Create a marketing plan for better results.

Every business needs a marketing plan and photographers are no exception. Without one, it’s difficult to make the most effective use of your precious marketing resources. A marketing plan links together all your marketing activities to ensure they support your overall goals.

The plan doesn’t need to be complex to be effective, so it’s best to start with something simple. You don’t need to list every detail for each activity, but the plan should be broad enough to include all your marketing efforts. You want to develop a framework for planning your marketing activities and measuring their effectiveness.

There are many guides to creating marketing plans but most emphasize areas that aren’t particularly useful for photographers. For example, while all businesses can benefit by examining their competitive environment, pricing strategy and risk factors, most photographers have a pretty good intuitive grasp of these areas. It’s more important to define objectives, determine strategy and specify each marketing activity.

There are many types of marketing plans, and many ways to create them. The best approach depends on each photographer’s individual needs. Listed below are 6 steps that can be used as a starting point for creating your first marketing plan.

1. Define Your Objectives: These are goals that help define your brand, your market and your lifestyle. They are generally long-term goals that go beyond the annual planning process. You can think of these as the “What I want to be when I grow up” goals. All of your marketing activities, and in fact all of your activities in every area, should be directed toward helping you attain these goals. Objectives are usually difficult to quantify. This section of a marketing plan is often the shortest but also the most important.

2. Identify the Market: Who are your clients? Where will your new clients come from? For many photographers, identifying their market is not as simple as it may seem. Some potential clients are obvious. If you are a commercial photographer, then art buyers and creatives at ad agencies are clearly your customers. But in order to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing you should define your market in fairly narrow terms. At the same time, you might also want to expand your market to include potential clients you haven’t addressed before.

For example, if you primarily shoot outdoor adventure images, list the top outdoor publications and the ad agencies that hold the accounts of the leading manufacturers of outdoor equipment. You also might want to approach the manufacturers directly through their marketing departments. In some instances they can persuade their agency to select a particular photographer for their campaigns. They also might hire photographers directly. You might also want to identify markets for prints of your work, or stock agencies that specialize in the type of imagery you create.

3. Determine the Strategy: What methods will you be using reach your objectives? If an objective is to travel less, you need to determine how you’ll promote yourself to local clients, or convince remote clients to use locations near you. If you want to transition from fashion to commercial photography, you should list the steps you’ll need to take to address this new market. If you want to stay on the same path but simply grow your business, you’ll need to either acquire new clients or get more work from your existing clients. How will you accomplish this?

4. List Activities with Measurable Goals: This is the “meat” of the plan. What specifically will you be doing? The activities and the projected results should be quantified. Every marketing activity that requires time and/or money should be listed. Examples include:

• Send out an email campaign every 3 months with an average click-trough rate of 10%.
• Change pictures on the Web site every 6 months.
• Attend 6 networking events per year that produce at 30 follow-ups.
• Completely update the print portfolio every 2 years with images that are no more than 3 years old.
• Make 15 marketing call per week, 5 to previous clients and 10 to prospective clients.

5. Plan the Budget: This is the reality check. How much time and money is required to undertake all the marketing activities you’ve planned? The budget should be as comprehensive as possible in order to give you a realistic picture of what it will take to accomplish your goals.

The one item that is consistently underestimated by photographers is their time. It can take 30 minutes or longer each and every day to make 15 marketing call per week. If you’ll be adding new images to your Web site or portfolio, you may need to spend hours doing additional post-production work. It’s not unusual to go back and reassess your marketing activities and goals once you’ve calculated their true cost.

6. Review Regularly: While this isn’t part of the written plan, it’s an important part of the process. You should look at the plan at every month and make adjustments every 3 months if needed. Give it a full review and overhaul every year.

It can be a challenge to find the time to create a marketing plan. If you’ll be writing a marketing plan for the first time, don’t worry about getting everything right. The most important thing is to start the process as soon as possible in order to make maximize the effectiveness of the marketing activities your doing now. Otherwise, it can be a wasted opportunity. As you repeat the process each year you’ll learn which information is most relevant for you, and the best way to structure it. You’ll also become better at projecting what you are realistically capable of doing, and the results you can expect.

It’s difficult for many photographers to devote time and money to marketing. Make the most of it by developing a marketing plan.

Quick Tip
Sign Your Emails

Never underestimate the power of branding. It’s essential that your brand to be consistent in both large and small ways. Something that’s often overlooked is the email signature. Often email is the most frequent touchpoint you have with a client. The signature is a subtle put important way to not only provide your contact information, but also to express your professionalism by adding a slight note of formality to what can be a very informal means of communication. The signature should be used in every email, no matter how trivial.

At a minimum, your email signature should contain your phone number, email address, Web site URL and a tagline. The tagline should express the type of work your do or something about your in a few words. It can be something as simple as “Lifestyle Photography,” or something more creative like “A Passion for Portraits.”

Of course the information in your signature also makes it easier for people to contact you. If someone receives an email from you and wants to call you or view your Web site, they should have that information at their fingertips. Never give anyone an excuse not to contact you by making him or her work to get your contact information.

Jon Hornstein is Principal of Creative Touchpoint, a marketing services firm for photographers, reps and stock agencies. You can learn about Creative Touchpoint here. You send send Jon email at jon@creativetouchpoint.com.

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