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This is the blog for professional photographers, and those who aspire to be. Our aim is to help professional photographers build long-term, sustainable careers.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Be yourself

Heather and I have been friends with a particular couple since our kids were pre-schoolers, which is some time ago.

She’s got progressive musical tastes. He likes Simon and Garfunkel.

She’s been complaining for forty years about Neil Young’s whiny voice. He’s been complaining that Bob Dylan can’t sing at all.

I don’t care. What would they know?

Not everyone likes Neil’s voice, or Bob’s, or what they have to say, but everyone knows them, and has an opinion about them.

They’d be long gone if Neil had tried to be Mel Tormé, or Bob had kept channeling Woody Guthrie.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

A road less travelled

It’s instinctive to follow the crowd, but you cannot succeed that way.

If you follow the crowd you get what the crowd gets, and they’re not making enough to live on. Trust me on this.

Maybe you’re concerned that new competitors are eating your lunch, but don’t assume they’re not going hungry too.

People come along, compete, and quietly fail. Don’t go down the same path they did.

In a world where there are no guarantees, this is almost certain: most aspiring professional photographers will fail, but there are plenty more where they came from. People with cameras who want to make a living in photography.

Welcome to the free market of social photography. You’re going to be fighting new competitors and low prices until you retire.

The way to win is by taking a road less travelled.

The 3% rule

Differentiation is about encouraging people to look past your price list, understand that you’re someone who does things differently (stands out from the crowd) and engage with you anyway.

Even though you’re different. Or because you’re different!

It’s how you:

— identify people who should be your clients, and

— withdraw politely from those who probably shouldn’t, and

— demonstrate to the first group why you’re the right photographer for them.

The 3% rule is our way of saying that you can’t succeed by trying to appeal to everyone, and you definitely shouldn’t try.

It dates from the time, years ago, when we tried to estimate the number of professional photographers in the English-speaking world. We soon realised that we could build an amazing business by turning 3% of them into paying customers. What a liberating thought!

It encouraged the idea of Queensberry as a niche company — premium, small and exclusive. It meant it didn’t matter if not everyone liked us, or even knew we existed. It meant we could be ourselves, doing what we believe in, and focus on people who appreciate what we’re trying to do and will help us do it better.

You’re exactly the same. Many a wedding photographer, for example, built a successful career by getting just thirty people a year to say yes to their services. Many still do.

Who cares if all the others have never heard of you, think you’re too expensive, or (shudder) don’t like your style? What you need to do is define your personal 3%. It will help you focus on two important things, what to do and what to avoid.

Sometimes I ask our people, “Why are you trying so hard with that prospect? You can always walk away if they don’t ‘get us’. If they want something we can’t do, or just want us to do what the competition does but cheaper…Ask yourself — are they part of our 3%?”

True leverage comes from being able to walk away from the 97%. Does that sound arrogant? I hope not. It certainly doesn’t mean not listening to the customers. It means listening to your customers!

It means being clear about what sets you apart. Which may be product, service, aesthetics, or personality. Yes, we love working with pleasant, inspiring people!

Does 3% really mean small? No. We realised 3% would multiply the size of our business many times.

Is 3% really 3%? No, it’s a concept. It could be 20-30% but it can never be 100%.

Does 3% mean working less? No, it means working constructively to define your niche. It means reward, recognition and the knowledge that what you do matters to your audience.

Let your own light shine — without being distracted by the 97%.

Google’s view

An easy way to get a birds-eye view of your competition is to do a Google search on photographers in your home town.

Which little dot are you on Google Maps? Often there are so many the map looks like it has a bad case of the measles.

Sadly, how much your images are worth does not depend on their quality or how much time you spend on them in post-production. Instead it depends on how you market and sell them, and yourself.

Follow the crowd (be that dot) and you’re a price taker not a price setter. Stand out from the crowd, be noteworthy, and you have a chance to do better.

Competition is everywhere, we just don’t notice it or respond to it.

We’ve all got to fight for our patch. The question is, What are you doing to win the competition for attention? So that more people search for your name instead of “photographer” … and get your red dot, not a skin disease.

