Ever feel like you’re shouting into the void when it comes to marketing your photography? You’re snapping stunning shots, but the world just isn’t noticing? You’re definitely not the only one facing this challenge, and guess what? Today, we’re diving deep into expert advice that will empower you to give your marketing strategies a major makeover, helping food photographers shine like never before!
Say hello to Julie Skarwecki, your friendly photo consultant who’s got all the tips and tricks to help your photos really pop in a busy world! She’s been doing this for over ten years and has helped loads of photographers just like you. Julie teaches photographers how to show off their photos the best way, make friends with clients that last, and feel super confident running their photography business.
First things first: Who are you shooting for? Julie always says it’s super important to really understand who you want your photos to reach. Are you hoping to catch the eye of big brands, support local businesses, or capture special moments at private events?
Each one needs its own special way of getting the word out.
For example, the strategies you’d use for wedding photography won’t necessarily work for commercial food photography.
Julie’s got a knack for picking just the right tools to help you shine. Julie knows the ropes, from navigating social media, to getting savvy with SEO, or just making the right friends—she’s got all the secrets that can truly transform your game.She likes to say, “It’s not about trying to do it all, it’s about choosing what works best for connecting with your crowd.”
Ever heard the saying, “You’re only as good as your portfolio”? Julie points out that photographers often struggle with choosing the images that truly represent their best work. She advises, “Select photos that speak to your ideal client. It’s about quality over quantity.”
Julie offers these nuggets of wisdom:
Alright, let’s break it down: marketing your photos isn’t just about tossing them up on the internet. It’s really about making clever choices that match your creative dreams and your big business plans. Julie Skarwecki has taught us that if you play your cards right, you can turn what you love into a booming business!
A huge thanks to Julie for sharing her super helpful tips with us. Here’s to making beautiful pictures and helping food photographers shine in the spotlight they deserve!
And remember, every snap you take is a step towards getting even better at your photography and growing your business. So keep on shooting, keep sharing your work, and shine bright, everyone!
Alright, let’s break it down: marketing your photos isn’t just about tossing them up on the internet. It’s all about making smart choices that get your work seen by the right people.
Julie has shown us that with the right moves, you can turn what you love into a super successful business.
A big shoutout to Julie for giving us these amazing tips!
Julie is a photo consultant whose work focuses on empowering commercial photographers by providing expert guidance and proven strategies to enhance their marketing efforts and connect with their ideal clients. With over a decade of experience, including as an agent, she understands the unique challenges faced by commercial photographers and aims to equip clients with the tools they need to effectively present their work, build meaningful relationships with clients, and continuously elevate their careers, helping food photographers shine brighter than ever before.
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Then you’ll love this one, too!
Mica: [00:00:00] Welcome to the 48th episode of The Savory Shot, a podcast about the art and soul of working in food photography. I'm your host with the most, Mica McCook. I am a food photographer based out of Austin, Texas. And y'all, I just want to start this par-tay off by saying, Holy crap, we're two episodes away from 50 episodes.
Cinquenta. That's 50 in Spanish, right? Cinquenta. We are cinquenta episodes in, y'all. Well, two more away. I'm so excited about that. That is a huge milestone and I have y'all to thank. So thank you for being here. Thank you for joining me. You could have been anywhere. You could have been doing anything.
But you're here with me, the most awesomest host in all of America. Yeah, I'll take that crown. I'll take it [00:01:00] Y'all I am so I'm excited to jump into today's episode. We are talking about a challenge that many of y'all, your girl included, face daily. Marketing.
I swear to Dumbledore above, I am so tired of seeing these Instagram posts where people just simplify marketing.
Mica: Like it's this easy peasy, tangible, Oh, you can do it every day type of thing. Cause it's not easy for everyone. And. Not everyone naturally picks it up. Sometimes you need help. And if you're struggling to if you're not sure how to effectively market your photography, or you're confused about what marketing actually is, then this episode is for you.
I'm excited to get into this, into the nuts and bolts. I'm not the [00:02:00] expert, so I'm going to introduce the expert and without further ado, meet today's guest, Julie Skarwecki.
I first learned of Julie when a colleague of mine raved about her on LinkedIn. So you know, your girl had to check her out and y'all, I'm glad that I did because one visit to her website, I knew I had to have her on the show. Thankfully, she said, yes, and after interviewing her, I was just so impressed by everything that she said that I hired her to design my newsletter.
I have watched so many videos of consultants, marketers, and it feels like they're just speaking French. I understand none of it, but Julie, she just explains things so beautifully.
Julie is a photo consultant whose work focuses on empowering photographers. Y'all she has over a decade of experience, including roles as an agent [00:03:00] and consultant. She has mentored countless commercial photographers and helped them present their work effectively and to the right people. She's taught them how to build meaningful relationships and help them elevate their careers.
Y'all. I'm so grateful that Julie came on the show. I loved everything about this conversation and I believe you will too. By the end of this episode, you will learn specific actionable steps to refine your marketing. You'll learn strategies that will help you get your work out to the right people, so grab a pen, grab a paper, or your iPad, I don't know. Grab a wand and wave it in the air. Whatever you got to do to take notes do that.
Grab your coffee, grab your tea, glass of wine. If you're having that kind of day, whatever you got to do to relax [00:04:00] and let's start the show.
[00:05:00]
Mica: Julie, I want to start off by thanking you for being on the show and to say, Hey, thanks for being on the show.
Julie: Oh my gosh. My pleasure. I was so happy when you reached out. I love getting to sit down and talk photo with someone.
