Photo Success

Tools for growing a photography business

The best photo marketing replays of 2018

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The best photo marketing
replays of 2018

Here is is.   I’ve gone through the presentations and mastermind meetings in the last year and drug up the best of the best in my o so humble yet accurate opinion.   These are replays for members.  

If you’re not a member, and want in, let me bribe you. Use the coupon code freenobs and save the initial sign up fee. GO HERE

  That gets you in for a meager twenty bucks (canadian funds no less).These are just  few from the last year. There are hundreds + hundreds more, AND online coaching in the forum.

December marketing with Rob

One of my faves, Danny Rabalais (mainly on volume photography)

“That dumb little bike ride created $5,000.00 in sales.” with Maria Sampaio

2 Lighting MasterMind replays with James Hodgins-
he’s the co founder of nobs and knows light like few others I know…

James Hodgins first presentation here

Second one here

One of my favorite photographers Dave Junion

Nancy Tillberg….She’s amazing.
“Loved the webinar with Nancy Tillberg. Wow! She is such an incredible inspiration.”

Ted Linczak  Mastering off camera lighting.

Notice a trend? It’s not about me.

Even though I run a busy Six Figure photography studio.

I love probing, chatting with and revealing nuggets of real world wisdom, marketing and lighting strategies from other photographers.  

Enjoy and see you in the new year with some exciting new events, meetings and guests.

Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer

“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”

What to do when people simply don’t want to have a family portrait taken?

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I noticed a trend these days. And it’s not good.

It appears many folks don’t want and don’t have much patience for family portraits.

Adults seem to hate having their picture taken. Even when with their families.

I could be wrong, but I think I’m mostly right. Priorities are changing.

Cell phones are ruining us all. In this faced paced world, the old adage is new and relevant: “People will take ease over quality everytime.”

My attitude is three fold:

It is what it is. Can’t change it, so adapt we must.
Follow the path of least resistance, water flows downhill.
Find the market that matters

And more.

Don’t get me wrong. We’re still shooting families in our studio, especially the legacy multi-generational family gatherings. It’s just that I detect these subtle changes.

A few ways through this in my oh so humble yet laser accurate opinion is to maintain promotions for families, fairies and such. Don’t sit back. Get at it! Maybe I need to work harder for each booking, but hard work never killed anyone.

Promotions and marketing are in fact the solution.

Maria S has a solution. She outlined it a few months ago when I had her on our marketing mastermind, now available for members HERE.

(one simple idea while out for her bike ride converted one simple family session into a $5,000.00 sale…pure genius!)

Fairies are a thing for us (that image above, in this email, is a current sample- one of many). I just shot over 50 in the last ten days.

We’re up to out eyeballs in fairy orders and I recently shared, as I usually do, my latest fairies workflow, with template download.

For members of course….GET IT HERE once you login.

Next week I am planning on bringing James Hodgins (he keeps bugging me, he has so much to share!) back for a marketing mastermind on selling, educating your clients, attracting the best market and creating ‘perceived’ value. And more.

More on that date coming soon.
Stay tuned, stay frosty my fiends and friends in photography.

Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer

“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”

Join us…Content, Coaching & Community

The secrets to making money in niche photography…

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Think of your photography business as a Swiss Army Knife. Many tools, each one doing a specific job.

A versatile tool that comes in handy.

Your photography business can be like a Swiss Army Knife too. In other words, it has many tools, each one with a specific niche purpose, each one unique onto themselves.

Having a photography business that is multipurpose and versatile is the very best way to create a successful business that will sustain you and your family and constantly be profitable.

Dan Kennedy always said that the worse number in business is one. Never be dependent on one market. If it goes away, you’re doomed.

In other words, create as many niches as you possible can.

Here’s a short list of some key essentials when picking a niche market:

  • Have a market you can get your arms around. If it’s too broad and big, then you can’t really target them. Likewise if it’s too small.
  • Make sure the market is hungry. If they don’t want what you have, it isn’t a market.
  • Create offers and promos. And make them irresistible. This is one of the keys to good marketing. I sometimes call it widgetizing. It’s re-defining a product that makes it easier to “get” so your market can understand it and act on your offer.
  • Have as many “niches” as you possibly can. Make sure you can deliver a quality service on each one. Often, your clients won’t even know about the others areas you specialize in. Doesn’t matter. They perceive you as the expert in that specific area.

This plays out in many ways. You can be branded as a wedding photographer who shoots with a specific look or style that brides love.

You could offer cool programs like the babies first year wall panel, kreative kids klub, toddler panel, five year family plan, and variations or levels on each one.

Slicing and dicing your offers to ascension marketing strategies helps too.

Families, fairies, theatre, headshots, real estate, editorial photography are all possible areas.

The real secret to niche photography is versatility and and marketing. You never want to market on “sameness” either. Stand out above the crowd.

You never want to market on price either. Yes, offer good value. But never make price your main value driven message. This will weaken you and eventually make you broke.

And we don’t want that, do we?
Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer

“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”

Join us…Content, Coaching & Community

Frequency separation made easy and a free photoshop action

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Frequency separation is a photoshop strategy that seems all the rage. Some embrace it, others can do without.

Many, like myself, found it very complicated at first, however I wanted the “look” and end results it offered. Problem is, it seemed very complicated.

So, I deduced it to a fast, easy, simple and effective solution. Here it is.

I even created a photoshop action which I now use on almost all my sessions and reprints, from families, to executive, fairies, commercial, medieval portraits….you name it. It works!

