Finding Clients

Where do you find product photography clients?

I get this question all the time. It’s intimidating to find clients if you have no idea where to look.

This is the framework I’ve used to reach out to thousands of companies and land deals.

We all know the big brands like Coca-Cola and Red Bull. You’re not going to land deals with these companies starting out. Luckily for you, there are thousands of smaller companies eager for new product photography.

E-commerce has never been bigger. Your job becomes finding the right companies to reach out to. Where do people shop online? Amazon.

I use Amazon to find companies to reach out to. First, I’ll pick a category like matcha. Then, I type matcha into Amazon, and scrub through all the pages. I’ll put together a spreadsheet and write down every single brand I see. For a big category like matcha, this could be 100+ companies. That’s 100 new business opportunities for you.

After I’ve got a list of companies, it’s time to get their emails. You can go on their websites and find their generic contact email that’s something like hello@matcha.com. If you’re really serious, you can find the marketing directors and or co-founders and email them. This way your email won’t get stopped by a gatekeeper and will go directly to the decision-maker.

There are a lot of paid tools that will help you get these people's emails, but they can cost you hundreds a month. A great free tool to use is Hunter.io. This lets you scrape websites and find the actual decision-makers.

After you’ve got a list of companies, names, and emails, you can begin sending personalized emails to them. If you have no idea where to start check out my templates.

And that’s really it. 80% of emails you won’t get a response. When you do get a positive response, book that discovery call, and find out how you can fit into their content strategy.

This is boring work. No one talks about this because it's not fun to do. But it's effective. If you actually want to turn your passion into a full-time career, this is what you need to do.