If we could offer only one piece of advice to those looking to upgrade their photography business, it would be this: Spend time building your brand.
As much as perfecting your photography skills should always be your number one priority as a photographer, if you want to grow a thriving photography business that feels professional and trustworthy, building a brand is one of the best things you can do for your business.
Why?
Because building a brand helps you attract a specific audience and stand out amongst the competition. In other words, when your business has a specific feel and aesthetic, inevitably, customers who also gravitate towards that feel and aesthetic will find your work. Not to mention, customers will likely notice the consistency of the professional look, feel, and aesthetic that your business has versus a business that failed to incorporate branding into its business venture.
We’ll go more into depth about the benefits of branding, along with other high-value topics like creating a brand identity, establishing an online presence, networking, and how to market your business using your new brand identity. For now, though, let’s start off with one of the most important aspects of building a brand: your target audience.
Understanding Your Target Audience
Before you can do any brainstorming for your brand, you need to identify who you are attempting to target. For example, are you a commercial photographer targeting brands who want a compelling and artistic campaign for their product? Or maybe you’re an editorial photographer targeting fashion publications who favor bold and unconventional portraits.
While both photographers would be targeting large companies, the aesthetics that these two audiences are attracted to are often very different. And thus, the branding for these two photographers would be very different.
In addition, it’s very important for you to intimately familiarize yourself with your target audience. While knowing their aesthetic is important, it’s not the only thing you need to know when considering your brand.
Having a specific avatar in mind that represents your target audience is a good way to help ensure that all your branding decisions stay in line with what your target audience would be attracted to.
Once you’ve carefully researched your target audience and you feel like you have a good understanding of their needs, wants, and preferences, you also need to ensure you’re considering those factors in all elements of your branding.
Some of the top branding elements you’ll want to consider include:
- Colors/color scheme
- Fonts
- Messaging (i.e. tagline/logo)
- Graphics
- Logo
- Copy (i.e. about page, blog posts, newsletters)
- Communication (i.e. how and where you communicate with your client and the wording you use)
- Tone/voice
Don’t expect to fully nail down the branding for your target audience all in one shot. Take the time to carefully consider your audience, research photographers with similar audiences, and don’t be afraid to make small adjustments as you go.
Defining Your Unique Value Proposition
As a photographer, you want to stand out against your competition, right? Of course!
And one of the first steps to getting there is to ensure that you have a unique value proposition in mind when setting up your brand.
Your unique value proposition is all about identifying what you bring to the table that other photographers don’t. What sets you apart? Why should someone choose to hire you? What are your strengths? Do you have a strong personality that clients feel comfortable with? Do you specialize in black-and-white photography? Are you skilled with children and therefore make a great family photographer?
Whatever the case, getting clear about your unique strengths is key to setting up a thriving photography brand.
Having said that, identifying your unique strengths is only one piece of the puzzle. You also need to ensure that you’re communicating that strength to your target audience. Whether it be with the copy on your website, your portfolio, or the awards you’ve won in the past, it should be immediately clear to potential clients what your strengths as a photographer are.
If you’re not sure where to start when setting up your value proposition, begin by asking yourself these questions:
- What is the product or service?
- What are the key benefits or advantages it provides?
- Who is the target audience or customer?
- How is it different or better than competing offerings?
The purpose of a value proposition is to communicate the value, relevance, and distinctiveness of your service in a concise and persuasive manner. A well-crafted value proposition captures the unique selling points, competitive advantages, and key features that differentiate the offering from competitors. It should resonate with the target audience, addressing their pain points and conveying the value they will gain by working with you.
Creating a Compelling Brand Identity
You don’t just want to create any old brand. You want to create a brand that gets people excited, captures attention, and makes you sales. To do this, there are a few key factors you need to consider.
Choosing a Memorable, Relevant Brand Name
You want to ensure you pick a name that is relevant to your photography business but doesn’t fall into the trap of overcomplicating your brand name. As a photographer, your business name can simply be your name.
You can also choose to incorporate the type of photography you do into your business to make it even more recognizable. For example, Happy Days Wedding Photography or Love & Laughing Family Photography.
