Last Updated: February 14th, 2020
How can I promote my wedding photography?
This is one of the biggest questions asked by beginner wedding photographers every day. Heck, even a lot of established wedding photographers that find themselves in a slow season might be wondering the same.
We have been professional wedding photographers for the past 3+ years and by the end of this year will have shot over 60 weddings and even more couples, engagement, family, and portrait sessions. We’ve managed to promote our photography business well enough to capture the attention and hearts of so many great clients who have decided to book us to capture some of the most important moments of their lives together.
While it does often feel like there is a little bit of luck involved in this process, we want to give you some wedding photography marketing and promotion tips to help you get your photo services in front of clients who actually want to pay for your work.
Online Marketing Vs. In Person Marketing – Which is Better?
Modern wedding photographers will probably be focusing their thoughts on online promotion through a portfolio website, social media, online ads, etc. In our experience, connecting with potential clients through the power of the internet has been HUGE for our business. This was especially true in the early stages.
In person marketing, though, is actually the most powerful of the two. Receiving referrals through word of mouth or having the chance to talk to a potential client in person makes an impact that no amount of online engagement can recreate.
Ultimately – it’s the combination of both methods that will produce the best results.
In the corporate world (lame we know!) this is called finding “synergies” – the interaction or cooperation between two or more things to create a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects (source).
In the tips below, we’re going to highlight wedding photography service promotional methods based on whether they are tied to your online presence or built around connecting with people “in real life.”
Online Marketing for the Wedding Photographer – 5 Methods
In this section, we’re going to talk about online marketing methods that have worked for us to get new clients to book with us. Most of these things are fairly intuitive but learning how to do them well is what will set you apart from everyone else.
1). Portfolio Website
The most important online presence that you need to create for yourself is your personal website. This site should showcase a portfolio of your best photography work – normally targeted towards weddings and couple’s portraits.
More than that, though, your website should be designed around your brand vision. Honestly – this may be one of the more challenging aspects of starting a wedding photography business. With a rock solid brand, more people will be attracted to working with you.
Some aspects of your brand that should be reflected on your website will include a good About page (should talk about who you are, how you work, what you offer that is different – and include a personal touch to help people connect with you more), brand specific imagery (think: logo and other graphics), and so on.
We’ve come to view our website as the “end of the sales funnel” so to speak. It’s where potential clients end up after they’ve found our work through a friend, social media, a business card, or some other source. In this sales process, we already have their attention, and the website needs to make it easy to find information and get in touch.
Related posts:
- How to Create Your Own WordPress Website with Bluehost
- How to Start a Blog – A Comprehensive Guide for You
Currently, Instagram is the most powerful social media tool for wedding photographers. In 2018, about 80% of all our bookings came from people who found us on Instagram. That is absolutely crazy when you think about it!
Oh…and we didn’t have to spend a dime on advertising!!
At it’s core, IG is a platform designed for sharing pictures. As wedding photographers, we share the images we have taken, and have made a real effort to showcase the best of our work in a curated fashion in order to have a consistent feed. People looking for a wedding photographer will find our work on Instagram and get in touch.
It really is that simple!!
The real trick to Instagram is learning how to effectively reach the audience you want to engage with your work.
This isn’t really an exact science, but it’s also not nearly as difficult as you would think. On a basic level, here is how we approach Instagram to promote our business:
- Research hashtags and use them. Hashtags are the keywords of Instagram. It’s like when you type into your internet search bar “wedding photography tips” and get a bunch of pages that (hopefully) match what you’re looking for. People search through Instagram in much the same way. Finding hashtags that are low on competition and appealing to your audience is very important. This is probably the hardest part about IG – and might require some trial and error on your part.
- Write engaging text to go along with the images. While most people will just be browsing through the pictures on IG, engaging people with stories, questions, calls-to-action, etc. are ways to really build a powerful brand on the platform. We often ask our audience questions – which helps boost engagement, and thus the amount of people seeing our work.
- Interact with your audience. Simple: when people leave comments on your photos, make sure you reply back to them. Even a simple “thanks for the comment” can go a long way.
- Schedule posts for consistency. One of the hardest parts about ANY type of social media is making sure you are using it consistently. There is a reason why big businesses these days hire entire teams to manage their social media accounts. Regular posting and consistent posting will help you to grow and retain your audience. We use a free-to-start scheduling tool to post on Instagram (…and Facebook/Pinterest/Twitter) called Later to do just this.
