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Marketing Strategies

The following expanded web content is a compilation of the information that Gary Kessler, Michael Schneider, and Jerome Vieh created for the Ohio Valley Chapter ASMP Web site.

• Marketing Basics—A Refresher
  
• How To Optimize Your Web site—Programming
  
• How To Optimize Your Web site—Submitting
  
• How To Optimize Your Web site—Submission Links
  
• Promote Your Web site Through Portals
  

The advent of photographer Web sites hasn’t changed the key to effectively marketing one’s business. They simply offer a new tool, a new way to reach new potential clients and to strengthen relationships with existing clients. With this in mind, here are some marketing basics to keep in mind when building and updating your Web site:

• Know your market. To create a successful marketing campaign you must know exactly the people who comprise the market segment you’re trying to reach. Who is your audience? What are their needs? What will attract them to your services over those of your competitors? Ask these questions on an ongoing basis. As their needs change you will need to adjust your marketing message accordingly.
  
  
• Teach your market about you. Creative and catchy marketing campaigns are great. But at their core, all quality marketing initiatives concentrate on three messages: Who you are, what photographic services you offer, and why potential clients should contact you.
  
  
• Establish the three marketing essentials. Regardless of your market and how you plan to promote yourself, you must have three things in place: your identity, your portfolio, and your lines of communication. Your identity—also called branding—includes your physical marketing collateral, such as your logo, business cards, letterhead, envelopes, as well as the concept of who you are and what unique services you can offer your market. Your portfolio includes all the ways you have to show potential clients your work, including your book, Web galleries, CDs, and tear sheets. Your lines of communication include all ways that potential clients might want to communicate with you, including phone and fax numbers, e-mail address, and Web site. While these things might seem obvious, a little Web browsing will reveal a shocking number of photographers who have not taken care of these basics. Phone numbers are often buried deep inside Web sites, e-mails don’t always work, and marketing materials often don’t have a consistent look and feel. Simply taking care of these basics will give you a leg up on the competition.
  
  
• Develop a marketing plan and stick to it. The very phrase “marketing plan” seems to immobilize an amazing number of creative professionals. But it shouldn’t. As a photographer you make your livelihood by continually coming up with a clear vision of an end product, and then executing the steps necessary to achieve that goal. To turn an abstract idea into a concrete visual solution requires careful planning and a systematic work process. To create an effective marketing plan you need to consider what types of marketing you will employ (direct mail pieces, phone book ads, paid advertisements, phone calling, networking); what your budget is; what your timeline and schedule is; who will be involved (only you, designers, printers, consultants); and what type of return you expect. Most important for improving success over the coming years, you need to track and analyze the effectiveness of your efforts. Carefully assessing your marketing efforts is really no different than carefully and systematically testing a new film (or, these days, a digital camera).
  
  
• Create your materials once, distribute them all year long. Consolidating your efforts into one campaign will save you time and money and it will allow you to focus on the other, more enjoyable aspects of your business. It will also ensure that you have one consistent message, which is the cornerstone of any good marketing campaign. You will always have appropriate materials ready for prospective clients, which will save you from having to interrupt your regular workflow to figure out how to sell your services to potential clients.
  
  
• Decide between the “shotgun” and the “rifle” approach. Shotgun marketing describes fairly impersonal campaigns that rely on contacting large numbers of potential clients with the assumption that only a small percentage will respond. The rifle approach is one in which a much smaller, but more personal campaign is designed to garner a greater percentage of interest. The advantage of the shotgun approach is that you get wide coverage. The disadvantage is that it is costly and impersonal. The sharp focus of the rifle approach allows you to be personal. The disadvantage is that it is time consuming and the volume is low. One method is not better than the other. What matters is that your approach matches your personal style and that it is suitable for your target market.
  
  
• Prepare a response mechanism. Before you initiate your marketing campaign, make sure you can follow up with prospective clients. You only have one chance to make a positive first impression and you want to do it right. If you’re not sure about the kind of response a mailing will generate, start out small.
  
