Tag: Marketing Photography Business

  • StudioBackdrops.com: Platform to Meet the Need of the Creative Community in India

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by StudioBackdrops.com.

    The Photography industry encompasses a range of photographic services, including commercial photography and portrait photography. Photography was once classified as a hobby profession only, but it has seen unprecedented growth in the last few years. The global photographic services market is expected to grow from $39 billion in 2021 to $43 billion in 2022. There are around 2 Lakhs of the photography business in the US, which generated $10.5 billion in revenue. Indian Photographers and cinematographers lack the availability of useful tools. StudioBackdrops.com is an eCommerce photography retailer that meets the demand for tools and techniques for passionate photographers.

    Read to know about StudioBackdrops.com, its founder, the startup story, products, and business Model.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Company Highlights

    Startup Name StudioBackdrops.com
    Headquarters New Delhi
    Industry Ecommerce-Photography and video equipment
    Founder Archisman Misra
    Founded 2016
    Website studiobackdrops.com

    StudioBackdrops.com – About
    StudioBackdrops.com – Industry
    StudioBackdrops.com – Founders and Team
    StudioBackdrops.com – The Idea and Startup Story
    StudioBackdrops.com – Products
    StudioBackdrops.com – Business Model and Revenue Model
    StudioBackdrops.com – Customer Acquisition
    StudioBackdrops.com – Marketing
    StudioBackdrops.com – Challenges Faced
    StudioBackdrops.com – Funding
    StudioBackdrops.com – Recognition and Achievements
    StudioBackdrops.com – Future Plans

    StudioBackdrops.com – About

    StudioBackdrops.com is a D2C platform that provides curated and affordable photography and video equipment to photographers, cinematographers, content creators and production houses in India.

    Their short term vision is to gather the most unique and niche photography and videography products from all over the world and make them available on its platform. They also want to create awareness about these products and educate their audience about the best way to use them.

    Their long term vision is to become the biggest platform for Photography, Video and Audio solutions in Asia. They also want to be able to offer products from every possible vertical in the Imaging Industry to their rapidly growing audience. This would enable creators to buy everything they need to set up their studios directly from one place without having to jump from one marketplace or store to another.

    StudioBackdrops.com was founded with the goal of giving the community of creators and creative professionals access to better tools and equipment at affordable prices. At the same time they want to create a community of creators involved with helping each other create the best content with the equipment they have. And to educate them about new types of equipment and how those can take their work to the next level and compete with the best of the best. They aim to do to the imaging market in India what Nykaa did to the beauty and personal care market.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Industry

    StudioBackdrops.com belongs firmly in the Consumer Electronics industry as a retailer of Photography, Videography and Audio industry related products.

    The global audio and video equipment market size is expected to grow from $149.00 billion in 2021 to $158.81 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6%. The audio and video market is expected to reach $196.50 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of 5.5%. The Asia-Pacific Region accounts for almost 30% of this business. In this region China and India generate the most business with 900 Million + and 600 Million + active internet users.

    With the Indian creator economy growing at an exponential rate, they envision StudioBackdrops.com as the ultimate support system of these creators. Already some of the biggest creators in India swear by equipment from StudioBackdrops.com. As the number of creators and influencers grow, they will always be right alongside them offering them the exact products and equipment they need to keep their content looking fresh and at par with International standards.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Founders and Team

    Archisman Misra is the Founder & CEO of StudioBackdrops.com. He did his schooling at K.R.Mangalam, New Delhi followed by a B.Tech in Computer Science. After his bachelor’s he chose to follow his childhood dream of photography and established himself as a commercial photographer working for some of the biggest brands and agencies.

    StudioBackdrops.com – The Idea and Startup Story

    Archisman Misra had been passionate about photography ever since he was a kid. During my school and college years, he had a yearning to learn more about photography and he went to the best learning resource on the Internet – YouTube. He wanted to increase and improve his portfolio so he started looking for tools that the photography educators on Youtube were using. Many of these tools were not available in the Indian market, and the some that he did find were incredibly out of budget. While working as a professional photographer, he talked to other photographers around him and they were facing the same dilemna. This led to the birth of the idea to create a platform to provide good quality and yet affordable products to photographers, cinematographers, and other creators.

    As with all his ideas, his first sounding board was my parents. He have always dreamed big and has a tendency to get ahead of himself. His parents know this and always counter his ideas with questions. When he had provided valid answers for all their questions, they gave him their blessings, hence validating his idea.

    He started listing down the verticals he would start with and studio backdrops came across as an obvious choice. He started talking with local manufacturers and international brands who were experts in backdrops and at the same time christened the company as StudioBackdrops.com. He also decided to bootstrap the startup with his own savings instead of looking for investors. The journey of ideation, designing and prototyping the idea was something that he went at solo, both to save costs and because he had experience of wearing many different hats throughout the years.

