bwhillans

Try this: Go around your home/office and find three flyers for professional services other than food delivery that you have kept....find two even! One? The closest thing I found was a card from the dentist office for my next appointment.

I went to a trade show this past spring, the kind of thing where companies hand out media and show their products, try and get you to buy into something. Most booths had a contest for a cheap prize so they can collect numbers and email addresses..pretty normal stuff. Anyways people always leave these places with a plastic bag full of flyers, pens, notepads, business cards, samples. I keep pens and notepads because I'm cheap. People still tend to keep business cards, most often I don't. The first thing people throw in the trash is flyers. Always. Food take out menus being the only exception.

So before you put your advertising into flyers, consider the effectiveness of the platform. Your facebook group or company website is your modern flyer. You can change the content at a whim, collect data on who is actually interested in your content and you can actually engage your clients. For pretty much free. Everything you do for offline advertising should be directing people to your online presence where you have control and can actively engage your clients day to day, month to month.

If your going to hand someone something as a hand out, make it something that 1) they aren't going to throw out and 2) that directs them towards your online presence where you can engage potential clients better. It's cheaper, it's less work, and it's more effective.

On the back of my phone case is a reusable sticker phone screen cleaning wipe, with the website address of a company on it from that last trade show. It's worn but I use it every day. Google: phone screen wipe advertising. Neat product. You'll find several companies online that will put your logo and facebook on something like that that you can give out to people for advertising. If that doesn't float your boat there are tons of other cheap options out there that will get your business exposure and not get thrown in the trash the same day you hand it out.

Unless what your selling has pepperoni and cheese, flyers suck.

I think it's really great when two small businesses work together to grow. In this case the small dog food company is trying to dip their paws into social media and increase their exposure and grow and in a desire to do that they've hired you're services as a photographer! You want the exact same thing they want, exposure for your business so you can grow as well. You both want the same thing / But, you hit a little turbulence here, with the whole photo credit thing. I think you got some credit, which is good. You've got something better out of this, probably more valuable to you in the long run than those photos will be to them, and that's a lesson in you're own business that will save you frustrations and help you manage your professional expectations in the future.

The dog food company is supposed to know how to make dog food. They need to be able to tell people what's in it, the different product lines, how they make it. They need to know dog food. It's their business right? If I go to buy dog food from them, they should be able to tell me if I can feed it to my big dog and my little dog, or just the little dog, serving size, etc. Every bag of dog food I've ever bought tells me how much food to give my jack russell and how much to give my german shepherd. The dog food company provides us with instructions on how to use their products. If I buy a 30 pound bag of dog food, and it doesn't have clear instructions on it so I just do what I think is appropriate and give my pug 2 cup a day and it turns out that this dog food is high calories concentrated food for like a bull mastiff or something and my pug gains double it's body weight in a week is it my fault? Without clear instructions from the retailer, how am I supposed to know how to use the product? So that's the area of expertise of your client, to make and sell quality dog food. This is their role. Making and selling dog food is their service, the dog food is the product, part of their service is making sure we know how to use the product.

You're the commercial photographer. That's your service. You've taken money to provide a product. You're product is the photographs. It's you're role to give the client a clear understanding of what they can expect to receive, how they can use the finished product, for how long they can use it and what credit, if any, your business will receive. This is why if your engaging in photography as commerce, you neeeeeeeed to have pen to paper, clear expectations for you and you're client. It is not the fault of the client that they have used your product wrong. They are not using the product wrong on purpose. You were not clear to them how the product was intended to be used. You've made a mistake by not including clear instructions with your product, and I bet you've learned a lesson about that! It's a mistake that I'm sure lots of photogs before you have made and lots more after you. That's kind of why I'm replying to a month old post. This is common and you shouldn't feel like you got burned or disrespected by your client. You need to understand though, that you are indeed selling a product and you need to provide it with instructions. You shouldn't feel entitled to displayed credit in the form of watermarks or social media tags for paid work. You're charging a company money for a product that promotes their company, but you expect them to promote your company for you for free? They might offer you the courtesy, but don't expect it. Your client is trying to sell their product not yours. The reason you're getting paid is because you have a good product that is usable. When you start forcing your clients to tag you and all that stuff, you're adding a distracting message to their advertising and making your product less usable. That's bad news for them and you.

So how do you get exposure if they don't tag you or promote you?. You do good work, you give them a good product they can use to promote their business not yours. It's what they are paying you for. If you want credit and exposure then YOU promote your product by promoting their product. You plaster your social media and with the great shots you got over at XX brand dog food, what a great dog food, love these people, tag them, tag everyone you know that has a dog. Push it. For everything you do. Every commercial shoot you do that you can. If next week you are out shooting a restaurant or some other small business, push that on your own social media. Expand your social media. Because this is what happens, you give clients a good product that they can use and you don't pull attention away from their social media push, and you actually help your clients out by helping yourself. If they are happy, they will talk about you to their vendors maybe, or at small business associations. Word will get around. They will have good things to say. You put the campaign in your portfolio, add some more, and when you go looking for work, you've got clients with good things to say about you that will come back to you in the future because they know you deliver.

That's my opinion anyways. I hope you get to shoot more with them and that both your businesses grow.