  
• Plan ways to keep your Web site dynamic. This does not mean regularly stopping to redesign your overall site or its content. But a static site is like a store that never changes its window displays. Simply posting a “Picture of the Week” will keep your site alive and fresh.
  
  
• Remember that you get what you pay for. As a creative professional you are in a good position to create many aspects of your marketing campaign en solo. However, it may be worthwhile to call in a professional for the things you cannot do with true finesse. If you’re not an excellent designer, hire one. Or develop a less graphically-driven campaign. Otherwise you can do more damage than good.
  
  
• Be realistic about your marketing efforts. Only engage in marketing activities that you can do extremely well. It’s easy to fall into the trap of creating an unwieldy marketing campaign. But less done well is far better than more done poorly.
  
  

To learn other innovative strategies for marketing your photography business, read Angela Wolff’s article Collaborative Promotion published in the Year End 2004 issue of the ASMP Bulletin and available here as a downloadable PDF document: http://www.asmp.org/pdfs/bulletins/2004/yearend04.pdf

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How To Optimize Your Web site—Programming

With good, solid HTML design that incorporates the right search engine metadata information, you are halfway to success. It will take some extra work, but once understood, it only takes a few minutes and you are on your way to being found by the clients who need you.

Optimizing—and implementing—the Correct Keywords

• Choose the right keyword phrase (not single words). Think about the person who will be searching through your site. What words will be most essential in describing specifically what you do and the kinds of images you make?
• Try a sample search using keywords or keyword phrases on a competitor’s site. Check their site’s source code and note the keywords they are using.
• Incorporate a list of optimized keyword phrases for every Web page in your site, not just the home page.

Optimizing your Title Tag

• The title of your page is one of the single most important factors when optimizing your Web site for search engines. The title tag is embedded in your Web page and appears at the top of your browser window. Most search engines and directories place a high level of importance on the title tag. In fact, search engines use your pages’ title tags for the titles of the results that are returned in a search. Include one or two of your most important keyword phrases. If you only use keywords, you’ll risk being viewed as spamming the search engines. An example of a good title tag is, “Jane Smith - Colorado Landscape and Wildlife Photographer.”
• Since the keyword phrases may be long for some search engines, place the most relevant keywords at the beginning of the tag.
• Each page of your site should have its own title tag with its own keywords that relate to the page on which it appears.

Optimizing your Page Copy

• The text that appears on your site (that is not part of a graphic) is also being “read” by search engines, and it is just as important as a good title tag.
• For best results, each page you submit should have about 200 words. This text should include important keyword phrases while remaining logical and readable.

Optimizing your Meta Tags

• The meta tag is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page's source code. Search engines use meta tags to index pages by subject. It’s a myth that good meta tags are all your site needs to achieve good search engine results. It’s true that older search engine technology relied almost entirely on meta tags, but now title tags and page copy are just as important. Still, meta tags are critical to making sure you are found when someone is looking for you!
• Two meta tags can help your search engine listings: meta keywords and meta descriptions.
• The keyword meta tag should not exceed 1024 characters, including spaces. The description meta tag is much shorter, and should not exceed 250 characters, including spaces.

Optimizing your Image “alt” Attributes

• Give each image a keyword phrase “name” using the “alt” information in the image pointer that relates to each image on each page. This is the text that appears when your mouse “hovers” over the image. Don’t use more that a brief sentence or two.
• Also, include your copyright information here.

HTML links

• Add hyperlinks to your home page that lead search engines—and visitors—to the major inside pages or sections of your Web site. The bottom of the page is the best location. Once added, search engines will find them and follow them.
• Add a site map page with text links to all the pages in your site. Then submit your site map page as its own site to search engines. This will allow the search engines to locate pages within your site.
• Make sure all the internal links of your site are working. By consistently pointing to different pages from within your overall site, you increase the odds that search engines will follow those links, and your Web site is more likely to rank high in search results.