    In October 2016 StudioBackdrops.com went live on Amazon shortly followed by their own website StudioBackdrops.com.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Products

    StudioBackdrops.com Photography
    StudioBackdrops.com Photography

    StudioBackdrops.com is primarily a curated D2C platform selling niche products to the Photography and Video industry. These niche products had not been introduced to the Indian market but yet were often vital to creative processes and studios. Since starting with Backdrops as their primary focus, they kept innovating, improving, and increasing the worldwide standards of the product. I am proud to say that StudioBackdrops.com is home to the largest collection of Backdrops in the world.

    StudioBackdrops.com initially started as a marketplace model of eCommerce where brands and distributors could sell their products. This was the time Amazon and Flipkart were surging in popularity and he quickly realised it would be impossible to compete with them. He immediately pivoted to an inventory model of eCommerce and started reaching out to Manufacturers and Brands and became an importer and distributor for these brands in India.


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    StudioBackdrops.com – Business Model and Revenue Model

    StudioBackdrops.com works on an omnichannel model of Business. The website directly engages with the D2C channels whereas the business development teams handle the B2C and B2B2C channels. StudioBackdrops.com works on an inventory model of eCommerce and hence is a direct distributor of multiple brands across India and is responsible for their marketing and advertising efforts.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Customer Acquisition

    The first platform for the launch was Amazon, quickly followed by the D2C website. They quickly understood that social media and a great customer experience would be the biggest tools to help us acquire more and more customers. This essentially became a big part of their strategy and they mainly depended on word of mouth promotion to acquire their first 100 users. Their customers loved the products they had on offer and became vocal advocates for the brand and quality.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Marketing

    StudioBackdrops.com has followed a very unorthodox route when it comes to marketing. It was decided pretty early on by Archisman that SBDC would be completely bootstrapped and this meant that he needed to achieve a lot of results with the lowest spend. He brought in all the experience he had gathered over the years, shooting campaigns for brands, and being actively involved in marketing them. He was quick to realise that no amount of marketing and ad campaigns could replace solid brand awareness and customer trust. To date, a lot of their marketing still revolves around creating brand and product awareness and helping customers make knowledgeable buying decisions. This builds trust and in turn, they recommend SBDC to their closely-knit community of creators, slowly and steadily building their user base and increasing the demand for the products they have on offer.


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    StudioBackdrops.com – Challenges Faced

    When the country was brought to a standstill due to the pandemic, SBDC was stuck in limbo without a working supply chain and logistics partner. But during the lockdown a completely new opportunity presented itself. The lockdown made stars out of struggling content creators and brought many new ones to the centre stage. The collective creativity of the country was growing and SBDC wanted to help them unleash it.

    As soon as the lockdown eased, they jumpstarted their supply chain, onboarded more logistics partners, and started shipping to 22000 pin codes across India. Their sales saw the largest ever boost once the lockdown was opened, as everyone was shifting to creating content from home. This trend has continued and StudioBackdrops.com has become the destination for content creators looking to add production value to their content and to compete with the best of the best.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Funding

    StudioBackdrops.com remains completely bootstrapped and has not raised any funds to date.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Recognition and Achievements

    StudioBackdrops.com was recently named as one of the top 500 Challenger D2C Brands from India by Yourstory as a part of their Brands of New India Initiative.

    StudioBackdrops.com – Future Plans

    StudioBackdrops.com intends to bring to market a whole host of niche and unique products along with popular offerings across multiple verticals. This is in line with SBDC’s goal to become the largest omnichannel destination for photo, video, and audio in Asia. Along with products, StudioBackdrops.com intends to release a wide range of educational content aimed at Content Creators, Youtubers, Photographers, Cinematographers and more. They are also planning to launch an Incubator Program to support content creators directly. The program will provide content creators with the products they need and professional advice from industry leaders to improve their content.

    FAQs

    When was StudioBackdrops.com founded?

    StudioBackdrops.com was founded in 2016 in New Delhi.

    Who is the founder of StudioBackdrops.com?

    Archisman Misra is the founder of StudioBackdrops.com.

    Is StudioBackdrops.com funded?

    No, StudioBackdrops.com is a bootstrapped startup.

  • How To Market Your Photography Business- A Guide

    Marketing strategy is an important factor when you set up a business. It aims at targeting potential consumers and convert them as our customers for our products/services. The marketing strategy of a business consists of the company’s value, target customers, branding and other essential elements.

    Marketing mainly concentrates on selling more products to more and more customers and it is also important to know about our customers’ needs. Marketing a product/service is a continuous process with some innovation in a regular interval.

    It is vital to strategise your marketing which aids you to bring in more profit to the company and at the same time attract more customers. According to a study conducted by Coschedule, the company’s having market strategies are 313% more likely to report success in their marketing campaigns.