A video:

The action I mentioned HERE

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Here’s some of the samples where I used this action:

Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer
“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”

Join us…Content, Coaching & Community

 

“SEO was easy when Friends was on TV” and other web optimization lies with Scott Crosby

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I hear it all the time. “SEO doesn’t work anymore. It used to work when Friends was on TV back in the day, but not anymore.”

A bigger lie has never been uttered. I know it’s a lie, I seen it in my photography business.

And so has Scott Crosby, and his SEO students (He teaches an online SEO class for photographers and is fast becoming the dominant leader on this topic).

I’ve been playing the SEO game for a long time. So has Scott. And he has more knowledge in his right pinky than I have in my entire pea brain.

The thing is, this works. Still. Very much so.

Join us tomorrow night, Tue, Feb 6, 2018 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM EST Scott will be presenting a strategy overview on SEO strategies for photographers.

This is an overview, since his entire course is much more in-depth.

However, the fact is, these strategies are relevant for anyone wants to dominate the SEO game in their area.

Some topics:
*Dominate your local search results
*Make Google love you!
*95% of your competition is not paying attention or is clueless when it comes to seo *Educate google all about your business

This is a must attend for the serious student of photography marketing.

JOIN US HERE
Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer

“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”

What they will never teach you in photography school…

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If you didn’t know any better…meaning, if you listened to everyone else, including the professors at photography school, you’d think the way to a successful career in photography would involve uber expensive lights, lenses, cameras and complicated software and more.

BUT, and this is a big but, what they won’t teach you in school is how much that’s a crock of bull.

We had an amazing lighting mastermind meeting last week with special guest and co-founder of noBs photosuccess James Hodgins.

And James was very generous in the amount of information he gave us involving his lighting strategies. Very.

See, the thing is, James is in my oh so humble and accurate opinion, one of the best lighting guys I know. I hate him 🙂

Is he a Big Name marquee celeb? Not.

Would I put him head to head, toe to toe in the photographic ring against any of the big names out there today?

In a flash (excuse the pun). And I’d bet my last dollar on him.

James has an ungodly amount of raw, innate talent and skill when it comes to working with light. He’s the real deal. (did I mention I hate him?)

And he’s just a regular small mining town, blue collar schmuck like me who likes to go fishing (a lot!) and rolls many times a week at his local jiu jitsu club.

The cooler thing is he credits me for teaching him. Ok, I’ll take that pat on the back. But the truth is, I may have started him off and kicked him in the rear, but whatever lighting monster I woke up, he created his own journey and worked at his own photography style.

And I’m just going to come right out and say this….James admits he shoots 100% jpeg, uses auto white balance, and uses every light available to him. And he makes it rock.

I can hear the gasps of air and clutching of pearls. The shock. The horror!

His images are stunning. And he’s in demand for his quality commercial and industrial photography.

Do you think they care HOW he created his images? Not in the least bit. He gets in, gets the job done FAST, and gets out, gets under budget and EVERYONE is happy.

Including his wife and his bank.

That’s the stuff they won’t teach you in photography school

But we do…The replay is HERE for members.
Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer

“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”

Join us…Content, Coaching & Community

Sending in a 5 star chef to run a chip stand on the beach…

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I was chatting with a retired RCMP and his wife, who recently got back from 7 days in Las Vegas.

They recounted the shows, the casinos, the usual chaos that makes Las Vegas, well, Las Vegas.

He pipes up and says: “Rob, you should go there. There were photographers everywhere, taking pictures that we buy on spec. Everywhere…”

(Same idea as when you go for a ride at some amusement park and the
camera snaps a photo of you and your ride mates at the most horrifying
time of the ride.)

I told him: “Without trying to sound like a blow-hard..” (I talk like that to retired folks)….“that would be like sending in a 5 star chef to run a chip stand on the beach.”

They got it. Point made.

“However,…” I continued. “I’m not above running a chip stand, especially if I were starting out. When I started in photography, I took EVERY job I could. I was ambitious. I was hungry and I wanted to grow.”

They told me how their niece graduated from a reputable photography course
and could NOT find any work.

Of course not. There ain’t no “work”. I explained that photography is not a career path.

It’s a business.

And it’s only for the ambitious and eager. Unless one does it for pure passion and enjoyment. Then it’s a hobby.

They looked at each other, and agreed their niece was not in that category of the overly ambitious.

She treated it like a job. And because she went to college, someone, somewhere “owed” her a job.

I continued painting my picture of hard cold reality:
“About 98% who graduate from college programs end up doing something else. She should have taken a business course and learned everything she could about running her own business.”

Maybe she could move to Las Vegas and photograph people, on spec, at shows, for peanut wages I’m sure.

It’s all about perspective. Starting out, working at a chip stand with ambitions of becoming a 5 star chef is not a bad thing.

When you take on every single job you can, you treat it like an opportunity.
And you’re grateful!

Because you have bigger plans to move on from the beach.

Photography is not for the job-seekers. It’s for the dreamers, the believers, the ambitious and those who know they have the skills, the passion to create their own reality.

Their own business.

Because that my friend, is where the gold is. In business.

Two nights ago we had our monthly mastermind and two members shared their success stories. Both from real, in the trenches marketing and networking stories, including some strategies from yours truly, revealing what it takes to grow a photography business.

Join us….and hundreds of ambitious, hard working photographers not too proud to run a chip stand on the beach.

Some are now 5 star chefs, some are still slogging it out on the beach.

But one thing for sure, we’re all in the same boat.
Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer

“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”

Join us…Content, Coaching & Community