Oct

Marketing Campaigns for Photographers – The Discount Book

There are dozens of different discount or voucher books available for all sorts of different industries. I’m sure at some point you’ve been offered the opportunity to appear in one, for a small fee of course.

Like many of the other marketing campaigns in this series this idea comes from something that already exists and can be successful. The difference being you create your own. Do a bit of the donkey work and save yourself a considerable amount of money.

Putting a discount book together is an easy enough task and just requires a bit of time on the phone and on the computer.

This campaign can work well for most industries but it is particularly good in the wedding and baby marketplace.

The voucher book

A set of discount vouchers which offer between 10% – 60% off retail prices. Thanks to daily deal websites people are used to receiving large discounts but really you want offers that are appealing whilst still allowing businesses to profit.

How many businesses you want to get involved is up to you but what you need is a good spectrum of services within the same industry.

You also need a good balance of specific businesses and not to have too much competition for each specialisation.

Making your voucher book different

The key is not to get greedy and try and make a large profit on selling the space within the voucher book.

Obviously you need to cover your costs and the time you spend designing but you can create prices for those additional services.

Selling the idea to businesses

Example – Wedding-Dress shop
I have simplified the pricing so it’s up to you what you want to charge.

For £100 they appear in the book as one of only 3 wedding dress shops.
They can have whatever deal they like in the voucher book but it must have a monetary value which can be used for the marketing of the books. For example you want to be able to tell people that these voucher books have over £1000 of savings or can cut their wedding budget by 10%.
They receive 100 vouchers books for their own distribution with the option to purchase more at a cost of £1 each.

Let the companies you are getting on board know that you are not a publishing or marketing company and that what they are paying is covering costs.

It’s also worth pointing out that you will be in the book yourself and use the discount you are offering as a benchmark.

Let the companies know how many voucher books will be printed and the reach of the distribution.

Distribution

It’s worth suggesting ways that the companies you have in the voucher book can distribute their books but at the same time you want to have your own distribution plan.

Here’s a few ideas but please feel free to add a few of your own.

Wedding fairs – via your stand and gift bags
Wedding venues
Restaurants and wedding catering companies
Local press and specific industry magazines.
Registry offices
Beauty Salons
Social media and online promotion – down-loadable voucher books

Michael Shilling I divide my time between being a photographer, retoucher, photography blogger and podcaster. Deep down I like to consider myself a portrait photographer and in my short 10 ten years in the business I’ve taken over 100,000 people’s studio portraits. When I’m not taking pictures I’m writing about it, most of my rambles can be found daily at http://photocreative365.com.