“Show Notes”
This is the Christmas show. Sam is going to share three things you need to do in the new year while Marcus is going to make some predictions for the next year.
Sam says the first thing to do is look at your marketing numbers for the year. Find out where your customers come from. Then look at the time (and this part will be an estimate) spent on different marketing activities. Then compare them. How much income has each marketing activity generated compared to the time you spent on it? Then evaluate. What marketing are you doing that is working and what do you need to stop doing? It will probably be following the 80/20 rule where 20% of your marketing activity generates 80% of your income. You just need to work out which 20% of your marketing activity that 20% is. Marcus suggests you could also do this with your camera equipment and work out what you use all of the time and might need a spare of and what you hardly ever use and so could possibly sell. The number two thing to focus on for Sam is to build your mailing list. This is vital. Lots of people you speak to might be interested in your work, but not now. This is a great way to stay in touch with those leads. We have lots of shows talking about how to build your email list and what to do with your email list including these:
Email marketing part one
Email marketing part two
The third thing to focus on is LinkedIn. Both Jeff Brown and Gareth Wax have been on the show talking about LinkedIn recently. So Sam says to look at your LinkedIn profile over the new year. Listen to Jeff and Gareth’s shows and then review your profile. Review every part of it.
Marcus is going with three predictions. He thinks that there will be an increase in the popularity of film (35mm) cameras. He thinks this will just be for personal use. Pentax is making a new film camera and new film manufacturers are appearing on the market. You can see our show about the film here.
Marcus sees photography Al not catching on next year. He is referring to image creation. Marcus thinks that this will become unpopular. Sam counters this explaining that it will improve and so could grow.
Marcus’s third prediction is that there are going to be fewer weddings next year. Marcus says there is a COVID knock-on in that people didn’t get together during COVID-19 and so there are now, a few years later, fewer weddings. Marcus thinks the photography market is going to get more challenging next year. He thinks that some photographers who started during COVID may quit leaving fewer photographers overall.
Sam looks at the UK population data and says there are fewer people in the mid- 20s age range which could affect weddings, and fewer babies being born, affecting newborn photography. But we can also use the data to see where the population bulges are and think what kind of photography they might need. There are peaks at 10,11 12-year-olds another peak at 30 to 40-year-olds, but a dip in the mid-40s, and a bulge again at late 50s and early 60s.
It would be good to also look at the local population near you.
Marcus thinks there could be growth in some different areas, perhaps funeral photography. He also suggests divorce photography, but Sam isn’t sure about that
one.
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“Show Transcription”
Sam: Hello, Marcus. How are you doing?
Marcus: Hello, Sam. I’m well. How are you?
Sam: Excellent. Very good. And not wishing to go against Marcus’s bar humbug status, but happy Christmas, Marcus. It is definitely approaching.
Marcus: Thank you, Sam. And happy Christmas to you. And I can see it’s snowing outside.
And yes, is that Santa in the distance coming on his way? It is indeed.
Sam: Convincing, Marcus. So are you currently in Mexico then?
Marcus: I am. I’m in Mexico.
Sam: OK. So not much snow at all. So I’m in Mozambique. You’re in Mexico. There is definitely no snow. It is baking here. Yes. For us, Christmas is the hottest time of year. It’s crazy, crazy hot here.
Marcus: Yeah. No, it’s very hot here as well. And we’re off to the beach for a few days as well. That’d be looking good. A bit of whale watching there. So we got a nice trip planned.
Sam: Amazing. Yes. I always find Christmas odd in the heat, but there we go. The children like to get YouTube and put on videos of a log fire burning on the TV.
Marcus: That’s funny. Cool. That’s a modern Christmas, that is.
Sam: That’s something like that. So, Marcus, so we’ve got a few different things, haven’t we, each? So I’m going to talk. I’m going to give three things that you really need to do next year. I was going to say three things to put your SH star T together, get your SH star T together next year, get your stuff organized. Three things to do.
Marcus: Oh, I wonder what that was. Yes. And I’m also going to be fondling my crystal ball and predicting the future as well. So why don’t you go first, Sam?