    An effective Marketing plan and profitability are the key factors for a successful company. It is marketing that elevates your business profile.

    Stepwise Guide for Marketing Your Photography Business
    Step 1. Identifying the target market
    Step 2. Create a customer database
    Step 3. Engage in social media
    Step 4. Go referral spree
    Step 5. Collect and add testimonials on your website
    Step 6. Get featured in photography blogs
    Step 7. Display your photographs on photo-sharing sites
    Conclusion
    FAQs

    How to market your photography business

    Stepwise Guide for Marketing Your Photography Business

    Step 1. Identifying the target market

    As the first step, you should choose a niche that suits your interests. There are varieties in photography like food, wedding, Wildlife, family portrait, celebrity shoot etc. Having a clear picture of your niche makes it easy to target a market. Be passionate about whichever niche you have chosen and concentrate on marketing. Do not go behind too many things as it reduces your efficiency.

    After a while, expansion of business is important, for example- if you choose wedding photography as a profession then have connections with other vendors that cater services to the bride. This is one of the marketing strategies to attract more customers.

    Step 2. Create a customer database

    Once you stick to a specific niche, now you should start creating a customer database. This database may consist of all your past and present customers. This kind of database helps your business to track the customers. These days photography has boomed as people are obsessed with capturing their memories. So get along with the customers, send follow-ups and offers some discounts to your regular customers. This way you can increase the customer database and also expect high returns.

    Many Softwares are helping you to create an effective customer database like CRM, Nutshell, Insightly etc. These Software have features like tracking your expenses, creating questionnaires and also can sync with other apps.


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    Step 3. Engage in social media

    Increase your network through social media platforms. On social media platforms, you can showcase your activities and other projects. Especially for the photography business, creating a website or adding their creative shoots on social media will help in expanding the customer base.

    In case of creating a website, add your achievement lists, for making the website even interesting add professional photographs and also give the insights about behind the shoot in a separate section called blog. Inculcate Search engine optimization (SEO) which allows your website to be ranked well on google searches.

    Social media marketing also includes Pinterest marketing to serve your photography business with more value.


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    Step 4. Go referral spree

    Word of mouth helps the best marketing tool for the photography business. Ask your customers to leave feedback after getting the service or write a review on social media about your work. By this referral marketing technique, you can guarantee the customer to offer discounts or some free services in future.

    When you kick off your business, it is always your friends, family and close relatives who support you throughout your journey and they act as the biggest source of referrals.

    Don’t forget to extend your gratitude to all those who make referrals.

    Step 5. Collect and add testimonials on your website

    Testimonials act as a trust factor between you and the customers. The testimonials are proof of your achievements and a catalyst to increase the customer base. Maintain originality and don’t hesitate to ask for testimonials from your happy and satisfied customers. This is the best way for a photography business to promote its activities and get more leads.

    Nowadays blogging has become a popular way for promoting your business. All your efforts will be paid off when you get featured on various platforms and blogs. This can be the best marketing strategy for a photography business, as customers can get a glance at your work and skills. In this way, you have a solid presence on social media. Do not limit yourself to few platforms, rather spread your work and expand your business. This will yield high profits.


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    Step 7. Display your photographs on photo-sharing sites

    This is the best time to expose your photography skills, do not be reluctant to post your work on various channels. Here are some of the photo-sharing sites that can improve your photography business: Photobucket, Pixabay, Behance, Exposure, 500px etc. It is observed that many photographers have increased their customer base by using the Flickr site. Sharing your work on such platforms will increase the number of Customers and get genuine feedback. This also makes an effective marketing strategy for the photography business.

    Conclusion

    There are always ‘N’ number of ways to make marketing strategies. And it is always recommended to make a lot of experiments to improve your business plans. Above are few tips to inculcate in your business, always make trial and error and see which suits you. There is no one size fits all approach. Few things work for some businesses and some does not work. Marketing for the photography business is a huge component which when implemented properly leads to high profitability.

    FAQs

    How to market a photography business?

    Photography business marketing tips:

    • Identifying the target market
    • Create a customer database
    • Engage in social media
    • Go referral spree
    • Collect and add testimonials on your website
    • Get featured in photography blogs
    • Display your photographs on photo-sharing sites

    What are the photo sharing platforms for promoting photography business?

    Some of the best photo sharing platform to promote a photography business are:

    • Flickr
    • Pinterest
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • 500px
    • DeviantArt
    • Fotoblur
    • Tumblr
    • Behance
    • Twitter

    How to increase the photography website speed?

    Compress the image size without altering its quality; if the image’s size is large, it will hinder the website’s loading speed; Inserting YouTube videos and add images in JPEG format.

    Is it important to have blogs on photography websites?

    Blogging is a kind of content marketing, which is the best way to showcase your photography skills and build a more client base.