For some reason, I’ve noticed a lot of recent talk in the professional photography arena on the subject of re-branding – literally throwing out an existing business and starting over. This is a pretty radical step for anyone to take, and I thought it might be worth examining further.

Business re-branding can be extremely difficult and potentially damaging if done incorrectly or in haste, so it’s worth taking some time to consider some of the implications before going ahead and making sweeping changes, some of which may turn out to be unnecessary or even unwise!

What Is Re-Branding?

In the context of this article, I use the term “re-branding” to mean the act of significantly changing or reinventing one’s personal brand or business identity. We’re all familiar with the idea of reinventing ourselves from time to time, so re-branding applies a similar principle to a business instead of just to an individual.

Motivation For Re-Branding

One of the first questions to pop into my head when I encountered this idea was, simply, “Why?” This is, after all, a major change that, at the very least, can involve most of the following attributes…

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Photography Business Ideas branding, photography business, professional photography, re-branding

Do you know what your clients and prospects are saying about you? How about your competitors? Are you aware of how your brand is perceived outside your studio walls?

Your photography business is a brand, whether or not you’ve consciously decided to brand yourself. In fact, as photographers, most of us are our own brand. Branding as we used to know it used to be something that larger corporations would engage in, and was mostly fuelled by advertising – TV, radio, newspapers, magazines etc. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Calvin Klein, Levi and the rest were all major players in their respective industries, with their branding determined mostly by their powerful advertising.

Not any more.

The onslaught of social media has changed all that forever. Interruptive advertising (radio, TV, newspapers and magazines) has declined sharply in both reach and effectiveness, replaced instead by a more permission-based form of marketing through social media and peer-to-peer recommendation. It has become harder for companies to market to us directly, but easier for people to adopt the role of brand evangelists.

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Sales & Marketing branding, facebook, google alerts, photography marketing, social media, social oomph

I came across something the other day that truly changed what I believed about how the business world works.

It also answered a lot of questions that had been buzzing about in my head about why some companies are successful and others are not so successful. Why is it that some businesses enjoy far more success with the same resources and time as their competitors? Why do some brands enjoy loyalty to the point of fanaticism?

Check out this video of Simon Sinek, the author of “Start With Why” to find out the [simple] answer…

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Personal Zen branding, marketing, studio branding

Post Highlights: 

• It’s not enough just to be in business as a photographer
• Marketing is essential to being noticed and building your brand
• Local-based marketing efforts need not be expensive (many of them are FREE!)

I was glancing through the stream of tweets from various photographers yesterday and one in particular caught my eye, and subsequently became the inspiration for this post. The tweet simply said something like, “Sitting here by the phone waiting for a client to call. Perhaps my phone is broken.” This got me thinking about one of the biggest mistakes professional photographers make when trying to build their business…

Kevin Costner was a lucky man, or at least his character Ray Kinsella was in the movie “Field of Dreams”, armed as he was with the now famous mantra, “Build it, and they will come.”

Sadly, the fictional world and the real world are very different things and the concept of building something that will inherently attract its target market like iron filings to a magnet really only applies in one of those worlds. I think we know which one that is.

It’s not the one we live in.

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Sales & Marketing branding, marketing, professional photography

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog the other morning, as I often do, and was particularly struck by that day’s post entitled “Thanks for leading”.

He talked about how being a leader means to live and work outside of one’s comfort zone, that leadership means dealing with things that are not easy; otherwise, everyone would be doing the same thing. One statement in particular stuck with me, quoted below:

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.

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Personal Zen branding, professional photographer, Seth Godin, studio branding, success

I am almost finished reading “The Brand Called You” by Peter Montoya (with Tim Vandehey), and have enjoyed reading this so much I thought I would share it with you here. This is a must-have book for any photographer (or anyone in business for that matter). There are so many actionable tips that they are too numerous to mention here.

For anyone, like me, who has a hard time trying to figure out how to brand themselves effectively to create a unique place in the marketplace, I can’t recommend this highly enough.

The book is a no-nonsense read of about 270 pages and is great for anyone new to the idea of trying to create a brand.

I’m sure I’ll be reading this one again several times.

Here is a link to the book on Amazon:

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Sales & Marketing book review, branding, education, marketing, studio branding, success

Success is in the eye of the beholder… Let’s think about that slightly paraphrased statement for a moment. One of the interesting points I’ve learned in sales is that success breeds more success. People like to do business with those who are already successful, rather than those who are not. This can be very hard for those just starting out, with no proven track record for others to judge them by.

Take a new wedding photographer as an example. Although they’re a competent and skilled photographer, they may not have a wide portfolio of photographs to show prospective clients. How do they get around that? Perhaps by photographing churches, using models to show off bride and groom portraiture, or by assisting another photographer on a wedding and using some of their own images.

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Sales & Marketing branding, marketing