16 Expert and Easy Photography Marketing Ideas

The idea that our product or content message spreads massively and quickly among users and it is they themselves who promote this content and thus can make it viral on different social networks.

Have you ever stopped to think about the mix that Photography and Marketing make? Seen from the outside, the profession of photographer can seem very simple. A good camera, take good photos, decide on a name for your business, create a website as an online portfolio, and wait for the customers to rain down, right?

Well, almost.

A good photography output is important; but needless to say, you cannot expect customers to come without making any efforts on marketing your expertise. Marketing is a huge factor that helps establish your brand as a photographer. At the same time, marketing effectively showcases your talent. If you still haven’t taken into consideration that marketing is an important element in your business as a photographer, it’s high time that you consider it as such.

16 Expert and Easy Photography Marketing Ideas

You have to focus your efforts on what works and what will lead you to be productive and achieve the results you want. Here, we present to you effective, expert, and easy photography tools and marketing ideas that will boost your photography career.

1. Identify Your Target Market for Personalised Campaigns

In order to be able to identify and know your customers, it is essential to have information about them. Data collection is fundamental to the next step: segmenting your customers. This data can come from different sources. Your website collects a very valuable amount of data related to web traffic. They will determine who your visitors are, what their environment is, and then what their behaviors and interests are.

Indeed, the data informs you about Internet users, their behavior (the pages visited, the visit time, the click rate, click-tracking, etc.), the connection context (day and time of the visit for example), and the origin of the traffic (search engines used, social networks, mobile or pc, etc.). Likewise, you will be able to take advantage of data generated on social networks if you are present there, or of data from your emailing campaigns such as your newsletters.

2. Build a Customer Database

A customer database is a file storing data relating to your customers and which will be useful for the personalization of the offers offered. Depending on your needs and goals, the customer database may contain:

• Their contact details
• Their previous purchases
• Their buying journey
• Etc.

Generally, you would use a CRM (Customer relationship management) to create, store and manage our customer database. There are photography management tools, you can choose the one that suits you and that will facilitate your customer management tasks.

So why create a customer database? Here are some good reasons to create and manage a customer database:

• Improve customer retention by offering them personalized offers.
• Increase turnover by attracting new customers.
• Have more sales by knowing how to personalize offers to new prospects.
• Reduced cost of acquiring customers.
• Improve customer relations, satisfaction rate, and loyalty.
• Strengthen Lead Nurturing with personalized data.
• The ROI of a customer database is estimated to be $ 5 for every dollar spent.

By collecting and analyzing information about customers and prospects, the company gets to know its ideal customer better, allowing it to personalize its offerings and the way it approaches customers.

3. Have an Up-to-Date Website to Showcase Your Work

Whether you make a living in selling photos or photography is your passion, every photographer wants their photos to be seen by as many people as possible. A photographer's website is the perfect tool for reaching as many people as possible with minimal effort while presenting photos in the best light.

In the profession of photographer, it is essential to be as close as possible to the public. In this context, a personal website serves both as a business card and brochure for your company and as a sales platform. A personal photographer site offers the following benefits:

• With a personal photography website, you have the ability to showcase your photos to the world. Potential customers will thus be able to get an exact idea of ​​your services and your offer.
• Thanks to your online presence, you will gain visibility with your customers. Today, websites are a central point of contact for receiving customer inquiries.
• In essence, a photographer's website is also a potential sales platform where customers can purchase the photos you have taken without having to pay a commission to a commercial photo platform.

Unlike social media platforms and general photo platforms, you have sole control over the content on your photography website. It will thus serve as an independent base and hub for all your online and social media activities.

Whether you are an ambitious hobbyist photographer or a professional, the same rules apply if you want to make money with your photos. The point is, the Internet is the main source of information for people looking for products or services today. By forgoing a personal website, photographers are also forgoing potential commissions.

4. Find partners

By working with external partners or workers, you discover a new way of looking at a business, helping to shape it for the future and even create new areas to expand it. With the right people and tools, success is magnified.

Partner with companies offering different products or services, but targeting the same audience! For example, if you are doing wedding reports, get closer to a videographer, an announcer, a DJ ... Nothing beats a good network to move faster and establish your brand image.

5. Create engagement on social media

On your Facebook page (if you don't have one, now is the time to start one!) It's very easy to build engagement with your fans. Start by regularly posting interesting content to the people who follow you. Engagement on social networks has several goals: keep in touch with people who already know you, make them want to share your content in order to attract new people to you, and sell products or services directly. Concretely, there are some publication ideas to create engagement: an unusual photo, a competition, "behind the scenes" photos, etc...

6. Pamper your ambassadors

Among your clients, you certainly have people who support you more than others, admirers who love your photos from the first hour and who naturally don't hesitate to talk about them around them. Develop a special relationship with them, and set up a sponsorship system for your photoshoots, for example! A customer brought back is a 20 × 30 offered for the sponsor! Your client ambassadors are essential for your communication. They are important because they are spontaneous and above all sincere! Enjoy it!