You’re not safe from competition anywhere, not even in little Westport, in the remotest region of New Zealand, at the edge of the world.

How to prosper while others decline

Chances are you’ve never been to Marfa, but as it happens we did some years ago. It’s a tiny town set in the vastness of West Texas (population 2000+) and obviously thriving.

Halfway between El Paso and the awesome Big Bend Park, Marfa is surrounded by towns in decline. It used to be a water stop on the railway, and a massive army base, but the trains went diesel and the army left town.

So why isn’t the town dying, like most of its neighbours seem to be?

A minimalist artist called Donald Judd came to town in search of a spectacular landscape to display his massive artworks. An interesting guy, and other interesting people followed. Now Marfa has excellent bookshops, art and craft galleries, a cool hotel, thriving real estate, a charismatic woman running our B&B, and the best food we ate in the States. On that trip anyway.

Why do people come (and bring their money)? Because there’s no place like it.

Marfa has achieved critical mass. Set up business there and your chances of success improve.

But even there (especially there) you need to look the best, and be the best.

Take Cochineal and The Food Shark.

At the time Cochineal restaurant was run by an expatriate New Yorker who moved there after 9/11 and loved Texas. It was recommended by our landlady, but if we’d just seen their elegant sign we would have gone straight in. It was perfect. The menu changed daily and the only mistake we made was deciding to share dessert – blueberry pie baked in the best pastry we’ve ever tasted.

After this little rave from me, imagine if you went to Cochineal and they offered you microwave lasagne and defrosted Keyline Pie?

If you’ve made your reputation, don’t throw it away.

Came time for lunch next day and we realised how small a town Marfa is. We couldn’t find anywhere to eat except The Food Shark, at the time parked in the shade under a flyover. We drove past it several times looking for something better.

Eventually we stopped out of desperation and ate the tastiest of lunches. According to The Chowhound, everyone knew about it but us: “cowboys, truckers, ranchers, smartypants New Yorkers”.

I’ll bet The Food Shark did well, but it’s tough to do the same thing in the photography business (sell great cheap stuff) because your time isn’t scalable.

It’s not easy being Marfa, and most towns fail. It’s not easy being a high-end studio either, and most of your competitors will fail.

Which is great, right?

Tell me a story

Supermarkets are based on volume and low margins, but that doesn’t shut out higher-end boutique grocery stores.

Here in Auckland we have Farro and Sabato, with their own sub-niche.

The big difference between the high-end stores and supermarkets is their story, told not with words but by way of abundant tasting stations, knowledgeable staff, grass-fed eye fillet, guilt-free eggs and pork, olive oil tortas made by hand in Spain … and the unspoken assumption that I, personally, am both successful and a good cook.

The story ends at my place when I cook for my friends, and they compliment me on the meal. At best I cook with the best ingredients. At worst I keep a straight face so they won’t know that the sticky date pudding and vanilla bean custard were hand made, just not by me.

You could tell a story for people who don’t want a studio that did 300 weddings last year.

You could be too good and too proud to give people just a quick and dirty stack of un-curated files for them to throw in a cheap photo book (maybe) or a drawer (certainly) with no regard to your reputation or their satisfaction.

Of course it’s just as hard to tell that story as it is to persuade people to spend twice as much on their dinner as they should, or could. But there are restaurants all over your town, and mine, proving it can be done.

You’ll have less customers than Dave the Discounter, but if you’re as good as you claim they’ll be profitable.

And I don’t know about you, but we never get out of an upmarket food store without spending more than we expected to.

There you go, I’ve been negative about digital files again. Note I said “just a quick and dirty stack of un-curated files.”

You’d have to eat them

That reminds me, years ago, when McDonalds first came to Auckland, a high-end downtown burger joint put up a billboard that said:

“You could buy two of their burgers for one of ours, but then you’d have to eat them!”

Funny, and I like Maccas now and then.

There are two ways to compete: differentiate or drop your prices. One doesn’t work, the other isn’t easy — better start now.

“If you’re remarkable, it’s likely that some people won’t like you… That’s part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise — ever.”

 — Seth Godin

This entry was posted in Marketing by Ian Baugh | Leave a Comment