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Photography Marketing By Visualizing Data

November 27, 2012 By 1 Comment

photography marketing

We previously we shared an article comparing photography marketing to Star Wars.  In this article, I want to talk about one of the items mentioned in the original article.  Google Analytics is a very powerful tool not only for gathering data, but also visualizing it.

Photography Marketing Keywords Visualized

In the screenshot below, you will see a word cloud of all the top inbound keywords that bring visitors to a website.  These keywords, are what the sample website is ranking for.

keyword-rank-word-cloud

 

As you can see in this screenshot, an article was written about Zenfolio and is the most popular keyword bringing in traffic to the website.  Knowing that, the photographer can optimize the article in some way convert the traffic to a lead, or monetize to earn affiliate revenue.

To get a keyword word cloud of your site, visit Google Analytics and on the left column, click to get to the Queries section.

Traffic Sources >> Search Engine Optimization >> Queries

Photography Marketing Referrals Visualized

Next I want to share referrals. These are the websites that traffic is coming from to visit your website.  As you can see in this screenshot, Facebook.com is the most popular.

referral-word-cloud

Knowing that Facebook is doing very well for the website, the photographer could and should focus more attention on that social network over others.  Twitter and Posterous are also bringing in a lot of traffic, so further attention could be focused there.

To get a keyword word cloud of your site, visit Google Analytics and on the left column, click to get to the Referrals section.

Traffic Sources >> Sources >> Referrals

As you read and visualized in this article, word clouds are a great way to see the data that your Google Analytics tool is capturing.  Take advantage of learn from it.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With:

Photography Marketing Like Henry Ford, Target And Tiffany

November 13, 2012 By 3 Comments

Photography Marketing in 2014

Yes, you read that right.  As photographers know, the weddings you book today, you won’t be fully paid for until a year from now (usually).  Therefore, it’s very important to think about the direction you want to take your business in the next two years.  You don’t want to be thinking a year from now you wish you would have increased your prices more!

As Henry Ford said:  ”Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.”

We as wedding photographers are creatives and usually just do more of whatever we have done in the past to accelerate our business.  For example, do you advertise?  Maybe that led to a couple of weddings.  Do you try and build a relationship with bridesmaids for referrals?  Maybe that led to a couple of weddings.

Photography Marketing Like Henry Ford

Screenshot from Ciderr.com

There’s nothing wrong initially with this strategy.  However, eventually you will find that these strategies die out and you need something more.  This assumes you are trying to increase your prices significantly!  If you just want to keep shooting as many weddings as you can, the please stop reading.

If you want to increase your prices significantly and take your business to another level, you have to do what the large successful brands do!  They invest in technology to scale their presence!  Williams-Sonoma was just a small cooking store in Napa, California.  However, there business exploded when they added a registry.  This caused an influx of people into their store buying for the new bride and groom.  This increased sales and increased their brand marketing.  Within a decade of this launch they had stores across the country, plus they had a successful catalog operation (this was the early 1980s).

Kathy David, general manager of Target.com, said 30 percent of the Web site’s sales came from its registry business. “It’s been absolutely huge for us.”

So don’t trust me – trust Target, Williams-Sonoma, Tiffany & Co.  If they are investing heavily in the registry business why aren’t you?

Don’t find fault, find a remedy. - Henry Ford

p.s. Can you tell I recently read Henry Ford’s autobiography

Jimmy Moncrief is a wedding photographer with with wife Brittany at Moncrief Photography and the co-founder of Ciderr, a wedding registry for wedding vendors.

Try Ciderr for one month free. Pick the Spiced Cider plan and use the discount code, photocrati (a $10 value)

Filed Under: Photography Business Tagged With: , ,

Photography Marketing Like A Jedi Knight & Sith Lord

October 23, 2012 By 2 Comments

photography marketing

Photography marketing is one of my favorite subjects. It’s so much fun learn new tricks, techniques and methods. It’s also extremely fun to see photographers putting the ideas into action and then hearing about the results.

Photography Marketing & Star Wars

I found a poll recently, on a random poll web app site where 70% of random people love Star Wars, and 30% do not. That sparked an idea to discuss how interested photographers can implement photography marketing tactics like a Jedi or Sith Lord.

“Do or do not… there is no try”

When it comes to photography marketing, you have to try new techniques, otherwise there are few chances for business improvement and you are only relying on old business to bring in new business.

“Use the Force, Luke.”

Think of the Force and the actual marketing technique, like blogging. Use it, embrace it, build it, and grow with it.

photography marketing jedi knight

© Chris Nitz

“I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”

Intuition is a great thing, but having the data behind decisions is extremely important. Make sure you have Google Analytics or some other statistics tool in place.

“Don’t let your personal feelings get in the way!”

