My Nan had a phrase. Not very cryptic… she was a brutally honest, no filter, Welsh lady. She’d never swear, but if she thought you were telling a ‘fib’ she’d just come out and say it.

“Bullsh.”

Doesn’t take a genius to know what bullsh is short for, I know. But that was her thing. The Nan who called bullsh. Often.

Mainly it was to do with any man over the age of 35 on TV who appeared to have a full head of hair.

“That’s a wig.” she’d say.

“I don’t think so Nan.” I’d reply.

“Bullsh.”

And the conversation usually ended there. He was hiding his baldness and that was all there is to it.

Why am I telling you this? I’ll come back to that.

Comparison for us hyper-sensitive, highly-stressed creatives is the biggest and most constant struggle.

We compare our pictures with other people’s pictures all the time. But that’s fine, in a way. It’s subjective. I can take a really good photo, but I can still choose – subjectively – to like yours more than mine at any given moment.

Comparison of our businesses with other people’s businesses though, that’s less healthy, and far less subjective, and best avoided. But how?!

I’ve often heard to photographers refer to ‘the January rush’ or the more American ‘engagement season’ where all our diaries are supposed to fill like magic over the next couple of months.

Well, let me tell you, I’ve only ever experienced a lull during this time. Once, back in 2016 (when I’d just won TWIA) I didn’t take a single booking for the entirety of January, February and March.

I’d love to know how to tap into the January rush!

And you’ll see a lot of photographers trying to tap into the January rush by using two things – scarcity marketing, and hype marketing.

Scarcity marketing is saying things like “almost fully booked” or “only 2 slots left” or anything that makes it feel like they’re running out of space so that potential clients will come running and snap up those supposed final slots.

Hype marketing is similar, but just usually involves talking about how overrun they are with enquiries, meetings, bookings or money.

Like this bloody new “Prime” drink. If ‘everyone’ is drinking it, it must be good?!

It’s not good.

I’ve given away my old catch phrase these days, but it’s something like ‘you mustn’t give credence to that which is containing of the hype’. 😉

But anyway, scarcity and hype marketing are perfectly acceptable forms of marketing. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do it. Crack on if that’s you, and if it works for you.

But both will trigger you, if you’re behind where you’d like to be in terms of enquiries, meetings, bookings or money. Like me right now – I’m at about 50% capacity for 2023. So don’t go around saying “It’s alright for ARJ” ok!

And realistically… there’s a chance both scarcity marketing and hype marketing are laced with a fair amount of…

You guessed it.

Bullsh.

Sometimes the only way to shield yourself from the business comparison blues, is to understand that a lot of marketing is bullsh, or that there is information behind the marketing that you’re not privy to.

Someone might only want/need 5 bookings a year for instance. They might have a full time job or some other income streams. Stuff like that. The list of stuff you don’t know about other people’s lives and businesses is endless.

Or just call bullsh and move on.

To finish on a positive because I just read that back and it sounds negative, what else can you do to beat the business comparison blues?

Stick your head in the sand and hope for it to go away? No. The sand will get in your nostrils and nobody wants sandy nostrils.

No, the only alternative is to work on your business.

A good friend once told me that ‘activity creates activity’ and it’s my mantra nowadays when I’m a bit stressed about bookings or money or just business in general.

Doing stuff will make stuff happen.

The main premise of this is that your work needs to find its way into the eyeballs of the people who are wedding planning. And there are many ways to do this.

You don’t have to do a lot, you just ideally have to be doing something. Here’s a list of the stuff I’m thinking about, this is not a ‘you must do all this’ list.

Blogging and Instagram are the most obvious. I’ve been terrible at doing both in the last year or so, and I’m trying to find my way back.

Venue and planner recommendations are possibly the strongest referral stream you can get. So having a plan to work on these is good if you’ve developed any good relationships here in the last year.

Next best thing is referrals from past clients. Some people incentivise this with free prints, free albums or even money. Maybe you could do something like that? Or at the very list, send people the link to leave a review on your Google page.

If you’re a detail oriented photographer and not using Pinterest, then spending some time learning how best to use Pinterest would be a great winter project.

But I know what you might need most is a bloody good rest, especially if you’re still working on an edit pile.

In which case allow yourself that. The January rush is a myth in my experience, or maybe it’s just bullsh.

So let those in the January rush club get booked up, and just make really good friends with them so they might refer you some enquiries! Joking… or am I?

Either way, happy new year and don’t believe the, erm, bullsh!

Thanks for reading.

Adam

PS — The best ever example of hype and scarcity marketing that I know of is the launch of Red Bull. To tap right into the psyche of their target market, they launched a campaign of filling the bins in and around night clubs with empty cans of red bull along with only releasing low stock levels into retail and hospitality, to give the illusion that everyone was drinking it. Which they were once they realised that everyone else was apparently drinking it! Many, many big companies use similar supply and demand tactics – how many times have you heard people talking about how a really popular product is ‘always sold out’. Most marketing is bullsh.