Because we're in an industry as professional photographers that doesn't require a lot of money investment to start this business, anyone can call themselves a professional photographer. But that doesn't mean they're making money at it. From starting my career at Coca-Cola and working as a marketing director for years at an advertising agency, people can sniff out your branding faux pas fast. If you're making these branding disconnects that I'm about to share, you're probably making way less money than you could be.
- Using an email address at gmail/hotmail/yahoo is devaluing you
The first thing I think when I see someone's email at a free generic service like Gmail or Yahoo, is that this is a person who grabbed a free email and likely printed some business cards, and bam, "I'm in business." But I know that they're new, guessing and they don't have a mentor or a system to follow or they wouldn't be doing that. I also know that they're underpricing.
As entrepreneurs, we have to make sure that because we're basically service marketers as photographers and people don't see our products, the ones they're buying until after they have hired us, we have to make sure upfront that our branding is better from the get-go. Instead of that free email, I want you to get an email at your domain. Even if you don't have a website, you've got to have a domain that matches your business name.
- Using multiple versions of your logo or name
I learned that people don't know better than this when I was at the advertising agency. Clients who hire an advertising agency have to have marketing budgets over, back when I was there, it was over $100,000. So if you're paying all this money for ads and you don't have a budget to run the ads, it's counterproductive. Most of our clients were not new businesses and still, when they came to us, the first thing we would do is scrub through their branding. It's crazy how when we laid out all of their marketing and promotional pieces, how many versions of their logo they would use. So many things were disconnected.
They were working really hard at their business, harder really than they needed to because they were having all these disconnects with people not recognizing them or being confused. Once we fixed the broken parts of their brand, it was amazing how fast we could get them even better results just because we made everything look cohesive and professional. Your brand comes from your identity. Your identity is what your business looks like. That's your logo, your colors, and so on. Your brand is how people feel about you. You can't build a strong brand on a weak identity. Don’t let disconnects devalue what you do and hurt your business.
- Trying to automate everything
When you are a high-touch business, and when I say high-touch, I don't mean working day and night, I just mean holding people's hands because we're competing against cheap, we have to be better. We have to explain every part of the process so they understand because what we do is so different from the digital file photographers. When you're using a booking calendar or an email reply sequence trying to automate all this fancy stuff, you're making it very impersonal and hard for people. When you're a boutique, you are your brand. People need to get to know you. So I encourage you to stop hiding and adding things to their to-do list with automation.
If you want to be a professional photographer and you want to succeed, meaning making money and having time in your life to put your family first, you've got to make the decision to value relationships over transactions. To build relationships, people must know, like, and trust you.
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