14 January 2008

Test Your Market

In today's Financial Post, Part 2 in a series of 12 articles on starting a business talks about market testing your products as a form of market research. Conventionally, business owners may look to their competition, read market statistics, read published research, conduct focus groups and build customer surveys. A photography business may not fit this traditional kind of market research, so testing is crucial.

How can photographers test (and therefore research) their market? Simply put, by working in it. When you are starting out you may take any assignment that comes your way. This is a great way to do market research. As a photographer, ask for feedback about the photography session or print sale as soon as possible after the transaction. Find out if there were any barriers to the shoot, getting the sale, or selling more prints. Was the shoot a great experience for your client? Was the time after the shoot (looking at proofs) a great experience for your client? Was it fun and easy for your client to buy prints? Was price a consideration or did your client hire you on reputation or referral? Were there any pricing problems or confusion with things like post processing charges? Generally, people don't mind spending their money when they have a good experience doing so. That's a sign of good customer service. Did you complete the job on time and on budget? Did you deliver what they needed? Did you, as the photographer, have trouble pricing the job? Did you make a profit?

Pay attention to all the indicators one way or another and adjust your shooting, pricing, and sales tactics accordingly. Listen to your customers. They are your best asset and indicator that you are doing a good job. No customers, no business. Don't be afraid to ask the difficult questions, including why you lost a shoot.

From this you can further evaluate your strengths and capitalize on those strengths. As Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt say in their book, The Power of Focus, "discover your brilliance" p.35. Don't get hung up on what you cannot or do not like to do. Learn. Move on. Get more experience doing what you love, and eventually hire people to do the things you are not so brilliant at.

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04 January 2008

New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year to you all - clients, friends, colleagues and especially my students. It is the time of year when we assess our past and make resolutions in many areas of our life.

Resolutions in your photography business are important too. As you know there are many pressures that hinder your profit making such as micro stock, low balling competition, amateurs with high-end dSLR's that aren't focussed on sustainability, and the perception that "anyone can take a decent photo, so why hire a pro?"

I've had several discussions with photographers about low balling and amateur competition. My response is always, "Don't focus on them, they will not be able to sustain their business for long." Typically these people either have lots of money obtained in other ways, or another job that enables them to offer bargain priced photography on the side, just because they love to take pictures and they think it's fun to see their photos in magazines once in awhile. My advice to non-professional photographers is: Go ahead and take great pictures, but please charge proper rates. There are lots of sources on pricing, especially when it comes to licensing fees - Foto Quote, Editorial Photographers, and professional photographers like John Harrington who just feel it's good to share their pricing models. Typically photographers are very closed minded about sharing prices in their market, but the reality is by doing so, you can raise the bar.

There is a lot of photography work in my market in Calgary, but there are also many clients who offer next to nothing for professional photography. I recently had a discussion with a colleague and we both had terrible experiences with the same client which was an ad agency, that also ran a magazine. The scenarios were similar; rush job, no money to pay for photography, wanted to trade for ad space, poor management on client side and lots of other screw ups like no photo credits or returned phone calls. I talked to two other photographers who had worked for the same client and they both had similar experiences. We all did one or two jobs for this client and then realized that it was not a client we were interested in keeping. None of us will work for that client again. We all gave the client a chance, and were hoping for a return on our investment. I figure that within the year, no one in the city will work for that client because word will get around about them. So my point is, that it is important to network and share with other photographers so you can either collectively avoid those clients or collectively educate those clients and perhaps raise the bar.

After all, if they can sell "Fair trade coffee" we should be able to sell "Fair trade photography" that sustains us for the long term, allows us to take a salary, send our children to college, and save for the future with some sort of investments to live off of in our retirement. Isn't that what the clients want? We deserve the same.

Not sure where to start? See the Cost of Doing Business Calculator on the NPPA site. You may be shocked at the results.

Resolve to be a better business person in 2008.
Estimate fairly and include licensing fees in all your quotes. If everyone does it, the clients will expect it and will get used to it. If they can't afford professional photography, they need to reassess their needs and their budgets, and not expect photographers to lower their rates.

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