We spend a lot of thought and time on advertising, promoting, website design, SEO, CRM, email marketing, … to be on top of mind of our potential client at ‘the moment of relevance‘, as Google calls it. So now you’re on the phone with him – what do you talk about? Obviously there’s the information you need about the production of the shoot, how many images, how they’ll be used, … but all photographers should be doning this. So what sets you apart? What makes you the guy or girl that this potential client is going to hire?

I mean apart from the obvious: that your work is first rate and that you can deliver and that your style communicates what the client wants to images to say (you know the 1,000 word bit). I had a phone call today with a new client that drove this point home for me (hence this post).

He had found me online, liked my work, contacted me through my website and was captured in my CRM tie-in, got an immediate email response from my website (read more about how automation on my website lets me do all this). So through the captured phone number and email address I contacted him back to discuss this job.

The conversation ended up turning to another photographer that he had spoken about this project with. “I like the way you are thinking about my product, the other guy was only interested in talking about who he had photographed for in the past.”

Our conversation had moved from the details of the current shoot (how many images, what background, usage, …) to the next shoot – thinking through how this product needs to be displayed in an editorial fashion to explain and show case how it is to be used.

That’s what made the difference. I was thinking about how to make his product look good, how to help him, how to drive more sales from his website to his pocketbook; instead of making me look great (some of my clients are national brands: Mars, Tyco, L’Oreal, Frontgate, Boston Proper, …), but I was more interested in offering him a solution to his company than making me look good.

Do you think he will spend more money on my shoot than on my competitors? Do you think I will be shooting for him for the second editorial shoot? Does he trust that I will deliver images that make his product look great? You betcha!

I will be photographing for him next week, because I took the time to listen to what he wanted and needed, I offered suggestions of photos and solutions that he had not thought about, and I want him to succeed in his new venture. Why? I want to grow with my clients, so that they will hire me for all of their upcoming work. And recommend me to their friends and business associates, because word-of-mouth advertising for my photography is far better than any email blast.

(I just read an article “Make People Love You Madly: The No-Fail Framework for Marketing Yourself” by Colleen Wainright on the Adbase blog.)

[Listen to my interview on the new media photographer podcast this coming Monday, as Rosh and I talk about the basic building blocks of your photography website(s) that you should have - stay tuned to this blog on how to save some money!]

•••

You have to be online. No one questions that. But how do you go about building a website? Now before I go any further, I have to remind you that I am a photographer first and foremost, not a coder, not an HTML pro, not a webdesigner, … but my business (in one form or another) has been online  since 2004 and the majority of my clients find me on the first page of their search results on Google.

Sure you can hire someone to do the work for you. This post will talk about a do-it-yourself approach. It will require you to be willing to hack a few things, to find work arounds to what people say is not possible and do be willing to learn, but it will also show you a few short cuts, save you some money over the custom website design or the high end services.

1. A stake in the ground – hosting your photography website

First you need a place where you’re website can live, an internet service provider. Once you have that (and registered your domain name of course), you’ll need to build your site and I’m gonna assume that your not a proficient HTML or CSS coder, so you’ll need some help. Oh and don’t forget to set up your email @yourbusiness.com with your web hosting service – the one I’ll recommend here will give you 1,200 2 GB email accounts – that should last you for a while. I’ll also show you how to get up to a year of hosting for free.

2. Constructing a place online – building your commercial website(s)

I’ll introduce you to an awesome Photoshop plugin that will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So now you have a server that hosts your website at  your URL  you have the website up, people are finding you and visiting your site.

3. Minding the store – fulfilling your clients orders

Once you’ve gotten your first client through your website and photographed the assignment, you need to get the photos to them and get paid. I’ll introduce you to a service build by photographers that does an amazing job at this. I will also show you how to save $40.- on your subscription.

4. Knowing who you’re dealing with – managing your customer relationships

Now you need a place to keep track of them, their contact info, discussions you’ve had  with them, leads that have been converted into sales – You’ll see how you can use the same company that Google, Dell, Satchi & Satchi and Starbucks use to manage their customers. I’ll show you how you can do it at a fraction of what they pay.  I’ll also show you how to get 30 days of free CRM.

Read about the first service you’ll need to claim your place on line (will be posted on Monday, 08/30). Over the next four days I’ll be looking at four must-have products that will help you build a strong, flexible website.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that Photography by Depuhl was one of the 100,000 businesses that Google selected to be a ‘favorite place on Google‘. I got a nice sticker from Google that includes a QR code, which links to my website.

Well I just saw a cool way of using this bar code on a site I’ve just discovered. Rosh Sillar’s new media photographer website. He has his QR tag on the front page of his blog, so I figured I should also include mine on my blog – for an easy link back to my site.

