I began working with Oklahoma-based photographer Brett Deering back in May of this year. He had just finished a Web Edit with Senior Photo Editor Honore Brown and was ready for marketing and branding help. I started working with him as a marketing mentor, and my first step was to look over his portfolio as a whole – website, branding, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I view it from a client’s perspective and make sure it’s coming across clean, cohesive, and within his brand and photography specialties.
The Marketing Mentor program, which provides a photographer with two hours of support each month from a Wonderful Machine consultant, focuses on nailing down a clear and actionable process for marketing, in addition to addressing brand development and presentation refinement around specific marketing goals.
Brett and I hit the ground running and had great conversations about the types of clients he’d like to pursue as well as some personal projects he had in mind to build out his portfolio. Our phone calls are back and forth discussions about what he needs support-wise and my ideas for his marketing and pushing him along the right path towards his goals.
Brett’s work focuses on Portraits, Agriculture, and Industrial photography, so his goals were to market to these industries more efficiently. He was mainly concerned with cleaning up his website, Instagram, and overall branding while reaching out to new clients within his areas of expertise.
I like how Jen broke it up into steps and gave me motivation for marketing myself. Jen helped make my marketing and branding consistent across LinkedIn, the featured section, and rewrote the about section on the website, gave me Instagram help and a plan to post new images consistently.
Previously, many of Brett’s clients had been more medical and regional ad agencies, so we wanted to highlight his work in the agricultural and industrial world in the hopes of gaining more like-minded clients.
Brett and I discussed a personal project he could start working on — a local hat maker. I thought this would be a great addition to his new ‘Stories’ section as it incorporates portraits as well as a maker. It’s always good to show clients you are continuing to shoot and have ideas in the works! I particularly like the lighting and smoke in this shot of the hat maker.
After the 2nd month of marketing mentor and some recent changes we made, we decided he was ready to send a campaign to new clients. I started researching a list of 50 clients in the agriculture, industrial, and editorial realms that would be a good fit for Brett. Once the list was built, I helped Brett in the outreach process, drafting emails (and follow-ups) with the primary goal being to get a meeting. This part of our process is called Client Introductions.
Brett got a response from an ad agency he had been wanting to work with! We set up a call, and they ended up chatting for an hour. He is hopeful about working with them in the future.
I really liked that Jen built the client list for me and reached out to clients as well as follow up within a week. I enjoyed our back and forth when she gave me insight on what types of clients to reach out to in the future and how to research them. Overall, it was a great service.
Further Reading
Wonderful Machine: Client Introductions: Irwin Wong
Wonderful Machine: Web Edit: Steve Boxall
Wonderful Machine: Client List Build: Amy Mikler Hunts for Hotel Contacts