If folks are looking for your studio online, chances are they are going to type in something generic like “photographer” and include a specific location. If you want your customers to find you online, it is important that you have your studio listed in every local directory you can find.

For example, I typed “photographer flint mi” into Google, and found that most local photographers don’t even bother to take the time to put their studios online. Looking for a photographer when you don’t know their name is like looking for a word in a dictionary when you don’t know how to spell it.

Below are 10 local directories you should check to make sure your studio information is listed and accurate:

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Kirk Russell has released a new marketing service called “PhotoZagging” that helps pro photographers energize their business and marketing plan.

According to Kirk, the PhotoZagging program offers specific branding, marketing and pricing tools that will set the pro apart from their competition. “It helps increase awareness for a photography business, makes it clear as to why people should pay premium prices, and makes them more attractive,” he says.

Or as Kirk puts it, “When everyone else is zigging, zag.”

JD Photo Imaging partnered with Kirk Russell because we believed that marketing was the #1 issue facing the professional photographer today. Kirk is an expert at marketing a pro photo studio, and we both agree on what it takes for a pro photographer to compete in today’s marketplace.

If your studio sales aren’t where you want them to be, you owe it to yourself to take a look at the PhotoZagging program.

I remember back in the day when film was still king. As a Kodak lab, we bought almost every one of Kodak’s latest products the moment they came out: film scanners, digital printers, CD recorders and digital cameras. These weren’t just Kodak-branded products. These were things Kodak engineers invented.

The CD recorder was brilliant. Although it was the size of a briefcase and cost several thousand dollars, it made a perfect CD recording every time. It was perfect for archiving digital images. Nothing else was like it.

So why doesn’t every PC in the world use a Kodak CD burner?

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Handling online customer complaints immediately pays off.

That was the conclusion of a recent Harris Survey, which found that responding to customer complaints posted online was more beneficial than ignoring them.

When customer complaints were immediately answered online and dealt with, here’s what the original complainer did:

• 33% turned around and posted a positive review
• 34% deleted their original negative review

For years, marketing companies have reported that up to 80% of potential customers research your business online before calling. This means that if someone complains about you online, potential customers will likely read it before they call. Unanswered online complaints will result in fewer customer calls, and will impact your bottom line.

How do you know if past customers are talking about you online? The easy solution is to set up a Google Alert to notify you if your studio name is mentioned on the Internet. Have the alert come to your inbox, and act on it immediately. Create several alerts for different variations on your name and your studio name.

Bottom line: respond to online complaints immediately. If you do, you have a 67% chance of turning them around. If you do nothing, you will have a negative comment online about your studio that will live forever.

A realtor friend of mine recently showed me a book entitled, Magnetic Real Estate Photography. I was less impressed by the contents of the book and more impressed by the idea. The author took a series of several “before and after” photographs, described them, and created a book she sold on Amazon.

Two things immediately struck me about the book:

1. 1. It was a soft cover photo book – just like the ones we make every day here at the lab.
2. 2. Every page had a few sentences, but the important part was the photography.

Which made me wonder, why couldn’t a professional photographer do the same thing?

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(c) Sam Sarkis

You’ve got the wedding party lined up with the bride and groom in the center, bride’s maids and groomsmen all in a row, and the lighting is perfect. You’re ready to take the shot when…Uncle Joe arrives.

Uncle Joe just got a brand-spanking new Nikon Coolpix with a pop up flash and he’s ready to start snapping pictures.

What do you do?

I listened to some veteran wedding photographers discuss this situation, and they had some great advice I thought was worth sharing with you.

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If you deal with customers, eventually you will have an unhappy one. You go through the normal steps common to all customer service issues: you listen without interruption, you empathize, you apologize, you take responsibility, and then you agree on a solution.

But after your customer leaves, you still have an unhappy customer.

The best customer service folks add another step to this formula that makes the difference between good and great service. They imagine the inconvenience the problem has caused the customer, and make sure that inconvenience is solved too.

Here’s an example.

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JD’s Design Service for wedding albums has been updated to $199 for any album up to 40 sides. Our in-house design service makes it even more affordable for you to outsource the entire process of creating a professional wedding album.

Here are some sample wedding album designs. Note that each design will be unique for each client.

If you would like to use the service, you can drop your images in the JD image drop box or send us a CD/DVD. Be sure to include your album choice and number of pages in the drop box instructions.

A rule of thumb is to send 3 images per side, plus an extra 10 images. For example, if you wanted a 20 page album you would send 40 sides x 3 = 120+10 = 130 images.

In 7 days or less, you will receive an email with a link for you or your customer to review the album. In the comments on the album pages, you can suggest changes or agree to the final design.

Our design service is available with the Diamond, Monaco and the new Summit album lines. Album cost is not included in the design price.

This was one of the first newsletter articles we published back in 2008. I believe it is still relevant today.

Recently I listened to an outstanding PPA online pricing seminar. As the pricing expert spoke, I imagined how my customers must feel listening to someone tell them that if you include labor, the real cost of a 8×10″ paper print to the photographer is $51 dollars.

As the expert explained labor costs, I thought about how so many photographers consider all the time they spend copying, sorting, color correcting, and uploading digital files as “free”, then consider the $1.80-$3.00 dollars paid to the lab as the most expensive part of the order. The expert argued that a photographer’s time is worth much more than an 8×10″ piece of paper.

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Why is branding important? When folks don’t know anything else about two similar products (like two 5×7″ prints) they will use price to decide between them. Without branding, the lowest price wins.

If you don’t want to compete on price, you have to compete on brand.

A brand is more than just a logo. BNET defines branding as:

“a means of distinguishing one firm’s products or services from another’s and of creating and maintaining an image that encourages confidence in the quality and performance of that firm’s products or services.”

Jon Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing offers an even simpler definition:

“Branding is the art of becoming knowable, likeable and trustable.”

It makes sense. All of us would rather do business with someone we know, like and trust – even if it costs a few dollars more. That is how you want your customers to feel too.

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