Avoid Spamming the Search Engine

• Don’t hide searchable text on your pages by making the font the same color as the Web page’s background color. This is an outdated method that was typically used to increase a site’s ranking. Search engines now detect this type of spamming, and knock such pages out of search results altogether. Don’t use multiple instances of the same tag. For instance, avoid using more than one title tag or description meta tag on the same page.
• Don’t use any keywords in your keyword meta tag that do not directly relate to the content of that page.
• Don’t submit the same page to an engine more than once within a 24-hour period.

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How To Optimize Your Web Site—Submitting

After you’ve programmed your site for optimal search engine results, you still need to go a step further and submit your site to the major search engines. You can’t rely on search engines to index your site on their own, as it might take months before an engine’s spider crawls out and finally takes a look at your site. Search engines have their “hands” full trying to index millions of Web pages that are calling for their attention—including those of your competition.

Even the best Web sites need to be resubmitted to search engines on a regular basis. If you’ve made changes to your content or simply want to rank higher in the results, you need to make sure to actively call attention to your site, so that search engines have the best “picture” of your site when returning search results.

How do I Tell Search Engines about my Site?

There are many software programs and Web applications available that will submit your site to multiple search engines in bulk. But when it comes to the top search sites, we recommend submitting your site manually.

Why Submit Manually?

• Since the major search engines account for over ninety percent of search-engine-generated traffic, they are too important to leave to an automated procedure.
• Some search engines don’t allow robot submissions.
• Directories require manual submissions, and you’ll need to add your own category and a description of your services yourself.
• One great page for more on manual submissions can be found at: http://www.searchengine.com/URLsubmission.html.

Search Engines and Directories

Optimizing your site for search engines can be complicated, but the submission process is relatively straightforward. You need to provide your URL and an e-mail address, and sometimes a title. Directories, in addition to the above, require you to:

• Find the appropriate category for your site from their listings
• Add a site description, some which are limited in characters.

Paying Search Engines for Rankings

“Pay-per-Click” search engines allow participating sites to pay for high rankings in their results. To be listed by a pay-per-click engine, choose a few relevant keywords and determine the amount you are willing to pay for each click-though from that engine. When a user enters a keyword, the search engine lists sites in order of the amount you paid for that keyword.

Paying Services to Submit your Site

There are hundreds of site submission services available, including software packages, Web-based applications, and companies that specialize in custom site submissions. Each option has pluses and minuses.

All Search Engines are Different

It’s not only how they rank sites (the formulas they use) but search engines also differ in how they index sites. Some engines may take three weeks to rank your site, others may need three months.

Consider the following:

• It’s not enough to wait for engines to index your site
• Submitting to engines is easier than submitting to directories
• Pay-per-click engines (that allow companies to pay for higher rankings) are an option that should be explored by site owners who wish to quickly build visibility. For some they may also provide a long-term advertising option.

Submitting To Search Engines and Directories

Web site designers must employ a number of programming techniques to ensure that a site ranks high in search engine results. But the challenge of Web site optimization does not end there. You must take the time—not very much considering the payoff—to manually submit information about your site to the major search engines. If you passively rely on search engines to locate and index your site, it will take months before all the search engines have added your site to their databases. After all, search engines have their “hands” full trying to index millions of Web pages that are also vying for their attention—including those of your competition.

There are many software programs, both free and fee-based, that automatically submit sites to multiple search engines. But some search engines don’t allow these “robot” submissions. And directories, which, unlike search engines, don’t use automated “spider” programs to scour the Internet, always require manual submissions. You can hire optimization specialists to make the submissions for you, but this is not necessary. The submission process is an easy one, and just a few of the major engines and directories account for more than 90 percent of search-engine-generated traffic. What’s more, as the person most familiar with your unique services, you are in the best position to make the most effective submissions.