Mica: Oh, it's going to be a blast getting into this. I was doing my research on you and I thought it was pretty awesome that you started as an assistant for Alex Prager, and then you transitioned into representing photographers, and that's just such a unique, tidbit about you. What influenced you to transform from working with photographers as an agent to focusing on helping them through consulting.
Julie: When I worked with Alex, I was working as a studio assistant, not a camera assistant. So a lot of what I did was more on the production side. We're working [00:06:00] on primarily Her Face in The Crowd series. We were on set doing more of again, the production side, but then also working through some marketing with her helping a lot with the fine art side of her practice, but also the commercial side as well.
And so that led me into repping photographers. I learned so much in that role about the commercial industry, how it operates, what clients, are asking for what they want to see from photographers. The process of bidding, like what, licensing is like just everything that goes into being a commercial photographer.
But, and I love my photographers that I worked with. But as in that role, there's not really as much kind of one on one career development. And that's something that I really enjoy. I was seeing, because we do meetings at an agency, photographers come in all the time, they show you their work, you chat. You might They end up signing someone at some point, but the vast majority of these meetings are just [00:07:00] meet and greets. And I would see so many people coming in with these like really strong great bodies of work who just had no idea what they were doing on the business and the marketing side. And I was like god, I just want to be able to have more of a role in that like instead of seeing all of these amazing photographers like like twiddling their thumbs a little bit, like not really sure what their next steps are.
Just wanted to have a hand in that because I was learning so much in my role of how to market yourself to these clients. And it was like, where is the information? How does this get to the photographers? Like, how would anyone know? And this was years ago where there was much less transparency than there is now in the photo industry.
I think there was a point where one of, one of our photographers, we recommended that they work with a consultant and that was the first I had heard of. I was like, a what? A photo consultant. Okay. Go to Google. What is that? And I just, I was looking to move on and it was like, this is exactly what I would want to be doing.
I want to work one on one. I want to [00:08:00] help people on a more personal level to show the clients that they're trying to reach what they need to see, what they want to see the right way to market to them. And then see the payoff. it's so rewarding when you've worked with someone and they're emailing you about this big shoot they finally got booked on, or they finally asked for that bigger licensing fee and they got it.
And it's, it's just such like a, it's such a nice feeling.
Mica: You mentioned something earlier that I thought was really great about that desire to, to work one on one and, they'd come in and have this great body of work, but they're not sure what to do with it. I've talked about this before about the frustrations of like me going to school that we learned how to be photographers, but we didn't learn the other side of how until we got out of school.
My question for you, is that something that you noticed with photographers coming to you as well? Did that play in your desire to be a little bit more one on one with them?
Julie: I would [00:09:00] say most. I think most photographers didn't go to photo school, at least in my experience of who I work with. So they, even more so probably just really self taught in every possible way. And then, I would say about half the people that I work with who did go to art school did not get any sort of training on the business side.
And then, they're like I've got the work what happens next? And you're like, there's so much that happens next. We need to like get you on board with this marketing and it's tricky because very few people are really good at the creative side and really good at the business side. Typically we have one area where our strengths lie. That's totally fine.
We don't really want photographers to be like a full time marketer. It's more like finding the tools that you need to use, finding ways that you can use them without taking on another 40 hours a week of work. But if you don't do it, who's going to see it, who's going to see your portfolio?
You built that website yourself. If you don't set up the SEO, who's going to find it? you can't just [00:10:00] expect that it's all just going to unfold for you super easily. And for some people it does. But for most people, there's a, there's work that you have to do.
You have to put in hours getting your work in front of people. And it takes. It takes a, a lifetime to figure that out, which is, yeah, why I wanted to work one on one is let's speed this up. Let's help people like, let's get from point A to point B a little bit faster.
Mica: You touched on something about photographers not being good about marketing themselves and the marketing that they are doing is attracting the wrong kind of clients. If a wedding photographer wouldn't market the same way as a family photographer. That is what my frustration was with my education is we did take one studio management class and we'd like touched on marketing for two weeks, but this teacher was trying to teach. ten different markets to market [00:11:00] one way, and I learned very quickly over the years that just isn't going to work out. What would work for the sports photographer isn't going to work for me. And what would work for the wedding photographer isn't going to work for the sports photographer.
I think a great way to start off this, interview is what is marketing to you?
Julie: That's such a good question to ask because so many people come to me and they're like, I don't know what this word means. You're like, it's funny cause we all use it, right? Like we casually know how to use it in a sentence, but can you break down what that is? To me, I would say that marketing is connecting a person with a need with a product or service that they're looking for.
For a photographer, let's just say, we're talking about food photographers, your clients are going to be brands like in house ad agencies editorial, publications, it could be restaurants you've got a couple of different people that you're speaking to. Even within that list, there's different ways of marketing to all of those types of [00:12:00] clients.
There's not just one. It's not just one way, right? There's not one tool that, is what marketing is. It's any way that you're connecting what you have to offer with someone who's looking for what you have to offer. Someone who wants to buy what you're selling basically. I don't know, Bar is opening down the street any more than that bar knows a photographer who can take photos for them you find out about it through pr you find out through social media you learn through word of mouth. There's all these different tools and it is different for everyone even within the food photography realm, there's different ways that we would market to the different types of clients that you have, but it all comes down, it's connecting the service or product with the buyer, who needs that service or product.
But practically speaking, it's, it includes anything like social media, SEO, your website is a marketing tool, printed promos, running ads, we would say falls into marketing. It's not one I recommend for [00:13:00] most people, but there's time and a place. Anything that you do that gets you in front of a potential client, we would count as marketing.
