advertising

Telling not selling

Most photographers don’t want to be a salesperson selling photography. Many hate to advertise or promote themselves. Most don’t want to call attention to themselves by yelling, “Hire me!”

Photographers generally just want to go out, make some nice pictures and then have a cheque magically arrive in the mail. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You must show loud confidence in your business. If you’re not confident about you then the customer won’t be confident about you.

In the previous post, I wrote about advertising, marketing and being remarkable. In that post, it was suggested that advertising isn’t always the best option when marketing a business. But other forms of marketing are possible and even required.

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Remarkable Marketing

Andy Sernovitz, a marketing guy, wrote:

Advertising is the cost of being boring.

If your customers won’t talk about your stuff, you have to pay newspapers and TV shows to do it for you.

Robert Stephens,  founder of the Geek Squad, made a similar statement:

… advertising is a tax you pay for being unremarkable.

Have you ever seen an ad for Google or Facebook? When was the last time you saw a Starbucks TV commercial? How often does a pro sports league like the NBA advertise its product?
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Best public relations photography

Public relations photography, or PR photography, is about producing editorial photography that puts the client in a favourable light and increases their name recognition.

PR photography must be editorial in nature simply because that’s the style demanded by publications which use public relations photography. Newspapers, magazines, trade magazines, news websites and other publishers of PR photography use only editorial photography and not, for example, advertising photography because it directly impacts the publication’s credibility.

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Why you should avoid cheap pictures

In case you missed the memo: it’s a waste of your time and money for your business to use cheap stock photos. A company that chooses cheap pictures is fooling no one but themselves. Cheap photography can harm both your business image and your bottom line, (which means “cheap” actually costs too much).

Here’s some proof pudding:

A study using eye-tracking technology was released yesterday by Jakob Nielsen, titled “Photos as Web Content”. Important points to note:

• Bland stock images on web sites are completely ignored by users.

• Feel-good images that are purely decorative are mostly ignored.

• Stock photos of generic people are intentionally disregarded.

• Photos of real people, (as opposed to stock pictures of models), are viewed as important information.

• Pictures of key people at a business are very important. Business portraits are always a win for the company.

Conclusion of the study: “Invest in good photo shoots: a great photographer can add a fortune to your Web site’s business value.”

Do your business a favour and call your local corporate or commercial photographer today. A professional photographer is worth much more than what they cost.

 

Photos key to online sales

Today’s Toronto Star newspaper did a business story about local artisans who sell their products to a worldwide audience using only a web site. The newspaper’s (print) headline included “Photos key to online selling.” Some of the business owners pointed out that, “having excellent photographs helps…” and “you can’t sell without a decent picture.”

We knew that, right?

So why do so many businesses, both large and small, fail when it comes to website photography?
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Effectiveness of Adwords for photographers

Advertising either works or it doesn’t, there’s no middle ground. If an ad is going to work, it will work right away. To know whether an ad is working, it must be measurable. If results can’t be measured then the ad is a waste of time and money.

I’ve been using Google Adwords for just over three months and I was planning to use it for at least one year.

Quantity of Results

After three months of using Google Adwords:

• My ads have been served up about 2,300 times per month.

• The click-through rate is about 1% (21 to 25 clicks per month).

• Number of enquiries is 10% of the click-throughs (about 2 or 3 per month).

• Number of paying jobs is 0.

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Paid Placements

When photography is licensed for editorial use, public relations or certain other uses, there will often be a licensing clause that states that the picture(s) may not be used for “paid placements”. A few folks have asked what this means.

“Paid placement” is simply any use that requires the company to pay a fee to have the photo(s) published. Paid placement includes, but is not limited to, advertising.

One could argue that all business communication is a form of advertising but here are three general types of photography usage:
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