In this episode of The Hair of the Dog podcast, I am diving into what I would do if I were starting my photography business from scratch today in 2024. So whether you are starting new or you're just wondering what you might wanna do to increase your marketing and get more clients to 2024, you're gonna wanna give this episode a listen. Stay tuned. Welcome to the Hair of the Dog podcast.
If you are a pet photographer ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley. Welcome back to the Hair of the Dog podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Begley, and today I'm diving into what I would do if I were starting my business from scratch today in 2024.
And I hope this helps you, whether you are new to business or if you have a business quite some time, maybe there's some ideas on this list that you haven't really put the effort into that you know that you could have that if you did, it might increase your results for 2024. So let's get into it, shall we? So number one,
and this is for everybody, I would love for you to really ask yourself, am I actually photographing what I wanna be photographing? And I'm talking not even just general niche like pets or families, I'm talking about like getting into the specifics of that niche. Is it something that you really love to photograph dogs and action? Or do you really love to photograph kids and their pets?
Or do you really love to photograph, you know, older families with like teenagers and their parents? What is it that you absolutely love to photograph? Think back to your clients from this past year, these past few years, and which clients really stood out, which sessions really stood out? Which types of sessions would you like to continue to shoot over and over again?
So start to get really clear there. And then what I would do is I would start to really look at my website, dial in that messaging for that specific type of client. Now I can hear some of you out there saying, oh my gosh, hold on, wait a minute, Nicole, if I get really specific like that, am I not alienating all these other people that might wanna hire me?
Yeah, no, you're not. What you're actually doing is you are going to become a super attractor for those clients that really fit into this like niche within a niche so that they will see your website, they will see your messaging, and they'll be like, oh my gosh, this is the photographer for me. I don't care what it costs. Like we are a perfect match.
And you'll actually attract more of those. Will you still have some outliers? Yes, of course you will. That is name of the game and that is great and that is fine. But when you start to really dial in that messaging and figure out who exactly you really wanna work with, you're going to attract more of that type of client. So that is something to do for all of you guys out there.
Make sure that you are really dialing into getting really specific about who it is you wanna serve. And then on the other side of that coin, how do you actually wanna serve those clients? What do you wanna be selling? Do you wanna be putting a piece of wall art in every person's house? Do you want everybody to go away with an album?
Are you selling an experience and it's digital files that they're getting? It really doesn't matter. All of those things can be profitable, but it needs to be done in with intention. And I think it's also really important that you absolutely love what it is you are selling. Because when you love what you're selling, your target client is going to be very excited to buy it because they will be able to tell how much you love it.
And that will kind of wear off as you're explaining it, as you're putting it on your website, that energy is behind what it is you choose to offer. So make sure that you are offering something that you absolutely love. So whether you're new to a market or not, or starting again or not, I recommend that everybody kind of go through those two steps and ask yourself those two questions.
You know, who am I actually serving? Who do I really wanna be serving? What do I really wanna be selling? Make sure those are dialed in and then we can start moving on to how we might start to attract more of those people into our business. So the first thing that I think about is our website. I would definitely have a website.
It's critical to have a website and it's critical to have a website that is beautiful and functional and easy for our clients to navigate. And it's also important that you realize when you're putting your website together that we're not selling photography, we are actually selling emotion, we are selling, you know, the artwork and the products, but really it's the emotion around what that artwork and what those products provide for our target market that we should be talking about on our website.
So it's not just about, Hey, let's meet and take some photos and you're gonna get some great files and some great photos or a piece of wall for the wall. It's so much more than that. It can be about decorating their home. So maybe they are redecorating and they're like, oh man, I would love to have this big beautiful art piece above my couch in my living room.
Or it could be, you know, I've had this dog since I was in college and now the dog's getting older and this dog means the world to me. It could be the kids are getting a little bit older, maybe they've just lost their front teeth, or you know, they wanna document this moment in their family's history because they wanna decorate their their home with that,
or they just wanna capture that moment because things change so fast. So it's about diving into why your target client is actually going to be booking these sessions and make sure that that emotional storytelling is happening on your website. So you can do this in a couple ways. You can talk about your own personal story. Do you have any personal stories that might resonate with these target markets?
So let me give you an example. I'm an equine photographer, and most people might think like, okay, let's, the reason that people are gonna hire me is because they want pictures with their horse. Okay, yes. But it goes so much deeper than that. Do you have a personal transformation story that you can share? Do you have clients that might have this type of story that they can share?
Can you go back and ask past clients what they feel about their images now? How much they love their artwork? Now, if you've been in business for a while and you haven't done this, I highly recommend that you get in touch with some of your past clients. Just reach out and ask them, Hey, I would love to know what the artwork that we created together five years ago means to you now.
