Wednesday, February 20, approximately 50 professional photographers had the opportunity to meet at JD’s training room and listen to Kirk Russell as he gave an in-depth class on marketing.

Kirk talked about how every good marketing campaign should begin with a story. He gave examples by putting up images on the big screen, and asking photographers to suggest titles or headlines for the images. Once the best was chosen, participants learned how the images and text could be combined as the center of a marketing campaign.

The audience was enthusiastic about the class, forgoing the afternoon break in order to get more examples in before the 3pm ending.

by Kirk Russell, 3Lenses.com

Business owners and non-profit organizations all know that between now and the end of the year, people will be at the peak of their buying, and giving cycles. If you’re going to make the most of this year, and build momentum going into the first quarter of next year, YOU MUST ACT NOW!

People are notoriously fickle and what they remember buying one day may be different than what they remember buying the next. If you want to build sales momentum from month-to-month, and year-to-year, you must keep your message in front of your past and potential clients every month, and don’t stop! (more…)

Listening to Kirk Russell’s webinar last Monday was the best hour I spent all week. He gave specific examples professional photographers could use to build their business. Unfortunately, as I reviewed my notes later, it was clear to me that I’m not as good at explaining his examples as he is.

Here are the notes anyway. If any of these ideas make you want to learn more, you’ll have to ask Kirk yourself.

1. Dollars-per-session x number-of-clients x repeat-business equals income. If I can raise all 3 by 25%, income doubles.This is an achievable goal.

2. What is my USP – unique selling proposition?

3. Selling a product doesn’t work anymore…build a brand.

4. Instead of showing images online from past sessions, why not show cool products you sell?

5. If you offer a product, show it. The web is your first sale.

6. Don’t set prices in January, then discount all year. Stop it. And stop hiding prices too.

by Kirk Russell, 3lenses.com

It’s likely you’ve taken risks with a new promotion, or new pricing structure, and for whatever reason, it failed (at least in the short-term) to produce the sales or response rate you wanted. But a bad month, or even a bad year, can actually be a “Good Failure.”

Today, with our industry in transformation, a “good failure” can be much better than a “weak success”. A weak success is realized when you do the same thing(s) as before, and the result is a small increase in sales.

A good failure is the result of trying a new thing, with the potential to attract new clients, but it fails because it was ahead of its time, or a little too “out there”.

When you only try things that are sure to succeed, you’re only imitating something that’s already being done by most of your competitors. If you want to be more appealing to clients, you must be innovative, and be willing to accept the potential of failure. I believe that if you’re not failing more often than you’re succeeding, you’re not innovating. And if you’re not innovating, long-term failure is inevitable.

I encourage photographers to push themselves, and their clients beyond their comfort zones, because complacency, and a failure to innovate, will result in the loss of clients to more aggressive competitors.

If your photography, products, and services aren’t new, they will become less and less appealing.

by Kirk Russell, 3Lenses.com

I often hear from financially struggling photographers who, when asked to explain a loss of business, offer: “It’s so easy for new people to get into the business today. And they don’t have to be good photographers, because they can rely on Photoshop to fix their images.” Is this really IT?

But what about…

• The cost of equipment, props, and backgrounds is so much less than it used to be. Really? Is future success dependant on keeping the cost of entry into the industry too high for others?

• “Soccer moms” entering the industry can afford to spend hours, or days, manipulating images before their clients see them. Really? How long could you stay in business doing that?

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by Kirk Russell, 3lenses.com

Imagine the following: You’ve just created the perfect website. But as with many studios’ sites, at the end of the quarter, sales haven’t increased.

What happened? You created a beautiful site. It has galleries that feature your best images. Your web address is featured on all your marketing materials. You hire a company to register your web address with all the search engines, and to make sure your site will rank high enough to appear on the first page, if not the first one or two results of a search. And you get hits, a trickle at first, and then hundreds. You feel great. Your new marketing effort is a huge success!

It’s easy to explain. You got people interested in your photography, and then left them on their own to figure out how to buy it.

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Kirk Russell, 3Lenses.com

The photographic industry is in the midst of a serious growth crisis. Even before the housing crisis, recession, and market crash, studios were booking fewer appointments, and clients seemed to be more price-sensitive.

Old-school solutions such as advertising more promotions or new flavor-of-the-month fads such as displaying images on boutique, graphic-enhanced web site and brochures, or using pretty delivery boxes won’t attract people who find most of today’s portrait studios outdated, unresponsive, and over-priced.

There is a parallel between today’s photo industry and the current housing market and auto industry. Luckily, we can learn from them and consequently avoid a similar fate.

Here’s the comparisons:

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