- Post your best work. It goes without saying, but gosh we’re going to say it anyways, post the BEST work you have. People are not going to be interested in looking at a wedding photographers page that is just populated with boring images that don’t stand out. It absolutely takes time to build a great portfolio, but even from the first couple of shoots you do – emphasize the standouts.
For more help using Instagram to effectively promote your business:
- How to Use Instagram Search to Get New Photography Gigs
- How to Use Instagram to Market Your Photography Business
- Is Your Instagram Just Featuring One Type of Photography? Or Do You Mix it Up?
Other Social Media
We clump all other social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter into this section because they have consistently underperformed in our experience. They do not bring in the targeted type of traffic that Instagram seems to have.
With this said, we have heard many success stories by other wedding photographers using these platforms. As a method of promotion, there is certainly nothing wrong with trying to diversify your efforts.
We have a reasonable following on Facebook – and quite a bit of engagement with our posts. The issue with FB has been the audience it has attracted to us has mostly been comprised of price shoppers – not our ideal clients. For a wedding photographer just starting out, this may work better since they will not be charging as high of prices as we do today.
If anything is clear, though, platforms like Facebook have, in recent years, scaled back the amount of organic traffic your content will receive for free. The truth is – photographers with a lot of success through Facebook (in particular) have had to spend a good deal of money on advertising to reach their audience. This can pay off in spades if you have success, but it does feel like a gamble.
Websites like Pinterest & Twitter are interesting social media alternatives because you would not think of them as locations where people would visit to find a wedding photographer, but they absolutely can be. Pinterest is comprised heavily of images – and for some photographers, especially those who like to travel, it can be a real gold mine.
The single most important thing about promotion on social media is maintaining regularity in your posts. There is no sense in having a Twitter account if you’re never going to use it – in fact it may be detrimental!!
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a more out of the box way of marketing your wedding photography business, but it works!
Writing guest posts for other photography and wedding industry websites can be huge for building your credibility in the industry.
How do you do this???
First – you need to research to find websites that have an audience you would like to address. You may want to start by looking into local wedding publications with an online presence – and offering to write content relevant to their audience.
Second – you need to write engaging content that is interesting and helpful. For example, you could write a post about wedding photography trends in [your city].
Third – you need a great author bio with links to your site and social media. Readers need to know that you are the expert voice behind the post – and should have a clear-and-easy way to get in touch with you.
On the surface, guest blogging is very easy to do. The difficulty comes from finding the appropriate websites to blog for, and convincing them to let you chime in. This becomes easier as you become more experienced in the wedding photography industry – so may not be a day 1 option.
Create Vendor Relationships Online
In the wedding industry, your connection with other vendors will help fuel great collaborations and referrals. While we prefer connecting with vendors in real life before touching base online, we have had success chatting some vendors up online before every meeting face-to-face.
Some of the things we would look for early on is finding vendors we felt we could connect with on personal and professional levels. We like working with vendors who are reputable and have examples of their end products when possible (like florists and videographers).
As we do wedding photography exclusively, last year we connected with a videography team located about an hour away from us. We loved their work and were happy to start referring some of our clients to them. We actually just worked with them a week ago, and it was an AMAZING time. Probably the most fun we had at a wedding – honestly. Looking back, it’s crazy to think this connection just started online and grew into a great partnership.
Related posts:
In Person Marketing for the Wedding Photographer – 5 Methods
For this section, we’re going to have a look at in person marketing methods that we have utilized to promote our business with great success. Keep in mind, some of these approaches are more longer term, but are absolutely essential to build a reputable photography brand and get a little more security in your bookings well into the future.
Connect with Vendors
Okay – we just talked about connecting with vendors online, but there is a lot more to this sort of relationship building.
The best vendors for us to work with are those we have already seen in action.
It’s much easier to recommend a DJ when we’ve lived through the reception dance party and have seen how people respond. The reason for this is because it’s so easy to make yourself sound great on paper, but reality can often be very different.
Personally, we look for just a few simple attributes of other wedding vendors that will make us want to work with them again:
- They act professional
- They are responsive to questions and concerns (of us & our mutual clients)
- They produce good quality work
These things really are incredibly simple!
