Marketing

Our consultants help commercial photographers identify their target audience and get their message out to the right people.

marketing

CLIENT LIST BUILD (CUSTOM)

All the marketing in the world won’t help if you don’t know who to market to! By reconciling your interests and skills with the opportunities in the marketplace, our marketing consultant will work with you to arrive at an elevator pitch (or several elevator pitches) that will help you focus on a particular type of client. With that in mind, we’ll build a list of 50 companies – based on specialty, industry type (and sub-type), and geographic area. Upon your approval of that company list, we will then track down the best person at each of those companies to promote to. Your list will include all the contact information you’ll need to keep in touch (we can provide mailing addresses for companies, but remote-working has made it impossible to verify addresses of individual people.) The information is yours to keep forever and it’s guaranteed to be 100% accurate for 30 days.

CASE STUDIES


CLIENT LIST BUILD (DIRECTORY ASSIST)

Utilizing our Client Directory, you’ll build a Shortlist of target companies. You’ll share that list with our consultant who will then track down the best person at each of those companies. We’ll deliver a list to you that will include their name, title, company, email, URL, LinkedIn, phone, and mailing address (we can provide mailing addresses for companies, but remote-working has made it impossible to verify addresses of individual people.) The information is yours to keep forever and it’s guaranteed to be 100% accurate for 30 days.


CLIENT LIST BUILD (BULK DATA)

If you’d like to cast a wider net to reach more clients as cost-effectively as possible, a bulk list build could be exactly what you need. After an initial meeting to identify your target audience, your marketing specialist will assemble a list of at least 500 contacts, taking into consideration your location, specialties, and preferred client type. The information is yours to keep forever and it’s guaranteed to be 85% accurate for 30 days.


CLIENT INTRODUCTIONS

You just finished a fantastic project and want to share it with the world, or you just relocated and want to introduce yourself to a new market, or you need a fresh set of contacts to get out of a marketing funk. Whatever the reason, we can help introduce you to a new collection of clients.  

This one-time list build with a custom email follow-up will help you identify the right targets and craft language that will get their attention. The list is yours to keep, and it’s guaranteed for 30 days.

Here are a few other ways you can use this service:

  • Help add to your existing list
  • Schedule meetings in a particular location
  • Promote a recent commercial or portfolio project 

CASE STUDIES


MARKETING MENTOR

Imagine having a savvy friend guide you as you grow your photography business. Marketing Mentor puts all the experience of Wonderful Machine at your fingertips. You’ll have a dedicated account executive working with you every month to help you focus on what’s important and to make steady progress. Our Marketing Mentors can help you:

  • Understand your strengths as a photographer
  • Understand your target market
  • Learn how to organize, edit, and sequence your portfolio and website
  • Learn how to research clients
  • Learn how to connect with clients on the phone and in-person

CASE STUDIES


MARKETING ASSOCIATE

Finding the time to research prospective clients can be a challenge. Let us provide you with a steady stream of prospects that you can connect with. Our Marketing Associate program starts with a meeting to review your website and Marketing Questionnaire, and to agree on who your target audience is. Each month, your consultant will feed you 25 new prospects to reach out to, and each quarter, you’ll review your past progress and adjust your future goals.


MARKETING PARTNER

Getting in front of the right person at the right time is a challenge. You have to be persistent. To grow as quickly as possible, photographers need a sustained effort of client research and outreach. Our consultants will help you reach a targeted list of new clients each month. 

In the first month, we’ll get to know you and your business goals, gather marketing materials, and create a marketing plan. In each succeeding month, we’ll curate a targeted list of 25 prospects and reach out with carefully crafted personal emails to introduce you. You will be connected immediately with any positive replies. At the end of each month we’ll review your analytics and make adjustments based on open and click through rates and based on your evolving goals. You’ll gain 25 new verified contacts each month to add to your contact list.

