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!
