what's up guys?! last week I asked you what your biggest struggles were in your
photography businesses and I had over fifty of you respond and tell me
resoundingly it's marketing. so today I'm coming to you with five ways you can
market your photography business today. so let's get right in! number one
leverage content marketing. now, I know a lot of people are talking about content
marketing right now and maybe you're thinking "what the heck is content
marketing?" well, it's simply creating a piece of content or material (That could be a video pr blog post even utilizing your Instagram stories) to
solve a problem or answer someone's questions you're creating value and
answers around whatever it is the topic that you know best,. you're essentially
creating consistent, reliable, and informative information that will
attract your ideal client instead of pushing and pushing - that feels so
obvious like you're selling. if that makes sense? so instead of saying hey I'm
a photographer you should book me you create a blog post that says here are
five ways you can get better images at your next portrait session or your next
engagement session you're creating content and helpful content at that. that
is more likely to be shared and then the person doesn't feel like they're being
sold to. through out pieces of your content marketing you can be putting in
pictures that you have taken giving your tips and linking to your work so these
are targeted pieces of content that point them back to you. so you don't feel
like you're selling and they don't feel like they're being sold to. however, your
work is inside those blog posts. your tips are there and it's linking back to
you! So you're establishing yourself as an expert and creating loyalty. tip number
two: is to plan a collaboration shoot so what I like to do is I like to go on
Instagram go through hashtags geo ties and find some vendors that I'd like to
work with that I've never worked with before because you want to create new
connections once you have those pictures you can cross promote you can share and
tag each other and they'll share and tie to you so their audience will become
your audience your audience will become their audience and you're lifting each
other up together tip number three is to start a referral
so a referral program is simply that it's just a rewards program for your
past clients if they go ahead and refer you to new clients this is a great way
to up your word-of-mouth referrals and in a non pushy way you can circle back
to people that you photographed in the past and let them know that this
referral program is now in action so it's a great way to email them or send
them a message and not be pushy but really just let them know what they
could get from you for free or what they could earn by simply sharing about your
work so I think a referral program is
extremely effective way especially if you want to work with a very specific
clientele and you've found that you've worked with them before so if you love
the people that you've worked with before and you want to work with more
people like them a referral program can be incredibly effective tip number four
is to give back this is the perfect time to get back into your community align
yourself with a charity or a fundraiser that your brand can stand behind and
photograph that event for free not only will your images probably be shared in a
newsletter or wherever the charity or fundraiser promotes those but you'll
also meet other vendors it's a great way for you to have content to blog about or
share about it tells your community you're still active you're still a
photographer and this is a cause you care about tip number five is to create
partnerships with local businesses in your market partnerships are really
based on relationships so I want you to create a list of businesses you think
would align well with your brand and go introduce yourself offer up some
headshots for them offer how you can bring value to them
before you expect them to give value to you because that relationship will start
off on a great flooding and once they trust you they'll start referring to you
and you can create some sort of mutually beneficial partnership so for example
maybe you want to work with a local gel shop and you volunteer to shoot one of
their runway shows for free once they totally love your photos and they loved
working with you you could offer to give them a free canvas of some of the
pictures that you've taken at their event up on the wall and say that you'd
love to leave some of your business cards this is a great way to
cross-promote but it starts with the relationship so
be sure to give before you ask so this has been just five of many ways that you
can market your photography business and I want to hear what was your favorite
tips what's one step that you're going to be
implementing is a very near future leave it for me in the comments section let's
continue the conversation if you have questions I love to answer them and I'll
see you next week bye guys