marketing

Everyone Or Just Someone

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Everyone who goes to a grocery store will buy something. Food is a necessity and everyone needs food today.

Everyone who goes to a photographer’s web site will *not* hire that photographer. Photography isn’t a necessity and everyone doesn’t need photography today.

Everyone is not your photography customer.

Everyone doesn’t want you. Everyone won’t pay your rates. Your photography isn’t good enough for everyone.

But someone is your photography customer.

Someone understands what you do. Someone will gladly pay your rates. Your photography is perfect for someone.

Who is your someone?

 

Job One for a Photographer

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Running your photo business is a bit like being a photographer in a canoe. You have to stay afloat, keep things balanced, paddle forward, don’t run aground or hit any rocks, and, along the way, make nice photos. Otherwise you might be up a creek without a paddle. (US Library of Congress)

Job priorities for running your photo business:

1. You’re a photographer.

No that’s wrong.

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Supply, Need, and Demand for Photography

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Marijuana plants grow at a licensed Canadian producer of cannabis for medicinal use, 21 June 2018. Recreational use of marijuana became legal across Canada in October 2018.

When Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, everyone in the industry was expecting a windfall. But that expectation soon faded.

More than three years after the federal government legalized cannabis, there are more than 870 licensed cultivators, processors and sellers in Canada. But despite piqued interest following legalization, high supply and low demand have led to billions of dollars in writedowns and millions of grams of unsold marijuana.
(. . .)
Ontario has seen, in particular, a very large increase in the number of retail stores over the last 24 months, and because of that, the overall (market share) each store on average is able to get continues to decline . . .

– Toronto Star, July 2022

There are 425 cannabis stores and 421 Tim Hortons across Toronto.

– Toronto Star, September 2022

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Marketing Fools

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Toronto’s first cannabis store opened this week on April Fools’ Day and it pulled a prank on everyone including itself.

The store’s very first customer was fake. A pretend customer. Someone who works for the store as its publicist.

When found out, their excuse was that they wanted to make sure its first sale, which was being recorded by the city’s news media, didn’t have any “issues.”

Every other cannabis store in the country, since last October, has managed to open and sell to their real first customers without any “issues.”

This Toronto store is now getting publicity for all the wrong reasons:

It may have violated Canadian advertising standards:
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Stop Being A Freelancer

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Photographers, stop calling yourself a freelance photographer. “Freelance” suggests temporary and, perhaps in the worst case, even fly-by-night.

Always refer to yourself as a professional photographer. It creates a much better image in a customer’s mind. For better or worse, titles are important in business.

So while “freelancer” may be more akin to how you see what you do, it might be selling you short. After all, your livelihood doesn’t depend on your own self-perception, but on how potential clients see you and your work.

– Suzan Bond

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Are your customers wide and flat or narrow and deep?

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If you chase every type of customer, you can end up not knowing which way to turn. Wedding customers, family portrait customers, high-school seniors, social event organizers, business headshots, real estate customers, retail web sites, consumer publications, corporate customers, commercial customers, academic institutions, etc. Who gets your attention? Everyone?

Of course you want as many customers as possible but do you want your customers to be wide and flat or narrow and deep?

Having a wide and flat customer base means that you do many different types of photography to appeal to anyone and everyone. This type of customer tends to make only occasional or relatively small purchases.

A narrow and deep customer base means that you do certain types of photography that appeal to a specific type of customer. Customers in this category tend to make more frequent or higher-priced purchases.
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