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Finding Clients
Update Your Action Plan
By Maria Piscopo

Update Your Action Plan to Find Clients

If you have been reading these tips you have probably picked up quite a few techniques from successful creative professionals in diverse areas. I have been collecting some thoughts of my own to help you renew (or create new) your Marketing Plan of Action.

Better Web Sites

An updated web site can attract new customers to your business from your local area or across the globe. Web sites are a hybrid marketing tool, working both as an ad and as a portfolio. As ads, they are broadcasting your message to the widest possible audience. Web sites can also work as portfolios with all the intimacy of the one-on-one previously only seen in the traditional sales call. When your web site has high rankings in the search engines under appropriate categories for your photography services, or many links from keywords prospective clients might search for, you should get dozens of inquiries from clients who otherwise would never call you.

More Effective E-mail Marketing

E-mail campaigns are very popular right now when properly done. One single email with no plan for a theme or series will yield minimal results. Here are some things to remember when trying out this new marketing technology.

Don’t use a subject line of more than thirty five characters. Use subject words that are concise and relevant to the client. The subject line should contain at least one keyword that is a benefit to the client. For example, try “photography for communications” or “children’s portrait photos”.

Do test how your email will display to clients. Broken links or raw HTML code in email marketing are ugly. Try setting up test accounts with the major online services to see how they handle your email. Always put yourself in the prospective client’s shoes, how will this look to them?

Don’t be cute and use words like “free” or “thank you” as these are often spam-filtered out and your email will never be seen. Use online “content checkers” to test your email for words in the “To, From, Subject” and even in the body text that might trigger a spam filter.

Do use a good permission-based e-mail list. Your best e-mail address list comes from current clients and good prospects that have consented to email contact with you. This consent may come from visiting your web site, replying to your direct mail, viewing your portfolio or buying a list. 

Do have a specific goal for your email campaign. Regular contact with current and prospective clients may be two different e-mail messages. For current client, you can be more familiar as they already know your work. For prospective clients, you will need a reason that the client cares about. It could be new services available or current client success stories. Be irresistible!

Don’t go on and on. Your very brief email body message should open with the first couple of sentences designed to capture client’s interest and active hyperlinks to selected web pages on your site (you do not need to send them to your home page).

Don’t ignore “bounced” email. “Bounced” e-mail is when you send an email to an address that no longer or does not exist. It is a good way for you to keep your own personal database clean. Also, today’s ISPs have rules and if you exceed their standards for undeliverable (bounced) messages, they could flag you as a spammer and block all your email!

Don’t Forget the Human Touch

Technology makes it easy to get into some real non-personal marketing, never as effective as the personal touch! When you have a web site and use e-mail to contact your customers, you may think there's no reason to contact them in person. You may feel justified in not picking up the phone, attending a networking meeting, participating in community events or even suggesting a lunch date if you think technology is doing the job for you. It is not. A web site or e-mail is never a substitute for a client or prospect hearing your voice or seeing your face. It's pretty rare for someone to hire without talking to him or her first, so if you put off the talking, you may also be putting off the hiring.

Don’t Give Up on Direct Mail

“Something different” is the key to getting response from mail with a stamp –many photographers have used direct mail but the usual methods are simply worn out. According to the Direct Marketing Association's Response Rate Study, here are some of their suggestions to improve response rate for direct mail:

• Get Personal –Use new mail/ merge technology to personalize your direct mail messages (check with your printing company).
• Premiums Work -According to the DMA, direct mailers that offered premiums (gifts) received response nearly 400 percent more often than their general mail counterparts. Traditionally these are specialty adverting incentives as notepads, white papers, tote bags, plush animals, flower bulbs, stickers, calendars and calculators. Your challenge? Find some "gift" affordable for your campaign and appropriate to your targeted photography audience!
• Envelopes Trump Self-mailers- Successful direct mail marketing featured fewer postcards, and other envelope-less formats. Self-mailers accounted for only 14 percent of all mailings, compared to 25.9 percent of all other direct mail received by the DMA Archive in the past decade.  
• Four-color vs. two or three color - Mailing in four-color is the standard for direct mail today. The majority of mailers that are printed in two- or three-color typically originated in the 1990s and has worn out its welcome – the exception of course is a very nicely designed piece where the photo service is actually classy black and white photography.

Another Direct Mail Resource

In addition to the DMA, we talked with the folks at ADBASE Inc. (www.adbase.com), an online custom list service and provider of self-promotional resources for photographers, artist representatives and stock agencies.

They are adding new features based on industry feedback from photographers, artists and creative professionals in today’s online marketplace.  Features like:

• Custom Lists – Ability to create your own custom lists that are automatically updated every time you use them
• Detailed Contact Information - The most detailed and easy to use contact information - including email addresses for buyers and direct links to company websites
• Flexible Output - Numerous output options, including email
• Quick Start/Specialized Lists - Ready-made lists full of the right buyers for particular artist specialties like People & Lifestyle Photography, Editorial Photography, Fashion Photographers and more
• Advanced Researching - The ability to quickly and easily find information on specific buyers based on chosen criteria
• ADBASE Contact Manager - Keep track of personal contacts and output them together with those from the ADBASE database

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