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April 8th, 2009

Does your website make you look like a jack-of-all-trades, master of none?

Posted by Luke Edmonson

Luke Edmonson’s booming photo business makes a pretty good case for the strategy he and his dad, David, have for EDMONSON Photographers — create individual sites for each kind of photography you do because high-end clients want to think you eat, breath, and live the one kind of photography they need. The father-son photo duo now has 11 sites, including ones for their wedding, portrait, and commercial work, as well as ones for other family members. In his first post, Luke explains why they decided on multiple websites instead of subdividing one. Here he talks about how they have used their websites to drive traffic and develop long-lasting, lucrative relationships with clients.
©EDMONSON Photography

©EDMONSON Photographers

We have a wedding site, an Indian wedding site, a site for David, a site for me, and an associate site for weddings. Then we have a commercial site, a portrait site, a catering site for my brother-in-law who is a chef, an Italian event site for two of my sisters who are living in Rome, and a couple others. We use our sites and the blog to be able to cross link and drive traffic to each other. We also invested in the liveBooks SEO service and now about a third of our business comes from people who are just searching for us on the internet. Another third of our business comes from vendor referrals — people in the industry who we work with. A perfect example of that is the photographer Robert Evans. He shot Brad Pitt’s wedding simply because he had given images back to a florist he worked with. No one had done that for that florist before, so he stood out and they recommended him for the wedding. So if you can find ways to give back to your vendors, it always pays off because they’ll send you some business. The other third of our business comes from word-of-mouth bridal referrals and people who endorse us in the community.

We advertise on a few exclusive websites and we’re part of organizations that help us create buzz, like WPJA, WPPI, and PPA. We also advertise in publications in our local markets, but the best way to get publicity in magazines is to just send them images from real weddings. That’s a great way doing editorial work, and it also helps the magazines out. My basic analogy about your business is, it’s like you have a container that you want to put a bunch of water in. Some of the cups that you’re using are big cups, and some are Dixie cups. But the more you’re pouring in, the better off you’re going to be. So whether it’s SEO or word of mouth, every little bit helps.

Then when potential clients come to us or to our websites, we found that for all our clients, when they initially have contact with us, they want see content that is very targeted towards exactly what they’re asking us about. If they ask about baby photos, they want to go to a site that looks like nothing but babies; if they want us to do a wedding, they want to go to a site that is nothing but weddings.

©EDMONSON Photographers

©EDMONSON Photographers

Most websites I see have portfolios divided up into four or five different types of photography. Then they have their blog link there, and their pricing. And they blend together after a while, because all the sites are the same. Everybody is showing that they do a variety of stuff. We just found that, for us, to connect with our clients, especially a higher-end clientele, they like things that are rare and unique, or specialized. They want to go to someone that is considered an expert in their field. So if you present yourself as a jack-of-all-trades, you may come off as a master of none. Versus if you have different websites, you’re able to show these different clients that you invest yourself into this particular niche, whatever it is. All of a sudden they’re building this trust with you. And you’re giving them a reason to want to use you because they think this is what you eat, dream, and sleep about, is taking baby photos, or taking commercial photos, or taking wedding photos. And it doesn’t actually have to be that way. It’s just the way that you’re presenting it to them.

And then, when they’re looking at our work, we don’t come up to them and necessarily start telling them all the other different kinds of stuff we do. We just show it. It’s like when we meet with wedding clients, we still have a few of our commercial products up and available, because it builds our trust. We’ve shot a number of recording artists and we have their gold records up. And they’ll start to think, if this band I know trusts them to do their photography, why can’t I? Typically, people when they come to meet us, they already know that they like our work. The only reason why they come to meet us is to find out our personalities, because they’ve seen the work online or someone else has put in a good word for us. So we don’t have to do a lot of selling then, at the point that they’re coming to meet us.

Then over time, once they get to know you, they like you, and they love your work, you can introduce them to some of the different types of photography that you do if you have different sites. All of a sudden they start to be your ambassador looking for ways to help you promote your business. And when you’re talking about today’s economic times, we all know that it’s not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, because all of a sudden if that hype, for whatever reason, start to slow down, you’re dead in the water.


4 Comments

  1. April 11th, 2009 at 10:20 pm

    A stunning festival of photography links… | Chuqui 3.0

    […] Luke Edmonson: Does your website make you look like a jack of all trades, master of none? […]

  2. April 15th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    Brad

    Superb advice on how to build traffic and use the web to your advantage. A new company just launched to help photographers keep track of their various shoots and events.

    Snapizzi provides free technology to tag and sell your photos. Digital barcodes automatically capture and manage your photos for sale; you get e-commerce, order, payment and fulfillment with no set-up fees or subscription costs.

    Snapizzi was featured in Layers Magazine after PSW:

    http://www.layersmagazine.com/snapizzi-more-cool-tutorials.html

    http://snapizzi.com/

  3. June 1st, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    kg

    So, I have a question. If you have many different websites that are each monothematic, when a person comes to you, do they just not know about the other sites, or are you saying it’s ok to have four different portfolios, but keep them separated so that the ‘presentation’ makes them focus on the one theme they are interested in in the one site?

  4. August 26th, 2012 at 5:47 pm

    Cleivisbrayan

    FritzPhoto – I can totally see the Cheryl Crow renreefce, Randy. Good point.I love shooting in the sun and not just in the sun, but INTO the sun. I’m a sucker for lens flare.Fritz

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