Commercial Photographer: Your Guide to Marketing, Creativity and Growth

A website that nobody visits can’t win you a single brand client, however good it looks, and Google isn’t going to start sending people on its own. The photographers who get steady visitors are the ones who go out and bring them. This episode shows you how, so more of the right people see your work and your site finally has someone to convert.

You’ll come away knowing where your effort is best spent, so you’re not guessing or paying for traffic that never pays off.

The Brand Photographer’s Website Challenge starts in November, with four weeks of group support and one-to-one help to get your site bringing in better leads. Spaces are limited and some have already gone, so book yours now.

If you want to know what happens once visitors arrive, Why Visitors Leave a Brand Photographer’s Website Without Inquiring is the one to hear next.

Turn up at a brand client’s office and you rarely get the room you planned for. Cramped, awkward, nothing like the space you pictured. Yet some photographers still deliver the same polished look every single time.

Two photographers with more than 30 years of flash behind them share the habits that make that possible. There’s a surprising answer on whether you still need to spend money on certain kit, and a few choices about how you work with the person in front of the camera that might change how your next headshot day runs.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re overcomplicating your lighting, this one will settle it. And if you want to keep going afterwards, The Flash Settings Most Photographers Never Check is the natural next listen.

Join the Brand Photographers Challenge to get more quality visitors to your website. Book now as spaces are limited and many have already been taken.

Corporate award nights look effortless in the finished photos. Behind the board, though, you've got seconds per group, a queue forming and nobody to tell you whether your shot worked. Marcus has shot red carpets and award events everywhere from Cannes to Miami this year, and he records this one the day before heading off to one of the most unusual jobs of his career.

If you're an event photographer, you'll hear how he keeps groups relaxed in front of the board, the small habit that stops a good photo being spoiled before the shutter even fires, and what changes when the organiser wants your pictures on a big screen while the party is still going. If events are a way into more brand photographer work this season, start here.

If you'd like more on photographing events, Don't Start Your Next Shoot Until You Master Event Photography Storytelling is the one to line up next.

Is your website delivering the quality leads your business needs? If not, then join our Website Challenge for Brand Photographers

Your website can look fantastic and still send visitors away without a single enquiry. Sam has a simple way of checking why, and it starts with three questions every brand photographer should be able to answer about their own site. Some of the fixes will feel almost too obvious once you hear them, and a few are probably sitting on your website right now. Have it open while you listen.

This episode is also the warm-up for Sam's Brand Photographer's Website Challenge, which starts in November with weekly group support and one-to-one sessions to help your site bring in better leads. Spaces are limited, and you can book yours at commercial-photographer-podcast.com/website.

If the design side has you curious, What Website Designers Wish Photographers Knew is the one to press play on next.

For a brand photographer, colour is quietly doing the selling on every logo, every website and every brand client, and most of us never chose it on purpose. Our guest works with colour for a living, and what she reveals about how people react to it will change how you look at your own branding.

If you've ever watched a brand client arrive on shoot day in something that just doesn't work, there's a simple step that prevents it, and it happens long before anyone picks up a camera. You'll also hear about the cheap piece of kit that saves a commercial photographer hours in the edit, and what you should be wearing yourself.

If how you present yourself matters to you, we went further on it back in Styling Yourself as Part of Your Brand.

Most brand photographers lean entirely on their website to get found locally, and miss most of what actually decides who Google shows first. This episode is about everything else — the parts of local search that happen away from your website altogether, and how they work together to tell Google and AI search tools who you are and where you operate.

You'll get a straight read on where photographers most commonly trip themselves up online without realising it, what Google actually rewards versus what quietly gets accounts flagged or shut down, and a handful of low-effort local signals most photographers never think to use.

If you've ever wondered why a photographer with a weaker portfolio than yours is outranking you locally, this is the episode that explains why.

For more on turning one of these signals specifically into leads, go back to Get More Leads Using Google Maps to Your Photography Business.

For more on turning one of these signals specifically into leads, go back to Get More Leads Using Google Maps to Your Photography Business.

If you've ever been told to pick a lane and stick to it, this episode is the counter-argument. Sam talks to Cherry from Simply C Photography, a commercial photographer whose brand clients span food, industrial, property, press and personal branding work across a huge stretch of the country — and asks the question most photographers with that wide a spread struggle to answer: how do you actually make it work?

Cherry's answer draws on a career built well before she picked up a camera professionally, in sales, advertising, IT consultancy and interior design, and it shows up in how she talks to clients long before a shoot is even booked. Expect a genuinely different take on what a commercial photography business is selling, and why the camera might be the smallest part of it.

If the niching debate has ever left you second-guessing your own broad client list, go back to Generalise or Specialise? Niching as a Photographer for the other side of this argument — it's where the show first opened up this exact question.

If you've ever watched a client freeze the moment you point a camera at them, this episode fixes that. Marcus shares the system he uses to turn nervous, stiff brand clients into natural, confident portraits — no posing guide, no awkward instructions, just a handful of simple techniques that work with anyone in front of your lens.

You'll learn how to get direction across without saying a word, why the shots your clients love most are rarely the ones you actually asked for, and the one prop rule that instantly makes a brand shoot feel considered rather than generic.

If you want the groundwork that makes all of this even easier, go back and listen to our episode with Colin D Smith, the listening expert, on building the client relationship before the camera even comes out

Most photographers run their business one shoot at a time: land the job, deliver the work, then start chasing the next client from zero. This episode is about breaking that cycle and turning past clients into a source of steady, recurring income.

Marcus and Sam cover two different ways to build repeat business into a commercial photographer's workflow, so you can pick whichever fits your client base best.

The retainer model: a monthly or quarterly plan that replaces one-off invoices with a smaller, predictable monthly fee, why that figure feels more affordable to clients even though it earns you more over a year, and how it turns you into an ongoing part of a client's marketing rather than someone who shows up once and disappears.

• Why one big invoice costs you more than monthly ever could
• The seasonal trick that keeps clients hooked
• Spotting which businesses are worth pitching a retainer to
• The packaging mistake that leads to scope creep
• The billing habit that stops clients quietly drifting away
• A no-subscription way to keep bookings rolling in
• Why in-house photographer hires are good news, not bad

If you've ever finished a shoot and immediately had to start hunting for the next client, this episode is the fix for that feeling.

Download the free guide to Marketing and Creativity here⁠

Offering Subscription Services to your clients is another way to build that same recurring income.

Ever wondered why some photos land perfectly on a website and others just don't work, no matter how good the shot is? A brand and web designer joins the show to reveal exactly what she wishes photographers understood before they ever pick up the camera — from the details nobody tells you about to the compositional choices that make or break a client's site. If you supply images that end up on someone's homepage, this one could change how you shoot.

Download the free guide to Marketing and Creativity here⁠

Planning Your Website is the practical companion to this one, covering what to sort out before you brief a designer.