Photography Marketing: How To Fascinate Your Clients

Photography marketing, and especially the idea of branding ourselves as passionate and trusted professional photographers, is something that sits at the very core of what we are. For example, in order for us to communicate anything meaningful about why we’re photographers in the first place, or why anyone should hire us, instead of the photographer down the street, we must first know who we are, and how to relate to the clients we’re meant to serve.

I happened to be thinking about the subject of branding and photography marketing this morning as a topic for today’s article when I serendipitously came across a very interesting and illuminating video interview with Sally Hogshead by Bryan Elliot on Mashable.

After watching the interview, in which Sally talks about the 7 most important personality triggers, I found myself fascinated by the idea of how these triggers might relate to those of us engaged in the business of being creative.

Take a look and share know your thoughts on this fascinating subject…

Sally Hogshead Talks About Fascination In Marketing

Sally is the author the book “Fascinate“, in which she talks in detail about the 7 triggers mentioned in the video:

• Passion
• Rebellion
• Power
• Trust
• Prestige
• Mystique
• Alarm

By the way, did you stop the video in the middle (like I did) and go take the “F Score Test“? If you took the test, how did you feel about the results? Did the answers surprise you or confirm what you already knew?

Fascination In Photography Marketing

As Sally mentions in the video, traditional marketing ideas rely heavily on the idea of manipulating the way people think and feel in order to get them to take a specific course of action – buy our product, download a report, fill out a form, etc. Sometime, those tactics and strategies work, but they can often miss the mark.

Better still is to know what it is about ourselves that make us who we are, and then to exploit those strengths to present ourselves in a more authentic and genuine way.

With that approach, we are far more likely to resonate more strongly with the type of people who are already naturally attracted to who we are and what we stand for or believe in.

Take Apple, for example. This is a company that has traditionally appealed to those who desire to challenge the status quo, or who want to stand out from the crowd by making a statement of some kind. Given that the company is practically the literal embodiment of Steve Jobs’ personality, it stands to reason that his dominant traits were likely to be “rebellion” and “passion“, with a good dose of “power“. Whether or not he was aware of those factors, he certainly employed them to great effect in everything he did.

However, I do think we need to tread carefully when applying some of these ideas, as it would be easy for someone clever and manipulative enough to use them as marketing weapons and really mess with people’s minds through their marketing or personal interactions. Imagine Dr. Evil combined with Seth Godin, for instance, and you get the idea.

How Do You Fascinate?

So how can you apply these ideas to your own photography business? By starting out knowing who you are, and combining that with a clear understanding of what motivates your target market, I think we can see how powerful some of these concepts can be, and I’ll be interested to know how these feed into your own strategies and tactics.

Since it would be unfair of me to ask you to share yours without me sharing mine with you, my test came back with a primary trigger of “prestige” and a secondary one of “mystique“, but I think I’ll leave it up to those who know me to decide if those are an accurate representation of who I am.

So how about you? I think it would be fun to see what the results for photographers are, so don’t be shy – share your thoughts below if you dare.

Will we see a lot of “passion” and “prestige” or something else entirely? Remember, though, there is no such thing as right or wrong here, and no combination of triggers is necessarily any better than another. Like everyone, they are each unique and valuable in their own right.

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Sales & Marketing branding, photography business, photography marketing, professional photography