***STOP COPYING OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS***

Its all to easy when setting out or upscaling your business to just copy the competition but copying the competition is just diluting your own brand and adding another “Same As The Rest” Photographer to the already over saturated market.

Think differently, we all have something unique and personal to offer and that might just be your fun and friendly personality. If you’re a wedding photographer and you build your brand around your fun and friendly personality, making this your USP (Unique Selling Point) then you could be onto a really winner.

To really succeed you need to specialise and be different, aim for a target market or a client and then give them exactly what they want and service them better than anyone else can.  Make sure your USP fits perfectly with what your ideal client is looking for, this will allow you to charge a premium for your services.

For example, imagine you are learning to drive for the first time at the age of 65, you are looking at websites for driving instructors but you are nervous about the whole learning to drive idea at such a late stage in your life and wished you’d just done it years ago.  Then you come across a website for a driving instructor who specialises in helping older more mature learners to pass their tests, his website is filled with photos and testimonials from older drivers recommending his services and praising his calming and patience nature.  Yes, he may be slightly more expensive but the service fits your needs perfectly because he has built his brand around you.

If you’re commercial headshot photographer and the competition offer a ‘by the hour’ or ‘by the headshot’ package, then be different and offer a Social Media Solution Package.  This type of package may include 3 poses with 2 backgrounds and one business lifestyle headshot, maybe at the person’s desk on in front of their premises.  Images are then sized for 2 different social media channels and includes a branded social media cover image too.  This package is cleverly devised to offer a solution to the clients’ needs. It’s not priced on time as the competition, so its easy to charge more because you are offering a solution to a need directly and it can’t be compared to an hourly rate.

People assess an hourly rate as exactly what it is, your time for an hour.  Often clients will relate to this as expensive because it maybe higher than their own hourly rate.  Charging by a “solution to a need package” does away with this objection.  This then becomes your USP, you offer solution-based packages because you know what your clients really want and base your service and USP around their needs.

What makes you different, what can you offer that the others don’t or can’t?  Maybe your USP could be your style or type of photography.  Imagine there are 100s of wedding photographers in your area, then you realise that 90% of your weddings are undertaken at country houses.  So, you rebrand yourself as The Country House Wedding Photographer.  To anyone getting married in a country house venue in your area you now appear much more appealing, you specialise in creating bespoke luxury wedding storybooks for couples tying the knot in an intimate country house setting.

Start getting creative, don’t copy, create your own…

Hope you found this inspiring, it’s your uniqueness that will develop your brand and put you on the road to success.