Advertising Your Photography Business

Advertising Your Photography Business

by William Lulow

I just had an interesting thing happen. I received a call from a company that wanted to do an interview of me for some kind of on-line radio station. The woman said they were looking for photographers to add to their stable of businesses they would feature from time to time. I agreed and a couple of weeks later, they actually called me to do a “recorded interview.” I answered their questions and all in all, it was a pleasant enough experience. I really had never heard their “broadcasts” but I did research them on line and, sure enough they had a nice website highlighting their “personalities” and what they did. Then, a few days after the interview, I received a phone call with the “pitch,” which I suspected was coming. They said that my interview went over so well (I scored a “favorability” of 9.4 on a 10 point scale). The woman said that most interviewees only scored around 7.4 on this scale. Okay. So much for all the “buttering up.” When they finally got down to the gist of it, this was an advertising campaign that, if I continued with it, would have cost me $2,500 PER MONTH! Now even for an experienced photographer like myself, that’s a lot to spend on advertising, period. Plus the fact that I had no idea where this interview went out to or what the demographics of their audience was. And they expected me to sign up for this.

I have to say that the only real results I have ever had direct evidence of was an ad I used to place in the old Yellow Pages. For quite a number of years I ran a very small display ad under “Portrait Photographers-NYC”. It used to cost me about $1,600 for the whole year. I tracked my results from this ad manually on a tally sheet and found that my annual income produced by this ad was in excess of $25,000. Now that’s what I call a good investment.

The moral of the story is that solo entrepreneurs have to be very careful when spending dollars on advertising. You have to have a really good idea who your audience is, what your target market is and what your basic “brand” is. I have found that direct mail advertising and other on-line mentions are the best form of advertising for photographers. And this includes normal “word-of-mouth” recommendations.

If you are a commercial photographer these days, it’s almost not enough to have a dynamic portfolio and a great, eye-catching website. Most people look for a photographer when they are in need of photographs. Sounds too simple. Right? But, if you want your business to thrive, you need to be available and findable exactly when someone is looking. Not only that, but not all potential customers do Google searches when they are looking for photographers. Sometimes they use Bing or Yahoo or whatever search engine with which they are already comfortable. Sometimes people look to “group websites’ like the various “City Moms” Facebook pages out there. Or they may just ask friends for recommendations. Whatever the source may be, that’s where you have to be as a photographer. When someone is looking, you need to be there. A number of years ago, I attended a Google-sponsored conference where the speaker talked about a “nano-search,” which is a search conducted on a smart phone while the person is waiting for something else. Searches are not always conducted on a computer. So, your website needs to look good in all formats.

Word of mouth is still the best source of leads for your business. So you have to have testimonials on your website. And, you have to have satisfied customers review your business on Google. Most sole proprietor business owners in photography have a business model that is something like a day rate (what the photographer charges for his or her time) plus whatever the expenses to produce the job would be. These days, since there is really no more film & processing, there are items like transportation, post-processing time (digital editing), stylists, assistants, location costs (scouting and permits) and models (talent). Perhaps there could be studio and equipment rental added to these things. Many photographers don’t actually maintain studios these days. (I closed my big studio in Manhattan way back in 1998, but I have full facilities in my home, including backgrounds, more than enough lighting as well as equipment for product shots.)

There are some portrait studios that have a model that establishes a reasonable shooting fee, but then makes up the difference in charging high prices for prints. These are usually portrait studios that rely on a high volume customer base. So the shooting fee really just pays for their photographers’ time while the profit is built into the print prices. Since I don’t use this model, I often use 8×10 prints as give-aways because my profit is built into the shooting fee. If larger prints are wanted, then I do charge extra for those.

So, photography is one of those services that people want when they need it. Many of my customers need head shots or portraits for their social media presence. Or a corporation needs special event coverage. (The wedding market is completely different and the business models usually include a shooting fee for time, second shooter or assistant fees with an album sold separately. A good wedding photographer might charge $5,000 and up for the fee, $500 for a second shooter and then another $2,000 to $2,500 for the album. The total bill for a wedding might be around $8,000 to $10,000 with some famous shooters able to command $25,000 and up for celebrity weddings.

There are different business models for almost every business. You have to use one that is convenient for you and the way you like to shoot and manage the rest of your business. But you need to treat the whole process as a “business.” It may be something you love to do, but you also have to learn how to run it properly if you intend to make a living from it. And advertising, if you do any at all, needs to be very direct and quantitative. You must be able to ascertain which jobs come directly from your ads and which by word of mouth, etc. Knowing how to spend advertising dollars is often difficult for a sole proprietor in the photography business.