Our marketing specialists support you by providing the following:

  • Reconcile your interests and skills with the opportunities in the marketplace
  • Evaluate your marketing materials to ensure that they match up with your brand
  • Creating a marketing plan that provides a flexible road map to follow
  • We research new clients each month so you have the opportunity to target multiple categories of clients
  • We report on our progress, keep track of clicks and opens, and make adjustments as needed 
  • We offer advice on how to reply, when to follow up and how to keep in contact with the new clients

CASE STUDIES


MARKETING DIRECTOR

This is the marketing you have always wanted, but couldn’t find the time or the patience to do yourself. Our Marketing Director program provides you with the skill of our experienced marketing consultants with Wonderful Machine’s client data and analytics to provide you with a steady stream of marketing week-by-week. With Marketing Director, we strive to build relationships and form connections in unique ways.

  • We start with an initial consultation to get to know you and your business and identify target clients.
  • We craft a custom marketing plan that reconciles your interest and skills with the opportunities in the marketplace.  
  • We conduct weekly client research and send individual emails sharing your photography and requesting a meeting.
  • We make LinkedIn connections with prospects that match up with your business goals. 
  • We follow up with monthly email campaigns to your growing list of contacts.
  • We track views and click-throughs and develop a constantly evolving strategy based on analytics.
  • We create and maintain a custom portal that allows you to monitor our progress and access all the client data that we gather.
  • We will have regular calls to review progress and make adjustments.

EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Once you’ve amassed a collection of potential client contacts, the next step is to maintain regular communication. Sending out monthly or bi-monthly email campaigns is a great way to stay top-of-mind for your target audience.

  • We’ll begin by creating an editorial calendar so our consultant can drive your email process, allowing you to focus on your assignments.
  • Each month, we’ll add new contacts through either Marketing Partner, a List Build, or your own efforts.
  • Our consultant will assemble your email campaign in Mailchimp (or the platform of your choosing) using your pre-existing template, and you’ll work together to update the images and the copy.
  • Our consultant will send out the email blast and compile the results in time for the next campaign.

MARKETING PLAN

The key to marketing is to implement an effective plan that allows you to make the most of your limited time. Our marketing consultant will help you reconcile your interests and skills with the opportunities in the marketplace. Then, they’ll translate those business objectives into a detailed, sustainable plan of action that you can carry out – incorporating client research, individual emails, mass emails (and possibly print promos) all with the intention of generating client calls/meetings that then lead to assignments.


FIND A REP

If you’re finding yourself with a growing list of assignments and a shrinking amount of time for marketing and bidding, it may be time to consider an agent. 

There’s a lot to consider when searching for the right agent for you, we’d love to help with the process by making sure you fit in with the agent’s roster and stand out as a valuable photographer in the group as well.   

With thousands of photographer’s reps and picture agencies around the world, finding the one that’s right for you can be a challenge. Our experts can help.

First we evaluate your work and have a conversation with you to thoroughly understand your skills and interests and to establish whether you are ready to partner with a rep. With that in mind, we’ll match your specialties with our photo reps in our database and curate a list of agents. Each possibility is evaluated to determine which ones are most likely to be a good match for you. We strive to make sure that you both have something to offer each other.

We’ll send personalized emails in order to introduce you, along with links to your website to each agent. We can’t guarantee that you will find a rep, however, if you do find a good match, we can help negotiate your contract for an additional fee.

CASE STUDIES


PROJECT PITCH

Self-assigned projects are a great way for photographers to sharpen their skills, and they can also provide great material to promote to clients. Getting clients to think about publishing your project is the primary mission of every Project Pitch, but raising awareness for your photography in general is an important byproduct of this effort.

  • Our marketing consultant will meet with you online to review your project and understand your goals for the Project Pitch.
  • They’ll work with you to craft language that describes your project and explains why people should care about it right now (two rounds of revisions are included.)
  • We’ll help you decide what to link to in your email and what images to attach (separately, our designers can create a custom digital promo attachment).
  • Our consultant will help you identify your target audience and then build a curated list of 50 prospects (including email, web address, LinkedIn, phone, and physical mailing address). This list is for your exclusive use and it’s yours to keep forever.
  • We send out a one-time email campaign and one follow-up email.
  • We’ll compile and share the analytics from the campaign, including opens, clicks, and responses.

