Pixiq

Even if you have no ambitions of becoming a full-time professional, perhaps you are still interested in licensing your images for some additional income. I will expand upon the marketing techniques used by professional adventure photographers and the tools we use to market our images. 

Marketing is one of those endeavors that can be uncomfortable for many of us. Tooting your own horn is not a natural undertaking for most people. At least, it wasn’t for me when I started out. These days I just take it for what it is: part of my job that I have to do if I want to continue making a living from my photography. Of course, marketing is such a vast topic that I will only be able to scratch the surface here and cover the most basic elements that every pro photographer uses to promote themselves. Because licensing images and shooting assignments is how we make a living, you can imagine that the average pro photographer spends a lot of time on office work and self-promotion. In fact, I’d estimate that 80% of my time is spent on marketing, paperwork, image processing, and all of the office work involved with my business, while only 20% of my time is spent shooting.

When business professionals talk about marketing, it is usually in regards to a marketing strategy. In the photography industry, it is no different. Every one of the marketing tools we will be discussing here are simply different segments of a solid marketing campaign. Of course, there are many other methods of marketing, above and beyond what I have space to cover here, that are also very effective. An effective marketing campaign takes time and consistency on the part of the marketer. If you really want to jump in and give it a go as a professional photographer, I would highly suggest sitting down and writing up a marketing strategy, as well as a plan to create images for your marketing materials.

POSITIONING YOURSELF AND YOUR WORK

Part of any marketing campaign is to first figure out your audience and what your message is. Basically, you are marketing yourself and your photography services, but prospective clients need to know who you are and, specifically, what you do well. You will need a group of images to convey that message. The ultimate goal is to build a brand around yourself and your work. By brand, I mean when a photo editor or art buyer thinks about adventure images, your name is the first one that pops into their head (right after mine, of course!). Building a brand takes years of work and consistent marketing efforts. It won’t happen overnight.

Part of building a brand is also creating a valuable commodity. Hopefully you and your work are that commodity. By assigning you to shoot their next ad campaign, a client is trusting you to come through with the images they need, when they need them, and within the agreed upon budget. Your value is your ability to pull it off time and time again. And as you do so, your reputation and your “brand” will gain traction.

In the adventure genre, there are already a few hundred excellent photographers out there working professionally in the United States alone. Do you have a style that is different from what is already out there? Or can you create better images than are currently in the marketplace? To define your work, I would suggest you take some time and write out what is called a positioning statement. This basically puts into words the type of images you produce and the audience for those images. As an example, here is my latest positioning statement:

"Michael Clark produces intense, raw images of athletes pushing their sports to the limit in remote locations around the world. He uses unique angles, bold colors, strong graphics, and dramatic lighting to capture fleeting moments of passion, gusto, flair, and bravado in the outdoors. Balancing extreme action with subtle details, striking portraits and wild landscapes, he creates images for the editorial, advertising, and stock markets worldwide. "

This statement talks about the type and style of images I produce, the subjects I focus on, and where I market my work. While this may seem rudimentary, the positioning statement will help you choose images that are in line with your style when you begin building the specific tools of your marketing campaign (like a portfolio and a website). Any images that don’t fit within this definition will only confuse potential clients and will hinder your marketing efforts. That isn’t to say that you can’t pursue other genres of photography with a whole different style or subject matter, but for the best return on your marketing efforts, you would need to market those images separately.

IDENTIFYING YOUR MARKET

Identifying your market is fairly easy in the adventure sports genre. First, any and all outdoor related magazines and companies should be on your list of prospects. The type of images you have available to license and your specialties will dictate which areas of the outdoor market you’ll target first. Of course, as anyone who looks at mass media these days knows, there are many outlets for adventure photography beyond just the outdoor industry. Marketing your work to those clients is a bit more challenging, but if you want to maximize your profits, it is well worth your time to research these extended markets.

One of the best ways to extend your marketing prospects beyond the outdoor industry is to use a list service like Adbase  or Agency Access . These companies track down and find all of the photo buyers at magazines, corporations, and graphic design firms that use photography and anyone can gain access to that information by paying a subscription rate. While the lists are not cheap to subscribe to, they are a much more convenient method of gaining access to a larger market. One of the other bonuses of using a list service is that they also tell you who the clients are at each advertising agency. This is incredibly valuable information that would take forever to compile on your own, and it will greatly aid you in building your list of prospects. I would advise that you get all of your marketing ducks in a row before you sign onto Adbase or Agency Access, because if an ad agency sees your e-promo, loves your work, and calls for your printed portfolio, they aren’t going to wait two weeks for you to build it. Be prepared.

Not all of your marketing prospects will be listed on Adbase or a similar list service, especially some of the niche outdoor industry magazines and gear manufacturers, who most likely have in-house marketing groups. You will have to track down these clients with careful research. Another consideration for identifying possible clients is to realize that you are in a global market. There are clients around the world that are looking for adventure images and you might have just what they need. When you are just starting out, you’ll go for the obvious low hanging fruit like the outdoor magazines and gear manufacturers, and as the ball gets rolling your horizons and clientele will expand globally.

Once you have identified your prospective clients, the next step is to start building your marketing materials to promote yourself to those clients. When I started out (and I’d say the same is true for most adventure photographers working as professionals today), we had no real clue about how to go about building a business and creating marketing strategies. We simply thought we had a few cool photos and sent them off to magazines like Climbing, Bike, or Surfing, depending on what sports we shot. It wasn’t until a few years into my career that I really started thinking about marketing aside from shooting amazing images and showing them to clients. Now, let’s jump in and discuss some of the individual marketing tools you’ll want to use. I’ll present these in the order of their importance, starting first with websites.