Imagine a world where one wedding just isn’t enough for a bride. She loves them so much that she just wants to get married every weekend! Who cares who the groom is?! She just wants to relive that amazing day over and over again, and of course have you photograph each and every one!
Ok, time to wake up! Unfortunately we don’t live in that world and instead we face the reality that wedding photography is a hard business. Not just because of the scale of the event, or the long hours of shooting and editing, or the knowledge and skill required, but because you always need a constant flow of new customers.
Unlike other genres of photography, wedding photographers can’t rely on regular customers or repeat business as brides only get married once. Ideally!
Of course weddings inevitably yield baby and family portraits which you’ll be only too happy to shoot. But if weddings are what you want to focus on then how do you keep the momentum going and keep the portfolio building? And where exactly is that new business going to come from?
If you’re like me your first experience as a wedding photographer was second shooting at a friend’s wedding. That was a great start, but you only have so many friends and, inconveniently for you, they’re not all about to get married!
The solution is to grow your potential client base but that’s not an easy task either. With little wedding experience why would brides come running to you? Time to think smart.
Think beyond brides. There’s a lot of people out there in your town, city, state, and a lot of them are going to know couples who have just got engaged, so these people become your target audience. Convert them into advocates of your work and they will become your PR agents and find the brides for you.
So how do you create these superfans when they have probably never bought professional photography services before? Easy. By running a promotion. That’s what I did and it worked! Here’s the lowdown:
I needed to provide the opportunity for people to sample professional photography at low cost and low risk so I created a set of one-hour sessions costing just $100 each. These could be used for anything they wanted – portraits, parties, sport, as I feel comfortable shooting any genre. In return for their investment each client would receive ten edited photos on a CD and also uploaded to an online gallery for sharing with their friends. Yes, I know that’s not a model to base a business on but remember this was a promo that had a higher purpose and promos are often run at a loss.
Next was the name. The promo needed to sound catchy and it also needed to quickly and easily relay the fact that these were little bite-sized tasters of professional photography. Being Asian and living in a foodie city it wasn’t long before The Sushi Sessions were born!
I wanted the Sushi Sessions to sell fast so I limited the set to just ten to make them appear exclusive and drive demand. This would also manage the amount of time and work involved at the back end.
It was time to take the promo to market. For this I used the most powerful, free marketing medium of our time: facebook. I had just created my facebook business page and gathered my first 100 fans so this was a great time to run the promo as a celebration of my fledgling achievement. $100 sessions to celebrate 100 fans – catchy huh? I created an event with details of the promo and invited all my fans and friends (some 600+ at the time) to “attend”. The only requirement was that to book a session they would have to “Like” my page.
I clicked “Create Event” then took a deep breath and waited.
The response was incredible. Half of the Sushi Sessions were gobbled up in the first 3 days and all ten were sold within a week! The clients were excited at the prospect of having professional photos (for some this was their first time) and I had loads of positive comments from friends saying what a great idea it was!
Most of the Sushi Sessions were booked for baby and family portraits but my clients included two brides-to-be and a wedding celebrant. Bingo!
The sessions all went to plan and my clients were extremely pleased with their photos. But would the promotion yield the word of mouth and bookings I anticipated?
Well, referrals from the clients led to a full priced family portrait session, two baby sessions and my first boudoir session! But the best news was that both brides-to-be booked me as their wedding photographer and a referral brought in another wedding! I was ecstatic! Seven bookings including three weddings from just ten promo sessions was a fantastic result and would totally help to get my wedding business up and running!
So that’s my story. Tiny promos landed the big fish and I believe they will do the same for you too!
If you’ve also had success with promos I’d love to hear about it so please share your story!
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I’m a born and bred Londoner who decided to give up the rat race, move halfway round the world to Australia and live by beautiful Bondi Beach.
But that’s not all. I also bought loads of cool camera gear to play with then realised I could use it to make a living, and now I run a successful wedding and baby photography business.
My background in media and marketing has been invaluable in quickly establishing myself, particularly through social networking, and I’m keen to help others do the same. I also strongly believe in giving back to the community, so look out for my blog posts where I’ll be sharing thoughts, insights, and tips about life as an emerging wedding photographer.