How do we make our ideas, our brand, clear to the public? We must speak in more concrete terms. In order to do this, we MUST have a clear idea of who we are and what we do and it should be well thought out. When we teach, we talk about how we understand what we do very well, but then we make the fatal mistake of assuming that our clients understand what we do too and they don’t! We must provide a very clear vision to them everywhere we can, both in our physical space and all materials that are printed.

One awesome way to get outside of your own world and get feedback on how clearly you are presenting your message is to have some of your friends read over your material and give you feedback. Often as photographers, we use photography-related words that the outside world doesn’t understand. We actually hired a marketing director 15 years ago who was a past client and she helped us to see our business through new eyes. She told us, from her perspective as a past client, the things we did that were confusing to her. We took this very seriously; after all, if she was confused, how many of our clients were also confused? It was during this time that we started getting serious about a “Clarity Campaign” which simply meant everything we printed had to pass the clarity test and that is also when we started segregating our work more stringently (ie: black and white Relationships and Color Studies).

Clearly defined ideas are easier to remember. One thing we did along with separating and defining our photographic styles was to not dilute any of them with crossovers. What I mean by that is that we didn’t and still don’t photograph clients dressed all in black turtlenecks and black slacks which is the wardrobe for our Relationship black and white portraits as a Color Study. No, that would dilute the message of clarity. Color Studies have a completely different goal and that is to photograph someone looking their best and they have a classic twist. Relationship black and white portraits are more contemporary and always include more than one person celebrating life, love and family. The Beau Visage paintings are milestone images, done when children are at least 4 years old and they are usually very formal. Making these decisions early in the game to never crossover allows us now to continue to define and refine our clarity efforts.

I will end Part 3 with a short chapter from the book, “You, Inc.” by Harry and Christine Beckwith.

“Most venture capitalists, who make some of the largest purchases in all of sales, ask two questions of companies that come to them for money and help. Their first question is simple, but the answers often are not. What do you do? You must answer simply too. Otherwise, you will confuse the person. If it sounds like you do too many things, or too many seemingly unrelated things, the person will assume you cannot do any of them well. Ask that question. Write down your answers. Show it to four people whose opinion you value. Ask them:
Is it clear?
Is it simple?
Does it inspire their confidence that you are focused enough to master whatever you are selling? Ask and answer: What do you do?”

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We will be halfway through this series with this post, so I hope this topic is helpful and causes you to be more strategic in approaching how your business appears to the public. This week’s topic is on CLARITY! We teach on clarity quite a bit and often say you must continually convey two things to the public, “Who you are.” and “What you do.” In our studio, we call them Clarity “Campaigns”. Simply put, everything we publish such as our brochures along with our facility itself makes it very clear what we do at Walden’s. Our galleries are physically divided into three areas showcasing Relationship Black and White portraits, Color Studies and Beau Visage paintings. When we put an exhibit at the mall, we segment it into one of these three areas along with appropriate literature. What our clients need are not abstracts; abstracts make it harder to comprehend what we are all about and it also makes it hard to remember us and what we do. What they need is CLARITY!

We found that to get our Relationship Black and White Brand where it is today, we had to be so repetitive that we were almost sick of it, but it took that to make it clear to the public. In the beginning and for about three years, every exhibit had only the Relationship work on it. Every marketing piece featured only the Relationship pieces. We stripped the message down to “Behind Every Face, There’s A Story.” Easy, concrete, simple to understand! We told stories about the people we photographed and others recognized them and it helped build our brand as they read about their friends or neighbors in our newsletters and in special give away papers we put in our mall exhibits. The public understood that our Relationship portraits involved a story. To be simple and find our core message in the beginning was absolutely crucial in launching our Relationship line of portraiture, but it took great effort and courage to whittle ourselves down enough for it to catch on. Have you whittled yourself down enough so that what you present to the public is painfully clear?

To be continued…

P.S. If you enjoy this blog, please subscribe to it if you haven’t done so already. Also, be sure to tell all of your friends about it, comment on Facebook and Tweet about it when a topic speaks to you. I would surely appreciate it:-)

Have a wonderful week, everyone. Bev

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ORIGINALITY

This post will deal with something we teach all of the time and that is originality. In order to create a brand that sticks in people’s minds, you need to surprise them a bit; offer them the unexpected. We cannot demand attention, we must attract it. To attract it, there must be an element of surprise.