7. Make your name known

Another tip completely free and yet essential if you want to make yourself known on the networks: tag your photos! Indeed, you can be sure that in 90% of cases, your photos will end up on the internet. You might as well at least write your name on these photos! On certain online galleries, you can set downloads so that your watermark ends up on web files. This is a great way to prevent screenshots on the one hand, and then leave your "trail" on the other.

8. Write relevant articles

Of course, running a blog takes time and patience. You have to find the right themes and publish regularly. So you might as well be efficient! Submit articles on topics that interest your potential readers. For example, if you have a studio and want to sell portrait shoots, write an article like "5 tips for being photogenic for sure!" ". With these kinds of publications, you will attract to your site what are called qualified prospects, that is, people who are already interested in the subject.

9. Ask for recommendations and testimonials

Let's get straight to the point: Facebook, Google, etc. reviews are the new word of mouth. Don't be afraid to activate this feature on your page! Don't hesitate to ask them to post their review on your Facebook page. For those customers you have had a really good "feeling" with, ask them to write a few lines that you will post on your site as a testimonial.

10. Post Videos

Video is one of the best formats for sharing valuable content. On the one hand, video is the most descriptive format and secondly, it helps you to position in a double way, both for the reproductions on your blog and on your YouTube channel. In addition, video is the most developed and shared format in online marketing in the last year and it may follow that trend. It is an easy format to distribute on social networks and whose content invites you to share.

Strategically it is good that you create your own videos of your process in photography and upload them to your own YouTube channel, but also if necessary, you can have an account on Vimeo, Vine, or Instagram if the format and content allow it.

11. Post Compilations of the best articles and linked pages

It is another of the most effective ways to distribute content in an easy way. On the one hand, you are helping your readers as soon as you do a content curation or a compilation around a specific topic. On the other hand, you are creating external links to other pages or building content with internal links if you mean content within your own website. With this, you are building external and internal links that can help improve the SEO positioning of your page.

12. Make a podcast

The audio format makes a strong comeback in online communication. And it's not just about the radio or the music anymore. Platforms such as Itunes, Spotify, and Soundcloud are two channels where companies can offer varied and enjoyable content marketing.

And why not integrate these platforms with your blog or with your way of narrating? You don't have to stick only to the text, video, or photo format. Audio formats can help you to better publicize your brand, your products, your services and establish closer communication with your followers.

13. Small photo books to give away

This is a luxury variant of advertising. With a small photo book, you can make a big impression on your advertising. They leave a lasting and professional impression. Put yourself in their shoes: you're looking for a photographer and you have a few flyers and this photo book. If you want the professional: who do you choose?

The photo book is so great that people like to show it to others. Before the interested party decides, he shows the little photo book to his friends. Shortly before the photo session, he says: “Look, I'll take my photos with this photographer.” And he'll use it to advertise to you after the appointment.

14. Display your skills

Show your skills - create a creative image. Photography is a creative profession. Everyday work sometimes prevents us from developing creatively. Use your free time to regularly realize creative projects. You can reuse your past photos and add a new theme to them. Background remover tools for photographers can remove backgrounds from your images and then you can add a new theme and feel into your photographs.

Advertise with creative projects. With the creative projects, you achieve a higher reach and impact on all channels than with the photos you take every day. In addition, creative projects are just fun.

15. Themed photo ops like Halloween, Carnival, or just for fun

Offer themed photo ops. For example, for holidays or simply as a one-off promotion. You can repeat this next year. Give reasons for new photos. With one action you shift the focus of your performance. The focus is now on the action and the photo session experience. Potential customers who don't need new photos now get a reason to take some anyway. After all, it's all about having fun at the photo op. Your existing customers who already have photos of themselves will also receive a new reason. Time-limited actions also create pressure to act. A very good combination for you. As a tip, offer themed photo ops for groups too.

Related Post: 40 Free Resources to Help Grow You Photography Business

16. Share anything that integrates various formats and social networks

We could summarize this same post that you are reading as a post that collects different formats, links, photos, videos, audio, infographics, etc. But if the post has something, it is that you can also integrate or insert publications from other social networks so that, for example, content on Facebook or Twitter can be read as well as invite the participation of your readers.

If you insert your content with the link to your publication on Facebook or a series of Tweets, you can make your readers participate directly in those publications while they read your content, with which the content has integrated feedback and that helps the participation of your community on your social networks.

We leave you this example that perfectly integrates, Referrals, links and a Facebook post, from which many people could read and participate in the blog, in the Facebook post, and vice versa.

Your turn...

For many, photography is always synonymous with being outdoors. But sometimes there are just days when for some reason you can't go out or you just don't want to. The good news: Your own apartment is also full of photo opportunities. They may not be immediately apparent at first glance, but they are definitely there. Just see it as a challenge that also trains your photographic eye.

With this article, we have presented you with 16 great photography resources and ideas to help your photography business. With these marketing ideas, you can easily come up with a plan for your photography business that will definitely boost your presence in the market. All the best!