To submit to a search engine you simply need to go to the pages listed below and provide your URL and an e-mail address, and sometimes a title (which the search engine will use when displaying your site in search results). In addition to this, directories require you to find the appropriate category for your site from their listings, and add a site description.

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Submission Links

Google

Submission directions: http://www.google.com/webmasters/

add url request: http://www.google.com/addurl.html

paid ad placement: http://www.google.com/services/index.html

MSN

submission directions: http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/mbr/msn.jhtml?o=U5621

paid ads: http://advertising.msn.com/adproducts/adproducttype.asp?aptid=aptid8

AltaVista

submission directions: http://addurl.altavista.com

Excite

submission directions: https://secure.ah-ha.com/guaranteed_inclusion/teaser.aspx

paid ads: http://www1.excite.com/home/companyinfo/advertise_overview/

AOL

paid ad placement: http://advisor.aol.com

link placement: http://www.aol.com/info/link.adp

HotBot

submission directions: http://insite.lycos.com

paid ad placement: http://advertising.lycos.com/contactus.html

Yahoo

submission directions: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/

submission categories: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/appropriate.html

Fast

home page: http://www.fastsearch.com

Northern Light

home page: http://northernlight.com

General Submission Sites

http://www.searchengines.com/URLsubmission.html

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156221

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Promote Your Website Through Portals

The following portal sites—each with their own unique features—offer photographers creative strategies for driving new traffic to their own websites.

Contacts: http://www.agpix.com, E-mail: Office@agpix.com, Phone: (800) 727-9593

Costs: $550 for one year of services. First time AGPix subscribers are charged an additional one-time set-up fee of $150, which includes space for 25 images. Eligibility to join AGPix is determined by publication credits (see below for further details).

Description: AGPix.com is part of AG Editions Inc. It is home to an online community of 600+ member photographers and 55,000 images. In addition, it publishes Daily Photo Wants, the AGPix Marketing Report and PRINT, an annual directory of AGPix photographers.

AGPix member photographers and stock agents’ files cover the full range of subjects: adventure, agriculture, children, environment, horticulture, industry, lifestyles, natural history, scientific illustration, travel destinations, urban areas, etc. Geographic scope is worldwide.

Membership in AGPix has these benefits:

• Profile Page that includes two images, your logo, contact information, a Web site link (subject to technical review), an e-mail link and a business description.
• A searchable stocklist with up to 300 index entries—50 of which can be emphasized with boldfaced type to indicate specialties. You can purchase additional subject index entries at $0.50 each and/or bold entries at $2 each.
• A unique Web address that goes directly to your Profile Page.
• Easy-to-use photographer utilities that allow you to control your account.
• Twelve months of Daily Photo Wants.
• Three Viewing Platforms that allow you to post images for temporary client review. Additional Viewing Platforms can be purchased for $25 with a one-time set up fee of $25 with your first new platform.
• Twenty-five free images in the AGPix Image Catalog and a one-time fee of $2 per additional image.
• Image requests go directly to you, allowing you to begin a dialogue and negotiate payments and rights with photo buyers.
• Images from your online catalog can be submitted for possible use on the AGPix Home page.
• Secure online purchase utility for adding images and additional index terms and to make your annual membership payment.

Qualifications: A list of ten or more national publication credits or clients to indicate professional experience is required. Credits must be from 10 different organizations and should not include contests, exhibitions or sales of photo prints. Calendars, annual reports, magazines, books, newspapers, corporate brochures and greeting cards are good examples of qualifying publications.

Altpick.

Contacts: http://altpick.com, E-mail: webhelp@altpick.com, Phone: (212) 675-4176

Costs: $299 annual membership with no extra charges for additional work, additional formats or additional links.

Description: The site was designed to help connect the viewer, whether an art director, art buyer, photo editor or creative director looking for talent to shoot, illustrate or animate a project to an artist looking to promote to this viewer base.

