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web site and brochures, or using pretty delivery boxes won’t attract people who find most of today’s portrait studios outdated, unresponsive, and over-priced.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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A decade ago, getting your name and phone number in front of customers was simple. You put one ad in the yellow pages and one in the local newspaper.

Those days are over.

Today, over 80% of your customers will look for you online before they call. In order to make sure they can find you, below is a checklist of places your business needs to be registered so customers can find you online.

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I worked part-time at a drug store when I was in high school. Their wasn’t anything great about the store: they didn’t have great prices, and they didn’t have a great selection.

However, what they did have was 100% US Grade-A milk for 99 cents a gallon. Even then, that was a deal. I spent half of my senior year emptying and re-stacking milk crates so that the giant walk-in coolers in the back of the store were always full of fresh milk.

What does milk have to do with a drug store? Nothing. The milk was a loss-leader.

You’ve seen them before. Supermarkets put something on sale in the back of the store so you have to walk past everything else to get to it. In exchange for the great price, you put up with the inconvenience.

Marketing pros know that once you’re in the store, you’re likely to buy a few other items at full price. Nobody likes to waste time, and since you’ve already got a deal on the loss-leader, it won’t hurt to pick up a few other things. Sound familiar?

How could this work for your studio?

• If you’re a portrait photographer, offer a low-cost sitting fee.
• If you’re a wedding photographer, offer a low-cost starter package.
• If you’re shooting churches, offer a low-cost 8×10 print.

I don’t recommend this marketing strategy to everyone. Cutting prices - if not done carefully and strategically - can lead to lowering the value of your service in the mind of your customers. And some customers will frustrate you when they buy the loss-leader - and nothing else.

However, if you need to quickly generate some traffic into your studio, offering a loss-leader is a tested marketing strategy that really works.

Michael Zang at PetaPixel wrote an article entitled Build Your Photo Business with Nickels. In it he says:

Here’s an idea for those of you who are looking for photography clients of any kind: Offer portraits and other kinds of photographs at your local farmers market for a nickel.

In the above video by Michael Hanson for the NYTimes, architect John Morefield describes how he offers architecture advice at his local farmers market for a nickel. While a whole day of doing this might net less than a dollar, Hanson found 100% of his work for a year using this creative way to connect with potential clients.

Photographers might be able to do the same thing. Why not set up a booth in your local farmers market and offer portraits or photography help/advice for 5 cents? You could take down email addresses, pass out business cards, and later email photographs to your nickel “clients”. If 5 cents would create too much work in terms of emailing photographs, you could increase the price or tweak the strategy to your liking.

This could be an absolutely phenomenal way to build your email list. The trick isn’t to take high-res photos, but to take reasonably nice low res ones people could use on their Facebook site. It would give you an opportunity to show the difference between amateur and professional photography, and it would give you a chance to generate some buzz with a press release to the local media.

Here’s a similar example, TopShop, the hottest new clothing store in New York City this year, has a photographer on staff. When a customer buys an outfit, the photographer takes their photo and emails it to them to use on Facebook!

What do you think about the idea? Is it a waste of your time, or is it the ultimate low cost, word-of-mouth marketing strategy?

With the tight economy many professional photographers I talk to are still pessimistic about sales.

They shouldn’t be.

As I walk through the lab today, I see more image-based products than ever before: press-printed photo books, photo merchandise, calendars, giant peel-and-stick vinyl wall prints, photographic wallpaper, metallic prints, dry erase boards, and gallery-wrap prints compete for floor space with standard 8×10 photographs.

Never has the professional photographer had a more creative and varied product line to offer to their customers. This is a great time to be in the photographic business.

Imagine you owned a clothing store. You don’t have any inventory, just sample photographs. A customer walks in and spots a photo of a jacket they love, but they need a different size and a darker shade of blue. With a snap of your fingers, the jacket is re-sized and the colors matched.

Why couldn’t you make every sale? In fact, I believe you’d have the most successful clothing store in the mall.

In the same way, once you have captured a great image, any product your customers can dream of can be made, limited only by their (and your) imagination. For example, using Lucis and Nik software, I’ve seen photographers create incredible works of art that would not have even been possible a few short years ago.

You can be pessimistic about the economy, or you can be enthusiastic about your profession. The choice is yours, but I guarantee it will show up in your bottom line.

Great article over at Entrepreneur Magazine by Gwen Moran that has several specific tips for marketing on a budget.

