Why waste time when you can devote your energy to what works for your business.
Recently, I heard Michael Beirut, longtime partner at Pentagram's New York office, give a talk called The Lazy Designer's Guide to Success. Anyone who knows Beirut's work knows he's anything but lazy, and his presentation was very tongue-in-cheek. But as I was listening, I started applying his design-oriented "steps to success" to the marketing of photographer and illustrator services... and they fit.
Keep it simple
Many commercial artists avoid marketing themselves by being very crafty. They don't outright refuse to do it; instead, they complicate the process until it becomes impossible. Because they are overwhelmed by all the different marketing tools they could be using, they become so paralyzed that they do almost nothing.
The antidote is to keep it simple. In other words, choose 3 or 4 (or at the most 5) marketing tools that your target buyers will be most responsive to (you learn this by trial and error) and use them consistently. Don't be distracted by any bandwagon - social media or otherwise - that tries to get you aboard. Let it pass you by and stay on course with your simple, focused marketing efforts.
The best tools are the traditional relationship-building ones: targeted and customized snail mailings and email marketing messages; an updated marketing-smart website; direct outreach by phone and email; and, whenever possible, in-person networking. If you've chosen and qualified your list of potential clients properly, this will pay off. But it does take time. You must not be impatient and give up quickly.
Don't reinvent the wheel. Rotate the tires instead
Beirut said, "Keep what the client has, just tweak it." Likewise, I say, keep what you have, just tweak it. Tweak your website, tweak your promos and postcards, tweak your ever-evolving answer to the question: "What do you do?"
Don't wait until your marketing efforts are "perfect." Of course they have to be creative - ideally an example of what you can do for the buyers receiving your marketing. But if you wait for perfection, you'll wait a long time and perhaps never produce anything. (Is that your secret intention?)
If you feel tired of your own materials, whether your website or portfolio, don't start from scratch to come up with something completely new. In fact, that is likely to confuse your prospective clients. They aren't looking at your materials as often as you are, so they are definitely not tired of them and their opinion is ultimately more important than your own.
Do as you're told
Finding advice isn't a problem. There's plenty of it everywhere, much of it contradictory. The problem is in actually implementing the suggestions you know make sense. Even if you know it's good advice, you can stumble because you just don't want to do it - whether it's networking, making calls, sending invoices or other business tasks that seem unappealing to you.
Forget what you want to do. Do as you're told. Do what's necessary to build your business. Whether you read books or follow gurus, choose one (not many) whom you trust and follow their instructions. Don't think you know best or that somehow what you enjoy doing will be the thing that works. That happy coincidence doesn't happen often.
Steal
"If your idea isn't working," says Bierut," steal one." This isn't a plug for plagiarism. Don't copy anyone's language verbatim; instead, see what others are saying, doing and showing, then adapt it to your own style. Study your competition like all successful businesses do. Use other people's ideas to trigger your own, especially when it comes to something you aren't particularly inspired to do. For example, cobble together your own "elevator pitch" from bits and pieces of others. Then make it yours.
Make other people do the work
One of the disadvantages of being a self-employed photographer or illustrator is that, for the most part, you work alone. However, you don't have to work in isolation. There is a difference.
Make the marketing of your work a collaborative effort. Get people involved in your process. Ask clients for feedback on your promotional materials; they'll be happy to help. Use any connections you might have to pass your name along. Make it easy for them by giving them extra business cards and staying in touch regularly.
Go even further by collaborating with colleagues on promotional pieces. Tim Read,
an Iowa-based illustrator, teamed up with copywriter and humorist Pat McSparin,
to create Desk Chums, a snail mail series of "fun and original illustrated characters
designed to keep you company at your desk." Every month, Read sends his list of
qualified prospects a personalized (and funny) letter along with the Desk Chum.
So here's the good news. The truth is, the "lazy" approach is the one that works. Less is more. Action, when applied in the right areas, is what gets results. Lazy means not wasting your time and just doing what works.
While the non-lazy people are doing laps around you, keeping themselves busy with marketing efforts that might not get results, you can just chuckle, wipe your brow, and watch as your tried-and-tested marketing efforts bring in business and get results.