Again, I will link our BRAND of black and white Relationship portraits to the thought of originality. In 1993 when we introduced this brand (we didn’t know it would become a brand at the time), we were trying to remedy the problem our studio had of being all things to all people. This made us unrecognizable in our community other than we were a better than average portrait studio. When we introduced the Relationship black and white fine art portraits, nobody was shooting in black and white. All portrait studios were using color film, so that was a HUGE difference and totally unexpected and original. If you look at the history of photography, black and white portraits were not a new and exciting invention of the Waldens! However, in a world of color in the 90’s, they were new and exciting!

Let’s look at some other things that made them original. One huge factor was the severe crops we used in these portraits. We actually had the courage to crop into people’s heads, sometimes cropping the entire head off and sometimes, just leaving chin and lips! What a unique approach! Different! Original! Tim often jokes that when he studied photography in the beginning, if he cut people’s heads off, he would fail the class, but now, he gets paid for it!

Black turtlenecks and slacks were another very different and surprising element in these portraits. We were not interested in photographing clothing or even talking about it; we needed simple, dark clothing to carry through the vision we had of Relationship portraits. We simply told our clients to think of a mime and notice what was important to their performances; face and hands! We wanted to show and elevate people’s relationships with each other through touch (hands) and facial expressions. We often asked (and still do) our clients to close their eyes and snuggle. It changes everything in the portrait and they are so authentic, portraying the love between family members. Closed eyes? Yes! In a world of trying to keep people from closing their eyes in a portrait, we ask our clients to do just that! Different, surprising and original.

Now let’s look at the factor of emotion. When we introduced these portraits into the marketplace, we wanted an emotional tag to go along with them. We came up with the line, “Behind every face, there’s a story!” In our Design Appointments, we started to ask for stories of why this portrait was being taken and we learned about the personalities of who was going to be photographed. Remember that we were a photography studio, yet, we were delving into people’s lives and hearts to learn their stories and then portray them through our Relationship portraiture. Our standard question to ask was this, “If this portrait were a chapter in a book about your life, what would the title of the chapter be?” With this one question, we learned about our client’s innermost thoughts and then portrayed what we learned in an intimate, touching portrait that was so different from the typical camera smiles that photographers typically sought. Most studios at that time were not inclined to do Design Appointments because it was too much trouble and nobody was asking for people’s stories. That was unheard of! Different, surprising and original.

When we came up with this idea, we decided to treat it with respect and as a true art form, therefore, we did not mix black and white and color sessions together. Our clients booked one or the other, not both together! We simply explained that black and white Relationship portraits involved stories, celebrations of relationships and were styled completely different (and because of the simple, black clothing and special lighting), we did not and could not mix this type of session with anything else. It was elevated to a different and higher level than anything else in our studio. WOW! This was very different! And surprising! And original!

When it came to the product itself, we only offered it in three wall sizes, one mat color choice (which we picked out) and only as squares. No exceptions. We also instituted a policy of offering the wall portraits for sale only at the initial appointment. If they didn’t buy wall sizes at that appointment, those negatives were retired and were never available again for purchase other than 8×10 and smaller. The reason we did this was really for Tim’s sake as he hand-printed each wall portrait one by one in the darkroom and matching a wall portrait that was printed in the past was nearly impossible. Not able to order later? Only squares? NO choice of mats? Different. Surprising. Original.

So you see with just these few thoughts put down how we created a strong brand 17 years ago that is still going strong today! In fact, it is still requested more than anything else we do today! I hope you see the importance of ORIGINALITY, SURPRISE AND BEING DIFFERENT! Read this again and again and make notes of how you are going to create your own brand!

