Commercial Photographer: Your Guide to Marketing, Creativity and Growth Guest Interview with Lauren McWilliams Photographer and Brand Strategist
Lauren McWilliams is a Brand photographer and Strategist. Lauren works with ambitious service based entrepreneurs across the UK through photography and programmes.
With a keen eye for capturing the essence of brands through photography and a knack for strategic thinking, she’s the go-to for those looking to make a lasting impact in their market.
Her passion for helping others can be seen and was recently recognised in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2022 as a finalist for Young Entrepreneur of the year.
Lauren's business story
Lauren started her business in 2019 not long before the pandemic began. When she started she had no idea how to run a business. Photography had always been a passion, so when she burnt out from her 9 to 5 job, she setup a photography business. Lauren got lots of support from the local authority for her business.
Lauren started saying yes to any work that came along, like almost all of us do when we start a business. She quickly realised that what she enjoyed most was working with businesses. When the pandemic hit she had no work, as with most photographers. So, she decided to launch a challenge to help keep businesses telling their story.
After lockdown she was suddenly fully booked having run the challenge. As she worked more Lauren realised that customers didn’t know what to do with their photographs. Most of the photographs she gave to customers stayed hidden. So she started to learn more about marketing and then started to help her customers with this.
Lauren ended up with a contract as a consultant to support businesses in the same way as she had received support at the beginning of her business journey.
Where do Lauren's customers begin as photography or branding clients?
Lauren is known mainly as a photographer and so her clients tend to come in for photography, but then they move on to also become brand strategy clients once they have their photographs. Lauren works with businesses over a long period of time and builds up a long term relationship with them, which she really values. She tells us the story of a recruitment business that she has documented over time. Initially it was just the CEO of the business on her own. Now she has a team of 20 or 30 with a new office. Lauren has documented those changes.
What could photographers could do to add more value to clients.
Lauren suggests building more of a relationship with the client. Ensuring realty careful panning happens before the photo shoot. As an example for a corporate photo shoot you could involve the people having their photo taken from the planning stage. Ask them for ideas so that they can become involved in the process and start to own it and enjoy it.
Collaboration
Lauren thinks it is really important as photographers to collaborate and learn from each other. When she started off she found some local photographers saw her as a threat and wouldn’t answer her questions. Later she found more supportive photographers. She is now using her skills and knowledge to help other photographers.
Shoot to the top Facebook Group
We have launched a Facebook group for the podcast. You can find it here. Lauren, Sam and Marcus are there and you can ask them questions.
Sam asked Lauren how we can make content to show the person we are without making it to much “me,me,me”. She says the balance is that we show who we are but we balance that with sharing out networks and our clients success. Lauren suggests the simple things that photographers could do to improve their marketing is to practice what they preach. Photographers are usually telling clients to get out and be visible. But then many photographers then hide behind the camera and aren’t seen. You can contact Lauren here.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-mcwilliams-brand-photographer/