Photo by Joshua Fuller from Unsplash (photo printing)
Marketing is fun. It is one of the fields where competition is tight. When you look at every business, you’ll see that one of its main roots is marketing. How businesses market and position themselves in the industry sets them apart from the competition.
The purpose of marketing is to appeal to potential clients. After all, what is a business without its customers, right? That’s why strategising and working on your business’ marketing is a must. One of the businesses that have to adjust the most in this digital age is photo printing.
Photo printing businesses have no choice but to step up their game to keep their place in this digital world. As the world keeps on getting more digitalised, how do businesses such as photo printing keep up? In this article, let’s discuss how you can market and keep your photo printing business unique in this day and age.
1st: Start with social media.
First, let’s start with the closest and most utilised digital platform: social media. If your photo printing business has not gone online yet, now’s the best time to do so. Before anything else, I suggest you create an account on each top social platform. Start with Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Since you’re a photo printing business, you have the advantage of marketing your business on Instagram. Why? Both of you have something in common – you both service photos. Being online is the best way to showcase your service quality. You can post and share your high-quality prints and show them a sneak peek of how it’s done.
If you’re contemplating between starting your website or opening a social media account – I suggest going with the latter one. After you’ve created your social media accounts, it’s time to move on to the second tip.
2nd: Think of a ‘brand’ or reputation that you want to be known for and work around it.
After you create your social media accounts, it’s time to think of a brand for your business. Even though you’re a photo printing business that’s been around since the early 2000s, it’s okay to rebrand your brand. Most especially if you feel like the reputation that you’ve been known for does not work well with your goals anymore.
This time, take the time to do your research on what type of branding you want to be known for. You might think, “do I have to go that far? I’m just a photo printing business anyway.” The answer is: yes. Nowadays, the best way to make your business known is through branding. Never underestimate the power of your reputation.
After you’ve decided on a brand or reputation, it’s time to work around it. Let’s look at the third tip to see how.
3rd: Be creative, witty, and straightforward with your messaging.
In this day and age, people are after convenience. As much as possible, people want a simple process. With that, I suggest you do the same with your messaging. But of course, it’s better if you can be creative and witty with how you share your brand.
There are situations when using flowery and long descriptions works. But, since you’re on social media, you have to keep in mind that people have a quick attention span. If your message is too long, people might just choose to scroll past your post. That’s one less potential customer, and we don’t want that.
With that, I suggest you try to be as creative as you can be. But, make sure that you are straightforward with what you are sharing. Also, it’s important to stay updated about current trends and fads. Learn some slangs and phrases that people love to use. You might be surprised at how useful those slangs are to your products and campaigns.
4th: Relate the trends of today to the trends of the past.
People love to look back. It’s not that we don’t want to move on – it’s more about how we want to learn and see how different things are now. After all, the things that we enjoy now are inspired by the past. Indeed, what goes around comes back around (sometimes even better).
You might wonder, how? A simple post on the difference between the quality of polaroid shots from old camera models from the new ones is one. If your photo printing business offers film processing services, why don’t you showcase how different your quality is from the rest?
Whatever service or product it is, I suggest you try to relate and compare it to the past. That’s one fun, informative, and entertaining way of letting people know how professional and high-quality your products and services are.
5th: Show people how they can benefit from your products and services.
The heart of marketing is to target people’s emotions. One way of doing so is by showing them how they can benefit from you. If you want your photo printing service to make sales, you have to show them what they can photo print. Here’s the thing – people don’t usually know what they need until they see it.
With that, you have to show your audience why they should avail of your photo prints. It can be to commemorate special milestones in their lives. Or to preserve the special moments that matter most.
If your photo printing business offers professional prints for magazines, billboards, and commercial advertisements, you can do the same. Just show people how they can benefit from you and why they should avail your service.
Make the most out of social media marketing. After all, it’s free and it can help you reach the right market.
We’ll stop here. For now, incorporate these five ways in your marketing game. Focus and work on each step. If you’re unfamiliar with how online platforms work, starting with social media accounts is the best step forward. Soon, when you are more confident and adept with how it works, maybe you can also start creating your website.
But for now, I hope you find these simple strategies to make your professional photo printing business stand out. It might be hard at first, but soon, you’ll surely make a name for your photo printing business. Who knows, you might be the next top photo printing business online.
About the author:
Bianca Banda is a writer for DS Colour Labs Ltd (DSCL), a professional photography lab that offers a vast range of products and services for photo and print needs.