Have a great week! Bev

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Principle. Definition: a fundamental quality or attribute
Branding. Definition: The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. Branding today is used to create emotional attachment to products and companies. Branding efforts create a feeling of involvement, a sense of higher quality, and an aura of intangible qualities that surround the brand name, mark, or symbol. Dave Dolak

PART 1-SIMPLICITY
In order to create a recognizable brand for your business, you must first strip down the business to find the core idea. This means we must exclude the non-essential peripherals and that can be painful. Tim often says that today is the first time in our history in this profession when wisdom is in knowing what NOT to do instead of what to do! With all of the possibilities digital technology opens up, we can get lost in the race of the latest and greatest filter or action. We go to trade shows and see the vast, and I mean vast, array of goodies before us in cute framing presentations or beautiful jewelry; trendy handbags and cutesy props. Along with that is the photography itself. There is something new and hot in our email inbox daily! So, where do you fit in this craziness? Can you find your core identity? Can you simplify what you do down? A powerful “brand” must be simple and quick to understand.

To strip an idea down and get to its core, we must learn to be “masters” of exclusion and create a brand that is also profound so that it has a long future ahead of it.

When we started the Black and White Relationship style of photography 15 years ago, we didn’t realize that we were creating a brand. In fact, the word “brand” was only used in professional marketing firms, not small “mom and pop” businesses. However, we were drowning in being everything to everybody which really meant we were a non-recognizable brand and we were being chosen based on location and price. We were convenient (location) and we were reasonable(price)!

This is what we decided to do on that day long ago when we made the decision to create a brand, although at the time, we didn’t understand that what we were doing was creating a brand.
1. We decided that Relationship photography would only be in black and white and we would offer them as fine art silver gelatin prints which meant Tim went back into a darkroom to hand print them. This was at t time when nobody was doing anything in black and white; everything was done in color.
2. We decided that Relationship photography would, as its name implied, portray relationships which meant more than one person would be in these portraits.
3. We decided that our subjects would wear black clothing, very plain and long sleeved, little or no jewelry and that we would photograph them on an “old masters” background. We did this in order for the images to be simple and impacting in their simplicity.
4. We decided to sell them only as squares and only in three sizes-small, medium and large. Now we sell in five sized, but still only square.
5. We decided to put white mats that were acid-free on them-no choice in other colors. We made the choice of which white we would use based on what looked the best with our portraits.
6. We decided to price them as fine art pieces which meant we didn’t base the price entirely on size; the price was based on the value of a fine art piece.
7. We decided to never compromise on Relationship portraits (ie: putting them on sale, making them rectangular if someone asked, etc)
8. We decided to make them highly personal and emotional; capturing and celebrating the moments between parents and children or siblings, etc.
9. We decided to separate our gallery area in order to display only the Relationship portraiture in its own dedicated space. In our mall displays, we did the same thing, dedicating space to show only Relationship portraiture.
10. We decided to market this portraiture by using people’s stories and we used the tag line. “Behind every face, there is a story.”

Hopefully, using our Relationship Black and White photography as the example, you can see how much we simplified it to create a strong, simple and profound brand. Over the next five weeks, we will continue down this road, learning the other 5 principles to creating a brand.

P.S. If you already have a strong, simple and profound brand, you may want to tune in to listen to Tim’s audio recordings on creating a Sub-Brand within your brand. It is available if you are a Coaching Community member. If you have not joined our Coaching Community, check out the features and benefits on our home page as Tim takes you through it step by step.

Have a great week, everyone.
Bev

digital,photography,acidfree

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We just received a note from a fellow photographer who was really struggling in his business…that hits home with all of us! As educators, we know there is no quick fix for the economic mire we are in right now. However, what we do know and teach are principles that have proven to be true  and we are living those principles day in and day out in our own business. Most of the time, what we teach are ideas that take time to start producing, but for us, they are the right ideas for building long term success.

What I would like to accomplish in this blog is to hear some ideas that are working for you right now to get customers through the door in your business.  Let’s all pitch in with ideas to help each other in this time of need!

I will start by sharing one idea that is working well for us to generate new business. We decided that starting January 1st, we were going to re-energize our efforts to get business partners in our community to align with us and help us find new clients. In order to do this, we decided to close on Monday and dedicate that day strictly to this effort. That is one-fifth of our work week, but it shows how important we feel it is! We found two new children’s clothing stores in our area that were suited for each of our divisions…one is perfect for Walden’s (more classic) and one is perfect for Studio B (more contemporary and colorful)!

