Photography marketing tips // planning overview (part 1)
Your photography website is the most essential piece of your digital marketing strategy. A great website will enable you to capture new sales leads, improve your production workflow, enable you to understand your customers and increase your profitability. An ordinary website will just tell people who you are and what you do, and a bad website will only ever be seen by the people you tell directly and at worst, may present the wrong first impression. The success or failure of your online marketing depends upon a range of variables but you can save yourself a lot pain and effort by investing in some thinking time up front and plan your online strategy first.
All to often, photographers start their online marketing efforts by jumping into Photoshop and attempt to design a web page. In other circumstances, the photographer may have some coding skills and start building their own website in something like Dreamweaver. Or, the photographer uses an online gallery service and realises that their options are limited. Pretty quickly, the photographer ends up scouring photography forums and communities asking for recommendations on flash galleries, web hosting, JavaScript/Ajax libraries, “the best photo sharing sites” and such ¶
A strong online presence takes time and careful planning. As the saying goes: Only fools rush in. By taking the time to plan your website strategy properly you will potentially save yourself a lot of pain, and you’ll have a much better sales, promotion and marketing tool.
Over the next seven articles we’ll provide practical tips and advice on how to plan your website and online marketing campaigns, including:
- Establish your Business & Marketing Goals
- Know your Audience
- Creating your Marketing Plan
- Decide on the Technology
- Design and Usability
- Building your Website
- Learn, Refine & Repeat
Next: Establishing your Business & Marketing Goals