Sam: OK, excellent. Marcus has thrown me now with that one. So I’ve got three things for you to think about going into next year, sort of end of year review type of thing. So I think I’m going to do backwards to the way I thought about them. So the first one I really think you’ll do is look at your numbers, especially I’m talking about marketing now, like an end of year review. Have a look at last year and have a think, where did your customers come from? How did you get them? And then compare that to the marketing activities you’ve been doing and how much time you’ve been spending on them. Now, probably you didn’t sit there with a stopwatch, did you? And go, well, I spent 40 minutes on LinkedIn. But you’ll have an idea, won’t you, of how long you spent on each one. So look at those customers and go, right, and the value. So kind of go, right, LinkedIn, how much value have I got from it? Literally just how many sales were made from LinkedIn? You know, what else have been Google ads? Have you been doing them? How much value have I got them in terms of how many customers and what have they paid? Yeah. And then have a look at that and evaluate it and go, right, what is working? What is not working? What do I need to do more of? And what do I need to bin? Okay, because it’ll probably follow, like most things, the 80-20 rule.
You know that old 80-20 rule, Marcus?
Marcus: Yes, I love that rule, Sam. It’s so true. It’s weird.
Sam: That’s it. So the whole you spend 80% of the stuff you spend 80% of the time doing, you know, gets you 20% of the work and the stuff you spend 20% of the time doing gets you 80% of the work. So the way you can help to get around that is look at your numbers. If you spent a fortune on Google ads and then you haven’t got any work from it, stop paying for Google ads. If you spent days and days and days polishing your Instagram grid and you’ve got no work from Instagram, get off Instagram. Yeah, work it out. What is working? What isn’t working? If nothing’s working, do something about it. But if something’s working and some things are, focus on the ones that are, ditch the ones that aren’t and stop wasting your time. So that’s the first one. And you really need to look at your numbers. And I know if I say spreadsheets and stuff though, then some photographers start like, oh my god, some love it. But yeah, so look at your numbers. It’s really important because it can just save you, make your business so much better, save you so much time.
Marcus: You can do a similar thing, Sam, with your camera equipment. If you use Lightroom or another software, I’m sure, but you can go to your metadata and you can see which lens, which camera body you’ve used the most during the year. And let’s say you’ve got a lens like, I don’t know, like a 24mm and you’ve only used it twice, you might think, well, I don’t really need that. But if you’ve got like a 50mm and you used it like 80% of the time, you might think, well, I need a spare of that lens because I use it all the time. And that’s exactly what I was doing this morning, actually, funnily enough.
Sam: There we go. Marcus, so if you want some nice camera equipment, keep an eye for Marcus on eBay and there’ll be some unused lenses coming your way. Anyway, that’s not going to be on eBay. Okay, so don’t buy when Marcus puts it on eBay, whatever you do. So next one, this is something I have talked about, but I think something you could really focus on next year, build your mailing list. Okay. It is really vital for future marketing, for being able to keep customers coming back. It’s just so important. Lots of people you speak to may well be interested in your work, but not now. Okay. And either you’re going to go back to them all the time and not be able to think of things to say or forget about them and then they’ll disappear or get them on your mailing list. And then you’re constantly reminding them you exist, reminding what great job you’re doing for other customers and so on. So think of ways, plan for the year to build that mailing list. It really is an amazing way to, for the future, build income for your business. Nice, simple one, that one. And we’ve got loads of shows about how you can do that. So we’ll put the links in the show notes. There are loads of past shows about how you can actually practically do that. We’ve talked about that quite a lot. Okay. And then the last one is about LinkedIn. We’ve had quite a few people recently talking about LinkedIn, a few experts on them, not least Jeff Brown. He had a load of really powerful things on there. And then we also had the purple fedora guy whose name is going to escape me now. Marcus, can you help me?
Marcus: Gareth Wax.
Sam: Gareth Wax as well. And if you want a show that will just take you sideways and into weird tunnels, that is the show for you. Somewhere between Monty Python and marketing advice, I think. So I think from taking away from that, for the new year, look at your LinkedIn profile. Get it 100% spot on. Make sure it’s where it needs to be. Make sure it isn’t just a hodgepodge of a few things from a while ago. Make sure you’ve really, really spent some time and nailed your LinkedIn profile so it is spot on, ready to go for the year ahead. So when people do look for you on LinkedIn, it’s saying the right things. It’s giving the right messages. It’s all there. It’s spot on. So listen to those shows. Again, we’ll put the links in the show notes about what they say about your profile and really get that sorted. Because if you’re doing lots of work on LinkedIn and lots of commercial photographers are, because that’s where the commercial work is, then hit the ground running and start as you mean to go on. If your profile isn’t quite right, you are not helping yourself and you could be losing a lot of work.