• Get Profiled - using social networking. Do you have a Facebook page or Twitter account?
• Make Yourself a Star - with a podcast or videocast. Do you have videos online that walk your potential customers through your services? How about a YouTube video of an event you photographed?
• Pluck from the headlines - my favorite is the studio who blew up life-sized cardboard cutouts of US soldiers in Iraq to give as presents to their children. Called a “Flat Daddy“, the story made them instant heros nationwide.
• Go for the Demo - The next time you’re at a show, take portraits of people in the aisles, then get their e-mail address and offer to send them the digital file. Have someone take a video of the process for your website and as a Youtube video to put on your Facebook account (for extra credit, Twitter before the show that you are offering portraits).
• Find businesses in your backyard - For example, offer everyone in a local office building a professional business portrait for a special price. Medium and large-sized companies like to tell their employees they have negotiated a special offer just for them.

Their are lots more examples. Check them out!

During tough economic times, it’s easy to get discouraged by poor sales. Below is the list of specific things you can do starting today that will give your business the boost it needs to survive:

Don’t Stop Marketing

It is too easy to cut back on marketing expenses when times are tough. If you are like many small businesses, your marketing budget is 3-5% of sales. As sales goes down, your first instinct is to cut costs, and marketing gets the axe.

Instead of cutting your marketing, you should focus it using these proven techniques. Use the checklist below to see if you are doing all you can to market more effectively:

1. E-mail newsletter (at least monthly)?
2. Reduced shotgun marketing - ads focused on existing customers?
3. Collected testimonials and used on website / in e-mail newsletters?
4. Collected 2-3 referrals from every customer?
5. Mingle with potential customers and hand out business cards at least 2x per week?
6. All non-essential tasks outsourced?
7. At least one viral marketing campaign currently in process?
8. Trading photography for goods and services?
9. Can explain your value proposition in one sentence, and list it in every ad?
10. Next sale planned to include additional services instead of lowered prices?

If you aren’t doing most or all of these 10 marketing ideas, you aren’t serious about growing your business.

In the end, the final question is “does all this work?” The answer is YES.

Experience shows that businesses who continue to market during downturns not only stay in business, but are much better positioned to grow when the economy finally turns around.

During tough economic times, it’s easy to get discouraged by poor sales. Below is the tenth specific thing you can do starting today that will give your business the boost it needs to survive:

Click here if you missed part 1 , part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, or part 9

Don’t cut your fees – add services

When times are tough it is tempting to put your products and services on sale to attract new customers. While a sale can be an effective tool, it doesn’t mean you have to lower your prices:

• If you offer five poses as part of your senior special, make it ten
• If you offer four hours with a bride, increase it to six
• Include a “trashed dress” photo shoot at no charge

One of the easiest ways to increase your value proposition is to offer more services at the same price your competition charges. Your dollars per hour average may go down, but you’ll be spending the time making money and developing a happy customer, which should lead to larger sales, testimonials, referrals and more profits.

During tough economic times, it’s easy to get discouraged by poor sales. Below is the ninth of ten specific things you can do starting today that will give your business the boost it needs to survive:

Click here if you missed part 1 , part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, or part 8

Know your Value Proposition

Your “value proposition” is the combination of price, quality and service you offer. As a business owner, you know the old joke “fast, good, cheap - pick any two” has some truth in it. The local hamburger joint is fast and cheap (their value proposition) whereas the gourmet food store offers quality and service, but at a premium price.

What does this mean for your studio?

In a down economy, customers who normally tend to buy on speed or quality will think more about price. This means that even though your value proposition was “high quality/service” last year, that will not be enough today.

However, re-thinking your value proposition does not mean “lower your prices.” Instead, be sure your marketing message raises the value you bring to customers. For example, instead of offering a discount, find out what is important to your customers, and make that the focus of your marketing. See this article for more examples.

Not sure what your value proposition is? Look at your business through your customers’ eyes. This is tough for most of us to accurately gauge, so you may need to ask someone who is brutally honest with you.

During tough economic times, it’s easy to get discouraged by poor sales. Below is the eighth of ten specific things you can do starting today that will give your business the boost it needs to survive:

Click here if you missed part 1 , part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, or part 7

Trade photography for services you need

Of all the services used by small businesses, good photography is the easiest to ignore – and most needed.

Every small business you walk into today needs a good photographer for their own marketing, advertising, business cards, etc. Does every local business you frequent have one of your cards? Do they know you are willing to take your services out in trade?

For example, offer to take photographs for your lawn service in exchange for free lawn care. Trading out services was common during the depression – it will be popular again. Make sure you are the first photographer they talk to.