Whether you keep it simple with your name or you go for something a little more creative, just be sure that it is relevant to the type/style of photography you want to do. With a name that includes your specialty, it’s also important that you are comfortable rebranding or creating a secondary brand if you later expand into other types of photography. If you’re not sure, keep it simple with a combination of your first, middle, or last name. Before coming to a final decision, it is always a good idea to take a look at available domain names and make sure there is something available with your business name. After all, you don’t want people getting you confused with a different photographer when searching for you online.
Developing a Visually Appealing and Consistent Brand Logo
This is one of those things you don’t want to skimp on.
Your logo will be on all your marketing materials, your website, and even on your photos if you choose to use watermarks.
You want your logo to look professional and recognizable. Consider things like colors, fonts, readability, sizing, and clarity. The last thing you want is an indistinguishable or blurry logo on all your marketing materials.
Selecting Brand Colors, Fonts, and Visual Elements That Reflect Your Style
Keep in mind that your logo isn’t the only visual element of your brand that you want to consider. Things like colors, fonts, and any other visual elements you use should also all reflect the same style as your logo.
For example, if you have a minimal logo that feels modern and contemporary, the other visual elements of your brand should also reflect that feel.
Coming back around to your target audience, be sure your chosen visual elements will be appealing to this demographic.
Crafting a Brand Story That Connects With Your Audience
And lastly, as much as the visual components are probably the most recognizable elements of any brand, it’s also just as important to consider your brand story.
Does your story connect with the right audience? Will your story help bring in your target audience?
Tools like social media are a great place to get your story out there and connect. Be sure to research where your target audience spends their time. For example, if you specialize in headshots and corporate photography, Linkedin might be the most valuable place to share content. For a teen demographic, you’ll often have more success sharing on TikTok.
Establishing an Online Presence
In the 21st century, building a brand without also establishing your online presence is virtually impossible. With so much business and marketing being conducted online, your brand will likely need that online presence in order for your business to thrive.
In particular, there are four areas of online business that we recommend focusing on when building your business. Let’s review:
Building a Professional Photography Website
Your website will become the hub for your entire business. It’s where people will locate your portfolio, your availability, your pricing, contact info, and virtually any information that they could possibly want relating to your business.
Having a portfolio website that is easy to navigate, fits within your brand, and provides all the necessary information that a potential customer could want is essential for a photographer.
Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines (SEO)
This might sound a little technical and scary, but don’t worry; there are entire companies you can hire that can take care of this for you.
To put it simply, all this really means is making sure your website is optimized to show up in search engine results, and updating content regularly using a blog or updating portfolios so the search engines see it as relevant. For example, if someone searches for a wedding photographer in your area, you want your website to show up near the top of the search results.
Optimizing your website and considering SEO will help ensure this happens.
Showcasing Your Portfolio and Highlighting Your Best Work
Your work should speak for itself, and that means curating a portfolio that reflects your best work and what you most want to continue shooting is critical to your success as a photographer.
In particular, you want to have an online portfolio in order to ensure that your work is easily accessible to the general public. As important as social media can be, a website is a place where you control exactly what visitors see; no interference of algorithms, oddly cropped image preview and post ratios, and the risk of your account being flagged or taken down at random.
Your portfolio website will help show off your style and your talent, making it easier for potential clients to decide whether or not you’re the right fit for them.
Utilizing Social Media Platforms to Reach and Engage With Your Audience
And lastly, while it might have been okay to be without a social media presence ten years ago, these days, if you want to grow a brand as a photographer, you’re going to want a social media presence.
Not only will this help to engage potential customers with your work, but it’s also a good way to help people to get to know you.
Remember, there are likely many talented photographers out there that potential clients can work with, but the one thing that nobody else can have is your unique personality. In other words, oftentimes, it’s your personality that will be the selling point for potential clients. Make sure your personality is shining bright by having a strong social media presence.
Building Relationships and Networking
There are four key ways that we recommend building relationships and networking:
- Engaging with other photographers and industry professionals
- Participating in photography communities and forums
- Collaborating with complementary businesses and influencers
- Leveraging word-of-mouth marketing through client referrals
You don’t necessarily have to engage with all four methods, but we do recommend finding the strategy that feels most comfortable to you and being serious about it.