One thing I had to learn the difference between was marketing and branding like they, they do intertwine, but they are different. What is a common misconception that photographers have about marketing?
One is that a lot of people will, a lot of people will come to me and I ask everyone when I first talk to them what they're doing for their marketing and people will say well, nothing. And it's like, well, you're not doing nothing because you do have a website, you do have social media. Like those are marketing tools, right?
So when people say that they're doing nothing, that isn't typically correct. It might be, you're not doing it well, but you you aren't doing it. You've got some tools that are already set up. We want to use them better.
Not everyone, but some people when you, when they hear marketing, they think like either really [00:14:00] gimmicky like a marketing ploy or things like running ads. Like I mentioned, running an ad is a marketing tool. Just if we're talking about anything that qualifies as a marketing tool, again, it's not one that I recommend, but I think that people sometimes when they hear that, they're like, Oh, I don't want to like I don't want to run a Facebook ad and it's like, yeah, I don't want you to either.
Please don't. I'm They're expensive. Don't do
that. And they don't want to help you. This is not going to help you at all. It might have, it more likely will have a negative impact on your like overall business. So yeah, I think a lot of it is people just not knowing what that word means. Like they don't know that they already have marketing tools.
They don't know that If you're marketing, it doesn't mean that you're like running ads. There's an organic way that we market. And that there's just a lot of things included in it. Like word of mouth, like I mentioned, that's a marketing tool. It's basically just like, if you do a good job, people will talk about you.
So it's not one that you have a ton of control over, but yeah, that's a marketing tool. Like just [00:15:00] doing well, like giving people a good user experience of working with you. That's a marketing tool.
Mica: You talk about word of mouth. It reminded me of my dad. My dad was a mechanic and he knew everybody and it annoyed me to death. And anytime I needed to get something fixed, my dad would say go over to so and so's shop and he'll fix that right up for you.
They go, Oh, you're Hickey's daughter? Oh, your money's no good here. We got you. We'll take care of this. How can photographers get to that point where people just know them?
Julie: Wait, you went for, that's a big question.
Mica: Okay. So let me, let me rephrase that. What's one thing that a photographer can do to start getting to that level of being known through marketing?
Julie: Oh, so even that's a big question. It's so [00:16:00] much the word . Word of mouth. Word of mouth is. It is a lot of kind of what you're talking about, right? Like I know this person because one because they're in the same industry as me, let's just say because that's the example you're using, right? It's these people are all working in the same world.
The other people that you work with, like I know other consultants, I'll sometimes recommend a client meet with them instead of me if they're not a good fit. Because I know these other people and I know what they specialize in. That's something where if you wanted that type of kind of word of mouth, like visibility, name recognition, obviously networking in the photo industry is going to help you a lot.
If someone came to you and was like, Hey, Mica can you shoot for, this like car company? And you're like, I don't shoot cars. But I bet I know a guy. I know this guy over here who does so I would recommend him. What we ideally want with word of mouth marketing is more from the client side.
And I also want to be really clear here because word of mouth is a very powerful marketing [00:17:00] tool. But a lot of people think that it is one that will last forever and it will not you need to use other tools. It's going to run out. It's not something you want to be super reliant on. Because you don't have control over it.
And also the people who are maybe passing your name around, they're typically going to be doing that to other people who are at the same level. So if we're talking about climbing a ladder career wise, you want to use other tools.
We want other tools that you're using, but with it from the client side. Part of what you're describing is someone who's going above and beyond. So someone who's saying, okay, you came to me for an oil change, but I'm going to refer you to this guy to get your seats repaired, right?
You can do that in your practice. Giving people one, just a very professional experience. And a lot of that kind of to your point about branding earlier that is something that we want to see from people because it looks very professional. We want it to look like you've invested in your business, you take yourself seriously, you are a professional photographer, you're not like a [00:18:00] hobbyist anymore, right?
We want to see good branding. We want to see. A level of like professionalism in your communication. That's very easily done, right? Your emails, like you're sending them to a client, not like you're sending it to your best friend. You want to match the tone of your client over email.
If they're being very casual, you can be very casual. If they're being very formal, you need to be very formal. You want to match their energy to connect better with them. Use positive language as much as possible. So we see this a lot when a client comes and they're like, Okay, we want 35 images in one day they're going on billboards all across the country.
Our budget is 500, right? We don't want you to go back and say like, you're crazy there's no freaking way I can do that. We want you to go back and say, hey love this project, you know, within your budget, this is what we can do. Use that positive language, be a teammate, a collaborator to your clients.
If they have a problem, we see this on the [00:19:00] production side a lot. If there's an issue with executing their vision, be the one to call out a solution, help them to problem solve. If you say that you're going to deliver final images in two weeks, try to do it in one, if you can. Be a little bit ahead of whatever they're expecting and then obviously the quality of the work. If you can't execute a creative deck, then you need to be honest with yourself about that. Maybe that means like you got an assistant who knows lighting better than you do, who can help you or, figuring out how to sort of expand your skill set so that you're always giving the client what they're asking for.
So they're happy with the images. You solved everything for them or helped them to solve the problem. You just made it as enjoyable of an experience as possible so that then they go, Oh, To someone else and say, Oh, yeah, I worked with this amazing photographer.
Like I had the best time working with her. She's like fun and easy and collaborative. We got these amazing images. It's a lot of little things that kind of go into that [00:20:00] part of marketing, but again, we don't have ultimate control over whether or not someone's referring you and there's sort of a ceiling to that, where we do still want you still doing some outreach, still getting outside of that network that you might be in.
