This is the Christmas show. Sam is going to share three things you need to do in the new year while Marcus is going to make some predictions for the next year.

Sam says the first thing to do is look at your marketing numbers for the year. Find out where your customers come from. Then look at the time (and this part will be an estimate) spent on different marketing activities. Then compare them. How much income has each marketing activity generated compared to the time you spent on it? Then evaluate. What marketing are you doing that is working and what do you need to stop doing? It will probably be following the 80/20 rule where 20% of your marketing activity generates 80% of your income. You just need to work out which 20% of your marketing activity that 20% is. Marcus suggests you could also do this with your camera equipment and work out what you use all of the time and might need a spare of and what you hardly ever use and so could possibly sell.

The number two thing to focus on for Sam is to build your mailing list. This is vital. Lots of people you speak to might be interested in your work, but not now. This is a great way to stay in touch with those leads. We have lots of shows talking about how to build your email list and what to do with your email list including these:

Email marketing part one

Email marketing part two

The third thing to focus on is LinkedIn. Both Jeff Brown and Gareth Wax have been on the show talking about LinkedIn recently. So Sam says to look at your LinkedIn profile over the new year. Listen to Jeff and Gareth’s shows and then review your profile. Review every part of it.

Marcus is going with three predictions. He thinks that there will be an increase in the popularity of film (35mm) cameras. He thinks this will just be for personal use. Pentax is making a new film camera and new film manufacturers are appearing on the market. You can see our show about the film here .

Marcus sees photography AI not catching on next year. He is referring to image creation. Marcus thinks that this will become unpopular. Sam counters this explaining that it will improve and so could grow.

Marcus’s third prediction is that there are going to be fewer weddings next year. Marcus says there is a COVID knock-on in that people didn’t get together during COVID-19 and so there are now, a few years later, fewer weddings. Marcus thinks the photography market is going to get more challenging next year. He thinks that some photographers who started during COVID may quit leaving fewer photographers overall.

Sam looks at the UK population data and says there are fewer people in the mid-20s age range which could affect weddings, and fewer babies being born, affecting newborn photography. But we can also use the data to see where the population bulges are and think what kind of photography they might need. There are peaks at 10, 11 12-year-olds another peak at 30 to 40-year-olds, but a dip in the mid-40s, and a bulge again at late 50s and early 60s.

It would be good to also look at the local population near you.

Marcus thinks there could be growth in some different areas, perhaps funeral photography. He also suggests divorce photography, but Sam isn’t sure about that one.

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