Time for my yearly Seth Godin quote.

I love reading the marketing-without-marketing mastermind. He’s always a source of great inspiration and thought provoking advice. I’ve been ruminating on this post from his site earlier this week called Are We Not Plankton? (Deevo fans will get a kick out of that).

Something that really stood out for me is the following:

What’s important to keep in mind is, as a small business owner running your own photography business, you are the “modern marketer” Godin is talking about.  You are the one that is changing the lives by attracting the clients. It all starts in the attraction of those clients. And as I discussed Facebook Likes a couple weeks back, each single Like, each individual potential client, each new actual client should be treated as gold. Because each Like, each potential client, and each actual client, all have their unique role in driving your business.

Marketers call the process of potential customers converting to actual customers a Funnel. That funnel should be your gold, and operated with your company brand values. If your communication was the last communication a person ever read, would you want that experience to be a canned response you saved in Gmail, or something profoundly worthy?

As photographers, we have the ability to change people’s lives. Let’s do it from the first contact.