Real Estate and Forex and Life, Oh My!

Apparently I don't know what it means to be a consistent blogger. Anyways there are a few things to be updated in my life. 1. Real Estate Investing Since last November I have been interested in investing in real estate. I Read more

Time Keeps Marching

The summer has been a whirlwind of fun. My parents were here for about 6 weeks, though they did travel a lot during that time. I was able to spend about 8 days with them down at my sister's Read more

Made It Through The Winter!

Well it seems that the winter is finally over. In fact there wasn't much of a spring around here. As my friend Casey put it, in Wisconsin there is winter, and then there's a death match between winter and Read more

New Job Finally

I've been back in the States since October and have had a couple of jobs here and there, but they weren't very good and didn't last long. Well it's been just a bit over four months and I finally Read more

I've Been Everywhere Man

Well I have now come to the end of my career on cruise ships. I thought it'd be nice to provide a little list of all the places I've been in the last 3 years. Most of the names Read more

I'm Off to See the Wizard

The wonderful wizard of Alaska!! Yeah I can't wait to be back in Alaska. Sounds strange to say that because it's gonna be 5 long months of hard work but it's gonna be a nice change - at least Read more

Skydiving in Honolulu

Well, this is definitely something worth writing about. I jumped out of an airplane. The airplane was 14,750 feet in the air. The free fall was 60 seconds. It was amazing. I had never thought about sky diving before Read more

Next Contract - Panama Canal and Alaska

With also a few other places thrown in such as Tahiti, Bora Bora, Hawaii and Christmas Island!! If you're interested please see below my itinerary for this next contract on the ms Statendam. I'll be joining it during dry dock Read more

Photography Business

Learn How To Start Marketing Your Photography Business

There are a lot of things to think about when you’re beginning to market your photography business. The type of marketing that you do should be determined by the type of photography you are engaged in and the type of clients that you have.

When you’re first starting out with your business, you probably don’t have a lot of capital to invest in marketing, so you’re going to want to be as cheap as possible and still be able to get your message across. Luckily, there are some cheap marketing strategies available to you; some of these strategies are even free.

Give Something To Get Something

The best way to get something is to give something first, and you can’t just give something worthless and expect to get something worthwhile in return. You need to be generous and give something that truly has value.

Consider this. You are at a park and you see a group of friends having a great time, maybe even at some sort of landmark. You notice that they are really enjoying themselves but none of them has a camera. Whip your camera out and offer to take their photo and email the results to them free of charge! Don’t mention that it’s free of charge, just offer to do it. They’ll be super impressed and happy to have some nice photos. Then when you email the photo to them, include a link back to your website. You’ve already got people who like you and now you’ve introduced them to your website where they will likely go in the future when they need professional photos taken. They might even refer other customers to you.

All this took place because you had the good foresight to see an opportunity that cost you nothing, but profited much. Remember how I said you needed to offer something of value? Yes it’s true, but value doesn’t always equate to money. In this scenario you didn’t spend any money but you were still able to offer something of great value.

You can use this same line of thinking to market your services in many different places. You can even make accidents like this happen less accidentally and more planned. Simply visit sites where you think there might be a lot of people. Search out those who don’t have cameras on them and grab your opportunity to get some free marketing!

An important thing to remember about this approach is that your customers aren’t actually buying a photo from you. They are buying you. This is true for almost every sale ever made. The client buys something because they like or trust the person that is selling it to them. The product can be the best in the world but if the salesman selling it is mean or unprofessional, the product is gonna stay on the shelf.

Search Engine Optimization: The Single Best Marketing Strategy For Nearly Every Business

Apart from the type of aggressive personal marketing that was just described, the best type of marketing is search engine optimization. The internet is king. If you rank well for searches in Google and other search engines, you’re going to get a lot of business. Every day people are getting more and more tech savvy. Everyone knows what the internet is and nearly everyone uses it. If you have a question about something, it is likely that you will turn to Google and within minutes you’ll have an answer.

What you need to do is find out how to rank well for these keywords in Google so that your website can get its fair share of the search traffic. Getting ranked in Google is usually not a matter of being expensive, but rather a matter of a lot of hard work. Of course you can hire other people to do the hard work, so then it’s a matter of cost.

There are plenty of programs that help you do this, but my favorite is The Keyword Academy. I have been a member of this site since 2009 and I totally believe in it. It’s free for the 1st month so you can decide whether or not it’s for you, and then after that it’s only $33 a month. That’s a super deal for having all the tools, support and information you need to keep your business getting all the business you can cope with.

Other Methods To Market Your Photography Business

The two already mentioned methods of marketing are where I would spend most of my energy, as they are the two best methods by a long shot. There are of course plenty of other ways to market a business however and they shouldn’t be completely overlooked. You can look into joining some photography clubs in your local area. They might be able to promote you to potential clients in your area.

Social networks are becoming increasingly important these days. Youtube, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, just to name a few of the big ones. If you market yourself on all of these effectively, you can very quickly become fully booked for years to come.

Hopefully this provides some food for thought and helps you get started!

Posted on in Photography Business, Photography Business Marketing Leave a comment
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