How to Grow Your Photography Business: Turn Goals into Action
By Jeff Brown
Most photographers have business goals. The problem is that a goal on its own doesn’t make very much happen.
You might decide that you want to photograph 40 weddings this year, reach a particular turnover, book more commercial clients or finally make photography your full-time career.
Those are useful ambitions, but they don’t tell you what you need to do on Monday morning.
If you want to grow your photography business, the important question isn’t simply “What do I want to achieve?” It’s “What am I going to do regularly to make it happen?”
One useful way of looking at this is to separate the work you do in your business from the work you do on your business.
Are you working in your business or on it?
Photographers spend a huge amount of time doing the work that keeps their business running.
That includes photographing clients, editing images, answering emails, preparing galleries, dealing with accounts, updating orders and all the other administration that comes with running a photography business.
All of those things are necessary.
But they don’t necessarily make the business grow.
Working on your business means deliberately setting aside time for activities that can create future opportunities, enquiries and income.
That might mean improving your website, contacting potential clients, writing useful articles, building relationships with other businesses, appearing on a podcast, creating social media content or developing a new service.
It is easy to spend an entire week working incredibly hard without doing anything that is likely to bring you your next client.
That’s where deliberate planning makes a difference.
What are Income Generating Tasks?
One approach is to think about Income Generating Tasks, or IGTs.
An IGT is an activity that has the potential to create an opportunity, enquiry, booking, referral or another source of income for your photography business.
It doesn’t necessarily produce money immediately.
For example, writing a useful article for your website probably won’t result in a booking within five minutes. But that article could appear in search results, answer a potential client’s question and bring someone to your website months later.
Similarly, contacting another business about a collaboration might not produce anything today. But it could lead to a referral, joint promotion or a new client further down the line.
Some examples include:
- Creating useful content for your website
- Improving pages on your website for search engines
- Writing articles that answer your ideal client’s questions
- Building relationships with complementary businesses
- Contacting potential referral partners
- Contributing to relevant magazines or publications
- Appearing as a guest on podcasts
- Sending useful emails to your mailing list
- Creating photography guides or resources
- Organising a collaborative local event
- Developing a new service or product
- Sharing your work consistently on social media
- Reconnecting with previous clients
- Asking existing clients for referrals or reviews
- Looking for opportunities to speak, teach or demonstrate your expertise
The important point is that you don’t need to do all of these.
In fact, trying to do everything is probably counterproductive.
Choose the activities that make sense for your photography business and the clients you want to attract.
Don’t confuse activity with progress
One of the traps of running a small business is feeling productive because you’re busy.
You can spend hours editing photographs, rearranging your website, answering emails or scrolling through social media without actually moving your business forward.
Ask yourself a simple question:
“Is what I’m doing right now likely to create an opportunity in the future?”
Sometimes the answer will be no. That’s fine. Your business still needs administration and delivery work.
But if the answer is always no, you may be spending too much of your time working in the business and not enough working on it.
Even a few hours a week devoted specifically to growth can make a difference.
Visibility can create opportunity
Being a great photographer isn’t enough if nobody knows you exist.
That doesn’t mean you need to become obsessed with follower numbers or post on every social media platform every day.
Visibility is about being present in the places where your potential clients, collaborators and professional contacts are looking.
That could be:
- Google and your website
- Social media
- Photography publications
- Local businesses
- Industry events
- Podcasts
- Networking groups
- Professional associations
- Your own email list
- Speaking or teaching opportunities
The aim isn’t simply to become famous.
It’s to become recognisable to the right people.
If you specialise in wedding photography, for example, it may be much more valuable to build relationships with venues, planners, florists and bridal businesses than to gain thousands of completely unrelated followers.
If you’re a commercial photographer, the people you need to know will be different.
Visibility works best when it is targeted.
Look for opportunities rather than waiting for them
One of the biggest changes in photography over the past couple of decades is how easy it is to connect with other people.
You can contact photographers, businesses, magazines, podcast hosts, event organisers and potential clients from almost anywhere.
That doesn’t mean everyone will say yes.
They won’t.
But a “no” isn’t necessarily a problem. It simply means you’ve identified one opportunity that isn’t going to happen.
The photographers who create opportunities for themselves are often the ones who are prepared to ask.
Could you contribute an article to a publication that reaches your ideal clients?
Could you collaborate with a local business?
Could you offer your expertise to a podcast?
Could you organise a small event?
Could you approach a company whose products complement your photography?
Could you reconnect with ten previous clients?
You won’t know unless you ask.
Turn a big goal into small weekly tasks
Big goals can be intimidating.
Suppose you decide that you’d like to appear as a guest on 20 relevant podcasts over the next year.
“Get on 20 podcasts” is a goal.
It isn’t yet a plan.
A better approach is to work backwards.
You might decide that you need to identify suitable podcasts, research the hosts, prepare an introduction and contact a certain number each week.
Perhaps you discover that around 80 approaches are required to secure 20 appearances.
Suddenly the enormous annual goal becomes a much smaller weekly task.
You might contact five potential podcast hosts every week.
Five emails isn’t particularly frightening.
