Vibrant Shades Commercial Photography

Vibrant Shades Commercial Photography, located in and serving Skopje, will serve small and medium-sized businesses and non-profits for all of their studio photography needs by creating beautiful shots that serve the client’s needs, offering excellent service and flexibility with a personal touch, and offering value-added services related to photography.
The keys to success for the business include:
-Establishing Vibrant Shades Commercial Photography as flexible to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses
-Offering a range of additional services, such as printing, photo editing, framing, and production of photos in a variety of digital formats
-Making businesses feel at home in our studio and a part of the creative process
Vibrant Shades Commercial Photography will be a sole proprietorship. Start-up expenses include the legal fees associated with incorporating the business, permits associated with a studio space, and the build-out of the studio space. Marketing includes a promotional campaign to alert customers and potential customers to the services and capacity Vibrant Shades Commercial Photography is adding. Rent includes two months of studio rent to cover the build-out period and two additional months for a security deposit. Long-term assets include additional photography equipment (cameras, tripods, backdrops, flashes, lighting) that must be purchased. Services to be offered include the following: studio commercial photography, on-site commercial photography, set dressing services for photo shoots, photo editing and digital editing work, delivery of prints or digital files of photo shoots, framing of photos, web portal to access digital files from shoots and manage editing process with clients, rental of the studio space to subcontractors when time allows. In the future, graphic design services will be offered for the photos taken, and we will expand to a multi-room studio to allow for multiple shoots simultaneously. The market for vibrant shades commercial photography includes all businesses and non-profits. For Vibrant Shades Commercial Photography, the target market is small and medium-sized businesses and non-profits (those with under 500 employees) based in North Macedonia. The target market can be segmented in 3 catagories:
-Very Small Businesses: these businesses are generally run by their owners. Photography needs tend to be for their basic marketing collateral (signs, menus, pamphlets, brochures, websites, newsletters, etc.). These businesses generally begin by taking these photographs in-house, but, over time, determine that this method produces sub-standard results. They then seek inexpensive freelance photographers who can quickly handle their needs.
-Small Businesses: these businesses have ongoing and regular needs for photography of their products and services, such as quarterly catalogs. They appreciate establishing relationships with vendors who understand their way of working, allow them access to the creative process, and reduce the stress of creating marketing materials. They prefer to work with one vendor for all photography needs and will be reluctant to change that vendor once it is found. However, they do continue to check the prices of their vendor against competitors to make sure they are getting the preferred mix of quality and price.
Medium Businesses: these businesses have marketing departments which outsource photography to photo studios. They have a higher volume of photography needs than smaller businesses and pay great attention to the quality of the images as well as the price. Volume discounts may be needed to retain businesses in this category.
Larger businesses are served by large studios who can send photographers to the client site or set up shoots with little notice. These businesses require photography vendors with the capacity to shoot in multiple locations at the same time.
Smaller businesses, on the other hand, are comfortable working with smaller photography studios. They are generally unhappy with larger studios, as they find they are not a priority compared with the larger clients of the studio. They want the same level of service, scaled to the needs and budget of their business, and only a smaller studio can provide this.
Furthermore, larger businesses often bring a great deal of photo editing work in-house to their marketing departments. Smaller businesses value the ability of a photo studio to handle this work as their marketing or design departments often do not have the capacity to deal with this work when new materials are being developed.
Medium and small businesses can provide ongoing work. However, without serving very small businesses, Vibrant Shades will miss out on capturing smaller customers before they grow. Working with very small businesses can also provide a wide base of customers, making the revenue streams of the business less susceptible to the loss of any one customer.
To reach these target markets, Vibrant Shades will use email marketing, business networking, and web marketing to find clients and to ensure that clients find Vibrant Shades.
The marketing strategy for Vibrant Shades Commercial Photography is based on the belief that using a few marketing tactics extremely well is preferable to using many marketing tactics with moderate success with each. The following are preferble marketing campaigns:
Email Marketing: Emailing a new business announcement and then monthly newsletters with details on new packages, the development of the studio, and new hires to past clients and other targets in the business community. Newsletters will include helpful tips on how to use photography and this will be used to gain permission from marketing departments at prospective client businesses to be sent the newsletters. Within these emails will be calls to action to encourage business referrals. Business networking: Vibrant Shades will establish a mutually beneficial relationship with other business people and potential clients or customers. Web Marketing: Vibrant Shades Photography will purchase search engine advertising with Google Adwords around commercial photography keywords for the Skopje market and gear its advertisements towards the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. Furthermore, Vibrant Shades Photography’s website will be optimized for higher search engine ranking under these keywords.
To increase the closing rate of prospects, Vibrant Shades will meet clients at their businesses whenever possible to go beyond phone conversations. It will use a portfolio of images and testimonials.
Sales for photo shoots are expected to drive the business and will grow with the growing staff. Additional photographers will be hired to meet the need first as part-time and then as full-time staff.
Supplementary revenue streams will be photo editing services and printing and framing of images. Finally, off-hours for the studio will be rented for events of other purposes to create a steady monthly stream of revenue.