Ask the Experts - Frank Hadfield - Sports Photography Marketing 03/20/2010
Marketing: the business activity of presenting products or services in such a way as to make them desirable.
I’m sure you’ve heard it said, “A great photographer who is a poor marketer will fail. A poor photographer who is a great marketer will gain success.”
With that being said, I know you’ll agree that poor photography is unacceptable. In building a business, poor anything is unacceptable. The statement was obviously made to drive home the importance of effectively taking your product to market.
And how do you do just that? What does it take to be a great marketer? Well, let’s start by getting some common standards out of the way.
First, you must study and get to know your market. You must identify each and every organization you wish to market to and each and every person within that organization you will need to contact.
Next, you must identify the needs and wants of your market. What you offer to your market should be in response to what they want. So get to know what they want! Don’t try marketing a filet mignon to a vegetarian.
Then you need to know your competition. Get to know what they’re offering the market. Are you competitive, price wise, product wise, promotion wise and quality wise?
Prepare proper marketing materials for distribution. Whether its email, snail mail, telephone solicitation or a combination thereof, develop your materials in line with your prospects needs and wants.
With these most common standards of marketing on the table, let me put forth the one aspect I believe to be the most important. And I can sum it up in one word, REPETITION. How often over the last twenty years have you heard the head of Men’s Wherehouse say on TV over and over again, “You’re going to like the way you look, I guarantee it.”
Present your products or services in such a way as to make them desirable and present them to all organizations and to all contacts and do it over and over and over again! “There is not too much but there is not enough.”