Normally, with vendors we liked working with, we will end the night by giving them one of our business cards. We’ll end up getting in touch via email or social media, and try to make an effort to tag them in our posts when we put up sneak peaks and so on.
Our favorite vendors end up on our referral list, and we receive the same type of treatment in return.
This is a really big deal as it will help you to start being promoted by other people in the industry. While online marketing is great, it’s not nearly as powerful as this sort of word-of-mouth referral.
Organize Styled Shoots
In collaboration with other wedding vendors, putting together a styled shoot is a great way to expand your portfolio. We must have participated in close to a dozen styled shoots early on in our wedding photography career.
While it should be said that these shoots are not reflective of an actual wedding day (and you might need to set that expectation with future clients…), they are often a lot of fun and result in some beautiful photographs. Being able to have more control over the artistic vision is wildly beneficial. We still participate in these types of shoots from time to time, even with our busy schedule, just to help maintain our brand imagery and, frankly, get a break from shooting paying clients.
Styled shoots help you promote your wedding photography business in the following ways:
- You will expand your portfolio with new and beautiful images
- You will work with other wedding vendors and network
It’s simple but effective stuff – and can be done at any point in your wedding photography career!!
Attend a Bridal Show
We are hesitant to add this suggestion as we don’t care for bridal shows much ourselves – but we know plenty of photographers who swear by them and have success, so here we are.
Most bridal shows look like this:
You (a vendor) pay for a space to set up a booth showcasing your work. On the day of the bridal show, many inquiring brides will walk around the event center touching base with wedding photographers and other vendors. In theory, you will be able to speak with these prospective clients and make a sales pitch to them. In practice, not all bridal shows are made alike – some even just attract price shoppers looking to work with the cheapest person there.
For us, bridal shows often feel quite impersonal. It’s a good space for a big wedding photography company trying to maximize sales to setup for, but not so great for a wedding photographer who is more selective in their clientele (like we are).
With that said – the ability to promote your services is very high in a space like this. Having the actual foot traffic and eyes on your booth is incredibly valuable. In this sort of environment, your ability to be a salesman will be put to the test, though – so keep that in mind.
Offer a Referral Program
As you begin to book clients, it’s a valuable business practice to maintain a relationship with them. For some people, your personal connection will allow this to happen naturally. For others, the relationship can remain professional – and there is nothing wrong with that.
In either case, offering referral incentives is a great way to keep your past clients engaged with your business in some way or another. Referrals can be set up at different points to help promote new business growth. Here are a few ideas:
- Offer a steep discount for prints sold through their online gallery if they write a review of your services
- Offer a cash incentive to the person referring new clients that book your wedding photography services (you may even offer a slight discount to the new client, too!)
Give value, get value.
^This is a saying we basically live by with our business.
Connect With Your Current Clients
Last, but maybe most important, of all the promotion methods available to you as a wedding photographer – making your current clients love you is the most important.
In the long term, a client who really likes you will tell their family, friends, co-workers…random people on the internet…about your service. This = new clients.
In the short term, it’s just a good thing to actually offer a positive customer experience. Weddings can be super stressful – especially for couples who have been planning this event for a year or longer. Or some doing it in 3 months. As a wedding photographer, you have the opportunity to positively impact this experience. While capturing beautiful images of the day is a given, other little things you can prepare for to help out with is very beneficial.
A few things we do to bring our wedding photography business to the next level:
- Respond in a timely fashion to all questions and concerns
- Work with our clients to put together a wedding day timeline
- Go to weddings prepared with extra goodies and essentials like water, snacks, bug spray, feminine hygiene products, etc. – you never know when someone will need something like this
- Help out with little things throughout the day like getting bouts on the guys
- Bring our chill and fun personalities to the table, but not at the expense of our professionalism
These types of things (and more) will be noticed and appreciated by your clients. It’s the type of stuff that takes you from a 4 star service to a 5 star one. Trust us when we say that!
Conclusion
With so many ways to promote your wedding photography business, it’s a good idea to just pick a few and start with them. The most critical to us has been networking with other professionals in the real world and growing our website and Instagram followings.
By combining all of these promotional methods together with a solid portfolio, good reputation, and being easy to work with – we’ve managed to grow our business into a full time gig. It’s an amazing thing!
If you are trying to start or grow your wedding photography business, let us know how you’re doing in the comments below. If you’re struggling in any area in particular, let us know and we’ll see how we can help you out!!