Pixiq

The most basic and effective methods for advertising your work are printed promo pieces and HTML e-mails. These e-mails are formatted with HTML coding that makes them appear as you designed them when they show up in the recipient’s inbox, and they are called e-promos. Both e-promos and print pieces should be designed with images that will impress the client and drive traffic to your Web site. Of course, your hope is that a client will see your e-promo or postcard, be floored by your images and either license them on the spot or hire you for an assignment. Sometimes that happens, but more likely you are building up name recognition and allowing a range of clients to see your work so that when they need those types of images in the future, you get the call.

Printed promo pieces include everything from custom promotional cards printed in-house to small or large printed portfolio books, fine art prints, postcards of all sizes and shapes, mouse pads with your logo and an image and any other clever method of getting your work in front of clients. The only limitations are your budget and imagination. I once sent out a mouse pad to all of my key clients. The mouse pad was printed by Black Diamond and was an exact copy of their winter catalog cover. Even though the mouse pad had Black Diamond’s logo on the front, the image was credited to me and the photo buyers loved it. It became one of my signature images, and every time these photo buyers looked at their desks, they saw my image and thought about my work. In fact, I was in a photo editor’s office a few years ago who was still using a really beat-up version of my mouse pad. They loved it and couldn’t bring themselves to replace it. The very next day I mailed them a new one.

If well designed and printed, a simple postcard is an effective and inexpensive printed promo piece. However, if you are sending postcards out to a few thousand clients, the printing and mailing expenses will skyrocket quickly. I suggest that you target your mailing list for print promos to a select audience and rely on e-mail e-promos to cover an extended list of potential clients.

The beauty of an e-promo is that it doesn’t really cost you anything and you can send it out to as many people as you want. If you use a list service like Adbase, it has a built-in email tool to send out HTML e-promos. It also tracks your emails, telling you who opened them and who clicked through to your Web site. This information provides great feedback and lets you know who is interested in your work. If after sending out three or four e-mails, you see that certain photo buyers are consistently clicking through and checking out your latest work, you can then follow up with them via e-mail. However, photo buyers are aware that you can track your e-promos, so be very careful how and when you follow up.

You don’t want to be a pest. Give it a week or two before you contact them, or they will know that clicking through to your Web site has consequences. Never follow up on an e-promo or print promo piece by calling a photo buyer, unless you have a specific proposal in mind that will be of interest to them. Calling and leaving messages like, “Just wanted to see if you got my latest postcard?” will get you blacklisted immediately.

In terms of frequency, I would advise against sending e-promos more than once a month; every six weeks might even be better because you need to have something new to show and talk about. For printed promos, sending one out every quarter seems to be the norm these days. Of course, as I said earlier, this all depends on your budget. If you can only afford to send out e-promos, make sure you make the most of it and are consistent in their look and feel. Ideally, your e-promos should look like your Web site so the style is consistent.