Time for another month of great PhotoBiz Live webinars. Take a look below at May’s lineup of FREE educational webinars and sign up today!

	3 Easy Steps to Create Buzz for Your Studio By Dan Frievalt, Dan Frievalt Photography May 7, 2013 | 2PM EDT Learn how to find your ideal clients and create stunning imagery to stand out from the sea of photographers in the marketplace. In this webinar, Dan will also describe his social media techniques to create buzz with little or no marketing dollars.
	Drive Traffic to Your Website By John K., PhotoBiz Passionate Support® May 14, 2013 | 2PM EDT New visitors on your website are absolutely key to growing your business. Learn some great ideas on how to get traffic to your website. Site layout, interesting content, featured clients, and social media are all great ways to increase traffic to your PhotoBiz website.
	How to Create Value for Your Photography so You Can Charge What You’re Worth By Sarah Petty, Sarah Petty Photography May 21, 2013 | 2PM EDT Are you feeling the pressure from low-priced photographers? Tune in as marketing guru Sarah Petty teaches you how to out-market the low end photographers and make a profit doing what you love to do. Filled with actionable steps to implement right away; you won’t want to miss this webinar.
	Unlocking the Power of Marquee Plus Pages By Paul A., PhotoBiz Passionate Support® May 28, 2013 | 2PM EDT Unlocking the Power of Marquee Plus Pages will show how to use one of the most versatile pages available on the HTML5 Content Sites. You can use the Marquee Plus Page in so many different ways to direct your website visitors to your content.

Here comes another month of great PhotoBiz Live webinars. Take a look below at April’s lineup of FREE educational webinars and sign up today!

	Marketing Makeover By Sandy Puc’, Sandy Puc Photography April 2, 2013 | 2PM EDT Sandy Puc’s award-winning photography and lifelong dedication to philanthropy have inspired photographers across the globe. Learn how to organize your marketing and create a dynamic calendar. Discover a more efficient and effective way to market your business with her tried-and-true techniques!  Catch her on sptv.me.
	Successful Website Checklist By Joanne K. PhotoBiz Passionate Support® April 9, 2013 | 2PM EDT There are over 600 million websites out there, and that number is growing daily. The way to make sure yours stands out from the crowd is to make it easy to use and remember. In this webinar, Joanne K. looks at ten ways to make your site both friendly and memorable.
	Flash Made Easy By Jim Zuckerman, Jim Zuckerman Photography April 16, 2013 | 2PM EDT This webinar is designed to take the mystery out of using a flash. Most people (even pros) are insecure when using their flash. Jim Zuckerman’s easy-to-understand instructions and beautiful examples will make you excited to start using your portable flash equipment with confidence.
	Do You Need Social Media Boot Camp? By Danny A. PhotoBiz Passionate Support® April 30, 2013 | 2PM EDT Want to take your social media to the next level? Join Danny A. from the Passionate Support team as he walks you through effectively using Facebook and Twitter. We will discuss tips and tricks that will make your social media presence more powerful as well as easy to manage, as well as talk about the benefits of signing up for our Social Media Boot Camp.

Here comes another month of great PhotoBiz Live webinars. Take a look below at March’s lineup of FREE educational webinars and sign up today!

	Limited Edition, Maximum Profit By Blair Phillips, Blair Phillips Photography March 5, 2013 | 2PM EST Every photographer knows about that dreaded “slow season” just after the first of the year. With his innovative and profitable Limited Edition sessions, Blair Phillips now looks forward to the New Year! In this webinar, Blair will show you how to stand out from the competition, bring in new clients and make record profits by implementing your own Limited Edition sessions.
	Small Business Website 101 By Chris B. PhotoBiz Passionate Support® March 12, 2013 | 2PM EST So you think Photobiz is just for Photographers? Not so fast! We have Small Business website solutions as well! Chris B from our Passionate Support® will show you how they work.. Have a friend with a small business in need of a new website, make sure they sign up for this webinar and learn just how diverse our products can be and how they can benefit PhotoBiz’s website solutions for small businesses.
	Liven up LinkedIn By Lew Everling, Muse Photo Design March 19, 2013 | 2PM EST Break the mold with your LinkedIn account, and set yourself free. Free to make contact with the professionals who want to do business with you. Free to create a network that can benefit you in more ways than you’d ever imagine. Join Lew Everling as he shows you how LinkedIn isn’t just for making connections. It’s for building your network of trusted professionals so they’re free to find you!
	Advanced SEO By Andy R. PhotoBiz Passionate Support® March 26, 2013 | 2PM EST Ready to take the next step with your website’s Search Engine Optimization? SEO Expert Andy R will be covering advanced SEO tactics and tools for use with your PhotoBiz site! We strongly recommend reviewing our SEO Basics webinar on YouTube before attending this webinar.

