Why A Business Plan is Helpful in your Photography Business
Image by: @noahdavis
For some photographers, the creative bubble may be at risk of bursting when serious talk of business starts. The desire to keep things creative over technical may lead you to start business in a risky way, such as taking random amounts of money (and not knowing if they are enough to pay your bills), or making equally random call-outs for clients in spots like Facebook, which may not get you much traction.
When the term “business plan” is mentioned, we may automatically be catapulted back into economics class in high school, where they talk about this corporate and official pile of documents that one might create and bring to their bank to ask for a business loan. It may call to mind red tape and paperwork, none of which we look forward to, much like taxes. In fact, a lot of resistance can be developed, because paperwork is the opposite of having a camera in hand. Yet, if we are able to overcome this mythology and realize that a business plan is a wonderful support feature, we may start developing different feelings. Don’t think about the corporate feel of it, because you are not a corporation. Businesses of all sorts - creative and small - also have plans and they are flexible, customized and exciting. Why exciting? Because it is your roadmap to the dream photography business!
The Creative Business Plan
Countless photographers struggle with marketing, and most of them have never put a plan together. A business plan guides our marketing efforts, thus making it a good place to start to solve the marketing struggle. Since all we hear is that we need to market our businesses, we jump directly into finding tips and trying to implement them, without realizing that marketing becomes infinitely easier if we take one step back and start at the start, and not in the middle. The start is the business plan. And for us, it’s a creative business plan. The goal of this plan is to chart a course for success in your creative business. And because we are oozing with photography creativity, we just need to take some of that creativity and apply it to the thing that will help us achieve exactly what we want. It’s not boring, and it’s a super tool for helping to shape all of your next efforts in becoming a thriving business.
It’s the foundation of the house that you will live in, rather that cobbling together walls and floors as you go and living in a leaky place that falls on your head and needs constant attention! A foundation is secure and when you have that security, you can then unleash the creativity in wonderful ways. Many think that the work of creating a plan takes them away from creativity, but in fact, it assures a base from which creativity can thrive for a long time. Those without the base are more at risk, because a home in constant need of repair calls you to do the fixing and interrupts being creative.
It’s not to say that a plan is one and done. But if you build a solid foundation, all that’s needed is a review once in a while to ensure things are still on track and relevant. I revisit my plan annually, but could do so more often - especially if something significant has changed in my business or in my environment. But a once-in-a-while adjustment is far more efficient than trying to run a business without a plan at all. When we experience something new or unprecedented, we might have to wing it, but we don’t want to wing it as a business strategy.
What goes into a plan?
The big marketing buckets are important: website/ SEO, social media, paid advertising, offline networking. But how and in what proportion we use these elements, and the structure of our messages matter. Our business plan precedes the marketing plan and helps us to define our important elements in order to find our correct marketing recipe. It also helps us find unique marketing strategies which are important in differentiating as a photographer.
Your business plan would include your financials, developing a detailed ideal client profile, your brand messaging, and detailing your business model. As you develop those, you will naturally find clues as to best marketing avenues. Let’s take an example: you wish to have a business model of a day of the life family photography sessions. For this client, they are more interested in the story versus dressing up, they might naturally gravitate to an album that documents the day, and you might find them in Facebook homeschooling circles. This would be a different client from if you wanted to offer formal studio portraits. Then the client would be someone wanting one formal portrait that will go over a fireplace mantle rather than an album. They might want to dress up formally and not need any story versus a record of what the family looks like. You might find them more in circles such as LinkedIn as they may walk more in corporate or academic circles.
When you plan, you transition from a hobbyist photographer into a business owner. Writing things out guides you to creating the right marketing content, speak to the right target clientele, and craft an experience that makes sense and is desired by that clientele. It helps to focus you daily on what kind of tasks you may wish to accomplish.
It’s no accident that the expression says there is a path to success. A plan is the carving of a path and then you follow the path. And then, you stay on it and it means you are living your dream!
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