Marketing. Marketing. Marketing.

Photography News that's Fit to Blog (This Week)
by Kerry Raminiak

Can you smell the cranberries? The holiday kick-off is fast approaching, if not (judged by my trip to Target and Hobby Lobby this weekend) already here. So, this week’s theme is none other than holiday marketing. Enjoy!

Quick (and cheap) marketing tips for PhotoReflect users. As promised last week, we spent some time brainstorming quick ideas on how to capitalize on the pretty significant industry research begging small businesses to market themselves creatively this year. Read and use!

PMA hosting holiday marketing webinars / PMA TV offers weekly marketing episodes. Keep in mind, PMA is not for photographers, rather for people selling equipment to photographers (both consumer and pro). That is not to say the information is useless. Their effort can be your opportunity! Here is information on their webinar series that promises tons of marketing ideas from the head of marketing at Michigan State. PMA TV is free and gives us five minute quickies on marketing, updated every Thursday for a total of six weeks. I had five minutes, took a look, and didn’t think it was wasted time.

Digital Photography School’s biggest tip to in their article called “how to survive a down economy” = “Marketing. Marketing. Marketing.” There are two other tips written by guest contributor, Annie Tao, but marketing, and more importantly, online marketing is the biggest message. It is designed to inspire action on your part.

Be inspired by warm weather. I stumbled across this website today and was taken aback by how a simple concept has really taken off. Travelin’ Local is a website of cool places in the Los Angeles-San Diego area of California that also happen to be photogenic too. Read the About Us page to see how owning a Nikon D40 and the desire to shoot has built a prolific online photography community.

10 low cost ideas on how to market your photography business. Did a Google search to fill up this blog post with relevant ideas (cheap + useful = goal). This eZine article fits the bill. Even if not everything on this list can apply to you, it is still a good start to understanding how to get yourself out there and put it all into perspective.

The point is, coupled with last week’s blog article; marketing is what is going to improve your business and marketing inspiration and ideas do not have to be expensive or elaborate. When we, at ExpressDigital, launched the new PhotoReflect with interactive greeting cards and photo gifts we knew photographers would embrace the opportunity. The real deal is that your customers need to know about you and your services. Good luck!