A page on Altpick allows you to:

• Display and change up to 10 multimedia files at any time
• Add up to three links to any other sites
• Receive e-mail directly from the site
• Enter keywords to help the site’s viewers find you using simple or advanced search options
• List biographical information or thoughts about your work
• Inform users automatically when you have made changes to your page
• Add classified and job listings
• Have news items as well as calendar items about you posted on the site

ASMP’s FindaPhotographer.org.

Contacts: http://www.FindaPhotographer.org, E-mail: info@asmp.org, Phone: (215) 451-ASMP (2767)

Costs: A free service for General Members of the American Society of Media Photographers. Find out more about joining by following this link: http://www.asmp.org/join/index.php

Description: Find a Photographer is a search engine to help connect image buyers with the most respected photographers in the industry, members of the American Society of Media Photographers. This service is free to general members of ASMP and allows photographers to upload up to seven sample images for display. Buyers can use pull-down selectors to limit their search to one of 44 different specialties, 60 metro areas or countries and then contact selected individuals directly to work out all the details of an image use or an assignment.

Blackbook.com.

Contacts: http://www.blackbook.com, E-mail: info@blackbook.com, Phone: (800) 841-1246 x204

Costs: Annual Web rates for non-print advertisers (this includes an online portfolio with up to two links to existing sites)

Option#1: Blackbook managed portfolio with up to six images is $500 per year. Blackbook managed portfolio with up to 12 images is $1,000 year.

Changes are $100.00 per change, per image.

Option#2: Self managed portfolio with up to 12 images $1,200.00/year.

Description: Blackbook.com is the online extension of the Blackbook sourcebook. A Blackbook marketing consultant will review your qualifications for exhibiting on the site. The site has an electronic leave behind option.

With Blackbook.com:

• High quality scans are seen by thousands of talent buyers at a fraction of costs for portfolio drop-offs or tear sheets.
• Online advertisers can exhibit up to 12 images. Print advertisers receive special discounts and a free link to their site.
• Photographers can update their online portfolios themselves or opt to have the Blackbook staff do the updating.
• Electronic Leave Behind lets photographers conduct their own direct marketing campaign by e-mailing printer-friendly samples anywhere in the world.
• Photographers can also e-mail buyers their Blackbook.com URL, which provides buyers with a link to their portfolio.

Digital Railroad.

Contacts: http://www.digitalrailroad.net, E-mail: sales@digitalrailroad.net

Costs: $99 set up fee, $49.95 per month (set up fee waived for yearly pre-payment). Storage or bandwidth upgrades of 10GB each are an additional $10 each monthly. Rewards include one month free for each successful member referred to the site after they have paid for their site for two full months.

Description: Digital Railroad’s Web-based digital workflow provides tools to manage, market and sell images. Photographers control how, where and when to share or sell images. Members can use the system purely to minimize their workflow and syndicate to agencies. Others may choose to leverage the system to sell their images directly to buyers. Some may do both.

IPNStock.com.

Contacts: http://www.ipnstock.com, E-mail: info@ipnstock.com, Phone: (866)-ipnstock (476-7862)

Costs: Setup (one-time fee): $595 for IPN to build and customize your site.

The monthly hosting fees are $195 a month for Photographers;, $495 a month for Agencies:. IPN asks for a two-year commitment, and reserves the right to refuse images for the network site if they do not fit quality criteria. IPN requires scans of high quality to service the needs of photo buyers: 40 megabytes is a minimum but 60 megabytes is preferred.

Description: Since February 2004 IPNstock (The Independent Photography Network) has offered an alternative for rights managed stock, including specialty collections not available through the major image sources. IPNstock is both a technology provider and a stock photography resource that provides the gateway to a wide range of content by participating photographers and agencies. A network of dedicated Web sites are built to individual specifications and grouped in a stock portal with the full benefits of e-commerce licensing, digital delivery, unlimited lightboxes and a wide range of search options.