But it is, it's a very, it's a powerful marketing tool.
Mica: What you just said, the word of mouth, you don't control what they say or who they say it to as opposed to like your website, that gives you the space to say exactly what you want about your business, about who you are as a photographer. And I know that one of the things that you do you curate images.
What advice do you give to photographers so that they're picking the images that will get them more work as opposed to the ones that they're emotionally attached to?
Julie: Honestly, I mean, half of my advice is just to hire someone.
Who can help you because realistically you're never going to be [00:21:00] objective. Some people can look past their feelings about a particular image better than others. But most people struggle with that to a certain degree, right?
Like you remember, Oh, I really hated this client or like it was so hot in the studio that day and I was just so uncomfortable and I was miserable and I never want to see these again. That's not a good reason to not include images on your website. We want a completely objective view. Part of putting together a website page is one, looking at your ideal client.
Who are you targeting? For instance, let's say you're targeting Folgers. Folgers sells packaged goods, right? It's a packaged product. You buy a can of ground coffee. If the only thing that you're showing in your portfolio is like a cup of coffee, but there's no product in it.
That's not really a great presentation for you getting in front of this type of client because they need to see a label. They need to see an actual product, not [00:22:00] just a food and beverage shot. So looking at it sort of like that, who are we really trying to target? What types of images are they creating?
And how can we best reflect that? And that's going to be different for everyone, obviously. It depends who are we going after? I see people, an issue that they run into with the website is that they aren't thinking of the website presentation as being more than the sum of its parts.
We have images that go into these galleries that create, let's say your food page. You have an, you have a drink page, you have an overview page. Maybe you have some client pages that break down different projects that you've worked on each of those is its own entity, and I think people don't tend to look at it that way. Where like, if we're putting together a food page, we really want to target packaged food clients, so the Folgers of the world. But if you're not thinking of that food page as its own entity, it ends up looking really jumbled and inconsistent.
You're also selling like a vibe, you're selling your look [00:23:00] and feel, the way that you approach a photo project, the way that you create images as an artist. If everything isn't consistent, if the sequencing isn't flowing right, if the retouching isn't consistent with everything, it will look very jumbled. It won't really give people this like cohesive view of a body of work.
Julie: And I think that's where I see a lot of people messing up. It's they're like, I just took all my favorite images and I put them on the overview page. That's great. I love that for you. But what are you trying to tell people? How are you trying to present yourself? What's the look and feel that you want your clients to really grasp onto when they first get to your website. And in order to do that, we have to look at it like this is a completely separate project. We have the pieces, we have the images, we're going to put them together in a way that creates a very cohesive feel and that feeling that you got when you look at someone's site, that's just as important as the individual images.
But [00:24:00] people break down there because they can't be objective. So it's like you can't always see how these things are or are not working together. And we want that really objective view to say okay, I want to be like, I want to be bright, poppy, colorful okay, that's great.
Let's go for that. We're going to leave off anything that's like really muted, really quiet, really subtle. It's not going to make sense here. We need it to be cohesive. We're picking a lane and we're staying in it. That's the biggest. I guess like single area that I see people mess up is they're like, I just like all of these images and it's like, well, that's not going to help you that much.
We need to curate.
Mica: You hit it on the nail about just kind of relinquishing control and letting someone who's not attached one of, one of the things that we did in our mentorship. So I was in the Apostrophe Reps mentorship and it was a group of us and they did an online magazine in addition to an art show.
And we did not, have a choice in picking the images. They [00:25:00] picked the images for the art show, for the magazine. We all had a discussion in our group chat about, how we felt about the choices that were picked. Unanimously, we were all like, they picked images that we would not have picked ourselves. But we also realized that there were some shots from our respective shoots that we were just emotionally attached to. I love that you said relinquishing control. With your clients, how has it been for them to, trust that process to you. Do they meet you with resistance? Is it just total trust or do they learn something about themselves that they didn't know before?
Julie: Okay, I would say it runs the gamut. I had one photographer that I worked with this year. And this was so funny. He sort of gave me a heads up beforehand that he was like, I'm gonna have a hard time with letting you do this, but he hired me to do it. So I was like, if you have a hard time, we'll work through that.
We'll talk through it together. [00:26:00] He fought me every step of the way, but he knew he was doing it. So he was like, this is a me problem, not a you problem. I know that I need to just let go, but can we just make some changes here? And it's absolutely, by all means.
We want you to be happy, It was nice that he was sort of able to recognize that you're really not letting go. You're tied to this vision, and it's not in line with your goals as you've outlined them to me. With that type of person, it often will take one, a lot of explanation, like this is why I'm making these decisions.
This is why we picked these images. This is why we didn't pick some of these other images. But there's also typically there's a happy medium where if you're really tied to something we can figure out a way to make that work. I would say the vast majority of people look at an edit and are like I haven't seen my work in this way before because I'm taking such an objective view and I will look at when something was shot, if it matters but a lot of the time it's like, yeah, this image, maybe it was five years ago.
It still looks good. This still works. This still helps [00:27:00] you in your larger like path to reach your goal clients. Other times there's things where it's like, okay, I know you might love this. Project but it's vastly different from everything else in your portfolio and it just doesn't have a place here right now. It's gonna hurt you more than help. We have to break down what people are looking for from their careers, like who are you, who are we trying to reach with this?
Like what sort of the impression that we need to give and build around that. And typically there's not a ton of resistance to it, but every now and then there's someone who's like, I just don't want to let you do it. And it's like, well, you don't have to, I'm not making you.
