Fishing for Clients? Find a Smaller Pond. Part Five of our 15 Day Business Tune Up

Sometimes casting a wide net is doing a disservice to our best offering.

Williams, AZ. Photo by the author.

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The Niche Blitz

You’ve heard me say it before.

Get your work out there, show it to everyone you can. All the time.

And I will continue to say that because it is an authentic way to get your work and your art noticed. There is no better way.

But occasionally we have to take a pragmatic look at the pool of clients we are working with and just get granular.

Your list, even after discovering your channels, will be wider than any one marketing plan could cover. We do our best, but there are ways to niche down that allow us to focus like a laser beam on what we want to do.

Let’s look at this niche campaign and break it down a bit.

You: Food, product, and lifestyle photographer. Your marketing is a solid one email per month, one direct mail per quarter, one printed piece (premium) per year, a good solid call list. Sometimes we refer to it as a voicemail list, but it has to be done.

This is a solid plan, one that can serve your list well.

But we want to boost something in particular.

Perhaps it is spring, and you want to get more food clients.

In particular, farm-to-market and farm-based restaurants.

This may call for a specific, targeted, and very deliberate effort with some serious planning and a short time window.

A project.

1. We do a deep dive into the market where we live. Where are the farm-to-table restaurants, chefs, services, ancillary services, hardware, producers, and any businesses that are in business with farm-to-table operations?

2. With this research, we note that there are 81 businesses in direct operation of something involved with farm-to-table food and distribution.

3. These become our focus for what I call a niche-blitz.

4. We need to develop a marketing strategy that treats the next 4 weeks like a full year. It’s a blitz, remember?

5. Create a specific web page that discusses your services, shows of 15- 20 images, gives them a price (range), and also mentions some uses for the work. Sometimes all we have to do is remind them of the ways they can use photography to spark a bit of imagination.

6. Design a print piece that covers the same information, although truncated, to drop off (optimally), or snail mail (still better than nothing.) You only need 100 pieces so look at places like OverNightPrints.com, 4-Over.com, and similar short-run printers.

7. Start calling your list to remind them of the info you sent, and to see if they have any events or ads coming up that could use your touch.

8. You have to become a monster here. There are only 81 possibilities, and you need two or three to hit.

These blitzes work much better in tight niches; restaurants, accountants, pest control, custom builders, and architects, to name a tiny few.

One of my photographers did wine, another Gin, another beer… say, maybe we need an intervention… One did chocolate, another farm-to-table.

These niche deep dives can be evergreen as well. Once you have them constructed, you simply tweak them a little, change a few dates, photos, and text, and do them again.

One niche-blitz per quarter will see results, I promise you.

Do some research upfront so you know how many possibilities there are, and keep in mind that you may need at least 30 or so to make the niche worth it.

Nuclear energy repositories may not offer many possibilities and, well, they probably already have a photographer who gets glowing accolades.

Another side benefit is that it keeps you focused on shooting and marketing. The habits that are formed can be vital to long-term success. While marketing one niche, you are shooting for the next quarter's project.

And having something to shoot for is truly wonderful.

So gear up, seek a niche you want, and target them like a laser.

Let me know how it works for you.

When you are ready, here is how I can help you succeed.

Group Mentorship: a small group of photographers who meet to show images, work on their portfolio, and build their businesses with help from a wonderful group. Lifetime membership for one fee.

One-on-one Mentorship: You and me - working together in an intense 6-month push to get you on the way to over $30K in additional revenue. The work we lay down will help you increase and scale your business for years ahead.

Today’s Premium Post is Part Five of out Fifteen Day Business Tune Up: Social Media Strategy. Yes, you can make it much more palatable and fun if you have a systematic strategy in place.