If you’re at all into marketing or shopping, there are some brands that you admire. Perhaps one or two come to mind right away. Your photo lab, your camera brand, your favorite coffee shop, or, perhaps, that shoe designer that always causes you to squeal, “I’ve gotta have a pair!”

You don’t have to be a raging consumerist to be a fan of brands. In fact, you may know of a very small, unassuming brand that very few people know about, but that you greatly adore.

Take note of why your most coveted brands are so madly appealing. It may serve as a bit of inspiration as we gallivant through this exercise about your own photography business brand. Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. Find Yourself

If you’ve been struggling to identify the answer to this question for some time, you’re certainly not alone. Most photographers, in fact most entrepreneurial businesses, are challenged to answer this question with succinct language and confidence.

If a magnificent phrase of approximately 1-3 sentences didn’t just spew out of you, don’t worry. We’ll come back to this point in just a bit.

2. Identify What Makes You Unique

There might be something you believe that’s uniquely your perspective on the world. Perhaps it’s an uncommon thing to shoot. Or maybe, the market you serve is undervalued or otherwise ignored by other photographers.

This step, just like step one, is another that photographers frequently struggle with. Intuition tells us to try to be everything to everyone so we can earn money from all directions. In truth, this is one of the world’s worst, most boring and certainly most overplayed marketing strategies. As a result, customers have trouble finding anything different about your business, which always resorts to competing on price.

Often, photographers blame the saturated market and the proliferation of digital cameras as the cause for so many lost customers who went to another photographer because of price. I believe infantile marketing and unremarkable brand positioning are more to blame.

3. Work on your Message

I teach a business class to photography seniors at Drexel University, a school known for their hardcore internship program. All of the students had more experience working on large-scale photo shoots for some of the country’s biggest brands, including Target, Urban Outfitters, Comcast and more, than most other already established professional photographers.

I went around the room and asked each of the students to tell me what they thought was particularly unique and remarkable about the place where they fulfilled their internships.

When I got to one student, she said, “The photographer really cares about her clients.”

“That’s unique?” I challenged.

“Well most photographers say that, but they don’t really mean what they say. It’s just marketing. The photographer I worked for really means it… she becomes friends with everyone she works with!”

If this sounds familiar or resembles the About Me page on your website, listen up.

The “I become your friend” , “I believe weddings are beautiful” , “all babies are precious, let me capture yours” kinds of messages don’t work:

• None of those messages break through marketing clutter and resonate like you’re intending them to.
• If everyone says it, even if you really mean it, it doesn’t matter…. everyone says it. End of story.
• There is no contrast to carve out a market for you. In other words, if all other photographers in your area shooting weddings thought that weddings were all BS, you’d suddenly look pretty unique. It’s probably not the case, so you’ll have to work a little harder to become worth talking about.
• Rarely, if ever, does a customer hire a business because he or she wants a new friend. That may be a nice add-on benefit, but it isn’t the message she wants to read when she’s out there looking around.

4. Divide and Conquer

When people are turned off, it’s a good sign. And I don’t mean turned off because of poor service or a poor product. I’m talking about marketing that divides an audience into the fans and the people who say, “this definitely isn’t for me.”

Scary, right?

If your business isn’t turning some people away toward selecting another photographer, instead, something’s wrong. Keep working at it until you’ve at least identified a few groups of people that’d be better served elsewhere.

5. Focus on your Ideal Client

Sometimes figuring out your brand is easily done once you focus on the people you believe would be happier with another photographer, instead. By identifying who your business is not designed for, you can start to identify the people that it is designed for.

Which clients–whether actual or imaginary at this point–do you want to clone because they make you come alive?

6. Have a Reason

It’s important to you and your employees, if you have any, to know why you do your work. For your customers, however, the “why” is rarely interesting enough to catch their attention, at least at first.

If you are among the few photographers that have a heart-wrenching story that led you to becoming a photographer, then this is part of your brand and is likely interesting enough to get you noticed by the right clients, assuming you’re willing to share it.

For the rest of us, the reason why we became photographers is not significant enough to be marketable material.

So if your story is pretty typical, that’s cool. But remember, you’re looking for pockets of uniqueness to use as pieces of a puzzle making up an elevated brand.

I suggest leaving anything ho-hum off your website.

For the vast majority of you, the answer to the question, “how do you do your work?” is potentially a more interesting part of your brand. You may do things for your clients that always happened “behind the scenes,” and now it’s time to reveal it to potential clients. More and more, photographers are finding a short promotional, branded video a great means of communicating this information.

7. Tie it all Together

If you’ve been dying for an example all this time, here you go:
Here’s a branding example using my own photography business brand that brings us back to the answer to step one by going through the subsequent steps, first.