We know the kinds of things that most clients want to see. Sometimes I think there is this they struggle for people where it's like, okay, maybe I do have this goal of who I want to be shooting for, but I don't want to let go of this side of myself as a creator.
That part I'm super receptive to. We don't want you to like self abandon in the interest of, you know shooting for Pepsi like [00:28:00] that, is that worth it? Let's see what other options we have. And there's often, not always, but there's often different ways that we can show the work or share different projects where it's like we can maintain who you are as a creative while still creating this really strong visual impression on the website.
Julie: But it does, it takes a lot of explanation because if you are so tied to the work, it's often, yeah, you don't really know where my decision making is coming from. So it is a lot of we want this image because this shows people. We need this one because we've got product, like there's a reason behind all of it.
We just have to have a little trust,
Mica: You mentioned something earlier about photographers needing to know who they're going after. Is that something that they should know before they start marketing efforts?
Julie: Yeah. You have to know or else you're not going to have any way of putting together those marketing [00:29:00] materials. You'll put them together, but it ends up being more of sort of like a crapshoot than a targeted you know, campaign, like marketing practice. But that said, who you're marketing to changes over time.
It's not set in stone. Earlier today, I was on a call with a food photographer she's in New York and she does food and also like some hospitality stuff. She shot for hotels in the past, but typically doing like covering their restaurants.
On this call, she was like, one, she was like, I just got contacted by one of the major, it's a household name hotel chain. That wanted her to come on for a shoot. And she was like, I didn't know this was my dream job until I filled out your questionnaire, the questionnaire that I like gave her at the beginning.
Yeah, it's like a lifestyle focused hospitality project that involves like some travel. And I thought that was really interesting that a lot of people.
Julie: At least when I start working with them, if they don't already have the answer to that question, it's a little bit of a process of figuring out partially like what do you want your life to look [00:30:00] like?
Do you want to be shooting every day or do you want to have a couple of shoots a month and you're off the rest of the time that helps us decide what level of client are we working with? Do you want to do a lot of travel? Do you want to stay close to home? What's your financial goal?
There's a lot of things that kind of go into determining who you're really marketing to, but if you don't know the answers to them. You're not going to be able to put together the materials, because how are you going to decide what images to share? Or even what tools to use, what platforms to use, where you need to be visible.
You're not going to have those answers. So you need to start with identifying who these clients are. A lot of people get so hung up there that they're like, it's anyone and it's like, no, it's not, like, don't lie to me. It's not anyone. We all know that but then that's where you break it down and, you're like, how much do you want to get paid?
Like how often do you want to be working? And that tells us a lot in itself. If you want to work one big shoot a month. We're really talking about advertising clients like we're talking like [00:31:00] agencies probably is who we're marketing to. If you want to be busy, you want to shoot every day, but it's okay, we can be looking more.
We look at restaurants. Look at editorial. We can look at just smaller brands. We can still have the bigger clients, peppered in, but we're expanding our marketing reach quite a bit with that. And then we know that there's a different way to market to those different types of clients.
And it doesn't have to be specific. You don't have to come and say, I want to shoot for Pepsi. You can say, I want to shoot for. large ad campaigns. Great. That helps us, let's look at your work, see who you're a good match for, and then we figure out, okay this is your target list right now, because this is the work that, we're working with, these images so we can figure out who you're gonna be well suited to.
Mica: I wonder when determining who you want to market to, who you want to target , are you choosing these brands because you really want to work with them? Or are you choosing these brands because they're the safe choice? And maybe [00:32:00] you have a much bigger apple, but you're like, I don't know if I could chew that apple.
So I'm going to go for these low hanging grapes here 'cause I know I could do that. It's like, dare to dream big, dare to aim big. How can a photographer know if they're dreaming big or dreaming safe?
Julie: I feel like more often the people that I encounter are going the opposite direction. But in a good way. When I am working with someone I want to, we're working on identifying who their goal clients are. I always tell people to start at the top. You want to shoot for Gucci?
Okay. Let's put them on the list. Realistically. Very few people are shooting at that level. You might get there you might not but that gives us an idea of how we're positioning you. And who exactly are we trying to target? We can replace Gucci with top level like luxury fashion brand, right? We can just say that instead.
If that's the goal, then now we know the type of work that we need to be sharing. We know the type [00:33:00] of images they want to see. We know what test shoots you're going to be working on. We know how you're going to market to them because we have the top of the mountain like we know exactly what's up. From There everything that you're doing, you're still going to be marketing to those smaller clients and if you're doing everything right those smaller clients are also gonna have ways of finding you So it's not like saying and vice not really vice versa like that doesn't really go the other way, right?
If you're like, okay, the top of my list is like the restaurant down the street. You Like, okay, that's achievable. We can work with that. But that's really limiting because what happens when you shoot for them? What are you doing after that?
Like your goal is shifting. And it doesn't give us the opportunity to share, share images, share work in a way where we know that different types and different levels of client are going to see it. We're like, we're keeping you small and we don't want to do that. We can structure your marketing around that the little guys are gonna follow like they're gonna find you to you're [00:34:00] gonna also be reaching out to them.
We're just not going to be building your entire brand around something that you can get next year We want to build it around something that you're going to be working for continuously over time.
Mica: With that being said what are three steps that a food photographer, should begin to do this to refine their marketing today? Okay,
Julie: Refine all of their marketing today. You're asking big questions, Mica.
Mica: But.
