How To Market Yourself As A Photographer in 2020

2020 is still only really just getting started, so if you haven’t already, now is a great time to get intentional with your marketing strategy for the next 12 months. Hopefully this blog post will help you to create a solid 2020 marketing plan!

Refresh on your Ideal Client

Before you can really get going with your marketing this year, I encourage you to go back over your ideal client. If you need a refresh on what an ideal client is, have a read of this blog post. In a nut shell, you need to be very clear on exactly WHO you want to serve with your fashion photography, before you can begin to try and market yourself to them. Further resources on ideal client can be found here.

Go back over your goals

If you're anything like me, you may have spent some time in early December planning out your goals for 2020.... and then promptly forgot all about them throughout Christmas and New Year! Well, thats certainly what I did. So before I do absolutely anything else, I'm taking the first Monday back at work to go back over all my goals, over my action plan, and set some solid dates in my diary. The more I can plan out when I'm going to do what, the plan I'll be able to create. 

Create a plan of action 

Once you know what your goals are, and who your ideally trying to target, look back over what marketing efforts really worked well for you last year. Where did you see the most success? What can do the same as last year? And what didn't work so well, or didn't bring in any results? Make sure you focus your time on areas that are working well for you.

 We're all different, so setting specific days of the week that you're going to focus on marketing might not work for you (it doesn't work for me), but maybe you want to set yourself measurable goals, such as: spending at least 2 hours a week pitching yourself. Or making sure you post to Instagram Stories once a day. 

Pitching

The start of the year is the absolute BEST time of year to do your best pitching. People are back at work with fresh ideas. Budgets are higher than ever as brands begin to assign money to different projects. The opportunities are endless. So make sure that you're prioritising showing up in the inboxes of the brands that you most want to work with. 

Social Media 

Social Media is still one of the most effectives ways that you can market yourself entirely for free. You'll be able to reach far more people than you realise, so make sure to set yourself some small targets. Creating a content plan for yourself can really help. Look over the platforms which are most help to you. That can be different for everyone, and I encourage you to focus on doing one social media platform really really well, than to try and be everywhere and not really show up effectively. 

I personally love using Instagram (both as a consumer and a creator), so will make sure to continue to show up there. I'll be utilising Stories daily, make a more solid attempt to use IGTV, and continue to post to my grid, but with a more paired back, curated strategy this year.

Other than that, I'm also spending more time on LinkedIn. As a fashion photographer, this platform is a logical place to be, as it's a platform between business owners. It's also seriously promoting posts more organically, than any other platforms, so I'm seeing posts continue to get engagement weeks and weeks after I've shared them!  

TikTok is also somewhere I'm paying attention. The organic reach on there is unlike any other platform (for the time being), and I've already had one video go viral (of my dog so it's not very useful but it was interesting none the less!). So if you want to see how I use TikTok, make sure to come and follow me.

Networking 

I wanted to give a special mention to networking. I don't think that networking gets talked about enough when it comes to marketing, and I wanted to highlight it. Especially in fashion photography, business is all about building relationships. I've seen first hand how effective it can be to meet someone at an event. You might not have any clue who you're going to meet, or what they might be able to do for you, but I really encourage you to go as many networking events as possible. 

I'm making an effort this year to attend at the very least two talks/events per month. There will never be an expectation of "I need to book two jobs a month from these events" but more of a thought that: you never know who will be there, you never know who that person you just met might go onto meet in the future, etc etc. 

So get out of your bubble, go to a talk, go to an event, get out and meet people. You never know where it'll lead you.