2. I love photographing newborns and am fascinated with alternative parents, whether they be same-sex parents, interracial, a little on the “crunchy side” or otherwise unconventional.

3. I have yet to find another newborn photographer that makes alternative lifestyle parents feel comfortable like I do.

4. If the average parent or mother-to-be can’t hang with someone that understands and connects with those that walk to a different beat, there are plenty of other photographers they’d be better suited for.

5. The answer to this question is obvious to me, but it took some time to figure out. If yours isn’t coming easy for you, I encourage you to read more, learn more and talk more about your business and what types of costumers you enjoy the most and, most importantly, what commonalities do they share?

6. I’m actually working on a video to show people exactly how I do my work. A close friend and I set up a video camera at a shoot and just let it roll. I did my thing for two hours, and now I’m simply planning on editing it down with a voiceover into a 60 second reveal into my work. It’s extrermely easy to pull together, and anyone can do it, even if you just need to rent some extra equipment for a day.

Finish up at the first step… 1. I’m a newborn photographer for parents that enjoy a slightly alternative lifestyle. These are the kinds of parents who believe love is love, no matter what it looks like or what shape it comes in. They’re seeking an image creator who knows how to capture that in photographs.

Next Steps for Building a Brand

Listen to my speech at the Dream Bigger Conference telesummmit (affiliate). I’m speaking on the topic of branding and uniqueness in the opening session, titled “How To Never Have To Market Your Business Again”.

I look at those famous photographers, too. You know, the ones who have tons of gear and who seem to be growing bigger and bigger every year. And sometimes I catch myself thinking, “gosh darn it, how did they get so lucky?”

And then I realize that it probably was only a sprinkling of luck on top of a solid foundation of planning and a bucket of sweat to represent their hard work.

Even though I forget sometimes, I have actually come to realize that so much in business hinges on good planning. And it’s not to say that plans can’t shift and change. They can. But going in feet first with no plan at all can mean rapid disappointment.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
– Benjamin Franklin

As photographers, most of us just want to be behind the camera. If we had all the money in the world, we’d pay someone to do our marketing, respond to emails, do our post-processing, and do our business planning for us. That stuff is all yucky and boring. Being behind the camera is fun.

The good news about planning, however, is that you really only need to lay out a photography business plan once a year and then visit it monthly to ensure things are staying on track (or to see if things need adjusting).

If you plan to start a photography business and have never done a photography business plan before, it probably sounds kinda scary, right? Well, what most of us think of when we think of the words “business plans” are really long, drawn-out documents that take up a lot of time and hard work. But then, they sit on a shelf to rot.

That’s the kind of business planning that I loathe. It isn’t helpful to anyone, except, perhaps, a bank if you’re seeking funding. A solid business plan, and one that actually works and makes a real impact, however, is a business plan that is simple and fits onto one piece of paper.

I’m going to walk you through each step for creating a sample photography business plan as you work on starting a photography business.

1. Know Your Strengths

We’re all good at a lot of things. However, when you’re evaluating your strengths for your photography business plan, you’re comparing yourself to your competitors in the photography industry. So, let’s talk about each of these things for a minute, starting with your competition.

Your competitors are your real competitors. Meaning, they’re the other photographers that your customers are considering when they’re looking for someone like you. So, if you’re a wedding photographer in a really big town, you might have 3-4 actual competitors out of all of the dozens of those doing wedding photography and serving your area. And even though there are other photography businesses, your competitors are only really the select few that your typical client considers.

Now, picturing those few competitors, when you’re thinking about your strengths, you want to be thinking of the strengths you offer that these competitors don’t. Perhaps it’s that you’ve shot at more locations than they have. Or perhaps it’s that you’re more networked than they are. List whatever strengths allow you to shine, where your competitors are weak.

For our sample photography business plan, we’re going to pretend we’re a portrait photographer in Philadelphia. We’ve evaluated our competition and narrowed it down to three. And after careful consideration, we’ve listed our strengths as being: better customer experience, more referring partners for our business, and more connections with Philadelphia non-profit groups.

Why are Strengths Important?

Because when you realize a list of strengths that your competitors do not have, you may see some opportunities for further growth. The key to market significance and capitalization is to leverage your strengths to their fullest

Too many photographers try to match their competition. That just creates more of the same. Leverage your unique strengths, instead, and leave the competition in your dust.

2. Identify Your Weaknesses

So, while strengths are competitive differentiators, weaknesses are holding you back from even more success. Just as we all have strengths to leverage, we also all have weaknesses.

The important thing to remember when thinking about your weaknesses for your own photography business plan is that the weaknesses you list should be things you’re looking to improve before the end of the calendar year. It’s no use listing weaknesses that you have no interest in improving. Think of your list of weaknesses as an alternative version of your to-do list.

