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A creative business blog for PORTRAIT photographers

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Photography Business Strategy Blog

Find Marketing Issues By Looking at Your Client’s Journey To You
Do you understand the journey your clients took to find you?
Was it a 2 minute Google search?
Did they visit Yelp?
Read your Google
places page?
Dig into reviews?
Go through your galleries?
Find you on Facebook?
Did they hear about you
from a friend first and then go to your website?
Or did they see an ad you placed in a magazine or on television?
Hear about you from a charity effort?
Get a
direct mail piece from you in their mailbox?

3 Marketing Ideas To Avoid A Price War With Your Competitors
I hear a lot of small business owners (especially photographers) talking about how many competitors they have. As far as being a professional photographer, everyone who owns a nice digital camera is really capable of calling himself a professional. So it’s tempting to compete on price.

Business Marketing Stategies for Suriving a Disaster
This week, my flight to Dallas, Texas (of all places) was canceled due to weather. You know that when the southern states close their airports due to snow and ice, the rest of us are in trouble. When your city (let alone half of the country) shuts down due to weather, it effects small business owners worse than the rest of the world. Think about it. People aren’t leaving home, they aren’t driving so they aren’t buying gas or spending money shopping. I think about all of the restaurants who are losing money because of spoiled food costs.

Put More Effort on Fewer Marketing Ideas for Greater Return
Are you focusing your marketing efforts on too many marketing ideas at the wrong place and the wrong time? Research on how customers make buying decisions in the McKinsey Quarterly says you may be. If you’re a geek like me and want to read the whole study, it’s fascinating. If not, here’s what you need to know as a small business owner.

Small Business Strategies: The Bottom Line for Small Business Owners Every Day
As a small business owner there are a lot of small business strategies vying for your attention. Does this sound familiar? You read a blog or join a group or forum and see something someone recommends you SHOULD be doing in your business to be successful. Your mind starts racing. Suddenly there are 100 thoughts of what to do to make your business grow. You don’t know where to begin.

Attracting the Right Clients: They Said No. Now What?
When I was in graduate school my classmates and I were continuously interviewing for jobs with corporate recruiters that visited our campus. Nearly everyday we had to don the suit and heels to make that great first impression. It seemed the focus of the MBA program was landing the perfect corporate gig rather than learning the curriculum to make profitable business decisions.

Get some cool art and help with Brisbane Flood Relief!
I had a request from a good friend of mine in Australia, Marcus Bell, to see if we can spread the word about his fund raising efforts in Australia.
You may have seen the news footage of the significant flooding that occurred throughout Queensland Australia during late December 2010 and January 2011. Many lost their lives, many more lost their homes. Three quarters of the state was declared a disaster zone. This is an area roughly the size of Texas.

Help us change the world!
One of my favorite lines is from the movie Jerry McGuire. “Help me, help you.” Sports agent Jerry McGuire (Tom Cruise) is pleading to Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to accept help.

Marketing Ideas: Have a Successful Promotion (nearly) Every Time
As small business owners we only have so many hours in our days. We’re already stretched to thin. So when we come up with a great marketing idea for our small business, we run full force ahead, throwing everything we have into it. We don’t have time to assess the pros and cons or do a little informal market research to see if our idea has legs. We just cross our fingers that our great idea is a success and brings us new clients. But it’s inevitable that some of our great ideas won’t give us the results we had planned. So what do we do to make sure our next promotion is a success?
How to Become a Professional Photographer: The 3 Lenses You Need
Wondering how to become a professional photographer? If so, you might not be 100 percent sure which equipment you need. Your budget is tight, so you can’t just go out and buy everything. So where do you start? I talked to Tony Corbell about this subject, and he...
7 Myths About Becoming a Professional Photographer (and the Realities)
When thinking about becoming a professional photographer, it’s easy to have on the rose-colored glasses that make everything look easy and wonderful. But the reality of those false perceptions can actually destroy the chance of owning your own studio (and a successful...
From Hobby to Jobby: 3 Steps to Making Photography Your Full-Time Gig
Answer this: Would love to take your side gig doing photography to the next level and turn it into your full-time job? But maybe you can’t yet make that leap—for a variety of reasons. You’re not bringing in enough money from it to support yourself. You’re worried...


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