CASE STUDIES


SOCIAL MEDIA: STANDARD SET UP

Social media can be a constantly changing landscape of strategy and ideas. Our approach to a successful plan begins with getting your account set up properly and getting all the right tools in place. 

Our Standard Set Up starts with a questionnaire and a meeting to discuss your goals and our process.  We’ll start with a Content Strategy Plan that will include:

  • Page optimization
  • Posting strategy
  • Hashtag and tagging strategy
  • Custom content calendar for collaboration 
  • Scheduling tool set up

Having all these things in place sets up a solid foundation for a successful social media strategy.  Once all these tools are in place, you will be ready for our monthly implementation plans.


SOCIAL MEDIA: PREMIUM SET UP

The Premium Set up includes everything in the Standard Start up, plus valuable competitor research. Our consultants use competitor research to find out what your competitors are doing and use that information to optimize your strategy. This will further improve the quality of the page optimization, content strategy, and hashtag and tagging strategy.


SOCIAL MEDIA: STANDARD IMPLEMENTATION

Your consultant will create and schedule your posts to keep your feed active.  Once you curate and caption your images, you’ll add them to the content calendar on a monthly basis.  Your consultant will schedule your posts, keep an eye on analytics, and help you post consistently, creating an active feed to showcase your work.


SOCIAL MEDIA: PREMIUM IMPLEMENTATION

The Premium implementation includes image curation, caption writing and posting.  The consultant will curate a selection of your images and write captions based on the notes you provide.  Once you approve all of the content, the consultant will set up the posts and schedule them.  Your feed will be continuously updated with engaging content. 


BRANDING & MARKETING (BaM!) PLAN

Our Branding & Marketing Plan is a quick and effective way to get a handle on where your career stands and how you might proceed moving forward. It starts with a conversation with one of our marketing consultants, to reconcile your interests and skills with the opportunities of the marketplace. Then, after reviewing your current marketing materials and marketing plan with our team of photo editors and designers, our marketing consultant will send you an in-depth, written analysis of your brand, our recommendations on how to improve your marketing materials and a custom marketing plan that spells out a specific course of action that you can follow for the next 6 months to move towards your goals. Finally, we’ll schedule a follow-up call with you to review that plan and answer any questions you may have.

CASE STUDIES


ANALYTICS SETUP

Where is your web traffic coming from? What parts of your site are clients looking at? How long are they staying on your site, what’s your bounce rate, and why is that important? Our SEO experts can set you up with analytics tools that will help you gather that information and they’ll show you how to interpret it and take action based on it.

MEMBER OPEN HOUSE


SEO AUDIT

Perhaps it’s been a while (or maybe never) since you reviewed the state of your website’s Search Engine Optimization, and you’re wondering if you’re missing out on valuable organic traffic. Our Audit starts with a review of every facet of your website and follows with a summary all the things you’re doing right and suggestions for all the ways you could improve. We’ll meet up over a video call to review our recommendations and we’ll answer any questions you may have. You can then implement those changes yourself or we can perform the SEO Implementation for an additional fee.

CASE STUDIES


SEO IMPLEMENTATION

Our Search Engine Optimization experts keep up with the latest changes to Google’s search algorithm so they can help you rank for searches that are most important to you. Once we’ve determined your SEO objectives, our consultants will level up your website, including keyword research, updating H1 tags, meta titles, alt text, and they’ll suggest web design improvements to ensure that you’re making the most of Google’s algorithm. They’ll review all their updates with you so you can continue to add new content to your site in a way that conforms to those standards. They’ll also set you up with GA4 if you haven’t already.

CASE STUDIES


SEO MAINTENANCE

Keeping up with the constantly changing landscape of SEO can seem daunting. Our experts can update your website’s SEO each quarter to ensure that you’re ranking as high as possible for searches that are most important to you. They’ll then meet with you to review the updates they made, they’ll review the past performance of your website, and they’ll discuss strategies to stay on top of search results into the future.


ALSO AVAILABLE

  • Web & Social Media Advertising
  • Relocation Package
  • Hourly Consulting