The Photographer’s Online Marketing Toolkit: The Problems Caused By Disorganized Marketing

How Disorganized Is Your Marketing?

In life and in business, the key to success is often found in the simple act of being organized.

For example, maintaining a tidy workspace, arranging a wedding, traveling overseas, setting up business meetings, scheduling a photography session – all these activities rely on good organization in order to go smoothly.

But when things become disorganized, problems usually aren’t far behind.

The same goes for your marketing.

We all know we should, yet how many of us actually make the effort to organize our marketing?

Sadly, not enough of us, and I’m guilty of disorganized marketing myself in the past, with predictably poor results.

Then again, planning and preparation aren’t the most exciting things in the world, and they often get skipped.

For many, the very thought of spending time figuring out a marketing schedule sounds a lot like watching paint dry, but this is one activity where the successful photographers truly stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Which makes it something worth doing, right?

We’ll get into the details of an actual marketing schedule in the next two lessons, and I promise to make those as painless as possible for you.

For now, let’s look at some of the many problems you might experience if your marketing is in a state of disarray.

#1: Non-Strategic Behavior

There’s a reason the word “strategy” is often used at the same time as the word “marketing”.

Running a successful business shouldn’t be a case of flying by the seat of your pants, or waking up each day thinking, “what the heck will I do today to get my name out there?”

The central idea behind any strategy is advance planning.

Strategic thinking involves looking into the future, planning a course of action, and taking aim at a specific goal or outcome.

We can’t very well be strategic if we wake up in a daze at 7am with the hopes of having a marketing campaign up and running before lunchtime.

And yet, many of us do just that, and far too often.

Without any kind of forward thinking, you risk being stuck in a world where all your marketing is reactive in nature, rather than proactive.

For example:

Nothing good can ever come from non-strategic marketing and it can often make matters much worse!

#2: Wasted Time

Disorganization is incredibly wasteful in both time and resources.

When you find yourself up against the clock, or chasing an ever-decreasing bank balance, it can be difficult to think straight, and it takes a lot more time and effort to generate ideas and think them through properly.

The result is wasted time – a lot of wasted time!

Plus, you’re likely to reach the point of implementing your hastily constructed marketing plans only to realize there’s a major snafu or gotcha blocking your way.

Few things are more frustrating than being forced to return to square one when you already feel pressed for time.

#3: Apparent Lack Of Ideas

Here’s a question to consider:

How effective are you when you’re under pressure to deliver results before a deadline?

Most of us kid ourselves into thinking we work better under pressure, as evidenced by the last-minute cramming for exams, weeks of project work compressed into a caffeine-fueled weekend, and other in-the-nick-of-time tasks where we just manage to scrape through.

But in truth, the belief lie of working well under pressure is nothing more than an illusion we create to justify an over-abundance of procrastination.

Marketing requires a steady supply of ideas:

Unfortunately, stress and anxiety are the mortal enemies of idea-generation, and can even lead you into idea paralysis.

Obviously, being more organized about your marketing will give you more breathing room in which new ideas can develop and grow.

#4: Missed Opportunities

In addition to robbing you of the ability to generate new marketing ideas, the constant mode of “putting out fires” created by disorganized marketing can lead to missed opportunities.

It’s a little like driving too fast on a foggy highway at night with a broken headlight.

You’re so focused on where you think you want to get to that you miss critical turns or possible shortcuts along the way. Worse still, you risk running off the road!

New marketing opportunities are inherently unpredictable.

Normally, you can’t see them coming until they’re right on top of you, and you must act fast in order to take advantage of them.

The problem is, you can’t do so if you’re already thrown off balance by a poorly-performing business.

Worse still, you might be so desperate for new ideas that you fail to recognize the good opportunities from the not-so-good ones, possibly causing you more trouble further down the road.

#5: Misfired Campaigns

Coming up with effective marketing campaigns can be a challenge, and you must juggle many moving parts to get the best from them, so it takes time.

But, if you’re forced to come up with an entire campaign in too short a time, components will be overlooked, messed up, or missed.

You might forget to insert a much-needed educational blog post into the campaign, or neglect to set up a social media posting schedule.

If you planned on including other business owners or clients to help market your campaign, you could easily forget to send the appropriate support materials they need to do their part at the right time.

In addition, we have the inevitable mistakes we all make along the way:

#6: Having to Fall Back On Emergency Marketing

In the absence of a definitive marketing strategy, most of your marketing campaigns will fall into the category of emergency marketing.

Emergency marketing is any campaign you come up with on the spur of the moment without proper consideration or planning.

And it’s most likely doomed.

We see examples of it all the time, usually on Facebook in the form of last-minute mini-sessions or heavily-discounted promotions.

Yes, it might generate a little business, but nowhere near enough to make it worthwhile, and it could even damage your brand in the long run.

In most cases, emergency marketing does far more harm than good.

#7: Reduced Creativity

I mentioned a lack of ideas earlier as a symptom of disorganized marketing, and an offshoot of that is reduced creativity.

This is perhaps one of the worst effects of disorganization in your business because it leads to a sense of staleness in your work, lack of motivation, and (in extreme cases) a genuine dislike for the photographic process altogether.

I suppose you could call this effect “burn out” – an apt description when you consider the vital spark of your passion is being smothered or extinguished by the stress of trying to make your business work.

No photographer wants to end up hating the one thing they always thought they loved to do – would you?

Of course not.

#8: Easily Distracted By False Priorities

When you allow your business to drift along from day to day without an organized marketing system, there will inevitably be seemingly-endless days with nothing meaningful to do.

No clients means no photographs to process, and no sales meetings.

Inactivity means too much unallocated time on your hands.

Unallocated time translates into an apparent vacuum, which demands to be filled.

It then becomes far too easy and tempting to engage in busywork – tasks with no tangible impact on the bottom line.

Checking Facebook and email too many times in a day, or getting caught up in other distractions, can fill up your time with something that feels like “work”, but the empty feeling you have at the end of the day reveals your true lack of accomplishment.

In the words of Zig Ziglar:

Don’t confuse activity with achievement…

Instead, use your quiet time to start building an organized system to prevent this situation from repeating itself in the future.

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