Julie: The next question. Let's just, no, this is fine. One, I would say is doing more client research. People typically are not doing nearly as much client research as they should be doing.
And what I mean by that is like really looking at the commercial work that we see in the world around us. So looking at Instagram, what are the ads that you're seeing [00:35:00] when you look at, if you want to shoot for restaurants, go to some restaurant pages, what does that work look like? What are other things that client might need?
What do we see from them? If it's like packaged goods, does your portfolio have packaged goods in it? Or are you showing a food portfolio to someone who's selling a food product. Like those are very different things. Really looking at what people want to see so the tools. The easy tools for that are going to be things like Instagram. Looking at what other photographers are shooting and who they're shooting for and then you can use some depending on what level you're at who you're really targeting.
You can use some like advertising tools like Ads of The World is a great resource for looking at advertising campaigns that have already been released. So we can see what these brands have already come out with. So that's one, then I would say competitor research. I know that's hard for some people to really like emotionally be able to look at someone else's work, but not just looking at their work. Look [00:36:00] at someone who's I say competitor, but let's say look at someone who's like a step above or who you think is a step above, I will say that most people are wrong about who their actual competitors are.
Find people that you think are doing better than you and look at what they're doing, like not just the quality of the work. That can help you. If you look and you say, okay, they're getting these shadows, really sharp in a way that I'm not really achieving yet. Okay. Then we know, great. That's something you can work on.
You can improve your skillset. But also look at where are they visible? Are they on directories? Is there SEO in a good spot? Are they sending out newsletters? Look at everything that they're doing with their marketing and see who they're shooting for. If they're shooting for dominoes and I want to shoot for Dominoes, let's look at what they're doing for their marketing. Let's look at their presentation, see if, is there something there that I can take away and say, okay, I'm not using this tool.
Or vice versa, they're not using this tool, which means it's an opportunity for me to use it and get in front of people in this different way. Those two really cover a [00:37:00] lot of what I would recommend for someonelooking at your own visibility and taking a step back and saying, Okay, if I am a food photographer in Boston, how would someone find me? And like, kind of go through the process. Look around, where do I show up on SEO? Am I on any directories? Have I done anything where people would see my name?
What's my like Instagram follower count isn't everything, or am I being followed by people who I would want to hire me? What am I doing to get in front of people? And if you can't really identify that, then it's okay, we need to. We need to update that because we need people to be able to find you without you necessarily having to reach out to every single person who could potentially hire you. We need to give them paths to find you on their own.
And that one's a bigger sort of undertaking is to look at everything you're doing in your business, but really think about it. If I was a client, how would I find you? What's the tool that I would have to use in order to make that [00:38:00] happen?
Mica: Something you just touched on as you know who's following me. It's cool that your mama, your sister, your cousins, your best friend from third grade follow you and they like all your stuff.
I actually I re added my mom, by the way, but I removed my mom from my Instagram. She got so upset. She's like, I'm your mom.
I'm like, mom, you don't hire me. You don't hire me. And I say, and you follow, we're friends on Facebook. What more, we talk on the phone. What more do you need?
Julie: Yeah, I've done that with, I don't know that my. My mom's not really using Instagram, but I did go through at a certain point and removed all of my personal connections from my like business Instagram. I'm still following them. I removed them as a follower for me because I'm like, I don't need you here.
You don't need to be seeing this stuff. You don't want to see it. You're being supportive. And like, I'm taking this away from you. Then when you look at it, and then you're like, these are my actual numbers, like the people who are engaging our photo industry people, [00:39:00] right? That's kind of something that we want.
Mica: It's great if you get a lot of engagement from Yeah, every friend you've ever had, but that's not helping you. Unless they have a business in the industry, you're trying to get work in, or they know a guy who knows a guy who can connect to you, otherwise find a medium, a platform for your personal stuff, or just, start a whole other personal Instagram and put your stuff there for your friends and family.
I want to take it to strategies for photographers when they don't know if their marketing efforts are making a difference.
What strategies would you give to them to stay motivated?
Julie: Effective is not really the metrics we should be looking at. Very few marketing tools are going to result in a one to one conversion. And that's because as a commercial photographer, you're in a B2B role. You're not [00:40:00] selling a product.
You're not just, appealing to someone who wants to order a pizza tonight and you have an ad and it looks really tasty, they buy it. That's not something that we typically see. So when we're looking at whether or not something's effective, we want to make sure that we're looking at the right metrics.
What we see with that is things like on Instagram, like I said, your follower count isn't. It's not that it's not important, but it's not that important. Your engagement is really what's more important. And also when you get people re sharing your work, I count that as a really high win because that's getting you in front of another person's audience.
That's a really great thing to look at. Am I getting re shares? Are people spreading my work around. That's gonna help you out a lot. With things like an email newsletterI hear so many people are like, I sent out one newsletter two years ago and nothing happened. And it's like, yeah, I could have told you that.
Cause you sent out one newsletter two years ago. What are you doing? So what we want is like to do it consistently and [00:41:00] look at your numbers. What's your open rate? What's your click rate? The click rate is I would say arguably the more important one of the two because that's people expressing interest in seeing more they're taking a next step There's telling you they want to see more of your work.
You have to follow up with those people but look at things like that. Are my newsletters getting opened? What's the open rate? What's the click rate? If the click rate is really low. It's always really low, but there are things that you can do to make it a more appealing email to click on.
Same with the open rate. If your open rate is like super low, let's look at your subject line or like the way that this looks in an inbox. There's something there that isn't working for people. With direct emails I tell people to make sure you have a tracking tool because that will save you a lot of headache.
