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Commercial Photographer: Your Guide to Marketing, Creativity and Growth: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Sam Hollis and Marcus Ahmad
Commercial Photographer: Your Guide to Marketing, Creativity and Growth is the essential podcast if you're a professional headshot photographer or brand photographer. Ready to achieve sustainable business growth? Each week, we share practical advice and actionable strategies to help you master your marketing, ignite your creativity, and build a profitable commercial photography business. Learn how to attract ideal clients, stand out in the marketplace, and build the business you've always wanted. Stop guessing and start growing with business help and guidance from industry experts.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 6 days ago17 min
Local SEO for Brand Photographers: How to Get Found Before the Competition Does
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.
- 1 weeks ago30 min
Why You Don't Have to Niche Down to Build a Thriving 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.
- 2 weeks ago17 min
Posing and Directing Brand Clients: Three Simple Techniques for Natural, Confident Portraits
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
- 3 weeks ago19 min
Retainer Models for Photographers: Turning Clients Into Recurring Income
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 couldThe seasonal trick that keeps clients hookedSpotting which businesses are worth pitching a retainer toThe packaging mistake that leads to scope creepThe billing habit that stops clients quietly drifting awayA no-subscription way to keep bookings rolling inWhy in-house photographer hires are good news, not badIf 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
- Aug 18, 202634 min
What Website Designers Wish Photographers Knew
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
- Aug 11, 202618 min
Why Smart Photographers Get Ahead During the Quiet Season
The phone's gone quiet, inquiries have dried up, and it's tempting to treat this as dead time. Marcus disagrees — and he's using it himself right now to get ready for the September rush. He runs through the moves worth making while the pressure's off, from a proper look at whether your website still represents the work you actually want, to a low-key way of staying on past clients' radar without ever selling to them. There's also a blind spot most photographers don't think to check: whether everything with your name on it, from your website to your pricing document, is still telling the same story about your business, and why that consistency matters more than ever with Google and AI both scanning across everywhere you show up. Plus why the quiet season is exactly the wrong time to just watch videos about a skill instead of learning it properly, and the one planning move that saves your future self when September turns into chaos. For any brand photographer whose website has quietly drifted out of date, this is the nudge to fix it before the busy season does it for you.Download the free guide to Marketing and Creativity here
- Aug 4, 202630 min
Making Networking Actually Work for Photographers Part Two
You've done the hard part, worked the room, swapped business cards, had the good conversation. Tony Bowler, founder of The Business Culture in Hull and East Yorkshire, is back for part two of our networking series, covering how to actually work the room without getting stuck at the wrong table, and why the two days after the event decide whether any of it was worth it. He breaks down the follow-up message that actually gets a reply versus the one that gets you quietly unconnected, why asking "what do you do" is the wrong question, and the slow-build sequence that turns a stranger with a business card into a genuine referral source. There's also a hard lesson in never judging a contact by their job title, and why the busiest-looking person in the room might be the one worth talking to. For any brand photographer building relationships in the local business community rather than just chasing bookings, this is the follow-through nobody teaches you.Download the free guide to Marketing and Creativity here
- Jul 28, 202618 min
Why Most Brand Photographers Are Impossible To Tell Apart
Most brand photographers look exactly the same. Same portfolios, same Instagram grids, same prices, same everything — which means clients have nothing left to judge them on except cost. Marcus breaks down why this happens, why quietly copying the photographers you admire erases what makes you different, and the three questions that surface the one thing about you that no other commercial photographer can replicate. If you've ever wondered why some photographers charge what they want while others get squeezed on price, this is where you start finding the answer.
About Commercial Photographer: Your Guide to Marketing, Creativity and Growth
Commercial Photographer: Your Guide to Marketing, Creativity and Growth is the essential podcast if you're a professional headshot photographer or brand photographer. Ready to achieve sustainable business growth? Each week, we share practical advice and actionable strategies to help you master your marketing, ignite your creativity, and build a profitable commercial photography business. Learn how to attract ideal clients, stand out in the marketplace, and build the business you've always wanted. Stop guessing and start growing with business help and guidance from industry experts.
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