3 Simple Marketing Activities For When You Live in a Small Town

If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a big believer that location doesn’t have to be a barrier to your success as a fashion photographer. If I can build myself a successful career working with brands and businesses in the very south western tip of the UK, you can too! No matter where you live, this is possible for you.
 

In this weeks newsletter, I wanted to share 3 simple marketing activities that you can to get yourself hired as a fashion photographer. These will work particularly well if you’re in a smaller town or city, but they aren’t exclusive to to that. If you currently live in a city, this will work for you as well!

1. Collaborate with local teams: 

When I first got started, I made it my mission to become known as a fashion photographer in Cornwall. I wanted to be the person that was recommended by others when someone was looking for a fashion photographer in the south west. Of course, there are others who are extremely talented down here, and you can never be “the only go to person” cause that’s not how life works. But when I first started out, literally no one knew my name.

Now that can seem daunting. You might well be in that position! But it doesn’t need to stay that way. If you reach out to one person, let’s say a make up artist, and ask them to collaborate with you, that’s one person who now knows who you are, what you do, and will now be able to recommend you to others. 

Next, you add a hair stylist to your next shoot. 

And on top of that, you’ve got models posting and tagging you. 

Pretty quickly, this all compounds together, and before you know it, you’ve gone from “no one” to “someone.”

This was what I did continuously for the first 6 months or so that I began to shoot fashion in my local area. I collaborated with people every single week. I brought in new people, asked more local businesses to get involved, and before I knew it, I had a huge network of advocates for my photography!

Remember that word of mouth is THE strongest form of marketing. So the more people that you can get on your side and rooting for you, the better.

2. Attend local networking events:

Attending local networking events works in a very similar way to my first point. You need people to know you! You need people to share your work with others, and recommend you. So one of the quickest ways to do that, is by attending networking events, talks, seminars, whatever you feel is relevant.

Of course that’s difficult at the moment for many of us, because of the pandemic, but there are still things happening, and events taking place online. And when things get back to normal, make a point of attending ONE event each month. This was advice given to me by a mentor a few months ago, and it has absolutely contributed to growing my network and getting my work in front of other people.

The thing to note with networking is this: you won’t necessarily get immediate gratification for it. Sometimes you’ll attend an event, walk away and think: “what was the point of that? I met no one who’s going to hire me.” But then 6 months down the line you get an email from someone who says they were recommended you by “that random person you met at that random event.”

Trust me, its happened to me! So don’t discount it.

3. Pitch yourself to brands in the area

My favourite topic! And yes, pitching doesn’t need to be only for big brands! I think that when people hear me talk about pitching, they envision it to be only for like, Zara or Chanel. Whilst I’m not gonna tell you that you can’t pitch to those brands (there’s no reason that you can’t), I also want you to know that pitching is just as important when it comes to small brands, too. 

No matter where you live in the world, there will be fashion businesses. In Cornwall alone, where I live, there are hundreds of small, one man/woman band fashion businesses. And guess what? They need photography.

When I first started to get the hang of pitching, I made a point to reach out to some of the local businesses in the area and introduce myself. Sometimes I offered to collaborate with them in a first shoot, or asked them to lend me clothes for me own projects.

Over time, when they next needed a photographer for something, guess who was top of mind? Me!