Being a wedding photography business owner isn’t just one job but several responsibilities and duties under one. One of the biggest responsibilities out of all is booking more weddings, and to do that, you need to market your business and services to the right people in the right way. This can often get stressful for many wedding photographers, but carefully planning and strategizing business tactics can help you avoid that stress. In this blog, we offer you 10 marketing tips for wedding photographers that you can use to grow your business digitally and offline.
10 Marketing Tips for Wedding Photographers
1. Keep Past Clients Happy
Keeping all your clients, including the ones you have already photographed, happy is a given. And if you are not already focusing on that, then this could be the first marketing strategy you apply to grow your wedding photography business. Your past clients are a reflection of your work, and they are the ones who can genuinely speak for your brand. Additionally, if you impressed them with your work and continue to have a relationship with them, they are more likely to refer your services to others too. Even today, word-of-mouth marketing strategy is one of the most effective ways to get more clients. To stay in touch with your previous clients, you could send them a weekly newsletter, season/festive greetings, anniversary gifts, or any other creative present as a token of your appreciation.
2. Network With Wedding Vendors
Couples often book wedding planners and venues before any other wedding vendors, so they can be a good source for you to get referrals. Network with them and find ways to get on their preferred list of wedding photographers. To do this, you could offer your photography services for free and even refer them to your clients. Remember that both parties should benefit from a partnership, so when you propose a business plan, you must ensure that they are getting something out of it too. However, don’t directly start with asking them for referrals. Establish a genuine relationship with these vendors, and once you have a solid relationship with them, you can start talking about working with each other. Additionally, you could also network with other wedding photographers in your area and get referrals for weddings they are unable to shoot.
Related Read: How To Build Trust With Wedding Vendors
3. Content Marketing & SEO
Content marketing is crucial for wedding photographers today. Information about what you do, how you do it, where you do it, and who you are is very important for your potential clients. With content marketing, you instantly give your clients a glimpse into what your brand stands for and what they can expect from you. Blogging has immense potential when it comes to introducing and educating people about your brand. Using SEO (search engine optimization) tools in your blogs allow you to rank high on search engines and be easily visible to couples looking for wedding photographers. One important blogging tip: Do your research, figure out your target audience, and then blog for them.
Related Read: 15 Ideas To Help You Write Wedding Photography Blogs
4. Get Published
Having a website and a blog is definitely helpful, but getting published on other popular wedding photography blogs or bridal magazines might also do wonders for your business. A credible source talking about your business makes you look trustworthy and valuable to your potential clients. You could also register your business in wedding blogs’ directories. This will make it easier for your ideal clients to find and contact you. Style Me Pretty, Brides.com, Junebug Weddings, and Rock My Wedding are some of the wedding blogs you might want to follow. You could also participate in wedding photography contests that wedding blogs organize. If you win an award, you can then show it off on your website, social media handles, and even blog about it. This again increases your credibility.
Related Read: How To Get Published On Top Wedding Blogs
5. Engage With Past & Potential Clients on Social Media
When it comes to online marketing tips for wedding photographers, you just can’t skip social media marketing. Besides sharing content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, you could also use your social media handles to engage with your potential and past clients. You can go live on Facebook or Instagram and interact with your audience and perhaps answer some frequently asked questions. Not many of your followers or clients know you by your face till they meet you, so this wedding photography marketing idea is great for showing them the face behind the brand. Interacting through social media also gives them an idea of who you are as a person. Therefore, you might want to brush up on your people skills and impress them through funny wedding anecdotes, why you got into wedding photography, or just by talking about what your brand and couples mean to you.
6. Try Facebook Advertising
Facebook advertising can be a great marketing tool for your wedding photography business. You could offer quick free sessions for couples or even organize a contest. Make sure you use visually appealing imagery that matches your brand and also draws the audience to your ad, and makes them click on it. With Facebook ads, striking visuals and minimum text is the golden rule. You also get the chance to customize your target audience, geographic preferences, etc., so target the right audience, or you might end up wasting your money. Also, you could create and time your Facebook ads based on festivals, vacations, or the wedding season.
Related Read: How To Create Facebook Ads To Book More Weddings
7. Email Marketing
If you find social media interactions awkward and live sessions uncomfortable, email marketing can prove to be a great marketing tool for you. You can contact and, in fact, interact with your clients through emails without having to talk to your followers and clients by looking into a camera. Email marketing helps you reach out to all the contacts you have saved in your mailing list, so you don’t have to worry about not reaching enough people. All you have to do is choose an email marketing software such as Mailchimp, Emma, Constant Contact, or MailerLite, create a content strategy for your emails, and then automate the emails on your software. Whether you choose social media or email marketing, the aim is to stay in touch with your target audience.
8. Establish a Relationship With Other Professionals
Establishing a relationship with other professionals is an age-old way to market your own business. Networking with people outside of your industry might turn out to be very helpful when it comes to getting referrals. Keep a stack of your business cards with you, wherever you go. Whenever you meet someone, try to strike a friendly conversation with them. Ask them about their business and tell them about yours. In the end, just write the name of the place you met and a sweet message on your business card before you give it to them. If you manage to get their contact information, you can even drop an email later to say hi. In the end, it’s not about being pushy or invading people’s private space. Networking is all about getting to know other people and their businesses and perhaps in the process generating leads for your own business. Plus, it’s always great to have friends in different industries!
9. Track Your Marketing Efforts
This tip is not exactly a marketing strategy to increase your brand awareness or sell your services but a way to measure the results of your marketing efforts. If you set some long-term or short-term goals for your business, you need to track your progress in order to review, evolve, improve and re-apply those strategies. You can use various online tools to track your progress or analyze your key performance indicators (KPIs). However, make sure you give it some time before setting final benchmarks. This will help you stay realistic and understand your marketing needs better. Your goal could be more traffic on your website or more clicks on your portfolio tab. Either way, you need to first do a test run before you finally decide your tracking parameters.
10. Keep Learning
Whether it’s about new photography styles or new ways to book more weddings – never stop when it comes to educating yourself. Stay active and alert about market needs and trends. Attend photography workshops, mentorship sessions, or online courses. You can even learn a lot through free courses online. To add more tools to your toolbox, we’d also suggest that you learn more about sales, copywriting, management, and even advertising. Learning about different aspects connected with the wedding photography business will help you manage yours better.
Keep Experimenting With a Variety of Strategies
We hope our marketing tips for wedding photographers will help you take your business to a new level. Each marketing strategy has its focus area, so it’s best to select a few and apply them to areas that need the most improvement. However, patience is key. Don’t worry if results don’t show overnight. It takes some time for strategies to work and to figure out what suits your wedding photography business. We would encourage you to network, gain more knowledge about different business aspects, and keep striving to do your best. Eventually, you will find a set of marketing strategies that you can rely on too.
At ShootDotEdit, we love offering you tips and tricks to boost your wedding photography business. To lessen your post-production workload so that you can focus on leveling up your business, we also offer photo editing services that match your style. To learn more about how we can help, check out our pricing plans.