When thinking of our sample photography business plan, our fictitious Philly portrait photographer really wants to improve her skills with lighting, the search engine optimization for her website, and her packaging. These are three things that she believes will enhance her business if she can manage to improve them all before the end of the year. As a result, they’re good things to have on her weaknesses list.

Once we know our weaknesses, they cease to do us any harm.
– Georg C. Lichtenberg

3. Target Your Ideal Customer

When working on your own photography business plan, your ideal customer might not be the type of people that have hired you in the past. No, this is the opportunity to be super critical and super detailed about the type of person you want as a customer moving forward. They’re the people that make your job easy, don’t ruffle feathers and who are super appreciative of what you do.

They pay what you want them to pay, and they don’t think twice about it. So, while they might not be who you’re working with now, it’s important to document who they would be going forward. And be as specific as possible.

For our sample photography business plan, we’re going to list the following attributes for this Philadelphia-based photographer’s ideal customer (see if any are on your list, too):

• the customer lives in Philadelphia’s city limits
• is married with at least 1 kid… usually a dog, too
• An active lifestyle and seems to really like marathons
• both spouses work full-time jobs
• their extended families tend to live far away
• they commute to work each day via public transportation
• they frequently do day trips and go out to dinner on the weekends

While much of the above list seems to have nothing to do with photography, it reveals some interesting marketing opportunities. For example, in this photographer’s case, they’ve identified that most of their customers participate in marathons. So what if they found an opportunity to sponsor a marathon as a marketing opportunity? Perhaps they could take shots of runners crossing the finish line as promotional pieces for their business. Or, since their customers’ families typically live far away, perhaps they can leverage some product sales by marketing special holiday keepsake books that help to connect families through photography that live miles away?

Some really fun brainstorming can come from listing out the commonalities amongst your ideal customers.

4. Understand Your Financials

All good business owners have a keen awareness of their current financial state. They know the revenue they need to bring in each month to make their number, along with their current standings against the goal. While financials can be a scary thing for many creative types, what I’ve found is that awareness actually moderates the fear.

A basic understanding of your photography business financials – including start-up costs and other expenses – allows you to plan better and manage the business better, thus alleviating this general sense of ignorance and uncertainty.

While crunching numbers and determining financial goals can seem like nerd-work, it can actually have a really positive effect on your own personal outlook on your business.

Here’s how I recommend you start:

Determine Your Total Sales Per Month

Grab a calculator and a pen and paper. If you’re an ex-corporate type like me, feel free to open up Excel and do this work there, instead.

You’re going to determine how much in total sales you want to earn for every month that remains in 2017. If you’re a wedding photographer or any other photographer that is booked further out, feel free to start your planning for 2018, instead.

Your total sales generally consist of:

• Session fees/month
• Average product order amounts per session
• Any other miscellaneous fees you charge your clients

If you’ve never done this kind of planning before, you’re probably thinking, “but I have no idea how much I’m going to book from now through the end of the year.” Or, “but everyone orders different amounts of stuff after each session.”

Don’t worry. The lovely part of planning is that we can use rough numbers for now.

To figure out your session fee revenue, determine how many sessions you think you will reasonably schedule between now and the end of the year. Then, figure out how many sessions, on average, you’ll book each month and multiply that number by your average session fee.

To figure out your print and album fees, it might help to look back at the earlier months of 2017, or last part of 2016, and figure out an average print/album order amount and go with that.

Finally, add your monthly session fees to your product order fees and other miscellaneous fees to get an estimated total sales number per month. Remember, a rough starting point is fine. There is an opportunity to refine your estimates later.

Determine Your Cost Of Sales Per Month

For every shoot you book, you have costs. There might be editing costs (if you outsource your editing) or second shooter costs or, at the very minimum, your own costs to the print lab or album company.

When thinking of your cost of sales (otherwise known as the cost of goods sold), consider anything that is variable and only incurred if a client books you. Your business has other fixed expenses (like your website hosting fees or marketing fees), but those expenses fall into another area.

Again, if you don’t know how to figure this out, look back at the earlier months of 2017 and associate your averages from this time period to what you’ll incur going forward. Be sure your cost of sales is a monthly number, as well.

Calculate Your Gross Profit

This is a fairly easy number to calculate. Your gross profit is determined by taking your total sales number and subtracting your cost of sales. You should be left with a positive number, which equals your average gross profit per month.

If the number you’re left with is a negative number, you need to take a closer look at your prices. A photographer should never have a cost of sale higher than the total sale.

Identify Your General Expenses

Your general expenses are the fixed costs associated with running your photography business. They consist of things like:

• website hosting fees
• accounting and legal fees – manage them using Freshbooks (affiliate)
• equipment and computer expenses
• studio rent, etc.

