Architectural and real estate photographers: What are the goals you have for your business? And when you set goals for one department in your business, such as revenue, how does that impact upon the other departments within your business?
This is something that a lot of photographers miss, and that's because they tend to look at the different areas in their business individually instead of collectively.
So in this video I talk about the goals you might have, and what that means for your whole business.
Video sponsor: Urbanimmersive
They provide business solutions for real estate photographers around the world, including scheduling, payment, photo delivery and single property websites.
For more details visit their website: www.urbanimmersive.com
Video transcript:
Are you setting goals for your business? There’s an old saying that says that a failure to plan is a plan to fail, so let’s take a closer look at setting goals, and what that might look like in your real estate or architectural photography business.
Now before we get into that I would like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Urbanimmersive.com, and they provide scheduling, payment and photo delivery tools for real estate photographers, so at the end of this video go and take a look at what they do to see if it might be a good fit for your business.
Have a monthly action plan:
Last month I spoke about the benefits of having a monthly action plan to help you get things done, and that's great for short-term stuff because it helps you move forward each and every month.
Plan everything:
However, I now want to look at the bigger picture, and I’d like to encourage you to start setting goals and plan everything. Every thing. Let me give you an example - if you were doing a big photo shoot for a large corporate client like a hotel or something, you’re not just going to rock up and start shooting.
Instead, what you’ll do is you’ll carefully plan out your entire photo shoot so you know you’re going to start with certain rooms while the light is right, and then at 10:00 you’re going to get that pool shot because the shadows will be good then, and then you’re going to do some other rooms that will be prepared for that particular time, etc etc … and that’s because you want to get the best possible photos of that hotel.
Well, it’s the same with your business. When you set goals and plan your business and what you’re going to be working on long-term when it comes to your marketing, pricing, client engagement, your services, product delivery – everything – then you significantly increase your chances of success.
Set goals for your business, and look for where the different areas of your business impact upon other areas of your business. That interconnection is super important, and here’s what I mean …
Look at how your goals impact on other areas of your business:
Let’s say your ultimate revenue goal is to earn $100,000 a year, then firstly, when are you going to achieve that? Is that next year? Is it four years away? When will you reach that goal?
Revenue -> Pricing:
Now when you start thinking about revenue, that’s going to impact on your pricing because you might need to change your prices in order to have the capability to reach that revenue goal, but there are other issues to think about as well – for example, are those prices at a point that your target marketing are willing to pay, but still enable you to clear a healthy profit after your expenses are covered?
Okay, so in other words once you set your pricing goals, then you need to look at what flows out from that. What’s going to happen next?
Prices -> Value -> Product Delivery:
Well, one thing you might need to do when you raise your prices is to add more value to what you do, and that might impact on your product delivery.
So for example, if you’re not yet using media content in your Tours then you could look at using the templates inside Urbanimmersive where you can include videos and interactive floorplans inside your tours to give potential buyers a complete overview of a property, and because it’s all in one then it’s easy to share and real estate agents really appreciate that.
Pricing -> Marketing:
Another thing to consider is that by increasing your pricing you might start appealing to a different client base, and your current client base, or at least some of your clients, may no longer be a good fit for you which means you’ll need to build a strong marketing system. So your revenue goal impacts your pricing, and that pricing goal impacts on your marketing.
Marketing -> Time:
Now when you start doing more marketing, then that takes time. So now you’re going to need to plan your days much better and operate far more efficiently in order to fit those things in.
Time -> Team:
What impact does that extra time you need to commit to marketing have on your day to day operations? Can you do it on your own, or do you need to outsource more activities, or perhaps hire some staff members to help you manage the load?
Team -> Revenue -> Pricing:
So now let’s look at what flow-on effects come next, and once you start outsourcing or hiring staff, then you’re adding extra expenses, and that’s going to impact on your revenue goals so then maybe that needs to adapt again. When does that need to change? How does that then go back and impact on your pricing?
Team -> Product Delivery:
But on the positive side, how does the outsourcing of activities or the addition of extra staff have on your product delivery? Does that enable you to complete tasks faster or better?
Define your goals to have more control over your business:
You see what I mean – by writing down your goals very, very carefully you have a lot more control over where your business is going.
Do you need some help?
Now as you know, I run a coaching program for architectural and real estate photographers, and one of the first things I ask photographers to do when they join my program is to complete a Goals document that I developed where they write down their big long-term goals for the types of clients they want to work with, their photography, revenue, pricing, their marketing, their online presence, and their personal life in terms of the time they want to spend working in their business.
I get them to detail everything, and then I help them setup the right systems to enable them get to where they want to be. That way they know what they want, and they know how to do it, and that just makes a massive difference to the way a lot of photographers run their business.
Identify your goals in order to reach them:
So this is kind of big picture stuff, but what it means is that if you can identify your goals and know what your objectives are, and also how you’ll achieve them and when you’ll achieve them, then you’ve given yourself a significantly better chance at reaching those goals, provided you continue to take action on that plan and don’t get sidetracked by other things.
If that’s you, then go back to my video from last month and take a look at my Monthly Action Plan, because that will help you to take small steps toward these big picture goals you’ve set for your business.
Alright, that’s it for today. If you like this video be sure to leave a comment, and then subscribe or like my page. My name’s Darryl Stringer, and you can see what I do at buildaphotographybusiness.com. I’ll see you next time – bye for now.