And that type of messaging is the messaging that you are going to want to weave into your website, weave into your social media, weave into really every place that you're talking about your services, because that is what is going to cause potential clients to actually book your services. So for me, back to that equine photographer piece, I had two horses and high school,
and then well, one in high school and then one in college. And the my, these images that I have of these horses, I have the normal horse show pho photo photographs in which my one horse is chomping, or we're doing a dressage test or whatever we were competing in. I have a couple images from those horse show type things, but what I don't have are any pictures of me and my horse,
or my horse just, you know, on the ground or like the normal day-to-day type photos. And when my mom was moving, she found this pile of stuff in the basement, and one of them was two poster boards that had photographs taped to them. So a friend of mine in college was taking a photography class at WVU and she needed to do this little documentary style project.
And so she came out to the barn with me and documented some time of me and my horse just out at the barn for a normal ride. But when I found those photographs, they meant the world to me. They were the only photographs I had of that time of that relationship with that horse because I have a couple other show images, like I said,
but I had nothing that really captured those moments, like those images. And man, I'm so sad, I don't have them for my other horse, and I wanna make sure that all of my clients, when they get 10, 20 years down the road, can look back and have these same types of images that means so much more than those horse show photographs.
So you can see how maybe a story like that could start to attract your target client a bit more than just saying, you know, Hey, let's, let's memorialize this time with your horse. Like start to paint the picture, explain what that looks like or how that actually becomes more valuable and why. Okay, so that's our website. So these first couple things,
again, everybody can be doing actually all of these things. This isn't just, if you're starting over again, this whole list is for everybody. So let's move into a little bit more with our website, which is SEO Search Engine optimization. We have had some other podcast episodes in the past here on the podcast about SEO. We'll link to those in the show notes.
If you wanna take a listen, we're not gonna dive into the specifics of how to do it right now, but it is important that you have your website set up so that when people are searching for family photography in X Town or horse photography in your town, or dog photography in your town, that they are able to find you, that you come up somewhere,
hopefully on page one of Google. And one way that you can start to show up on more searches and train that algorithm that you are a website that should be shown a little bit higher is by having quality content on there. So that would be things like blogging, you guys, blogging is not dead. I realize it's not like the early two thousands,
but blogging is such a critical, important piece of our marketing that very few photographers, I don't know the specific number, I would venture to say somewhere around, I don't know, 2.4% of photographers actually do blogging. So that means this is wide open for most of you to get in here and see some really great benefits from this. So the first question that I get about blogging is,
what the heck do I blog about? Well, we can blog about so many things. You can blog about things specific to your area. You can blog about potential partner businesses or other businesses that maybe share your target client and highlight them and make those relationships with those potential businesses. You can blog about what do people need to know before they book their services?
What do they need to know while they're planning for their session? What do they need to know about decorating their home with artwork? Like go through your client process and figure out different articles or different informational things that people might need to know at each stage of their, of their experience with you. And then you can build a blog post on that. Now,
once you build these blog posts, you can continue sharing them from now until forever on social media. Share them every few weeks. Figure out what objections people have with getting their photographs taken out. If you're a family photographer, the objections might be, I'll book that when I lose 10 pounds, or family's really busy right now, or you know, junior just lost his front teeth,
or whatever it is. So if you can think of what the objections are for your specific niche, having blog posts about that, oh my gosh, so important because you can start to put those objection busting blog posts on social media in your welcome sequence of any email marketing that you do. You can link it to the bottom of your emails when an inquiry comes in,
you can let them know there. You can put a link on it on your homepage of your website. This is really important when you're on your homepage of your website, have those main objections right there that link over to that blog post that dispel them. Because if people have those objections as a pet photographer, one of the biggest ones is my dog is not gonna behave.
And even if they trust me and my ability to create these beautiful images and work with all these different dogs, I've never worked with their dog, their dog is going to be much harder. Their dog is going to be the problem, their dog is going to be difficult. So by having these types of blog posts, this type of information on my website,
or really anywhere that I can put it into this client education process, they're gonna start to feel a little bit more comfortable that, oh no, their dog is just like every other dog that I photograph, and it will be just fine. So that's really important. I would definitely make sure that I have those things on my website. Another thing that I would do if I was starting from scratch is I would look at different ways to build a community.
Can you build a community in your local market? Do you wanna create like a dog specific Facebook group? Do you wanna create a local market podcast where you're talking about all things dog or kid activities or family friendly in your market? And when you do that, then you get to bring on all these guests onto your podcast to interview other businesses, and you are making so many connections.
Making connections in your local market is gold. You guys, if there was one thing overall things do not pass, go do not collect $200, please do this. Creating those local connections is truly the backbone of your business. Another backbone of your business is creating an email list. So while you're now connecting with these other businesses, you can start creating your own email list.
