More Life Photography was a personal passion project of mine. One day it hit me that I could get paid to do what I love. Since 2011 I have been a street style, portrait, and fashion photographer. I ran a popular sneaker blog and used my photography skills to launch my own apparel company. But I never explored photography as a service. All of the work I did was either pro bono or for personal projects. I took pictures because I loved taking pictures.

9 years ago when I fell in love with photography, I couldn’t explain why, but something about capturing a moment captured me. As I learned more about myself and the art form, I found 3 key drivers.

I devised a multi-phase plan to successfully launch my studio over 1 year:

1. Build a brand to gain awareness and credibility among my audience
2. Create a distinguished and seamless user experience to capture the most value possible
3. Launch a grassroots marketing campaign (aka i had no budget lol) to get people through the funnel

I’ll caveat everything sounds a lot more perfect than it was. Hindsight is 20/20. The real process was a just a series of hunches about how to get from A to B, that i was silly enough to act on. That’s an idea I really want to come through: launching your project is basically about following your hunches and validating them somehow. But like Lisa Nichols says, don’t wait for clarity to take action. Clarity will come from the action itself. That’s something that I felt throughout the process, from the idea to start this journey down to how I priced the services. So if you take anything from this, I hope it’s more action lol.

Howard University is consistently ranked as one of the top 3 most fashionable schools in the country. Every day is a fashion show. The campus is overflowing with creativity and individuality.

People are naturally self interested, so if I focus on doing something from them. I create reciprocity, a virtuous cycle, and as a result — virality.

So I created an Instagram page dedicated to featuring the best fashion on campus. This page quickly amassed a following and created buzz for two reasons:

This idea of sharing lessons learned has always been at the core of my content strategy ever since 2011. It forces me to reflect honestly on where I am and articulate it. It also allows you build brand more effectively because you’re being honest and you’re reaching back to the people who are going through what you just went through. This is the power of micro-influencer brands. While blockbuster influencers may have expansive reach, micro-influencers have the benefit of really strong connections and relationships with their audience. So in some cases they may have a fraction of the audience but 10x the power.

Once I built the website, it was time to drive traction. I didn’t have any marketing budget so I had to get scrappy. I launched my own grassroots marketing campaign. My strategy had several components to it:
Problem: Finding a time that works for both parties is often the most time intensive part of the sales process, especially when working at scale. If you’re running your biz via instagram, a calendar, and venmo — you’ll constantly be going back and forth to coordinate times and appointments and it gets very tedious.
Solution: I solved for this by integrating my website with Square Appointments for seamless booking and payments. So once the client saw the work and selected a pageant, they could select a time on a calendar and pay in one go.
A launch announcement on my personal social media platforms

This allowed me to capture initial traction and support from my existing following.
Digital/Out of Home Marketing Campaign

This allowed me to create a campaign unique to the brand that would run during peak season
Continuous documentation and client testimonials

This allowed me to leverage social proof to keep my marketing strong/fresh.