How to Succeed in Commercial Photography : Insights From a Leading Consultant

challenging, as it pushes commercial photographers, forcing

them to dig deeper into their creative pockets.

STAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE

In order to be sure that your information about buyer’s

trends and habits is complete, look beyond your vision. Look at

sales tools and sales trails and make sure that you understand

how buyers are choosing talent. Here are some marketing tools

that have shifted for buyers.

Sourcebooks seem to be the dinosaurs of the industry.

One would never know it by looking at the size of the major

sourcebooks, but I am hearing all the time from buyers that

Web portals (many owned and run by the same companies

that publish the print sourcebooks) are getting all of the traf-

fic. I am told that the books are glanced at and then go on a

shelf. When buyers are searching, they go to the bookmarks of

Web sites saved and on to online directories. Many prospects

still keep direct mail and refer to notes from in-person visits.

While some photographers can track an occasional lead

or assignment directly to a sourcebook page, it seems as if

this once-successful addition to a photographer’s marketing

program is much less successful today then it was just a year or

so ago.

Web portals, on the other hand, are hot. This makes

perfect sense as we move further into a digital, online, e-mail,

Web-oriented society.

For years I have been pushing my clients to use another

recently popular marketing tool, visual e-mails. These mailers,

containing a photograph with a short message or no message

(but a clear link to a photographer’s Web site) are currently

huge marketing tools. While many shooters were resistant, they

are now coming around as they see that clients are opening

them and accessing their sites (in large numbers in some

cases). Tracking software is a must as e-mail addresses can be

harvested for future, in-person showings.

Visual trends, marketing shifts, and buyers’ habits have

always been and will continue to be a central part of the ever-

changing landscape that we know as commercial photography.

PART4 / TOOLS

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