In most cases, general expenses don’t vary too much from month-to-month, aside from annual fees or quarterly fees you might pay to keep your business running. For example, I pay my website hosting fee and my email newsletter software fee in an annual payment to take advantage of their annual payment discounts. Therefore, my expenses are abnormally high in the specific month when these two payments are incurred.

Figure out your own personal business expenses per month. Then, add your own compensation to that number. Now, you have a total general expenses number, including the owner’s compensation. If you’re currently running a part-time photography business while still working a “day job,” your owner’s compensation may be $0, and that’s okay.

Obviously, when you’re running a photography business full time and are wanting it to be your source of income, you need to provide yourself with monthly owner’s compensation.

Calculate Your Net Profit

When figuring out your photography business’s financials, the two numbers you’ll find the most enjoyable are the owner’s compensation and net profit.

Net profit is simple to calculate. It is your gross profit minus your general expenses. If you’ve been in business for years, you’re likely to have a positive net profit number. If it’s your first year being a photography business owner, your net profit number might be in the negative, and that’s perfectly okay if you’re planning for the loss.

Many businesses take a year, sometimes more, to get out of a negative net profit (known as operating in the red) and see positive net profits. Smart businesses owners know this ahead of time and save up equity to cover the losses that will be incurred for the first year or so until profits become positive.

If you’re at the point where you’re making money, and you’re left with a positive net profit number, you have a couple of decisions to make. You can either boost your owner’s compensation and take home more income from the business, or you can decide to invest more money into the business to increase its longevity and future success.

There are other potential uses for positive net profit, such as charitable donations or keeping more cash in the business for use later, but investments and bonuses for the owners are typical uses. Investments that photographers typically make are in staff, assistants, new equipment, or an additional marketing strategy.

5. Set Your Goals

The last piece of a solid photography business plan is articulating some goals for the business. When you’re thinking about your goals for the remainder of 2017, review the sections of your business plan that are listed above. They’re loaded with ideas for really strong, growth-oriented goals.

When setting your goals, remember the acronym SMART. What that means is the goals you set should be:

• Specific
  • A well-defined goal, so you know your target
• Measurable
  • A way to measure progress toward your goal
• Achievable
  • The goal is within reach (although it may be a stretch)
• Realistic
  • You have the means to achieve the goal (time, resources, knowledge)
• Time-bound
  • A realistic time limit to achieve the goal is essential. Too short and you may get discouraged, too long, and you may lack focus

In the case of the Philadelphia-based photographer we used for our sample photography business plan, she should consider:

• making each of her weaknesses a goal to improve upon before the end of the year
• leveraging some of her strengths through her marketing plan, such as attending more non-profit group events for marketing and networking, for example
• taking a closer look at her financials for opportunities to raise prices and earn more per shoot, lower her expenses and/or invest in some things that will help her photography business grow (this is recommended for all photographers)

Defining Your Business Plan

Having a plan for the plan is also recommended to help you reach your goals. Start with a simple goal with an x amount of days to complete it. For example, you will have your business plan completed in 60 days.

Photography Services

Have you made a list of the photography services you will be offering? Are you a portrait photographer or do you dabble more in commercial photography? Maybe you do stock photography or even pet photography. All of these are different services, and all require their own set of must-haves and must-determines, including calculating what the start-up costs for your new venture may be.

A solid photography business plan will simplify this and outline the main areas you need to focus on to grow a successful photography business.

You can then enlist any help you feel you will need and create a schedule of times that you have available to work on the business plan. In addition to the elements above that should be included in your photography business plan, you should also be able to define your products and photography services, tune up your website, get social, and follow up with any old clients you may have.

Marketing Strategies

As business owners, you need to come up with viable ways to reach your target audience and get the attention of prospective clients for your business. To do this, you need to determine which channels you use the most and what your marketing budget will be. Are you going to put all or just some of your efforts into different strategies, including social media, SEO, and email?

Define Target Market

When you define your target market, you need to do everything you can to understand your ideal clients in detail. It is only then that you can successfully market to the right audience to grow your business.

Final Thoughts

If you can’t sit down and come up with your business plan right away, set time aside each day to work on it, so it doesn’t become overwhelming. If you choose to skip this very critical step for your photography business, you risk financial ruin and the downfall of what could have otherwise been a very successful photography business with clearly defined goals and objectives.

Planning Made Easy

A Guide to Crafting a Killer Vision Statement
A vision statement can mean the difference between a ho-hum business and a business that stops you in your tracks. Learn the questions you should be asking yourself, see examples, and learn how to write the perfect vision with this free PDF workbook.
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Quick and Easy Template for your Business
I designed a photography business plan template and accompanying tutorial video to help photographers easily create a photography business plan. The best part? You get to watch me complete my actual photography business plan in the tutorial video using the same template you’ll receive, and it only takes about an hour.
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