Other ways of getting the message out

What's your overall marketing strategy? You want to be the first place consumers think about when they think about digital cameras or the prints from digital cameras. It's your key to survival in this rapidly changing market!

Conventional advertising is expensive. The combined advertising budget of the Ritz and Wolf stores is enough that they can afford to place newspaper ads. (At the left you see part of a full-page ad in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Click on it to see it bigger)

 But newspaper advertising is not only expensive, it's not always effective. Here are a few low-cost ways to let your market know that you offer great prints from digital cameras:

Carry a digital camera everywhere. It's easy to do today, with cameras as small as this Minolta Dimage X. Take pictures of your friends and make prints for them. I guaranty they will all say something like "Wow, the prints from my digital camera never look this good." That allows you to tell them, and show them, about the services you offer.

Put signs in your windows. Karl Kantowitz of Village Camera in South Orange, New Jersey, may have gone a little overboard. Click on the photo for a bigger image.

Put signs and displays in somebody else's window. The Downtown Development Agency had an empty window, and encouraged me to put this display here. It shows that we handle classic cameras, talks about the fact that we moved, and has one of my favorite digital images printed 12"x18". The text of the sign says "If the pictures from your digital camera don't look this good, let us print them. We use real photographic paper for prints that last." Click on the photo for a bigger image.

Teach courses. I've taught in public night schools and in conjunction with a local arts center. It's not only a good way to build customers, you might even get paid. And quite frankly, the studying you have to do to stay ahead of your students makes you more knowledgeable about photography and digital photography.

Run courses in your own store. Don't be afraid to charge for them. The prestigious Colorado Photo Academy says "if you teach them, they will come." I really like this promotional piece, which shows a student "honing" his photographic skills by putting a classic Leicaflex SL to the grindstone. Click on the photo for a bigger image.

By the way, the prestigious Colorado Photo Academy is the back room of the Colorado Camera Company, a retail store.

Tom Gramegna of Bergen County Camera in New Jersey promotes both digital and conventional photo courses in his store and on his website www.bergencountycamera.com

He bought enough folding chairs, planned a curriculum, and charges $30 for a two-hour session. 

Jim Scharzbach of Jim's Photo Lab in El Paso, Texas, promotes photo courses with inserts in his finishing envelopes. He makes highly-personallized inserts by popping the customers' images into the stock insert, using a Noritsu 2911 printer. The image here shows your fearless editor with his new granddaughter. Click on the photo for a bigger image.

Be sure to take reservations for your classes and charge a deposit.

Speak to every organization in town. Rotary meets once a week, so they need 52 speakers a year. My town has three Rotary chapters. Other service clubs like the Lions and Soroptimists have similar needs. If you prepare a speech about current trends in digital cameras you can give it many times. You don't want to pitch your own store - that would be tacky - but the message gets out. And you'll almost certainly get a free meal and a commemorative pen, in addition to meeting lots of great people.

Become known as "the person who wrote the book." I've run some advertising that claims, "When it comes to digital cameras, Chris wrote the book." You can't make this claim unless you've got something to back it up. Here are two examples:

Roger Christian of University Camera in Iowa City, Iowa has a 4-page handout he gives away. It answers a lot of questions for most consumers, and does a good job of establishing him as the source of digital camera knowledge.

I've created a CD-Rom book entitled "Choosing and Using Digital Cameras" and have sold several hundred copies at $9.99 apiece. It's been a great marketing tool for me. Click on the photo for a bigger image.

Originally I planned to put nothing on the CD except "sell sheets" for the cameras I sold, but then decided to add editorial content and charge for it. With each book sold we give $30 worth of coupons, and if the consumers bring back all the coupons it generates hundreds of dollars in sales. If they don't bring back any coupons, I've still got their $9.99! To date we've sold more than 350 copies. More about my CD book