You're not going to get a response from most direct emails that you send out. But if you have a tracking tool and you can see this was opened, you can also see, Oh, they clicked the link to my website. Good enough. Like we're going to call that good [00:42:00] enough for now, in terms of a marketing tool.
Great. You've gotten in front of them. Might not have hit them at the right time or they're too busy. They can't get back to you. Fine. That's all great. We want to know that it was delivered. This was opened or it was clicked on. Also with things like Instagram or Linkedin.
This isn't often reflected in analytics, but getting sort of a read, this kind of will come from like a third party of what your presentation looks like what type of photographer do you look like? Are you searchable on any of those platforms? Can people find you? What are we, what information are we giving to people?
Are you calling out client names? Are you sharing work that looks like what your clients want to see? If you are doing all of those things, you're going to see that your marketing is effective. It's not going to be a one to one conversion. It's not like, oh yeah, I sent out this newsletter.
I got booked for five jobs. Like that just isn't going to happen. But that's not what we want. That's not really the goal of that marketing tool. All of your [00:43:00] marketing tools, it's a lot of little things that are working together. And we want to be really consistent and give time and know that this is going to take a while.
It's a long game. But looking at the metrics and just seeing, okay, am I getting these numbers that. Am I at the average for these my above the average? Those are good enough. That's what we want. We don't really need like Yeah, I posted on instagram and I got hired the next day.
That's not good That's not what we're looking for. We're just looking for the numbers that tell us this is effective.
Mica: You've said the word marketing tool a few times. What are marketing tools? Like I know what they are, but your website is a marketing tool.
Your Instagram is a marketing tool.
Julie: Yeah, website, Instagram, LinkedIn, email newsletters. Yeah, if you're doing printed promo. Any of the individual things that you're doing that fall under this broader marketing category. Where I'm just referring to those all as [00:44:00] marketing tools. That's all part of your like toolkit.
Mica: And you said something earlier about business to business versus this is to customer B2B, B2C. One thing I tended to do when I transitioned from families to commercial is that the things that I was doing applied were B2C marketing and learning how B2B marketing works. How can we know the difference between what type of marketing we should be doing?
Julie: Yeah, that's a problem that people run into. And we sort of talked about a little bit at the beginning talking about your, your education that in this like marketing class, it was sort of, not, not specific to any group. Anyone who's Yeah, a wedding, like a, family, engagement, like that type of photographer.
That world has a totally different set of marketing tools that's available [00:45:00] to them, and they're going to use those marketing tools in a very different way than a commercial photographer will. The commercial photographers.
There are exceptions to this. There are some industries or some client types where you will be able to use some of those like retail marketing tools. But for the most part, there's a different way that we communicate with a commercial client base. And part of it is because this is not a one to one conversion.
We're not selling you on a product that you're going to purchase today that you can just buy at any time. We're building a relationship with someone that we want to work with when they have the need for us. So a lot of people make that mistake when they're putting together their marketing or they're putting together their website and they're looking at. If it's not specific to the photo industry, it tends to lean more towards the retail direction. We see a lot of, I, I can tell right away looking [00:46:00] at someone's website oh, you got, you didn't, get this advice from a commercial photo person because he made a lot of retail photography decisions.
And it just doesn't translate because a lot of those tools. Again, it's for a it's for someone who's looking for a one to one conversion. We're not looking for that. We're looking to build relationships. We want you to be top of mind to people. When that project comes through.
This person at the ad agency they need a photographer for this creative direction. They know, Oh, I just got this newsletter. I've seen this woman's work a couple of places. I'm familiar enough with her style that I know that she would be a good fit. We're not trying to say what job do you have today?
Give it to me. That isn't going to. Work because that's not how it works there's not just like a bucket of photo projects that are available. It's like we go through cycles. That's something that we want to keep in mind and communicate that in the right way to the client that you also understand their [00:47:00] business and that's why presenting with these sort of more retail photo tools can limit you.
It's not even that it's non effective. It can also hurt you because the client, a B2B client can look at that and be like, this person doesn't know who we are. They don't understand how to communicate with us, what we need. So we want to be really sure that, yeah, that you're using all of the marketing tools in the right way for whatever it is that you're shooting.
Mica: What other signs would a photographer know that the marketing that they are doing or the way that they are presenting themselves online needs a shift?
Julie: One sort of giveaway is what are the requests that you're getting? All photographers pretty much at all levels will get random requests where you're like, why did you pick me? This doesn't make any sense, but whatever.
Mica: We saw your camera and it looks nice.
Julie: yeah, like really high level photographers that are like, why did they commission you?
Like this? I don't know. There was something they liked and they went with it. That's all. [00:48:00] Fine. If you're getting that consistently and you're like, this just is not aligned, then we know that you're not really communicating in the right way. What you are looking for, who you are as a photographer.
That's going to be the most obvious sign. I think the outside of that what I like people to do, and this is sort of like a longer way of getting to this answer is just to do a lot of like portfolio reviews. Find out exactly what people think of you. Cause they're, you're paying them to give you that feedback.
If you want to shoot for like Dominoes and they're telling you that you're a good fit for a restaurant, right?
That's very different. That's a different client type. So we know that something isn't coming through, right? We need, we know that we need to update something there in the presentation probably because it's like you're selling something that you don't want to get hired for.
Mica: So I want to close out today's interview to talk more about your business coaching and the services that you [00:49:00] provide. The consulting that you do, the newsletter design, the marketing and audit plan. You do the coaching. Why is it crucial for food photographers to work with a photography consultant?