Marcus: Yeah, LinkedIn all the way, definitely. Cool. Is that it? Is that perfect, Sam?
Sam: That’s three, Marcus. Last time I checked.
Marcus: That is three and bang on time as well. That’s perfect. Okay, let’s roll my three predictions out. First of all, I think there’s going to be a growth in film photography.
Sam: So what do you mean by film photography, Marcus?
Marcus: Well, you know, the stuff you stick in your camera and you wind it on.
Sam: Film, film. Okay. I always thought you meant as in films, as in movies.
Marcus: Yeah, it’s a bit confusing that terminology. I know it is an odd one. But anyway, I mean film. And I’m basing that on a certain anecdotal evidence. First of all, I noticed this year that there’s a manufacturer bringing out, I think it could be Pentax or it could be Fuji.
I don’t know. Okay. I don’t know. But they’re bringing out a film camera.
Sam: Wow. And so are you thinking this is going to be a growth commercially or just for like personal use?
Marcus: No, I just think it is a growth in photography. So personal use. But who knows what could happen later on commercially? Yeah. So I’ve seen some new manufacturers of film as well. The actual stuff you put in the camera. And I’ve also noticed here in Bristol, a new darkroom opened up communal darkroom for people to borrow to hire out. And I had went down there and had a chat with them. And they’re doing phenomenally well. So I thought, wow, obviously, there’s people feeding this growth.
Sam: That’s it. So this whole analogue like records. And we’ve also got a show about using film, haven’t we? So again, link in the show notes, go back, have a look. And Marcus has got all sorts of tips about using film and going back in the day. So that’s prediction number one for Marcus, growth in film for like, personal use and fun. Yeah, prediction number two.
Marcus: Yeah, well, my second one leads on from that. And I think this is partly why there’s going to be a growth in film. I see AI as far as photography, really not catching on. I know it’s been the big talk of this year. And we’ve talked about a lot on the show, Sam, haven’t we, with other guests and ourselves. But from what I see out there, it still looks really awful.
Sam: So you’re talking about AI, because we’ve talked about all sorts of use of AI, are you specifically here talking about AI image generation?
Marcus: I am specifically talking about that, because I think, you know, with the iPhone, the new chat GPT pin integrator, I think there’s gonna be a big growth in that in AI generally. But I think for image making, I don’t think it’s, it’s just not even there. And people are I’ve not seen people use it. And when I do see people use it, it just looks very inauthentic. So good news there.
Sam: I think, of course, good news, maybe. So but I mean, it will improve. I mean, if you think where it was just a couple of years ago, and it well, it was consistent. And then it went to kind of being fairly iffy to the moment, it’s okay. So yes, I suspect if it doesn’t improve, you could well be right. But my thought is it will improve massively.
Marcus: Yes. Well, Sam, I just counteract that. I mean, I think in when you’re dealing with one photograph, one image, like on an advertising campaign, or, you know, two or three images, I think, yeah, I mean, that’s going to be hit hard by AI. But if you’re doing weddings, conferences, headshots, that type of thing, it’s just not quick enough to be able to come up with these images.
Sam: Well, I mean, it can’t, can it? Because I mean, that’s capturing an event area, I can’t it’s not what it’s for. It’s for it’s for you sitting in your house and go, can you please get a picture of create a picture of me sitting next to my pet lion? He goes, Oh, look at that. But yeah, you can’t you can’t go, can you get a picture of me last Thursday? Because he doesn’t know what happened.
Marcus: No, I get that. But even so, okay, well, let’s see. I mean, you’re making a strong argument. But I really think, yeah, about to say I’m obligated to say I think AI is going to fail photographically this year, or next year.
Sam: Okay, okay, well, we’ll bring that back next Christmas show.
Marcus: I’m at work. And funny enough, my third one is my prediction for next year is about work, work in general as a photographer. So I think, let’s look at different genres. I think if you take a weddings, I think there’s going to be less weddings next year. I know with my wedding band, we’re getting less bookings so far for next year. And speaking to the venues, they reckon that because of COVID, there are less people actually getting who got together during the COVID times for obvious reasons, and therefore less relationships were formed and therefore less weddings. So yeah, I think that’s, I think it hit hard last year. And I think it’s gonna be the same next year as well. I think, you know, that’s gonna have maybe your children being born for infant photography, maybe family photography, the long one, who knows. But to counteract that, I think there’s also, it’s going to be a lot harder next year in photography market. We don’t know what’s happening in America, for example, who knows what could happen there. So we’re still in tough times. And I think a lot of people who came in during the COVID times as photographers, picked up a camera or started their businesses off are going to leave because they’re going to find it too difficult. So it’s going to open up the market a little bit more, I think, for people who’ve been doing a little bit longer, or maybe decided to stay the course.
