What are people's successful marketing tecniques?

[kyle_heaser]

<p>I am a photographer currently looking for ways to attract more clientele. What are the successful marketing tactics people have done to get more clients?<br>

Thanks,</p>

<p>Kyle </p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>In what specialty?</p>

<p>Marketing weddings is very different from commercial/product is very different from fashion/glamor</p>

<p>In my tiny niche, I mail postcards to my prospective clients 4-6 times a year. Most of my prospects don't need my services every day, but I need to keep my name in front of them. I'm pretty sure that's not a valid marketing technique for a wedding photographer.</p>

<p>You need to give us enough information about what you are doing so we can help.</p>

<p><Chas></p>

[Stock-Photos]

<p>To market my stock images, in addition to a couple of agencies, I publish lots of images (which I think might sell as stock) to photo.net with accurate, descriptive captions and tags.</p>

<p>I sell prints via harrington.zenfolio.com where I managed to make the pages do well on the search engines for phrases like "photos for sale" , "nature photos for sale" "boston photos for sale" etc.</p>

<p>If you want people to hire you for specific work, build, and learn to optimize for search, a web site with a domain name which consists of the phrase people would most likely search for when looking for your service. salem-portraits.com for example.</p>

[Ian Taylor]

<p>Word of mouth</p>

[craigblankphoto]

<p>You have to tell us what market you are trying attract. <br>

As a commercial photographer I do not do a whole lot of marketing. I have a handful of clients that keep me super busy. When I am slow I contact businesses that I would want as clients. It is a numbers game in that you have to contact a lot of people to get one response, but I look at as getting my name out there. Never an email blast. All inquiries are personally tailored with a lot of research involved.</p>

<p> </p>

[nate_delucca]

<p>Wow, didn't realize that last post was so long, sorry about that!</p>

[nate_delucca]

<p>I find this subject pretty fascinating. I'm starting a new post on a different thread about it, but thought I'd comment here as well. <br>

First, I'm a marketing guy, who recently got engaged and needed a photographer for my wedding. Since my fiance was calling the shots for who to use, I let her pick. But then I sat her down and figured out why she decided to use who she used, went through all the steps she used in picking that person, and why she didn't go with others. <br>

The results will surprise a lot of you.<br>

Not only that, I can't believe how many professional wedding photographers don't know a thing about marketing! Even the ones who are tops at their craft, still miss out on great leads because they aren't getting in front of the right people. <br>

Here's a little of what I found out through talking to her...<br>

For example, when my fiance walked me through how she found our photographer, she googled "Birmingham Wedding Photographer". This is what 95% of people do when looking for a photographer, they google "Wedding Photographer" and the city. While there are some websites that spend time and money trying to rank for the term "Wedding Photographer Birmingham", the first 7 results are called "Google Places" results. These are free results that people get for registering their business through google. Definitely do this. You don't even need to have a website for these. And all of these are ranked higher then the people spending money ranking their websites! Since they're first, her eyes naturally go to these first. <br>

Next I asked her what do you look for first. Well, she ignores the ads (don't waste your money if you don't have it), and first looks for the photography sites that have a name listed in the title, and clicks on their sites first. That's her first criteria, selecting a site that has a full name. So if you have a site called birmingham wedding photographer, she wont even give your site a click. <br>

Once she opens a site, if the site feels old or cheesy, she's out. Gone, no looking back. This is why I recommend word-press for your site, with almost no effort you can find a new look for your site and update it, and never miss out because you're site looks dated. If she likes the site design, she checks out the main photo posted on the site. If she doesn't like that, she's out. Make that photo count people! It sounds harsh, but make that a picture of an attractive person. It really makes a difference!<br>

Next, she looks for recent albums. It's all about what have you done lately, and how good it is. The latest trend is no "posed" shots (in her mind it's the latest trend anyway), so she's looking for the artsy, interesting shots. If the last wedding taken has all cheesy posed shots, she's out. <br>

She will check facebook fan pages for photographers she likes, so if you're posting a recent wedding shoot there, keep doing it, it's working! Same with twitter (although not a often). Blogs are a huge plus, because it's an easy way of saying look what I've done lately. Social media is great for photographers. Websites matter in certain ways, just don't let it hurt your business. <br>

Ok, so take a lot of the notes I've suggested with a grain of salt though, this is just one person giving their comments. But it's one person that got a nice paying wedding gig from this.<br>

I've decided to talk to more people about this subject now, and see how consistent this information is. Feel free to check out my other post (when I get around to putting it up) where I'll go into more detail with this stuff. I'll probably even come up with a whole marketing strategy that I can give to anyone interested. Well see how things go.<br>

Hope it helps!</p>

 

[francis_chesko]

<p>To summarize Nate's point, you need to have an attractive and up to date website featuring your best photos. And don't forget to optimize your site for search engines, like Google, so people can easily find you.<br /><br /></p>

[ilovemedia]

<p>The popular choices have been the utilization of email marketing and social media. How about your website? Does it have a high rank in search engines? What you can do to achieve that is Search Engine Optimization.<br /><br /></p>