What first intrigued me about Nordica Photography’s web page was their advertisement for a social media package. It’s the first time I had seen a package offered by local photographers so I started asking some questions of how this fairly new market was working out for Cole and Jakob. They also have what most would see as an unconventional when it comes to their marketing approach.
How did you each get your start in photography?
Jakob started when after getting his Masters Degree in Business, he landed an awesome government job in Stockholm. They needed an in-house photographer, he volunteered and rest is history.
Cole started because of two things: his mom and his goal to start a business. His mother has been a photographer for over 20 years and Cole was always around it. He wanted to start a business where he could follow his passion, so photography fit the mold perfectly.
What was the hardest thing about moving to shooting professionally?
Avoid marketing to your competition (which is a bizarre and ridiculous trend we notice) and focusing on your marketing efforts on your target market. That and staying true to your brand, which in photography, should be your style.
Once you start moving your style around in different directions you veer away from your brand, and that’s a surefire way to lose potential clients, and have retainable clients shift to the competition. Be consistent to your style, and your brand strength will build from there.
On your site you have a package for social networking. Can you expand a bit on what’s offered that would be different from a standard portrait shoot?
Images are destined for different homes, and you should prepare them for such in your editing efforts. Some are meant for print, which could be billboards, canvases, paper, or anything in between. Alternatively, images find their homes on the web. We prepare images that are destined for web-optimization in our social media packages, which will allow for a perfect photo for our clients to be best represent their online brand.
How this is different from stand portrait shoots depends on the client, and how we communicate before the shoot. What we want to learn from a client is who they are and what they represent. With that information, we envision how we visualize their own online brand (or their personalities, which in today’s social media world, is their brand) and convey that into a photography shoot. The shoot itself may not be completely different in approach and techniques from other photographers, but what may be different is our own psychology in knowing what the images will be used in the end.
Has that niche been well received?
Extremely well. While weddings are our main business focus, focusing on social media users has been very successful. People are understanding that they themselves are their own brand online, and the starting point for building a fantastic brand is the visual aspect. That means having a kick ass picture, which obviously bodes well for the business of photography.
What seems to have the largest return on investment for your business marketing dollars?
Not spending any money at all on marketing has been our biggest return on investment. We haven’t since day one, and we likely never will. Everything we do is a profit if you equate expenses to profit because we invest our efforts into social media marketing, which if done with a strategy in place, does not cost anything.
We believe that our style and our efforts in communicating our style as our brand will build our market for us, and to this point, it has.
What advice would you give to our readers who are looking to ‘go pro’ and turn a hobby into a profitable business?
If you cannot identify your own style from your competitors, your brand hasn’t started to take shape. Wait until that happens or you may find yourself in a competitive environment that you’re not quite ready to be a part of yet.
Jakob and Cole can also be found on Twitter and Facebook if you’ve like to get in touch with them with more questions.
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