Going along with the previous quote. Once you have the statistics in place, you can pinpoint what keywords you’re ranking well for, what blog topics are helping and which are not. SEO for photographers, is as important as marketing for photographers.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Criticism is something that can and should boost your photography business, not hurt it. If you publish and photograph and the comments you receive aren’t what was expected then you need to learn from it and improve. Feedback is good for the soul.

“The Force is strong with this one.”

Competitors know when you are using a technique that produces good results. In fact, they might try to duplicate it. Competition is good, but always be thinking ahead and plan for the future.

photography marketing sith knight

© Chris Nitz

“Watch your mouth kid, or you’ll find yourself floating home.”

Ok, so Han Solo was not a Jedi or Sith, but the quote works very well. When you are planning your marketing tactic, make sure you are true to yourself. Being yours and respectful can produce amazing results for your photography business.

“Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.”

If a marketing strategy fails, do not give us. Keep poking the box, as Seth Godin says. Try, fail, try. If you do fail, go back to the first quote, “Do or do not… there is no try”. In other words, start fresh and keep pushing until you find a strategy that is successful.

“May the Force be with you.”

Sometimes you have to let a test play out for some time before you can consider it a fail. Have trust in yourself and what you are trying to accomplish. Eventually, it will pan out in your favor.

“I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.”

In closing, don’t assume that you’re the most powerful Jedi. Always be learning, as Yoda does. Find marketing blogs around the web and learn from other sources. Even if they’re not photography specific, you can relate it to your work, usually with some ease.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

The photographs in this article were used with permission by Chris Nitz Photography.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With:

Re-Search With Bottlenose

October 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

bottlenose-re-search

Last week I mentioned a new search engine, Realtime. Today I want to share another very interesting new tool called Bottlenose.

This is not just a search engine. It’s more of a research engine.

Bottlenose shows you a live streaming view of what the crowd is thinking, sharing and talking about at the moment and in a visual way. You get insights and analytics into what’s behind the trends and who is influencing the conversation. Registering for an account provides a personalized dashboard for keeping up with all your news, interests and social networks in one place.

The website generates a dynamic semantic interest graph about every topic, link and person on the Stream, using a new patent-pending platform for social listening, analytics, and trend detection, called the StreamOS. This performs natural-language processing, classification, analytics, etc.

Before I keep going with the technical jargon, check out this video.

Ok, does this interest you? Head over to Bottlenose and try it on for size. You may find some interested tidbits that can help you find new opportunities for link building, comment marketing or partnerships.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

Filed Under: Photography Business Tagged With:

Realtime Marketing Strategy With Realtime From Bitly

October 2, 2012 By 2 Comments

Realtime is a new search engine, currently in beta. It was developed by the company who brought the world Bit.ly.

What is really neat about this search engine is the real-time social media search capability.

What it can do for photographers, is to pinpoint conversations or articles about a specific keyword with certain criteria. Look at this screenshot:

realtime-marketing-strategy

After typing your search query, you have the option to designate a social network or leave it as any. You can then put it in your location as a means to see what your competitors are doing, or maybe to strategize a way of contacting a potential venue/partner.

Next you can put in a domain that you’re eyeing. For instance, if you’re a New York photographer, then maybe the nytimes.com is an important domain to search. Last is one of my favorite features for local marketing. If you are a photographer in Spain, you can put Spanish as the language. Or if you’re in France, you can put French as the language. And so on…

Right now Realtime is in private beta so you need a Bit.ly account to request access. When it’s public, I can see this one gaining popularity.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

Filed Under: Photography Business Tagged With:

12 Steps To Blog Promotion Success

September 25, 2012 By 3 Comments

Content marketing is more than just writing, photographing and publishing content.  It’s also about the promotion of that content.

The team at Divvy HQ published a great infographic that doubles as a checklist to blog promotion success.

To sum it up though, here are the steps.

  1. Keyword optimize your article (see Photographers SEO for keyword tips)
  2. Syndicate your article through RSS and social channels
  3. Shorten your article using a tool like Hootsuite or Bit.ly
  4. Modify your headline for each community you share the article on (Buffer can be a great tool to test headlines)
  5. Post teasers on other websites either through guest blogging, Q&A, commenting and more
  6. Bookmark your site on social channels like Pinterest or Delicious
  7. Engage in comment marketing
  8. As for sharing help on Twitter (use retweet in your requests, not RT)
  9. Add your latest blog article to your email signature
  10. Share your article with customers through personal interaction
  11. Share your article with your email list or newsletter
  12. Ask other bloggers to mention your article

Now that you have read through the list, here is the infographic.  Print it out and hang it near your desk for future reference.

12-Things-Infographic-1000px

Be sure to share this article with your community of blogger friends so everyone can benefit from the great checklist.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With:

Bad Comment Marketing And How To Fix It

July 31, 2012 By 1 Comment

comment-marketing

Comment marketing is the use of a website’s comment feature to engage with others as a way of promoting (marketing) your business.

