Is your photography business sick? Is it, like so many businesses these days, living on life support? Do you spend much of your time worrying about the future, or how your photography studio is going to survive in the current economy?

Do you regard the new game of business as a dark shadow of impending failure through unfair competition?

Does Your Business Have A Fever?

If your business were a sick child, which it resembles in many ways, we might stick a thermometer in its mouth and take its temperature to determine if it had a fever. In this instance, however, viruses and bacteria are not the cause of the illness. The symptoms exhibited by our business are not the direct result of external factors, such as the economy or unfair competition, no matter how tempted we are to blame those things. Rather, what we’re really seeing is the effect caused by our business being poorly adapted to live in an environment that changed faster than our company’s ability to evolve or adapt…

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Photography Business Ideas business success, photography business, poke the box, Seth Godin

Can you recognize something exceptional when you see it? How do we know? What signals are we responding to? In marketing, exceptional qualities are essential to the success of having our message stick. Being exceptional is difficult, it takes effort and hard work, but “ordinary” just doesn’t make the cut any more.

One thing is certain – inauthentic exceptionality is easily recognized.

Seth Godin, in his famous book “Purple Cow” talks about the principle of uniqueness, and how being exceptional is the major key to successful marketing in today’s world. If you haven’t read this amazing little book, then you need to, right now.

The landscape of marketing has gone through major changes over the last decade or so, as the quakes caused by the rise of the Internet, web 2.0 and the explosion of social media literally tore the traditional marketing model apart. Consumers have revolted and no longer want to see or listen to corporations blasting their message out indiscriminately to the masses.

In this new marketplace we need the consumer’s permission to market to them, but even then only if we behave and have a productive two-way conversation.

That conversation can only occur when there’s actually something worth talking about. Something exceptional, that stands out from the rest and makes itself worthy of attention.

This is the essence of the “Purple Cow.”

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Sales & Marketing exceptional business, photography marketing, purple cow, Seth Godin

While talking with and listening to other photographers lately, I’m left with the sense of doom and futility shared amongst some people in the photography business. Not only do I find this sad and depressing, I believe it’s totally unfounded, and is compounding an already negative issue – that marketing is not working that way people expect it to.

It Doesn’t Matter How Much Marketing I Do…

This statement is dangerous in the extreme to any hope of success in business. Most of us became professional photographers because of a passion for the art of photography and what it means to people’s lives. We didn’t think in terms of being marketers or sellers, but that is precisely what we are, like it or not. The fact is that if we can’t market ourselves, or we can’t sell what we do, we’re not going to be in business for long.

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Sales & Marketing Brian Solis, marketing strategy, photography marketing, Seth Godin

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