Here comes another month of great PhotoBiz Live webinars. Take a look below at February’s lineup of FREE educational webinars and sign up today!

	Sell Wall Groupings and Stand Out  By Lori Nordstrom, Lori Nordstrom Studio February 7, 2013 | 2PM EST How can you attract high end clients? Sell for the wall! Home decor is exciting, so if you can become an interior designer you’ve got the money in the bag. Join Lori and hear how you can choose a high-end product that clients will love. Market it, communicate it, show it, sell it.
	Connecting with Your Customers By Carrie H. PhotoBiz Passionate Support® February 12, 2013 | 2PM EST It’s not always easy to stay connected to the people who matter most to your business; your customers. Watch this webinar with Carrie H. to learn valuable ways to use the tools PhotoBiz offers, and proven social media strategies to keep customers coming back.
	A Photographer’s Survival Guide By Kalen Henderson, Studio K February 19, 2013 | 2PM EST With more photographers than subjects to photograph, every professional needs “an edge” to help their studio rise above the rest. That’s what Kalen will teach you about in this webinar. Tune in to find out business secrets to help your business grow professionally and financially.
	Custom Sites: Before and After By Charity C., PhotoBiz Passionate Support® February 26, 2013 | 2PM EST Does your Portfolio Site or BizSite need a fresh new look? Embrace change with Charity C. as she walks you through the Custom Site service process, and gives you an inside look where you’ll get to see “Before and After” examples from actual Custom Site service customers.

As a professional photographer, you’re not just competing with cheap, shoot, and burn photographers. You’re competing with FREE! Anyone with a nice camera may consider himself a professional and can find clients who are willing to pay for their services. Competition is increasingly fierce for you, as a professional, to find clients who are willing to pay you for your artwork.

So how can you find these clients who value photography and want to invest in your art? In my 25 years of marketing experience at Coca-Cola Enterprises along with my career as an advertising agency marketing director and photography business owner, what I’ve found is that it all starts by developing a strong brand.

Your brand is how people feel about you. To charge what you’re worth, it’s essential to carefully craft and manage your reputation for being the best at what you do before you start marketing. Yet as photographers, many of us fail to develop a strong brand before we begin trying to attract clients and that’s where we go wrong.

We recently had the privilege of working with Daniel and Clare Troutman of Troutman Photography in Salem, Oregon to give them a brand makeover on creativeLIVE.  The Troutman’s had been struggling to find an identity that truly represented their photography style for the last 18 months. While they KNEW who they were, their brand wasn’t accurately communicating that to potential clients. Like many small business owners, Clare and Daniel were using several logos throughout their website and marketing materials. And while ranking high in search engines, their website that didn’t reflect the style of their photography.

As part of their brand makeover, a professional graphic designer created a new look and feel for their brand that reflected their photography style. But that new logo needed to be reflected every place a potential client came into contact with Troutman Photography so PhotoBiz provided them with a new FLASH+ Portfolio Site with an HTML Mirror, plus a mobile mirror. And the results have been incredible.

If your business looks different every time a client sees you (i.e., your style, signage, marketing pieces versus website, look, personality), you’re making it very hard for them to trust you. And without trust, it’s hard for a client to fall in love with your brand or even refer you to their friends. So what’s to stop them from going next door for the cheaper products of your competitors?  Your brand – when it’s strong – can keep your clients loyal and referring you.

Your brand lays the foundation for attracting the right clients and increasing the results of your marketing efforts. Your fantastic, reliable brand will put you ahead of the competition, whether the competition looks like a huge corporation or the brand-challenged mom-and-pop next door.

Your brand is worth more to the long-term success of your company than most other things. Don’t hand it off just because you don’t know how to manage it. You have the ability, unlike shoot and burn photographers who are focused on volume, to directly oversee the management of your identity and reputation with every single impression. From your logo design to your business card, price menus, marketing materials and website, the bottom line is, your identity and brand are worth protecting and investing in.

I’ll also be doing a webinar with PhotoBiz next week on Tuesday, January 8 at 2 PM EST, so make sure to tune in and learn How to Create Value for Your Photography So You Can Charge What You’re Worth.