There is something very important to remember when attempting comment marketing.

Comment marketing is not link building.

In fact, by treating this form of marketing as link building, you can find yourself faced with the spam button.  Look at the example below, a screenshot taken of a comment on our Pinterest for Photographers article.  WordPress automatically caught it as spam, and for a good reason.

comment-marketing-spam

The better choice would have been to engage in a discussion with other people have commented.  Answer their questions or reply to their statements.  Including the obvious advertisement will not get people to click as much as being engaging.

Example: “Good point John Doe, Pinterest isn’t for everyone.  However, Pin Authority has a few photographers beta testing our software and the statistics and conversions have been incredible.”

A comment like that will get people thinking… curious… clicking.

I want also mention the biggest problem in comment marketing. That is people who truly believe comment marketing is link building.  They believe it so much that they purchase tools that will automatically search the web for specific topics and comment with random names and email addresses.   Want proof?

seo-spam-bot

Notice the % symbol in that comment?  That is where the comment link building tool will place a specified keyword.

Avoid doing this at all costs.  It’s not worth your money, time or effort.

Have you been successful with your comment marketing endeavors? Comment below and share your story.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

Filed Under: Photography Websites Tagged With:

Get Trippy With Local Marketing

July 10, 2012 By 3 Comments

local-marketing

Previously I wrote about why photographers should use Pinterest.

Today I want to share another website, similar to Pinterest. However, this bookmarking tool has a niche that is great for photographers.

Meet Trippy

“travel boards are visual collections of places where you’ve been or want to go”

trippy-local-marketing

Like Pinterest, you can pin (or bookmark) places you’ve been, want to go, or photographed. But there is more to it than that.  Let’s say you’re a travel photographer.  Create Trippy boards for each state or country you’ve been.  Then pin different photos from each location.  Make sure your description has a natural tone and is not a sales pitch.  Then browse around boards from others within the same locations, comment and mark as “i’ve been”.  Be engaging with others and you may find yourself eventually selling prints to new customers.

Let’s say you’re a destination wedding photographer.  Could this be any better for reaching potential customers?  Follow the tip I gave above and do the same for marketing to specific locations you want jobs.

But that’s not all.  Currently you can also customize the anchor text within your profile which means you can create the perfect backlink from within your profile.

So go ahead and create a Trippy profile.  Then come back here and let me know if you discovered a new strategy by commenting below.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

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Cause Marketing for Photographers

December 30, 2009 By 4 Comments

As we move towards the coming new year many of us are beginning to implement a new marketing plan. Also, as the holiday season comes to a close many of our thoughts are on giving. Cause marketing is an opportunity to combine the two. For those unfamiliar with the term, cause marketing is a form of marketing that allows two organizations, one for profit, and one non-profit, to work together to further each of their individual marketing/development goals in a cooperative fashion. Think of the (product) RED campaign, or the partnership between the NFL and United Way.

Cause marketing can be as simple as offering a sponsorship to a local charity event, or as involved and complex as you care to make it. Below are some examples of actual cause marketing campaigns I’ve seen photographers in my market employ”¦

  • A local portrait/wedding studio holds quarterly workshops for photographers on various business practice issues. They host at their studio and usually bring in a guest speaker. They don’t charge attendees directly but ask that they make a donation to a specific charity ($40 to the local food bank or so.)
  • A commercial photographer sponsors a hole-in-one contest at a charity golf outing. If a participant scores a hole in one, they win $10,000. He gets a bond each year to cover it for about $100. He’s at the tee of that hole, shoots a photo of the foursome and mails each of them a print (with his logo and web address of course.)
  • A fine art photographer gives 25% of sales of a series of images of the Chesapeake Bay to a local environmental charity.
  • In lieu of holiday gifts for his corporate clients, an industrial photographer makes a donation to the USO (many of his clients are in the defense industry and are veterans). He then sends the clients a note thanking them for their business and letting the client know that he’s made that donation. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Advertising, Selling Tagged With: , , , , , ,

TimeLapser app for iPhone

November 5, 2009 By 2 Comments

One thing that many buyers of commercial photography like to see are behind the scenes videos of a shoot. It allows them to get a sense of how you like to work and what kind of shoot you might run if they were to hire you. Even for photographers working in the retail and personal fields, behind the scenes video can be a great marketing tool, showing potential clients and customers what their shoot might be like.

Of course, like photography, productions vary widely. You can shoot a scripted narrative with voice overs and scores. You can shoot a time lapse of the shoot and simply post that. The latter is certainly the easiest to shoot, and the TimeLapser app is designed to make that easy.

TimeLapser uses the built in camera to shoot individual frames, at a user-determined rate and resolution, then stitches those images together into a .mov file (at a user determined frame rate). At its heart, it’s basically an intervalometer that will combine the individual files together for you. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Advertising, Photo Editing and Digital Workflow, Photography and Imaging Software, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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