We visited each store and pitched our ideas about partnering with them and shared our thoughts on clients. Of course, it needs to be beneficial for both of us to work. Whenever we approach a new business about partnering with us, we always ask two questions. “What can we do for you?” and “What can we do with you?” Then we work out the details of each question to everyone’s satisfaction. We do offer to photograph the owner’s children and/or family in order for them to experience Walden’s or Studio B, but we clarify how long we would like them to use that sample in their business before taking it home. We want it to be a win-win situation for all parties. We then design custom cards with those portraits and a few other portraits we feel are appropriate from our files that have a gift of a Session Fee from us that they can give their best clients. From there, we play it by ear as far as what we will do for that business.

Some things we are doing for our partners at this time:

~We visit a few times each month, take them treats (or take them to lunch) and talk about ideas to work together on.

~We set up drawings a few times per year (ie: Mother’s Day, Easter, etc) and from these drawings, build a data base of names and emails that we can market to. Besides the main winner of the drawing, we have the store owner select 10-15 additional clients they feel would be a good fit for us, and we send them Gift Cards worth $300.00. The amount given has to be enough to entice that person to call. If you just give a few dollars or an 8×10, it is not enough to create a successful call to action. We also put an expiration date on these cards with a 30-45 day window.

~We make them custom clothing tags with images of their children and both of our logos. We use WHCC’s Rep card template for these as they are economical and come in larger sets.

~We show up at store events with a snapshot camera and take a few shots (just because), have them printed and give the images to the store owner.

~We make sure to change out images often and if we photograph any of their best customers, we use those as their samples.

So, this is one idea to generate new business. What are some of your ideas? I really would like to hear from all of you who read this blog:-) Let’s help our fellow photographers out with some of your great ideas!

Have a great week! Bev

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This week’s blog is about looking inside ourselves and our businesses to determine if we are the highlight of our client’s day; the very BEST part of their day.  We must be exactly that in order to stand apart from the competition, and in this market and economy, the ones that go the extra mile are the ones who will rise to the top and succeed. In fact, in a Seth Godin blog I read a few weeks ago, one thing he said stood out to me. He said everyone goes 90% of the way, but it is those who push through and go the final 10% that will be the successful ones! The final 10% is the hard part, the part that nobody wants to do. After all, isn’t 90% enough? Not in this business!

I love this quote, “It is our professional responsibility to be absolutely delightful!” from the book “Indispensable” by Joe Calloway. We are in a business where people and our relationship with them is critical; we don’t sit in a cubicle in a huge office building entering data into a computer…no, we meet and greet the public daily and we must win them over and form bonds immediatley.

In order to do that, we need BIG VISION, CREATIVITY and the WOW FACTOR.

It takes BIG VISION to see down the road and understand the immensity of your business and how all of the parts interact with each other. Even after 30 years, I am not very good at seeing down the road, but Tim is! Between the two of us, we succeed because of his vision of who we are, where we need to be in one year, five years and ten years, and then, what it will take to get there. I am more in the moment of the day, rarely meditating on the future. If you are like me, you need to find a “Tim” who can help you make a plan for your future. However, the vision of your business and how it needs to develop should be birthed from you.

Second, we need CREATIVITY. I used to teach how to be more creative in artistry and photography. Now, I see creativity as being useful in running our business  and help us to stand out from the rest. One example I can think of is a mailing we just sent out to names our “partners” gave us. Our partners are businesses in the community that help us gain clients and we do the same for them. We asked for a list of ten of their best clients we could send a special mailing to, and we wanted these mailings to be something that was more hand-made, not a press product. In other words, we wanted these people to notice our mailing since everyone gets so much “junk” mail these days. We had some beautiful, soft blue watercolor type paper, a rubber stamp set and black ink. What we did was cut the paper into 5 3/4″ squares, stamped them with the stamp that said “A Note For You” with a tree branch and a little bird and then we hand-wrote our message. These went into vellum 6×6 envelopes (envelopemall.com) with an image we printed in-house the same size. They looked really sweet and different and we felt we had created a unique mailing piece for this handful of potential clients. So, open your mind and brainstorm often. Don’t be a follower all of the time; create a path for others to follow every once in awhile.

The WOW FACTOR, to us, means doing something totally unexpected for a client! We provide a WOW experience with our facility, our staff, our work, our service and our experience. It takes all of these things working in harmony to create a fully finished WOW factor. The scary part is that this can be destroyed by one staff member doing or saying the wrong thing. That is why we must work on building a culture of WOW experience within our studio.