Julie: Yeah, people come to me with so many different needs. People at different points in their career. Sometimes it's people looking to pivot. A lot of the time it's that people come to me and they say, I'm not getting the types of clients that I want.
I feel like I'm getting these requests that are not what I want at all. And I am not objective enough to be able to see what I'm doing wrong, so that I think the biggest benefit I would say is getting that objective view. Like I don't really have a stake in the game, right?
Like I very much want my clients to be successful obviously that is our end goal all the time. But I'm not emotionally attached to your images. I'm not going to hold on to something if it's not beneficial for you. I'm literally only looking at what are we doing that we are going to get you [00:50:00] bigger clients, more work send you down the right path career wise.
So really having someone who I think can be on your team. Someone who's looking for the same things, right? We all want you to succeed. We all want you to reach your goals. We're going to do that together. But, you get this very objective view of you know, hey, like you might really love this thing that you're doing, but I got to tell you it is not helping you. Like this is going to hurt you. Getting that sort of feedback in a safe space. consultants are very nice. It doesn't pain me at all to tell you, if you're going down the wrong path, if you're not showing the right work or even yet at times if it's a skill set issue, like, all right, we need to fix this way that you're shooting.
This one thing isn't really working. Like you're going to get that really direct feedback. And again, I can't stress enough all positioned to help you succeed. It's like everything that we're doing is just to get you more work, get you more of the type of work that you [00:51:00] want and we're going to do it together. Honestly, I would love a consultant, if anyone wants to give me one because it's so satisfying.
It's satisfying on both ends when you're like, yes, like we did it. We've gotten yeah, we got that big budget job that we really wanted. We reached this client base. We've gotten more clients this year than we did in any other one because we've been doing all of these marketing tools together.
It's a very satisfying relationship to have.
I love doing the one on one coaching with my clients because that's really where we get more personalized and where we get to look at anything and everything that you're doing. We go over together. People come to me with so many different goals. And this is actually topical.
I work with a lot of women who are coming back from childbirth or had to take time off with their families and are having a hard time getting back into the swing of things. I work with people who have sort of hit a plateau. They did really well.
They got to the level that they're at [00:52:00] right now, but they're not really moving forward anymore and they don't know why. What they're missing. I work with people who are earlier stages where a lot of what we talk about is more educating them on the basics of the commercial photo industry, but also really introducing tools that they've never used before.
It really runs the gamut. Everyone it's different. There's no one way that I operate with coaching. It's more. We look at your goals. If it's something that I cannot help you with, then you'll know right, I'll tell you, it's not for everyone. There are limits but, most people, it's like, we can work with this.
There are things that we can improve here. We'll troubleshoot any issues that come up, we'll do that together. We'll look at the work, we'll look at your marketing and we'll make sure that everything is aligned with your target. What is your goal? And that goal can be anything.
It can be financial, it can be a type of client, it can be, just getting back into the swing of things after taking time off. For some people it's [00:53:00] accountability. They're like, I know what I need to do, but I will not do it unless you help me. Which is always so fun because it's I feel like a little cop, who's like to do your homework. But it's a good way to keep people on task. It's you have to answer to meI'm gonna give you the thumbs down if you show up to our meeting and you haven't done any of the things that we needed you to do.
Mica: My god, I love an accountability person, because I will procrastinate forever and ever.
I have one final question for you. If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice about building your career as a consultant, what would it be?
I feel like this would apply to photographers as well. My career path was always in the photo industry and it was always in service, right? Like supporting a photographer. Working at the agency to support a group of photographers. Everything that I did, though, was sort of like I'm learning so much [00:54:00] and I need to, and I want to keep learning.
Julie: I want to keep being in positions where I don't know everything and I want to learn as much as possible. I didn't plan to become a photo consultant. It just was like, once I found out, Oh, this is even an option. This is exactly what I want to do. But there was always sort of this okay, it's going to pay off, right?
You're going to learn all this stuff and you're going to get these. There's this like amazing job. You don't know what it is right now, but you're going to love it. I wouldn't advise myself to do anything differently. This is just, you know, sort of validating that every opportunity was an area to learn so much.
And then it all came together in a way where it's exactly a logical conclusion to all of that, like educational work experiences. But I would say if you're not, for me, if I'm not learning as I'm going, then it's like, what are we really doing here? We need to keep learning, keep challenging put yourself into situations where you don't know anything and allow yourself to figure it out and to pick up all of this [00:55:00] information from people who know a lot more than you.
Knowing that's going to pay off, there's no way that it can't. You're always going to be doing better if you're, continuing to evolve and educate yourself. So yeah, I think that would be the advice. Always be learning.
Always be learning.
Mica: So I know for sure that there are listeners who are going to want to know and follow you. So wheree can they find you?
Julie: I have a difficult last name, so I really hope you have this written down . So Mica,
Mica: it, will be show notes along with the okay, for you guys, so.
Julie: We're gonna help people out. yeah, my website is Julie Skarwecki and on Instagram, it's julieskarwackiconsulting.That is spelled S K A R W E C K I. But again I trust there will be a written element here where someone can just click on it. Uh, But yeah, it's so difficult. But yeah, come take a look at my [00:56:00] website and follow on social media for marketing tips. And yeah, if anyone thinks that they would benefit from working with a consultant, you can always set up an intro call and we can chat. See what you're looking for.
Mica: Thank you Julie so much for being on the show.
Yes.
Julie: Good chats.
Mica: Yes. With my meaty questions.
Julie: Yeah. I'm aiming big with some of these.
Mica: Oh man.
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