QR Code

Social media exploded onto the web in earnest in 2009, with facebook having more hits than Google on Christmas, twitter becoming an interesting method of communicating with each other. What is in store for 2010? I believe Social networking is going to go B2B. With products such as Chatter from Salesforce and Wave from Google being tried out right now, collaboration between clients, partners, suppliers, … will look different then before.

If you already use wave, you will be able to see a wave that is inserted into this blog. If you are not take a look at the following introduction from Google and see if this looks interesting to you.
[wave id="googlewave.com!w%252B40SCzdYOE" color="black" bgcolor="ffffff" default_height="10"]

(Since this post was written in 2009, pricing on these packages may have changed. For a more upto date look read “4 must have products to build your photo website.’ posted in August 2010)

Now more than ever being a professional photographer is more than capturing an image. Technology has changed the way we capture photographs from a photochemical process (film) to a electronic (digital) one. This shift in technology has also caused a shift in responsibility. A commercial photographer has to do much more than just take a picture. He has to become an IT specialist (or hire one) to do everything that today’s clients expect.

We are able to manage our business online, which begins with building our website, how we deliver our images to our customers, the way we manage our clients and business contacts, how we track the performance of our web presence and ads online and where we actually host our website.

Before you read on I do have to make one disclaimer, this post is inspired by Jeana Lee Tahnk‘s mashable post “5 Essential Sites for Professional Photographers” and were her blog gives you the turn key solutions to some of these needs, the sites that I have listed here, require you to do a little more work – be it learning a new software, re- interpreting how a cloud can be used for your business or figuring out how to bounce data through a few services to make it work for you. The upside of this is that you do save money. Here are the sites in no particular order:

1. SiteGrinder

SiteGrinder is a Photoshop plug in, which allows you to design your website in a program that any professional photographer is very familiar with. It requires you learning a few hints at the end of a layer name, which are very with easy to understand video tutorials and very good customer service. They usually answer my email questions within 24-48 hours.

Photoshop plug in that codes HTML for your PSD design

Pricing: $129.- for the basic version

2. Photoshelter

If SiteGrinder creates the face of your web presence, Photoshelter is the backbone of your image delivery system and portfolio presentation. It allows you to store your photographs remotely, i.E. offsite but also has good security features for protecting your content and your clients privacy needs. You can create password protected web galleries and share them with your customers. It also allows you to sell the images directly. They have incredible phone tech support.

Photoshelter provides the backbone for the images on your website.

Pricing: $9.99 per month for the basic plan

3. Salesforce

Salesforce is the kingpin of your online presence. It helps you manage all of your sales leads, opportunities, customers, correspondence, … Salesforce is build for sales people, which professional photographers have always had to be. It is the most powerful one of these websites, since it can integrate the information your visitors type into your contact form with the client database it maintains, it also can track your click through traffic from your Google ads, letting you know precisely were a lead originated. (You can read more about how to integrate Salesforce with your website here.) These guys invented awesome technical support.

Salesforce is an amazing Customer Relationship Management tool

Pricing: $17.- per month for the Group edition

4. Google

As you know Google is one of largest players on the web. I use Google docs to let my clients track their products through my workflow, when I am photographing a large volume of items for them. Google analytics helps you track the performance of your website,  Google Adwords keeps your business in front of potential clients, …

Google does much more than just search

Pricing: $Free

5. 1&1

You’ve designed your website, you’ve customized your image delivery and your CRM. One thing you need underneath all of this is a web hosting company. The one’s that actually serve up your website, email, … 1&1 allows you to host your URL, your email addresses (you are not still conducting business from your name@gmail.com address right?) 1&1 reps can answer all your questions efficiently and quickly.

1&1 - a great website hosting company that offers many extra features to its customers.

Pricing: $9.99 per month

These are just a few of the software, services and sites I use in my commercial photography business. Many of these services run specials on their pricing structure and also offer free trials for their services. So give them a whirl, kick the tires and see how they can make you business more productive in 2010.

I would be interested to hear which ones you use.

Read my more recent post for more information on tools you need to build your photo website.

I am going toward a convergence of design in my website, blog and social media platforms like twitter. I have been working hard on branding my business in the real world over the last two years and now it is time to translate that into my online presence as well (thanks to Bob from Bob Buchanan Design for helping tweak the website version).

www.depuhl.com

blog.depuhl.com

www.twitter.com/photosbydepuhl

Photography by Depuhl is cautiously testing the waters of paid advertising. The first ad began running on December 16th, 2009. Although I have been creating photographs for clients since the late 1980′s, the way of selling yourself as a photographer has drastically changed. You used to have to purchase expensive ads in printed annual professional directories to have your work seen, have an agent that had all the connections – a route that I just could not afford as a beginning photographer. Today I can determine down to the $0.01 how much an ad costs, which search phrase triggers it, when and where it is displayed, …

Screen capture of the first paid ad for photography services

Paid advertising is the logical next step for our online presence. Back in 2007 I made the decision to put a professional website up online. It is created with an awesome photoshop plugin called sitegrinder. This is my first step in a concerted effort to use the web as my primary sales tool for my fashion and product photography.

