Branding Your Studio

By (Guest Contributor) Greg Stangl

Most small business owners, including photographers, assume that the prospect knows what they (the business) are all about. The sad truth is most clients simply don’t know that much about your business or what you are trying to offer to the public. As a business owner it is your job to mold your brand into a consistent message that will encourage the client to interact with your business and hopefully, secure your services.
You have to work to develop a brand that the client will want to do business with. So, what exactly is a “brand”? Your brand is a collection of images and ideas that represents the essence of how you feel about your images. Your brand can consist of a set of associations and perceptions that have strong identifiable content and can be used to influence the client. You can use your brand to differentiate your business from your competitors and to bond with your customers to create loyalty and establish your position in the marketplace.
Your brand can be a collection of visual symbols such as your name, your logo, your tag line and even the car that you drive to photograph the wedding. It can be the colors that you choose to decorate your studio and it can even be the images that you choose to produce.
Brand is also embodied in your choice of portrait packaging materials. You are making a clear statement about how you feel about your finished images and how you value the client in the way you choose to package your finished images. How you present the finished images to the client can go a long way toward making a statement about the type of business you run.
Carefully chosen premium albums, folios and folders make a bold statement about your company. Photographers put a lot of emphasis on creating our portraiture; we need to put the same energy into choosing the proper packaging as a way of clearly establishing our brand.
Greg Stangl Photographer and Speaker