Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Everyone constructs their own path. The important thing is to follow your heart. Find your niche, is my best advice. If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.—Carol G.
Most entrepreneurs start a business because they’re passionate about something. Book lovers open book stores, art lovers open galleries or design studio and shutterbugs start photo studios (that’s my own story.) But you’ll need more than passion to be a success post COVID-19 starting with the need to set yourself apart from other photographers.
Be original. Don’t be like everybody else. Look at your competitors and make sure that you have nothing in common. If the only thing that separates you from the competition is the name on your front door and the color of your website background, you’ve reduced your services to a commodity and all commodity purchase decisisons are based on price.
Look for a gap in the marketplace, then fill it. It may seem unlikely that there could be anything new but these days the opposite is often true. Look for any kind of new technology and develop products and services around it. If you think the Internet is finished growing you are wrong. The Web is a toddler taking its first, halting steps and you can leverage Internet technology, along with wireless communications and hand held devices to offer new photographic services and products as well as a way to market the ones you already have.
Don’t practice on your clients. Your should know what you are doing before you hang out that shingle or website. (And don;t confuse a Facebook page for a website.) Knowledge of your craft and the technical skills needed to perform must be a given. Over time, you’ll also need to develop policies and practices that enable you to do a better, more efficient job for your clients while remaining profitable but enthusiasm alone will not sustain your enterprise: You have to know what you’re doing.
Treat clients the way you want to be treated. These days bad customer service is the norm and one way to set yourself apart from your competitors is to treat clients like the gold they are. The temptation with start-ups is to worry about cash flow and the thought of refunds or even giving a client “something for nothing” sounds suicidal but customers are the reason you’re in business. When I had my studio, every thing that I “gave away” to satisfy a client’s concern was returned to me ten-fold. Most clients were astonished that instead of giving them grief, I was understanding and gave them something for their trouble.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $34.54, as I write this. Used copies start at the hard-to-beat price price starting at nine bucks and the Kindle version is $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.