets, in the USA as well as Europe, Japan, South America, etc.

The reason you find so many comments about not getting work from LinkedIn comes from the fact that people are not linking their (best-looking) profile to the right people, in the right groups.

Once you have someone in your network, you have access to his or her email and other contact info, data which LinkedIn allows you to download to your computer to prepare a contact list. By definition, these contacts are opt-in, meaning they are all willing to exchange info with you, so you would not be spamming a single soul with your newsletters, promos or news updates.

Because you have this personal info, you’re able to send private, personalized emails, to very focused lists of people, those you REALLY want to work with, and make your best effort to reinforce your relationship with those highly specific people. Just last Saturday I got a request to link with one of the editors of Vogue America. I don’t know yet where will this lead, but no doubt, I will cherish and nurture this relationship with this very relevant contact!

So in essence, this is the least you can do with LinkedIn. There is still much more than this, but this in itself is a great thing, much more useful and powerful than the “personal messaging” on Facebook or any other social network media. I’m not saying FB is not another tool to explore, just that the ROI in time and effort vs. effectiveness, by far favors LinkedIn.

To this end, I consider Linkedin a Professional Networking Media, not a Social Networking Media. This distinction is critical.

Read part two of this article.

Sweet Dreams: Are You Better Than Your Competition?

28 09 , 2010 6 Comments

Suddenly you’re wide awake in the middle of the night. The nightmare was horrible, worse that that monster you thought was under your bed when you were six years old.

In the dream, you received a call from a potential client, all they said was, “Good morning, we need a photographer for a project. Please answer this one question: why should we hire you instead of one of your competitors?”

Still dreaming, you’re stammering a bit, your blood pressure rises, you’re scrambling to compose your thoughts, perspiring.  In a defensive attempt to slow the conversation and wrestle back control, you blurt out the question you always ask: “Tell me a bit more about the project so I can better answer that question.”

The person on the other end of the phone said: “No. All I want is that single question answered. Our decision on whether or not to hire you will be based solely on your response.”

That’s when the dream became unbearable and you force yourself awake.  But staring into the darkness, you’re asking yourself, “How would I answer that question?”

You’re not selling a commodity unless you want to be.  In what ways is doing business with you different?

We complain constantly about customers beating us up on price.  But imagine for a minute that they didn’t care about price.  Have we so conditioned ourselves into believing that every call will eventually become a negotiation on price that we are somewhat unprepared to demonstrate our value instead?

So what is your value?  How are you different?  Your value could perhaps be reputation, ease of doing business with you, or the speed at which you work, resulting in less interruption of the client’s business.  Maybe it’s your grasp of the latest technology, the ease of ordering prints from your studio, or your people skills, meaning you’re experience helps you to be comfortable with any CEO of any company.  Or perhaps even something as basic as talking about the awards you’ve received from high-end competitions that the client might be aware of.

Whatever your differentiation is, talk about it during the call.  Sell your value.  If you focus that sales conversation on price, the price will likely fall.  If instead you focus the conversation on value and how you are different (read: better) than your competitors, the price will likely rise.

There’s an old saying in sales:  Sell the sizzle, not the steak.  The reality in our changing industry is that the sizzle is your value.  Not your photography.

This essay, written by Detroit People Photographer Blake J. Discher, originally appeared in ASMP's "Strictly Business" blog. Blake does a lot of stuff, the most satisfying of which is being the father of a six year old who is quite convinced there is a monster under his bed.  To see what else Blake does, have a look at his lifestream at www.blakedischer.com. (Photo copyright 2010 Blake J. Discher.)

Auto-Generated Online Ads Use Some Web Images

24 05 , 2010 7 Comments

Last Friday, the New York Times ran an article titled, “An Ad Engine to Put ‘Mad Men’ Out of Business” which talked about an online service called PlaceLocal that automatically creates online ads. From the article:

“New software called PlaceLocal builds display ads automatically, scouring the Internet for references to a neighborhood restaurant, a grocery store or another local business. Then it combines the photographs it finds with reviews, customer comments and other text into a customized online ad for the business.

The program, developed by PaperG, an advertising technology company in New Haven, Conn., is aimed in part at small businesses just beginning to advertise on the Web sites of local newspapers or television stations, said Victor Wong, its chief executive.”

I was immediately intrigued about how the service works so I went to the site and created an ad for a my favorite deli here in Detroit, The Russell Street Deli.  The ad it created in less than two minutes was fairly basic, but included moving images (using Flash) gathered online, and testimonials presumably from reviews on the internet:


OK, so it’s not the sexiest ad in the world, but for someone with a limited budget that precludes hiring a photographer, it would certainly work online.  The user can select from a number of sizes including vertical and horizontal banners and the site creates the new ad instantly.  Being a photographer, I was interested in how they were selecting images and whether any respect being paid to copyrighted content. My query to them in a form on their website:

I am curious as to how you eliminate findviagra copyrighted images from ads that are created on the fly, or if you do.  If not, how are the creators being compensated for the licensing of their images?   Cheers, Blake Discher, www.groozi.com

Less than an hour later, Victor Wong himself responded. His answer:

Hi Blake:

Thank you for your interest in our product. We are definitely respectful of right holders, and make best efforts to make sure the elements used to create advertisements follow comply with copyright regulations. Specifically, we have taken the following steps to address copyright concerns:

.    We use content from our partners who have secured content rights
.    We use content from the websites of advertisers so they can reuse their existing content in their advertisements
.    We offer a library of stock photography as an alternative to customers without their own photos
.    We strictly adhere to restrictions of photographs offered under the Creative Commons or other relevant licenses
.    We require users to certify that all the elements used do not infringe intellectual property of others
I hope this is helpful.

Thanks,
Victor

A few thoughts…  It’s refreshing to hear that Mr. Wong is mindful of copyright issues and has created a system in which safeguards are in place to protect rights holders. Aggregation of internet content began with news gathering sites and it’s no surprise to see it move to this sort of use.  Because this model is sure to expand, it’s even more imperative that before images are placed online, they be registered with the copyright office, watermarked, and contain full metadata including your contact information for licensing.

What do you think of this service?