Maybe you're doing some little giveaways or contests with these other businesses. Maybe you're connecting with local charities and you're doing contests or giveaways or special offers for their supporters. You're starting to collect these different email leads and then you can send regular emails to them, ideally weekly, but certainly at least monthly. That's only 12 a year, you guys, that is not that many.
If you need help with blogging topics, with what to send in your email, you can use AI to come up with suggestions and topics and brainstorm. I still highly recommend that you write the emails yourself. However, the different AI tools can definitely help you outline them and help you get started. And they're so great for brainstorming. So you could think of different things that you might want to send that your community might be interested in.
Okay, the next thing I would do is I would make sure that I am getting people in front of my lens. This is right up here. I would say these are probably the trifecta. Oh gosh, all of these things really are important. Your website's critical. SEO is very important. Logging's very important. But if you had to pick three,
I would pick making connections in your market, local businesses, local people, local charities, starting an email list and getting people in front of your lens, people, animals, whatever it is you're shooting, just start shooting more because then you're going to be getting people that have had the experience that are gonna be sharing with their friends. You're starting to to just get that momentum in your market.
That momentum comes so much more easily when you are out photographing people or dogs or whatever your niche is. That could be through model calls, that can be through promotions, it can be through full sessions. If you don't have anything on your calendar, maybe create a personal project or two. But it's just really important to keep that momentum going. And then of course,
we mentioned it a little bit, but connecting with those local businesses, connecting with local charities. Anytime you're doing any sort of charitable work or charitable connections or any sort of promotion that a charity is involved in any manner that is almost always guaranteed free, PR free public relations, free pressed, you should be able to get some extra eyes on these offerings in your paper,
on your local news, on your local website. It's usually now it's 2024. Maybe a lot of people aren't reading the paper per se, but do you have basically like an email newsletter for your local market? Like here in Charlotte, we have it used to be called the Charlotte Agenda, it's called something else now. But every day I get an email in my inbox that has different things happening around town,
new restaurant openings, interesting news articles about things that are going on around Charlotte. Are there things like that that you could reach out to to get some free press? Same thing with neighborhood magazines or town magazines, like more location specific media. Those types of places are great places to reach out for that. We've had, again, another podcast episode with Zoe Hilmar,
who is a PR specialist. I will link to that again in the show notes. It's gonna be quite a few additional resources here in the show notes of some other podcasts that we'll dive deeper into some of these different strategies that I mentioned. But anyway, that would be, those would be what I would be doing if I was starting again. So let me recap real quick.
Starting over. In a new market, I would be questioning what is the niche that I wanna be serving? Like who specifically even the niche, within a niche, what do I wanna be selling? What do I wanna be known for selling? Do I have a beautiful website that is beautiful, easy to use? And the messaging is driving home the actual emotional reasons why people would want to book their service or book my services?
Am I working on my SEO? Do I have some sort of additional content that's being added to my website, likely through blogging? Is there a way to maybe create a, create a community in my market? Do I have an email list? How am I gonna get people on that email list? How am I going to get people in front of my lens?
How am I going to be shooting new clients, personal projects, model calls, whatever it is, how can I connect with local businesses and how can I connect with local charities and what types of promotions can I do with those different organizations? Because here's the great thing about connecting with those businesses or charities. You don't need an email list in order to have profitable,
productive, successful marketing promotions with them because they can promote it to their list. So there's lots of different ways that we can utilize that. One way that one of my previous students has done just this is by creating a calendar contest. She started her business from absolute scratch in Pittsburgh, pa and has built it to a six figure business for a few years in a row.
She has been killing it, doing a great job. And in fact, this calendar contest strategy is still part of her yearly marketing calendar. She does it every first quarter and continues to just get more and more reach, and it's a great way for her to get 13 clients in front of her lens, connect with all sorts of local businesses, connect with a local charity,
and support that charity by raising thousands of dollars for them. And it's also going to build her email list and just sew many other great benefits. And we're actually doing a free training about how she utilizes these contests, contests, and the results that she's had. Giving you an overview of that on Thursday, January 18th at 1:00 PM Eastern. If you go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/calendar
contest, one word calendar contest, you can register for free and join us. If you're listening to this after that date and you go to that link, you can learn more about calendar contests still. I hope that no matter if you are starting your business afresh or if you have been a business for a while and you're just looking for some ways to double down,
get more marketing results here in 2024. I hope that you found this episode helpful. I would love to know what you found most helpful from this list. Go ahead and shoot me a DMM on Instagram at Nicole Begley Official, and otherwise, I will see you here on the podcast next week. Thanks for listening to the Hair of the Dog podcast. This was episode number 225.
If you wanna check out the show notes for access to any of the resources that we mentioned, simply go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/ 2 2 5. Thanks for listening to this episode of Hair of the Dog Podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss our upcoming episode. Episode.
One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our website@www.hair of the dog academy com. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.