Think about  Starbucks employees. We go there at least 5 times a week and have our order taken by different people working the window, but they are all similar personalities. They are young-ish, quirky, talkative, kind, interested in us and what we are doing, and in general, very engaged with us on many levels. I LOVE  that! It makes me feel special. It is the culture of Starbucks!

To build the culture we desire at Walden’s, we meet weekly, we talk, we teach leadership principles in our staff meetings and we understand that what we put importance on is what our staff will put importance on as well. It flows from the head down! We also live what we preach! We do love our clients and they are like family to us! We are authentic!

So…are you ready to up the ante and be more delightful this upcoming week? I would like for you to write and tell me how you create a delightful experience for your clients. Have a great week!  Bev

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This week, I asked you to write in questions for today’s blog. This is George’s question:

George writes, “We drove to Lexington a couple of weeks ago to visit your
mall display. Made for a nice weekend out of town. How effective do you feel
mall displays are? What is your strategy for mall displays and other displays
that are around your community? Do you utilize other businesses for displays as
well? How often do you change your images at the mall? We liked the
idea of using two displays at the mall and you have a unique way of displaying
images using arms or wings to hand them from….very nice. Noticed you also use
a flat screen with images with a slide show. Do you ever utilize promotions
with your brochures at your displays? Any way of tracking the effectiveness of
displays? Ok…I am pushing the edge here…I need to quit asking so many questions.
(by the way the bourbon trail tours are very interesting …even for us that
rarely tip the glass!) Enjoy the beautiful weather this week…and thank you for
all you share.

George and Donna Routt

We have had a mall display for nearly 20 years…whew…that sounds like such a long time! The mall that George visited is Fayette Mall, which is a regional mall, and the best outreach we have for those potential clients that live 3-4 hours away. Yes, they do come to this mall on the weekends as they are from very small towns and love to visit Lexington for almost everything, including us:-) We have gone through many years of experimentation and have come to these conclusions to be the most effective…

~Location, location, location. This one took awhile as mall management decides this for the most part, but as we have been long-time clients and pay our bill on time, we now have more say in where our exhibit is. We are in the very center of the mall where the wings converge and also, we surround the play area where bored parents sit and finally have a chance to really study our images that are displayed right there in front of them!

~Consistency. We rotate our exhibit about every 6-8 weeks and make a decision on what to display and when at our yearly January meeting. We do not mix babies with high school seniors or our Relationship black and white portraits with our Color Studies. We theme each exhibit as it has greater impact that way. Our brochures are on each panel and they describe all that we do, but to mix up the samples and try to display all that we do at one time would dilute the effectiveness. (our opinion)

~We do use the flat screen with images that match the display at that time. We use the Apple TV to load our images up and their screen saver program is actually our “slide show.” We lock the Apple unit in the base and run the cords up the middle post. The plasma is very securely attached (believe me) and makes for a nice upgrade to a static display. We also include words that come across the screen like “love” and “family” and so on. Emotional words. No music at this time as the mall is so loud in this area and it wouldn’t be heard.

~Safety. This sounds weird, but we do make sure our exhibits cannot be pulled over on a child. If any print needs glass, we use plexi instead. The bases are very heavy and cannot be moved and the wings are securely on the posts.

~Information. We just re-designed our panels to allow us to put information on each side, not just one panel per display. After all, why make it hard for potentials to find your brochures? We also make sure our signs are everywhere! We pay a premium price and we want people to know who we are!

~The only promotion we ever do is with high school seniors and that is just to get them into the studio earlier than summertime. Most of the literature on our mall displays is just about what we do, not promotions.

~We track the mall effectiveness on our studio software. What we discovered is that most of our out of town clients find us at the mall, so we feel that is important to keep our finger in that “pie.” Additionally, we do have exhibits around town in children’s clothing stores, kennels (for our Furry Friends) and in a very large OB/GYN office that is in our complex. These keep bringing us clients in from Lexington.

Well, I hope this week’s blog gives you helpful information. That is my goal every week, so I do encourage you to write in any questions for possible future blog topics. Have a great week everyone!  Bev

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Ask yourself, “What is possible?” and not, “What is everybody else doing?” In today’s environment, you must distinguish yourself. That is why we have been teaching what we call “finding your style” for many years now. Often, we wonder if we should remove that part of our program as we have taught it for so long, but we always leave it in. We know not everyone has grasped this concept yet and it is critical.

