Are you feeling the pinch of a stagnating photography business? It's time to pivot and refresh. This week, let’s discuss how understanding your audience and industry trends can rejuvenate your approach.

QUICK TIPS

1. Website UX in the distraction era

We're all living in a distraction era. Someone lands on your photography website and they just give you their attention for a few seconds until their phone dings with a notification, or they get lost on social media or something.

And because of this distraction mode, I think that browsing habits everywhere have changed. People get confused very easily, if they notice any mistakes or problems on your website they leave. If they take a second more to decipher what your website is all about, they leave, they don't have patience to sit through anything.

Google is also trying to make sense of all these browsing habits and turning them into ranking factors. And this is all where user experience comes into play. It's about making the website as clear and user-friendly for people as possible.

2. Hunting vs farming

Before agriculture, everybody was a hunter.

Buying Facebook ads, cold-calling, and engaging in aggressive SEO are forms of hunting. You're actively going out there to "catch" new clients.

The problem with hunting is that good leads have gotten really good at hiding.

I know I personally immediately hang up on telemarketers, I never click on ads (and I use an ad-blocker), and I have strict BS-filters when choosing what to click on in Google search results.

Is your target audience usually hiding from the form of marketing you do?

The alternative is farming.

You choose your crops (defining your target audience, being self-aware of what you enjoy doing), plant the seeds (taking action, being courageous with what projects you take on), fertilize and water them (actively growing your skills, learning new things), watch them grow (being patient and consistent) and then you harvest the results.

The metaphors here are endless:

• growing genetically-modified corn instead of organic vegetables = going into an over-saturated market because it appears as though all the money is there

• using chemical fertilizers = trying out shallow tips & tricks to try to get ahead, they often backfire

• waiting for the rain = not treating it as a business, not putting in the work