Marketing for photographers
It takes more than a strong online portfolio to survive and thrive in today's world
The Internet is filled with great online photographic portfolios.
And, that's part of the problem! Regardless whether you're a commercial or a fine-arts photographer, your competition is only a click away.
To succeed these days, you need more than just an attractive, well-designed online portfolio, coupled with search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads.
What you need is a comprehensive website strategy aimed at building lasting relationships with visitors, current prospects, and past clients (or collectors).
A relationship-oriented website strategy is necessary because only a few website visitors are ready to buy right now. Your website needs to cultivate relationships that must be sustained until your website visitors are ready to buy.
The Profit Wheel displays the five different relationships individuals may have with you. The stages are:
- Awareness refers to first-time website visitors gathering information.
- Comparison is where serious prospects compare you to your competition.
- Transaction is the stage just prior to making a purchase decision.
- Reinforcement follows transaction. It's the point where repeat sales originate.
- Advocacy is the result of reinforcement; it's the stage where referrals originate.
- Referrals, of course, create new Awareness prospects-and the cycle begins again!
Success requires incentives, education, and consistent follow-up.
The Internet makes it possible to use email to keep it touch with website visitors, active prospects, and previous clients.
However, before sending e-mail, you must first obtain the recipient's permission.
The easiest way is to offer website visitors an educational incentive in exchange for their e-mail address and permission to
recontact them.
Your incentive must offer high perceived value. It must be do more than simply describe your background and qualifications. Your messages must benefit the recipient by concisely communicating appropriate, helpful, and useful information.
Education creates a "halo" effect around every product and service you offer. It reduces your exposure to price competition.
Education expands your market by building enthusiasm for new products and services, while reducing fears of making an expensive buying mistake.
Your follow-up must be consistent. Website visitors, prospects, and previous clients have short memories. If your message is not visible when prospects or previous website visitors are ready to buy, you may lose the sale!
Internet options are constantly expanding, as blogs grow in effectiveness and new options, like Squidoo appear.
But, websites and e-mail are not enough.
Your marketing strategy should also include offline media like postcards. Postcards offer great "surprise" value when they arrive in the mail. They can often get through when email can't, due to stuffed in-boxes and changed e-mail addresses.
To learn more creating an effective Internet strategy that goes beyond a simple portfolio website, visit my website and sign up for future issues of this newsletter.
You can also download numerous additional topics, dealing with proposals, newsletter marketing, newsletter design, testimonials, and tip sheets.
You can also download two free chapters of my latest book, Design to Sell.
If you agree that an effective Internet strategy requires more than a portfolio website, call me at 603-742-9673, or email me at roger@designtosellonline.com.
I offer a variety of e-books, including a Content Catalyst that contains over 400 ideas for articles, blog posts, newsletters, presentations, speeches, and web features and an innovative Planning Catalyst.
I also offer coaching, consulting, and planning services, customized templates, teleseminars, webinars, and interactive website critiques for you and your staff.
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