We got the first glimpse of it when we developed our Relationship Black and White portrait line years ago. At that point, in our studio, we were all things to all people. No style…no consistency and failure as a studio. However, as our Relationship style has matured, it has taken on a life of its own and formed the foundation for our success over the years. It makes up 60% or more of our sessions and the public still embraces it with gusto. Why? It is very distinct, narrow, focused, different and appeals to the masses. These characteristics are what form a successful style.

Some of the UNIQUE things we did when we first started with Relationships several years ago:

1. It was always in black and white when the rest of the photography world was all color.

2. It was named Relationship Portraiture…who had ever heard of naming a style at that time? Nobody!

3. It was more about capturing the moment and body language and less about rigid poses.

4. It had a strong emotional pull by showing moms, dads, babies and children interacting with each other.

5. The composition was much closer and all about the faces as opposed to “pictorial” portraiture that made the subjects very small.

6. We allowed ourselves the freedom to crop into subjects’ heads, sometimes cropping entire heads off! Whoa! Is that ok to do??? Answer-YES, when appropriate.

7. We only offered it AS FINE ART BLACK AND WHITE IMAGERY, ONE COLOR OF MAT, ALWAYS SQUARE,NO SEPIAS, LIMITED SIZES AND LIMITED AVAILABILITY and we included Certificates of Authenticity and registered each image.

In other words, as you can see from the 7 points made above, we created a distinctive style with attributes we could consistently do again and again. We never strayed from these principles and today, our Relationship portraiture is still much sought after and very successful. My challenge is to think about who you really are and what your style is. What would your clients say if asked? If you are currently all things to all people, you have diluted yourself in the marketplace and making it harder for people to choose you unless you are the cheapest or the easiest to get to. Without that strong element of style to draw clients, people will choose you based on price and convenience of location.

If you have always wanted to do a Relationship style of portraiture, but need a little help with the posing basics, we have created a Relationship Pocket Posing Guide which will be on our website under Educational Products and available to order later this week. It has over 50 Relationship pose ideas in it and they are categorized according to subject. Also included is a lighting diagram showing what we use daily and a vendor/equipment list. I believe it will be a great resource to keep handy in the camera room when you need a new idea or a boost. The introductory price is only $49.00 plus shipping. I will alert everyone on our email mailing list, so if you have never gotten an email notification from us and would like to, please contact us through our website and get on the list.

Have a great week, everyone!       Bev

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I remember teaching at NEIPP last year when Tim said he thought we were through with having to market so hard and work every day for new ideas. Then he said no, it was just the opposite. We were once again having to create the momentum in our community through aggressive marketing, just like when we first started! Laughing, he said it was time to kick it up a notch (again) and get busy!

This brings us to today’s topic, Marketing on Mondays. What you may not know was that we never closed on Mondays because our commercial clients like LexMark and IBM needed us to be open 5 days a week. Of course, that was many years ago before our portrait business became so strong that we could leave the commercial business behind us. However, during our entire history, we have always been open on Mondays. That is why, when Tim mentioned that we close on Mondays for marketing, I was very surprised! However, we both knew it was time to put more emphasis on marketing once again, so we worked out a plan.

We met with Laura, our office & marketing manager, and made a plan to start closing on Mondays, starting in 2010. We then wrote out our goals for Mondays since we now had 8 hours of uninterrupted time to pursue marketing at a new level. The main task we all agreed on was that we needed to find new partners in our local area and then, we needed to offer a higher level of service and attention to those partners. Because our studio is divided into Walden’s Photography (Tim and I) and Studio B (Laura) and our styles are so different in each, we decided to find partnering businesses for both Walden’s and Studio B. Laura packed her car with samples, pamphlets, business cards and treats and took off with the goal of getting exhibits in area businesses that we thought matched us. The first Monday she went out, we hit every goal we had set. The following Mondays have been over the top successful with many area businesses joining us in partnership, both long term by accepting an exhibit and some short term by helping us hand out information an upcoming events.

