Louisville, Kentucky-based Clay Cook is one of the most proactive photographers we know when it comes to self-promotion. He loves to create printed promos that you can hold in your hands. These are often in the form of beautifully designed mini-publications. Clay frequently works with our marketing team to help him identify new clients who will appreciate his unique skills, experience, and style. Clay recently utilized our Client List Build service to expand his prospect list. Because clients are constantly moving from one company to another, Clay depends on our team of researchers and consultants to make sure his emails and promotional materials land in the right place!
Clay is a versatile photographer with a special interest in Travel, Lifestyle, and Hospitality photography. He’s a true craftsman with a unique ability to shape light, and through his photography tells stories about the human condition. Recently, Clay and his team created a physical promotional mailer, containing images from a completed creative project for Travel Alaska, to send out to agencies in the Louisville area. In order to ensure their hard work reached the right audience, Clay enlisted Wonderful Machine.
For this promotion, Clay wanted to target local agencies around Louisville that focus on Lifestyle, Travel, Tourism, Hospitality, and Portraiture photography. With this service, we typically develop a list of fifty companies that includes contact information of notable individuals within their creative departments. For this particular project, however, we built a list of sixty names at creative agencies in the Louisville area.
Wonderful Machine categorizes and tracks over fifty Specialty Keywords to help design the perfect strategy for our photographers’ marketing needs. This data gives us a fine-grained method for analyzing industry trends and changes. With this information, we can develop more effective outreach strategies. In marketing, half the battle is ensuring that the right person sees the work. Wonderful Machine’s vast database enabled me to develop a targeted marketing program that would help Clay improve his odds of reaching the right contacts and building new relationships.
From my first conversation with Clay, I learned that he enjoys sending out print promos. They’re a fun way to experience his work tangibly. Clay is well-known throughout his home region. That said, local agencies still sometimes choose to outsource projects in New York and Los Angeles. This was Clay’s gentle reminder that there is a talented and capable photographer in their own backyard who also produces large-scale campaigns.
I started building this list by searching for creative agencies in the Louisville area whose work resonated with Clay’s. Some of the initial agencies I researched were The Creative Department, Critical Mass, and HLK Agency. After building a short list, I found people with appropriate job titles within these agencies. I then scraped our database for their contact information. Fortunately, because we are working with the most current information available, there was no difficulty contacting those we wanted to reach with Clay’s print promo.
Custom Client List Builds are perfectly suited to a busy photographer like Clay. Creative directors make lateral moves from company to agency at a pace that is difficult to keep up with. Wonderful Machine’s team of analysts in our Outreach Department make daily updates to our vast internal database of client companies, agencies, publications, brands, and their employees. We maintain the most current information available on these industry changes, which allows us to develop the most cohesive, detailed, and effective marketing strategies.
In this case, a custom and up-to-date list was the foundation for a more effective marketing campaign. This enabled Clay to reach out to the most relevant individuals within his desired market. After extensive research, I developed a list of sixty industry professionals, mainly creative and art directors, within the target market of Louisville, Kentucky who I knew would appreciate Clay’s distinct style.
After receiving his custom list of clients, Clay shared this feedback.
I’ve taken a look through the list. I have worked for a couple of these agencies, but I don’t actually know any of these specific contacts themselves. I think we’re good to go!
Working with Clay on this project was a great experience and I look forward to working with him again on future projects. Our work together enabled him to reach new clients with his print promo which resulted in a more impactful marketing campaign. In marketing, the most current and accurate information is paramount and highly valuable. This project proved this principle again. Moreover, it demonstrated that even in an established photographer’s own backyard, our database can reveal new contacts and potential clients.
Further Reading
Read more articles featuring Clay Cook.
Case Studies: Client List Builds
Expert Advice: Marketing Misconceptions