In 2008 Photography by Depuhl pursues its online network in earnest …… reaching out to clients, friends and prospects via LinkedIn. This becomes the basis for a new level of engagement with people for us. At the same time my blog ’catching the light’ begins – although at that point I just post what is interesting to me, not expecting much out of it. The website is also reworked to better display images and to have a more professional branding across all of my communication channels. In late 2008 I implemented a cloud based CRM, by using Salesforce.com, now my website is tied in to my client services back end – taking a request for photographing people, products or places and automatically notifying me as the information is being entered into my client database. The photography back end of my website also changes using Photoshelter as a backbone to serve up my images online. Proof of this approach working is in the jobs I receive from my network and people that find my website via organic search results and book me as a photographer through my website.

In 2009 Social Media becomes a more important part of PbD‘s web presence – you can find us on twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, … and ‘catching the light‘ my blog is receiving more and more attention. I am now posting articles not just about me, but about what I am learning about SEO, how to utilize the web in your online business, and also stories about my photography. Proof of this approach working is in the photos resold after blogging about them, and my website becoming more popular as seen just last week where my photography business is named ‘a favorite place on Google‘.

What is going to be new in 2010? None of the pieces of this web presence is ever finished. So I continue to build my network (online and offline), I continue looking at how redesigning my website and social media channels can push my business forward (A new and improved website design-both design wise and SEO wise-is in the making.) PPC advertising on Google and other social networking channels will be another portion of Photography by Depuhl’s online presence and I am also looking for more services that I can offer my clients to help them grow their business and make their interaction with my photography studio easier.

It never stops, but it’s been a great few years now with many lessons learned and all of this done spending a lot less money on this (web hosting fees, URL registrations, software, web based services, PPC advertising, …) that a single yearly ad would have cost me a few years ago.

Merry Christmas and an awesome new year of 2010!

… catching the light!

On December 8th, 2009 Google rolled out a program called “Favorite Place on Google“. The search company has send out the decals free of charge to over 100,000 businesses in the U.S. and I am pleased to announce that Photography by Depuhl has been selected by Google to be one of these selected businesses. According to D’ Technology Weblog, Google picked the businesses, that’ve been most sought out and researched on Google.com and Google Maps

We're a favorite place on Google

Photography by Depuhl has been found in their business listings over 6500 times in the July-September, as per Google’s letter that was included with the Favorite window decal. All of these results have been organic results with no PPC advertising done for the company. Incidentally this has been the best quarter my commercial photography business has ever had, in spite of the economy.

The favorite program takes Google search into the real world, where you can scan a companies barcode on their window decal and instantly see their profile on Google maps.

Android Central calls it a type of status symbol that local businesses can strive for. (…) If you see the QR code, you know you’ve stumbled across a good thing. Basically, Google is helping us determine and learn what the hottest spots around us are.

You can download QuickMark’s mobile barcode reader here iTunes Link to read the barcodes on the decals. If you can not capture the QR code you can click here to see the site it links to (remember this will display directly on the mobile phone).

Just added catching the light blog to:

Blogging Fusion Blog Directory

photoblogs

Wow! I just saw something incredible that’s coming soon!

We all use social media to keep in touch with our clients, contacts, suppliers, … at least we try to. The question is always how to integrate Twitter, my facebook page, LinkedIn, … with our webpage and our business, our billing and our contact management system. But if you’re like me, we have a handful of applications, websites, clouds, … and try to piece this all together, automating as much as we can to get them to talk to each other. My blog has my twitter and facebook feed; my facebook feed shows my tweets, the website captures lead information into my CRM and my contact database syncs on my computer, my phone and the internet.

But there are still many components that I need to look up and log into. My cloud based CRM does a nice job of keeping all my marketing and sales information together in one place, my social networking presence is webbed together loosley; but that’s just me – just Photography by Depuhl, my commercial photography company.

What if all of that information was in one place?

That would be awesome and make me more productive, by eliminating information slipping through the cracks. Now what is on top of all of my information all of the relevant information of my clients, partners, suppliers and crew would be on the same feed, kind of like a facebook for business? If this service gave me the ability to compartmentalize the information that my contacts see in their feed, to limit it to the relevant information they need and vice versa that they would be able to send me only the information that I need to see?

Of course all of this would have be super secure – since we all share proprietary information with our business partners and clients.

Enter Chatter – salesforce’s newest idea that is rolling out next year. It does just that, combining all of the information of your CRM with your social networking sites, and so on. As you know, I put all of my CRM (Customer Relationship Management) into the cloud about a year ago and it has made me more productive. This will combine even more sources into one live feed where my people, my apps and my data all talk to me.

Stay tuned for more on how I am going to get this done.