Phone calls are still taken on Mondays, even if Laura is out, by having all calls forwarded to her cell phone. She can also book appointments on her laptop anywhere she is since we use StudioCloud, a web-based studio management program which has access to the studio calendar. However, when she is out, doors are locked until she returns, and we don’t book appointments at all on Mondays now. Clients were notified of the change and we have had no problems at all.

Two things always come to mind when I think about this idea. The first is from the book “The E Myth” where a statement was made, “Take some time to work on your business, not always in it.” Wow, on it and not in it-that’s a major thought for those of us who own our own businesses and stay so busy just trying to keep up. It’s time to step away to work on your business, whether it’s an hour, a day or a week! The second thing that comes to mind is an article I read long ago in the Rainbow, a magazine put out by Burrell. There was a story written by a photographer who decided to close on Mondays just to work on marketing and he spoke of the great success he had. In fact, he stated it worked so well that he decided to close for two days and then three days a week to work on marketing! Well, that idea stayed in the back of my mind. When we decided to close on Mondays, I just knew it was going to be one of the most successful ideas we implemented for 2010. So far, it has proven to be true!

Here are some things that have worked for us:

~Have confidence. We load our car with wall samples that we can put up immediately along with brochures, booklets, biz cards, etc. If the business is interested, we can go in and hang a couple of portraits right away.

~Ask two questions…”What can I do for you?” and “What can I do with you?” The first question is important because it allows us to service our partners better by knowing what we can do to help them. The second question allows us to join with them in their events or maybe even create an event together. We want these partnerships to be strong, healthy and lots of fun too!

~Take treats! There is no better way to show you care that to bring in a tray of cupcakes, brownies or cookies. We even get to know the children and then start taking them little bags of goodies just for them! Small thing…HUGE result!

~If you get rejected, always ask this question. “If I have another idea I think may work for you, may I come back and talk to you again?” That way, you always have your foot in the door and it removes the funny feeling of coming back again.

~Create gift cards just for them with their logo, your logo, their kid’s portraits done by you, etc. You have the access and ability to provide these and they don’t. Make this extra effort to help.

~Create a rotation calendar and make sure you change their samples often. Don’t get exhibits and then leave them hanging too long or forget to go back and replenish literature! That leaves a very bad impression!

Marketing Mondays…a great idea for us and hopefully for you too! Have a great week!

Bev

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Whittle your photography down to a recognizable style!

The narrower your focus, the broader your appeal. You need to be a specialist, not a jack of all trades. Decide what you do best and do it the absolute best you can and build your name (brand) in that area. If possible, be the first in your community to launch any new style, product and/or idea. When you are the first, you own that “real estate” in your client’s mind. No matter who copies or follows you, they will not be perceived as the original author which translates to “not as good!” A copy is never as good as an original.

When you are all things to all people, you become a “guppy” in the photography aquarium. Be the bright, yellow, odd-shaped fish so that people will notice you. They may not like you, but they will notice you and that is the key! It is more important that people know what you do than like what you do, and the people who like what you do will pay what you ask for it! And guess what? The people who don’t like what you do won’t bother you at all! That is a win-win situation!

Once you are established and well branded in your style and feel the need to expand, do so VERY carefully. After 15 years of doing Black and White Relationship portraiture in our area, we were super established, but felt the need to offer more color work and something a little more “journalistic” and interactive to catch the eye of the younger moms we were seeing, so we started Studio B. It is the associate-run division of our studio offering a completely different look so that it doesn’t compete with Walden’s at all. We even divided our studio space into Walden’s and Studio B and we have separate entrances into the building. Studio B galleries are in one area and Walden’s galleries in another. When you do this type of thing (expanding), keep everything as clean and simple as you can for the client so they are not confused. Everything is kept separate including product lines, pricing structures, the photographer, etc. This has been very successful for us and has allowed us to expand in an intelligent way rather than trying to be all things to all people without a plan. I have put the Studio B logo plus a few of the Studio B images from this year below for you to see. If you want to see how they compare to Walden’s or to see more Studio B work, you can visit our website at www.waldensphotography.com.

So, as we go into 2010, evaluate your photographic work and if you haven’t narrowed down what you do, start now. You need to go into this next year strong, with purpose, new vision and clarity. Figure out who you are photographically and go for it!

Happy New Year! Be Blessed!  Bev

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