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Rangefinder Magazine
July 2003

Building Your Business: by Skip Cohen

Welcome to “Building Your Business,” a new Rangefinder feature designed to help you with ideas to build your business and your reputation in the community. Regularly, we’ll bring you projects covering a variety of aspects to help build a successful photography business in the portrait and wedding sector. And we want to help you fine-tune your marketing skills.

Building Your Reputation
Building a good reputation in your community is a never-ending project. Besides being service-oriented and developing a business known for its integrity, you have to work hard to get the word out. Survey data shows you have to hit a consumer between five and eight times for them to remember who you are. Your whole challenge is to have top of mind awareness the minute a potential client thinks about photography. Here are a few suggestions:

Get involved in at least one community activity. Think about everything from service organizations to working with the local PTA. Any kind of volunteer work is going to help spread the word you’re more than just another photographer in the area. Remember, people like buying products from companies they feel give something back to the community! If you want your community to be good to you, then start being good to your community.

Remember, publicity doesn’t happen by accident. There’s nothing wrong with grabbing a shot of yourself while working that Lion’s Club fundraiser. Or, how about the program you did about photography on career day at the local high school? Once you’ve got a few images from different events, send out at least one press release to the local paper each month for 3–4 months and then back off to every other month. In the press release, mention the event and who’s in the photograph. Then close with a consistent tag line that simply tells who you are, your specialty, etc. Here’s an example:

“ Mary Smith has been a professional photographer for 10 years and specializes in wedding and event photography here in Our Town.”

Project of the Month
Think back to the last trip you made to the doctor’s office. Now, what was on the walls in the waiting room? If your doctor is like thousands across the country, the best pictures you saw were travel posters or original art knock-offs from a poster shop or frame store. I’m convinced most members of the medical profession spend less than $100 to decorate their waiting rooms. So, how about putting some of your photography on the walls?

Let’s look at a pediatrician’s office. The majority of adults in any waiting room are moms. Rarely does dad take the kids to the doctor. Who makes most of the purchase decisions regarding professional family portraiture? Once again, it’s mom. Now, here’s a tough question, who’s totally frustrated with a sick child and really doesn’t want to read a travel magazine that’s 10 months out of date, let alone Popular Mechanics (a waiting room standard)? You got it, it’s mom once again.

How about suggesting to your doctor a free waiting-room makeover featuring original photography? If you don’t already have a few framed prints you might use, go ahead and spend a few bucks with your lab and frame company. It’ll be money well spent.

You’re going to redecorate Doc’s office at no charge and all you want is to be allowed to leave a stack of business cards on the magazine table in the corner. It’s a no-brainer. Every day you’ll be delivering a subliminal message to mom, who typically has nothing to do but stare at the walls, while little Tommy worries about whether or not he’s going to get a shot on this visit.

And, if you’re really creative, offer a little photojournalism for the office. How about doing a three-print series of a kid getting an X-ray? X-rays are part of a child’s unknown fear list. It’s a scary procedure for a six-year old who’s never had one before. A three-print series showing first-hand the painless procedure might be a great office addition.

The bottom line is you need to get yourself known beyond just the phone book. Think about the truly great photographers we respect. Half their reputation comes from creating outstanding images, but without their marketing skills we wouldn’t know their names. Knowing how to create a great image only gets half the job done. Making sure people know you can create a great image is the other half!

Skip Cohen is the president and COO of Rangefinder Publishing Company.