Do that consistently for several months and you’ve taken hundreds of deliberate actions towards your original goal.
The same approach works for almost anything.
Want 30 more weddings?
Work out how many enquiries you need, then where those enquiries need to come from.
Want more commercial clients?
Identify the companies you would genuinely like to work with and start building relationships with them.
Want more portrait bookings?
Look at where your ideal clients spend their time and put your photography in front of them.
The trick is to turn an outcome into a series of actions.
Small actions can have a compounding effect
One useful opportunity can sometimes lead to another.
Imagine you write an article for a photography publication.
A potential client reads it and visits your website.
Someone else sees the article and shares it.
A photographer contacts you about a collaboration.
A podcast host discovers your work.
A business sees that you understand its industry and asks about a commission.
You can’t predict exactly what will happen from one action.
That’s why consistency matters.
You aren’t necessarily looking for one magic marketing activity that suddenly transforms your business. You’re creating multiple opportunities for good things to happen.
Build a weekly business-growth routine
You don’t need to spend every spare hour marketing yourself.
Instead, give yourself a regular block of time each week to work on your business.
For example:
Monday: contact potential clients or referral partners.
Tuesday: create or improve website content.
Wednesday: work on social media or your email list.
Thursday: look for collaborations, publications or speaking opportunities.
Friday: review what happened and decide what needs to happen next week.
Your own routine will obviously be different.
The important thing is that business development becomes something you do, rather than something you keep meaning to do.
Don’t wait until you have more time
Photographers often tell themselves they’ll concentrate on marketing when things quieten down.
Then things get busy again.
The problem is that the work you do today often produces results later.
If you only market yourself when you have no bookings, you’re constantly trying to fill a hole that already exists.
A better approach is to keep some business-development activity going even when you’re busy.
And when things do become quieter, use that time productively.
Update your website. Write some articles. Contact potential partners. Reconnect with old clients. Plan a new project. Create something that can generate work later.
Quiet periods don’t have to be wasted periods.
Stop saying you’ll “try”
There’s a surprisingly big difference between saying:
“I’m going to try to do that.”
and:
“I’m going to do that.”
“Try” gives you an escape route.
If something is difficult, you can tell yourself that at least you tried.
Commitment is different.
That doesn’t mean every goal will be achieved exactly as planned. Circumstances change, and sometimes you discover that a particular goal isn’t actually the right one.
But if something genuinely matters to you, put a plan behind it.
Jeff Brown experienced this himself after leaving the Royal Navy, where he had worked as a photographer. He and his business partner set themselves the goal of building a six-figure photography business and then worked towards it rather than simply hoping it would happen.
The lesson isn’t that everyone should aim for a particular turnover.
It’s that an ambition becomes much more useful when it is followed by action.
Don’t be afraid to change direction
Your photography business doesn’t have to look exactly the same next year as it does today.
You might discover that a particular type of photography is more profitable than another.
You might find that you enjoy working with commercial clients more than weddings.
You might discover that teaching, mentoring, writing or speaking can become an additional part of your business.
Or you might realise that something you’ve been doing for years simply isn’t working anymore.
Pay attention to those signals.
Growing a business doesn’t always mean doing more of exactly the same thing.
Sometimes it means changing direction.
Measure the actions, not just the money
Revenue is obviously important. If photography is your business, you need to know whether it is financially viable.
But don’t measure everything only in terms of immediate sales.
Also look at the actions that create future opportunities.
How many potential clients did you contact?
How many useful articles did you publish?
How many new relationships did you build?
How many previous clients did you reconnect with?
How many collaboration opportunities did you investigate?
How many enquiries came through your website?
How many people joined your mailing list?
Those numbers can tell you whether you’re actually doing the work required to create future growth.
What could your IGTs be?
Take 20 minutes and make your own list.
Start with your ideal client and work backwards.
Ask yourself:
- Where do my potential clients find photographers?
- What questions do they ask before booking?
- Which businesses already work with my ideal clients?
- Which publications or websites reach my target market?
- Who could I collaborate with?
- What expertise could I share?
- Which previous clients could I reconnect with?
- What could I improve on my website?
- What content could I create that would still be useful six months from now?
- What opportunities have I been putting off?
Then choose three or four activities that are realistic for you.
Don’t create a list of 50 things that you’ll abandon after two weeks.
Pick a small number and do them consistently.
Success starts with taking action
There is no single formula for building a successful photography business.
Different photographers have different markets, personalities, skills and ambitions.
But one principle is remarkably consistent: goals only become useful when you turn them into action.
Don’t just write down that you want more clients.
Work out where those clients could come from.
Don’t just say that you want to become better known.
Decide where you need to be visible.
Don’t just hope for more opportunities.
Look for them, ask for them and create them.
And don’t wait for the perfect time to start.
Choose a few income-generating tasks, put them into your weekly routine and keep going.
You may not see a dramatic change after one week.
But six or twelve months of consistent action can put your photography business in a very different place.
The goal isn’t to spend every waking hour working.
It’s to make sure that some of the time you spend working is deliberately helping to build the business you want.
