Branding essentials for your photography business

Photography is an emotional art because images effortlessly reproduce past feelings and the nostalgia of the moments they capture. When it comes to Branding a photographer’s business, emotion plays an integral part as well. Ideally, customers will recognize their favorite brand as they do a friend, so it’s important to decide what kind of friend their brand will be.

No two photographers are alike, and so finding one’s branding muse is often an exercise in identifying what specific niche he or she occupies, and expressing it to potential customers. Many photographers use branding tools for small businesses to help them establish a brand identity. Those who do so successfully will earn a larger and more suitable audience and quickly push their business to the next level.

Creating a connection

Branding is much more than an assembly of marketing materials, a portfolio or a website. It’s about building and maintaining a connection with your audience, using the special touch that only you have. Therefore, the best place to begin branding efforts is with your own portfolio. Look through your work and try to identify your best pieces, and what is common among them. The clients you choose (or which choose you), the color palette, aesthetics and types of objects or events you shoot will all contribute to the final essence of your brand. It might help to make a collage and try to find common elements.

Don’t try to build a niche around your specific type of photography, however. Instead, focus on what separates you from the others who do the same thing: your unique value proposition. This is very hard to do, but also represents the struggle behind branding itself: how to accurately convey a broad, nebulous concept into a single company name, or Logo.

Being memorable

Part of building a connection is getting there first, but branding for photographers is challenging because there is so much of it. Photography is a field naturally suited to freelance work or smaller LLC businesses, and so for any specific job, the market is usually saturated with competitors. You can set yourself apart by sticking like glue in the minds of potential customers. Using the list that you’ve assembled of your own brand’s pervading themes, start thinking about creating a powerful logo that communicates the same ideas.

Tailor Brands is a service that helps young companies explore a plethora of options, with an innovative and visual logo-building platform. Photographers can use Tailor Brand to assemble their perfect logo, no matter the elements it requires, and stay within the boundaries of best-practice logo design as well. Being able to save any number of logo designs and compare them is a specific benefit, and will help anyone to craft a strong identity for their practice.

While the logo is only one component of a brand, it’s especially relevant for photographers, who are visual creatures above all else. Set aside some time dedicated for introspection, exploration of branding tools and development of the personality you want your brand to have, and you’re already ahead of the game.

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