Trying to figure out where to get more business? Here’s a tip. Forget about chasing numbers. Numbers distract us from the central focus of what products and services do. They solve problems. Numbers do not.
Numbers will deceive you. Don’t think about a million hits or five thousand followers or a hundred thousand dollars a year. Focus on problem-solving. Figure out the best way – not just any way – to get one hit, one follower, or one dollar. If you find the right way to position your pictures, the right way to talk to your clients, and the right way to spread your name, the numbers will follow.
Not to say that you shouldn’t be tracking and watching and thinking about your numbers. Of course they matter. But you’re not after a thousand likes. You’re after knowing how the right headline doubles your response. You’re not after a gazillion followers. You’re after finding out what keeps people interested in you. And before you even address these things, you should be after who the headline is for and what follower you want.
As objectives and criteria, numbers are black holes. They create a false sense of security in your process when you hit them. They create a false panic, when you don’t. They’re necessary when you get to the point you have to hash things out, but as a goal, they stink.
FOCUS ON THINGS THAT WORK
What you really want is to know what works. Once you know what works, you have a repeatable model you can develop. When you know what works, you know why you’re hired. You know what your client’s problems are. You know what phrases they react to. And you can create a solution that’s specific to them. Numbers pull you away from that. They encourage you to target broad, when you should target narrow. They make you think of wide nets, when what you want is spear fishing.
Casting wide is deadly.
It’s costly. It’s hard. But, most importantly, it’s fantastically difficult to test. Big business dies by it. Small business dies by it. Because until you find out what works, you’re throwing things out there to see what sticks. Which would be bad on its own, but it gets worse in the real world, because when you’re not focused, it’s hard to see what really sticks. No one stops you in the middle of a pitch to tell you that this convinced them or that turned them off. Most people don’t ever find out why they were hired, and unlike school, there is no teacher to circle all your errors in red and underline the good parts with a smiley face.
Without feedback, you’re stuck in a cycle of insecurity that pushes you to throw more and more at every problem, which further obscures the problem, diluting your message, until you’re left telling yourself that some things just weren’t meant to be. Maybe the client wasn’t a good match. Maybe they were too much trouble. Maybe it’s all true. But the whole purpose of a business is to make your product feel like it was meant to be. That’s what a business does. It lets people see the value in what it offers.
TARGET AUDIENCE IS EVERYTHING
Let’s take an example. Ask someone about their target audience. Ask who people are after, and you’ll usually get vague, unactionable answers.
“People with money who like to look good.”
OK, that’s a lot of people.
“They read Martha Stewart Weddings.”
That’s still a lot of people.
“They like farm-to-table meals.”
Not there yet.
“They want to get married in upscale locations.”
And so it goes. See the pattern? What are you supposed to do with that information?
What you want is an actionable model of a person so you can determine an actual problem to solve. Cross-cultural Hindu and White couples that require special attention to details and tradition with a modern approach, for example. You hear that, and you can start to figure out what to say, what to address, and what to show.
What you want is a target audience you can imagine as living and breathing. Until you know who you’re talking to, there’s no way to know what voice to use and what needs are there. You can’t even research the market.
ABOUT TRENDS AND SOLUTIONS
The whole problem with look and feel and trends isn’t an aesthetic problem, which is how everyone sees it. It’s a business problem. You’re not after the next trend. You’re out to find the next need. The more specifically you solve a problem, the more people will pay for it. Even if it’s the same thing everyone else could do. Does a large format photographer who specializes in color environmental portraits in loft spaces sound more expensive than someone who just specializes in portraits? You bet. It doesn’t matter if both photographers can take the exact same shot. Value is perceived, not real.
The problem with trends, then, is that most people aren’t looking at how they specifically address a need. Take Jose Villa. You can talk about first mover advantage (though he certainly wasn’t the first person to shoot in an editorial style), you can talk about art, you can talk about quality. Those are all ways to look at it. But it’s easier to boil it down to the fact that he solved a problem.
He unabashedly embraced an approach that people wanted but couldn’t easily find at the time. He offered a look that was soft, light, unpretentious, and visually appealing at a time when styles were predominantly either harder and darker (photojournalism) or more self-aware (traditional wedding photography). It was a perfect match for a market that was about to boil over with a love of craft and details, and people who eschewed glitz but loved style.
What’s equally true is that in the present tense, this is not a problem people have. You can’t throw a stone down the street at a gathering of event photographers and not hit someone with a sun-soaked look. That doesn’t mean it’s not marketable. What it means is that the need is not only diminished, but the values have changed.
That’s why you can shoot just like him at this very moment, and you won’t make the same. It’s also why it’s no surprise that trends bounce back and forth. As the market polarizes in one direction to address one need, new needs arise from the opposite side. It’s no surprise that photographers entering the market lately bring a more rugged look with a darker palette. These things suggest heritage and connect us to a nostalgia of yesterday.
The point of all this? You have to solve a problem. And to figure out what it is, you have to be specific. Specificity lets you know exactly what your product does, why you are hired, and it gives both you and your clients something to build on. When you’re the only one who solves a need that exists, it’s pretty much a guarantee you will find people who want you. In fact, it gets even better, because when you do it, people will find you.
Goodness Spencer. This is an entire class on its own. Thank you so much for putting that together.
Glad to have done so, Michael. Thanks!
I truly wanted to make a quick word to say thanks to you for the great concepts you are giving out here. My rather long internet look up has at the end been paid with incredibly good information to talk about with my family. I ‘d express that most of us readers are very blessed to be in a perfect community with so many lovely people with very helpful guidelines. I feel pretty fortunate to have discovered your entire site and look forward to some more thrilling minutes reading here. Thank you once more for a lot of things.