Your Two Most Important Marketing Tools

First, your business card represents you are serious about yourself, your work, and your profession. When asked for your business card and you have to say something like, “I don’t have business cards” or “I don’t have any with me” you are all but yelling, “I’m not committed to my work.”

Second, photographers have a huge advantage over most everyone when it comes to marketing their products and services. Yes, it is the visual showcase medium, the online portfolio. If you are reading this, you have undoubtedly looked at a number of photographer’s websites. Some are good, some much better than others. Regardless, their sites offer photographers the opportunity to present their work to anyone, anywhere, anytime of the day.

It has been my observation that most photographers get hung up on having the perfect business card or website. This is their conscious or subconscious reason for not having one or both of these critical marketing elements.

So here is practical solution for anyone caught in this creative freeze mode.

Just Do It!

Your card can be as simple as your name and contact information and most importantly your website url. Your web page can be very basic, no flash, no search engine optimization (SEO), no music. Just a clean, simple design with your very best images grouped into a few appropriate categories.

Notice I said, don’t pay attention to search engine optimization. Google photographers and you get 58.4 million returns. “Fine art photographer” produces 176 thousand returns.
No matter how much SEO you employ, it has little or no value to bringing someone to your sight unless your turn up in the top 20 returns. So don’t use SEO costs and time commitment as an excuse for not creating your website. Rather, create your site with the idea you will drive people directly to it using other marketing tools – such as your business card.