The name of the game is branding, or so I'm told.

I went to a meeting with my business advisor, Lydia Jones, at the Small Business Development Center. Lydia is probably the best thing to happen to my business since I started it back in October. The SBDC is basically paid for with tax dollars, and new business start-ups such as myself can meet with the professionals such as Lydia and discuss things like financial planning, ideas, overhead, and most importantly to me: Marketing.

It seems like in this digital age, a good marketing solution would be a hop, skip and a -click!- away. Indeed the internet, particularly Google and Yahoo! have made marketing much more accessable to the common man. It has. Too easy. Type "Photography" in the Google bar at the top of your page and you get, well, agoogle hits. How to choose? Perhaps modify your search with the word "Atlanta" or "Portrait" and you've narrowed those hits to around 178 zillion.

And where does Stephen Jones Photography fall in that massive tome of hits? Oh, you know, I'm like on page 146,349,533. Really. Go check for yourself.

Even if a customer lost my card but new my name and added that to the search I'd still be on the fifth or sixth page. Lots of guys named Stephen Jones out there. Sheesh. So much for internet marketing. Well, not really. There are a lot of steps I could take to maximize my Google searchability, and I've taken a few of those steps. However, the best marketing mechanism remains the good ole' fashioned word-o-mouth.

There is simply no more efficient way to bring in business than referrals, especially if you happen to be a photographer. A long photography session is such a personal, even intimate experience, that people are extremely reluctant to hire a complete stranger. That's why the first advice I ever got from my dad was to start going to church. Indeed, a photographer I knew in Hattiesburg (who shall go unnamed) told me once that he can pretty much retire early thanks to the massive 3000-person congregation attending the megachurch west of I-59 in Oak Grove. I love Jesus, too.

I'm not going to church to make money. So I'm back to the tried-and-true formula for getting my name out: Run an honest, reliable business with excellent customer service. Oh, and get a good-lookin' website, which brings us to part B of my marketing plan.

My current website has drawn criticism from my business advisor. Too black. Bad fonts. Doesn't load right. Not Google friendly. Not user friendly. Time for a redesign.

Oy. Sigh. Jesus help me. It took me two months working almost every day to build the current bucket-o-bolts and now it's back to the drawing board. Oh, well. In some respects, I agree with her. There is a lot that could be improved, and this is a chance to really make my site shine.

I also felt like a re-design was inevitable, even from the first day I uploaded it to my ISP, sort of the way you know from the first week you're in a new house that furniture is not quite in the right place. This is my chance to rearrange a few couches, move that table out of the dinning room, paint the living room, install a flat-panel display and put hardwood down upstairs. Ah, the joy of anticipation. The future is bright!

Now where did I put that doggeared copy of "Adobe GoLive 6 for Dummies?"

The website also will be a cornerstone of my ongoing marketing war-o-attrition. It will tell potential customers what makes me unique. It will help to "brand" me as a certain type of photographer. In business, if you can fill a niche, you can make money (theoretically) hand-over-fist because no one else fills that need. I need to set myself apart so people have a more compelling reason to hire me other than the fact that I'm well-trained, experienced and have $8000 worth of Canon digitalia.

It's sort of like in nature. If no other organism eat that icky green slime covering those rocks, evolve into something that eats that slime and you can get fat. So I need to A) Find my slime, B) Fine a way to eat it, and C) Keep other photographers from doing the same.

Bringing this whole over-stretched metaphor full-circle, Lydia and I talked today about what makes me unique. We were discussing my child portrait business, which has recently blossomed. I told Lydia how it works: For $50 I go hang out with my client and their children at a park or hiking or something. I take pictures the whole time, turn the whole thing into a slideshow DVD and upload the photos to my finisher's website. The way it works is, parents watch the DVD, fall in love with the photos, jump online and go hog-wild with their credit card buying prints.

Lydia liked it so much that she hired me on the spot to photograph her grandchildren next weekend. She also pointed out that a few things about my system make me unique: I shoot unposed action shots, give someone a DVD that they can then keep and show to family and friends, and I come to their house. Having been to a number of studios throughout her life, Lydia thought that was the clincher. Parents hate going to a studio. Time is precious for parents, and driving all over the place for a few awkward photos is stressful. What makes me unique is that parents and their kids can live their life as they normally do. I just pop in and take pictures.

Less stress on the parents, unposed photos (what maniac tries to get 3-year-olds to sit still?) that exhibit more of the child's natural personality, low up-front cost, and a great, easy way to view and order the finished photos. Seems like I might have found my special green slime. Yum!

Now to find out if it works.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that I need to craft a slogan for my soon-to-be-new homepage that says all of that in fewer words. It needs to be a slogan that capitalizes on stressfree, creative and inexpensive photos.

Any ideas???


--Notes