IPNstock currently represents rights-managed imagery for over 50 individual photographers and over a dozen archives, serving all markets including advertising, corporate and editorial. This extensive collection is organized to provide easy access, high quality, volume and diversity to art buyers and editors worldwide.

IPNstock offers the following to photographers and agencies:

• Efficient distribution
• Generous commission structure
• Web-based administration
• Photographer friendly network
• Global Reach
• Specific site reports
• Keyword search
• Maximization of sales revenue
• Control over imagery
• Low up front (out of pocket) costs
• Ease of use
• Built in marketing tools
• Archiving
• Captioning
• Ability to sell direct to selected customers

Photoserve.com.

Contacts: http://www.photoserve.com, Director: Barbara Goldman, Phone: (646)-654-5794

A basic listing is free. The cost for an enhanced portfolio is $780 per year with a $80.00 discount for ASMP members.

Description: Photoserve is sent to 15,000 qualified art buyers worldwide every month. They encourage photographers to update listings with at least 1 new image per month, that way you go to the top of the updated portfolio list and they also offer several other ways to keep your site at the top of the listings. Please check the site for all the details as they keep adding ways to promote you.

Photoserve.com’s service includes:

• 24 images in a portfolio that creatives can view, place in an online lightbox or e-mail to a client. This self-managed package allows you to do unlimited photo updates.
• Portfolio images are presented as thumbnails and can be enlarged to 350 pixels wide or tall.
• A dedicated Web address for your PhotoServe portfolio that can be included in e-mails, print mailings and all correspondence.
• Your contact information and a list of your photographic specialties.
• A personal biographic profile, client list and your awards won.
• A hot link to your e-mail address or Web site.
• Personal customer service.
• Monthly newsletter e-mailed to 15,000 creative contacts includes an opportunity to place your news on the site
• New features include the option to include 24 images on the IPNstock sister Web site for $200 per year (with an additional $10 per image for up to 50 images)

Stockphotorequest.com.

Contact: http://www.stockphotorequest.com, Phone: (928) 214-8272, E-mail: info@stockphotorequest.com

Costs: One time subscription fee of $400 per year. Additional images can be placed in searchable image collection for $2 per image.

Description: This site is for professional photographers who want to sell rights-managed stock to an understanding set of qualified buyers. Contributors must have at least five years of experience, 10 recent publication credits and a stock file that is not overly represented in the existing subscribers. Photo buyers contact photographer directly to license images. There are no commissions on sales made.

As a subscriber, photographers have their own Profile Page on the site, with a bio and a portfolio of three images. Photographers receive daily e-mails from SPR with image requests from advertising and editorial photo buyers, along with budget and contact information. Contributors upload images to one common light table per request and can see what other photographers are submitting as well and what the photo buyer has saved or deleted.

Workbook.com

Contacts: http://www.workbook.com, Editor: Kirsten Larson, Phone: (800) 547-2688, (949) 360-1328

Costs: Free listing on workbook.com. In 2005, the non-advertiser rate for a five screen, Workbook managed portfolio is $1000, each additional screen costs $100. U-manage it with Wookbook.com has seven different options for designing and updating your portfolio. Different options all have charges for the design and maintenance of the site. For more information go to: workbook.com/andmore/ratecards/index.html for the details.

Description: Workbook is made up of three families: 1) Workbook Assignment, both print and online vehicles for commercial artists to promote their assignment business; 2) Workbookstock, an online provider of high-end, rights-managed stock images to art buyers; 3) Workbook Resources, a stringently verified online and printed database of contact information for over 65,000 companies and individuals in the advertising world. The company markets their online presence to art directors, graphic designers, corporate art departments and publishers with resources for their creative needs for assignment and stock as well as industry contact information.

For more strategies on using portals to direct people to your Web site, as well as a rundown of the major portals, read the article “Going Portal” at: www.asmp.org/commerce/business_articles.php.

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