Promoting your Photography Business using Digital Marketing Tactics
I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the websites of professional photographers and reading a lot of community discussions about how to market photography businesses online. If you take the time to look around, there is a lot of great information out there, but a lot of it is either grounded in the language of self-proclaimed digital marketing experts or it is full of nonsensical waffle. It is my goal (with these posts) to try and make the business of digital media marketing simple, accessible and open for discussion.
But first an important disclaimer:
I would classify myself as a self-proclaimed digital marketing expert. I’ve been working in the field for nearly 15 years and have a healthy portfolio of campaign successes from which I can draw experience from. But! I fervently believe that no-one can ever rightfully claim to be “the expert” in digital marketing. Yes, this a contradiction, but my reasoning is that the world of digital marketing is changing every day, and what works today may not work tomorrow. Despite popular information to the contrary, consumers are actually pretty smart, and the disruptive tactics of old do not work as well as they used to. Equally, modern marketing tactics that are coined “viral” or that leverage “social media” can as easily destroy a brand as make it the coolest thing in town. So my theory is that there is no single blueprint for online marketing. Instead, there are range of online tools, marketing tactics and best practices that can be deployed to improve your marketing capabilities. So, whilst theoretically I am an expert, I do not proclaim to know everything. Let these posts be an opportunity for everyone to express and share their opinions on what works and what does not.
Learn from our mistakes
At PhotoMerchant, our goal is to help professional and amateur photographers have the best set of online marketing and business tools at their disposal. We plan on sharing our own successes and failures in marketing PhotoMerchant as a point for discussion and as place to learn and grow from. We encourage everyone to join in on these conversations either through the comment system, the “Feedback” tab on our website, through twitter or by writing to us directly: wave [at] photomerchant.net
In upcoming posts we will discuss:
- Website best practices
- Email marketing
- Digital relationship marketing
- Search Engine Marketing
- How to maybe/kinda/sorta use Social Networks
- and Integrating with non-digital campaigns
To put it simply, we want to practice what we preach. As I write this post, I’ve realised that there are a whole range of things we should be doing on our current website to improve our marketing capabilities. Like you, we’re a very small team with very limited resources. I look forward to sharing our experiences, no matter how painful that might be.
Kain Tietzel
Designer / Digital Strategist (and self professed Douche bag)
Tell us what you think!
What would you like us to cover in our “Digital Marketing Tactics” posts?
Do you have any stories or insights to share?
Are there any links and resources that you have found invaluable?