Sam: Okay, so you think some will drop off? So yeah, I’m looking at I’ve got charts up now for the UK population. So yeah, so that is quite interesting. So there’s some bulges and some dips. So there’s some bulges in kind of the 30 and 40 year olds, there’s kind of a big gap in the early 20s. There’s less people which are probably the age that are starting to get married. And you’re right, at the younger age group, there’s definitely a gap in the population from like there’s a peak at 10 year olds, but going down to zero, it’s reducing, reducing, reducing, and they are finding that aren’t they primary schools are starting to shut down and amalgamate and stuff because there is less children. So the newborns at the moment, there is definitely a downward trend. And like you say, if people got together less than COVID, and there’s a dip in the population at those kind of early to mid 20s, that could be affecting weddings. But then counter to that, you need to look where the peaks are and go, so what can we do for these people? So there’s peaks at kind of that 10, 11, 12 year olds, there’s peaks at the moment at the kind of 30 to 40 year olds, then a big dip mid 40s. So I’m a unique person here. And then there’s a big bulge again, at kind of the late 50s, early 60s. So in some ways, it’s a case of, you know, look, yeah, look what’s happening locally as well, you know, if the newborn market is going what else to go for. But obviously, the newborns and the weddings are those are those big events that you straight away think of, aren’t they?
Marcus: They are and they are traditionally a big mainstay of the photography industry. I think maybe we might see some new genres start or growth in genres, maybe funeral photography might be a big growth in that. Divorce.
Sam: Divorce photography, that’s certainly the funeral. I mean, I’ve spoken to quite a few funeral celebrants, and they and they’ve got quite an interesting, yeah, view and an interesting take. And they’re kind of kind of doing things quite differently to the traditional, the vicar sits at the front, who’s never really met the person while a celebrant, even if they haven’t met in front a lot of time getting to know families make services kind of more fun and personal. And so I have talked to photographers who are working with celebrants and are kind of, you know, photographing it in that celebration way. And yeah, they’ve been doing quite well, but we’re finding it hard to market it in some ways. I mean, first of all, you never know when someone’s going to need a funeral. And then just in terms of they also felt awkward promoting photos from other people’s funerals and stuff.
Marcus: So that’s a tricky, it’s a tricky one for sure. But it could be a growth there. I think from, you know, from a personal point of view, I, you know, as being a branding photographer, or whatever that means, a commercial photographer, really, I think I’m moving away from solopreneur clients much more now to bigger companies and working with much larger, you know, companies, because I think those solopreneurs are dying away a little bit.
Sam: Have you seen the number of small businesses in the UK at the moment, Marcus? There’s a lot of them.
Marcus: Yeah, well, maybe the ones who’ve got money to spend on photography.
Sam: Small businesses will always struggle for budget. So yes, then there’s always the education. Why do they need it? And yes, the move, but yes. Excellent, Marcus. I think we’re going to, I don’t have to be tested on it. You see, I’ve got an advantage here, Marcus, because I didn’t know. So I can’t be tested on them next year, whether they’re right or not, because I just gave advice.
Marcus: I misunderstood the question, maybe.
Sam: Next year, we’re going to be looking at these, Marcus, and going, what’s happening? We’re going to see how they do. But perhaps on mine, people who’ve taken my advice should, like, write in to us or email us at the end of the year to see how it panned out.
Marcus: Yeah, well, I’m looking at mine now. I’ve got film, AI and work. I can see all mine will be probably replaced by a robot taking photographs and digital cameras taking all the work.
Sam: Well, if that happens, your final one, well, there must be a camera somewhere, Marcus. The light has to go somewhere and be caught.
Marcus: Oh, very poetic, Sam. A poetic note to end on, I think.
Sam: That’s it. Well, I will not see you next week, Marcus. We are going to take a break for Christmas, so there will be no show going out next week. So happy Christmas to all of our listeners. Have an amazing and restful break, and we will be back in the new year with lots more guests, lots more shows. If you want to be on the show, please do get in touch. Hop on the Facebook group, say hello, and make sure you sign up for the newsletter. And have an amazing Christmas and see you in the new year.
Marcus: Happy Christmas, Sam, and to all our listeners.