The more connections and networks you’re a part of, the better you set your business up for success. In other words, putting yourself out there never fails when trying to grow.
Consistency and Quality In Your Work
You can do everything right in your business, but if the quality of your work doesn’t speak for itself, there’s a good chance you’re going to struggle to build a successful photography brand.
There are a few key things we recommend doing if quality is important to you:
- Deliver quality work on time, no matter how big or small the project. Trust us, sometimes the smallest projects can lead to something bigger if you go above and beyond with your work. You never know who your clients are connected to.
- Never stop learning. Take workshops, watch videos, and continue to practice your skills. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have. There is always something new to learn or improve upon.
- Ensure your clients understand your values and standards. Communicating clearly and thoroughly on your website and all other interactions will ensure your clients know what to expect from you, which can help you avoid disappointed clients. Believe us when we say, there’s nothing worse for business than letting down your clients.
- Make use of client reviews. Put them on your website front and center so that anyone who visits your website can see all your positive reviews. This will help potential clients feel more confident and comfortable with the prospect of working with you.
Marketing and Promotional Strategies
We’ve already talked a bit about marketing in terms of making sure you have a website and social media presence set up, but beyond these non-negotiable strategies, there are a few other marketing strategies that we recommend implementing when attempting to build a photography brand.
So first…
Make Sure You Have a Marketing Plan in Place
It’s easy enough to get your photography business all set up, and then start marketing with any strategy that you come across, but the thing is, this strategy is likely going to backfire on you.
With marketing, you want to have a well-thought-out plan in place. This means knowing how, when, and why you’re implementing strategies rather than just having a free-for-all.
For instance, if you want to use Facebook ads to market your business, you should carefully consider the ad, thinking about your target audience, the graphics used, and the copy. You’ll also want to have a budget in place, and a timeline set up for how long you will run the ad. It can also be helpful to have one or more similar ads with different wording or images, to see which is most effective. Once you see what is working best, cut the money for the other test ads.
You’ll likely find that focusing on one or two marketing strategies at a time will be much more effective than trying to implement multiple strategies all at once.
Consider Both Online and Offline Channels for Marketing
We’ve already talked a bit about establishing your online presence and ensuring that you’re using social media, but keep in mind that this doesn’t mean you should just totally ignore offline channels.
Networking, paper flyers, business cards, radio ads, TV, and even podcasts can be excellent ways to get your name out there. As with all other parts of this strategy, consider where your target audience spends their time most and be selective about where you put your time and money.
Try Implementing Targeted Advertising Campaigns
Remember our Facebook ad from above?
This is an excellent example of a targeted advertising campaign. In other words, it’s an advertisement that is being put out to reach a specific demographic.
Social media ads like Facebook and Instagram are excellent options for this because you can target which accounts see your ads.
For instance, if you’re a family photographer, you’re probably going to want to target women between 25-40 as opposed to 70-year-old men. Alternatively, if you’re a real estate photographer maybe you specifically want to target real estate agents.
Knowing your audience will help a lot when it comes to creating advertisements that help you get sales/leads.
Analyze and Measure the Effectiveness of Your Marketing Efforts
Putting your budget towards strategies that aren’t doing anything for you is the last thing we want for you. Not only will this prevent you from growing your business, but it will also lead to you wasting your budget on strategies that aren’t helping.
Taking the time to sit down and see how your marketing efforts are working, and what kinds of sales/leads they are resulting in will help you refine your strategy and grow your business.
Not to mention, allocating your budget appropriately will help you use those advertising dollars as effectively as possible.
Are You Ready to Build Your Photography Brand?
While it might be tempting to throw together a photography website and hope for the best, we hope this article has illustrated just how important it is to be methodical and intentional about growing your photography brand.
Whether it be using Format to help you build your dream photography website, or putting a carefully thought-out marketing plan into place, having a plan and being intentional about your brand is one of the best things you can do for your growth.
So go ahead, get out a pen and paper, and start off by defining your target market. From there, simply keep further refining your photography brand and before you know it you’ll have a brand that you can feel proud of.
Are you ready?
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