How To Market Your Wedding Photography Business in 2022
Wondering how to market your wedding photography business in 2022? That’s what we’re here for! Here at Second Fiddle, we help wedding photographers to win, and we have some tips and tricks about marketing your wedding photography business that will help you to grow and thrive in 2022.
What Is Marketing
Marketing Insider Group writes that at '“a fundamental level, marketing is the process of understanding your customers, and building and maintaining relationships with them.” This is particularly true for how to market your wedding photography business! As a wedding photographer, marketing is all about understanding your ideal client and building relationships with them.
A huge part of that is helping your ideal client to discover you in the first place. Marketing is anything and everything that helps get eyes on you and your brand - and, after that, it is what you do to convert that attention into bookings. Here are some of the best ideas and plans to rocket launch your business in 2022.
How To Market Your Wedding Photography Business
#1 - Go Where The Clients Are
Strategic marketing starts with a target audience - the ideal client you are trying to reach. As you consider how to market your wedding photography business, now is the time to consider the ideal client you are aiming for. Where do you have the most success already? What is the ‘vibe’ of the couples you shoot, and who are the people you want to work with in the future?
Once you’ve decided on your ideal client, begin to think about the niche interests and lifestyle choices they might make. What kind of hobbies and pastimes might your target couple be interested in? Farmer’s markets, cinema festivals, craft beer tastings - begin to think about where they might be spending time.
Then research local, interest-based events - the more specific to a hobby, a faith group, or an interest, the better - and consider how to get into these spaces. Sometimes simply a display stall of your work would be welcomed. Other times it is an interactive photo booth or an expertise-led talk or online workshop that is your ticket in - get creative! This is helpful because it doesn’t just get eyes on your work, it gets the right eyes.
#2 - Taster Shoots in Bridal Boutiques
Another way to get the right eyes on your work is to create a relationship with the kind of bridal boutiques that cater to the demographic of brides you are hoping to attract. Going into a wedding dress shop and offering free taster shots of soon-to-be brides who have found their dream dress can be an excellent time investment! You’ll give the bride a taste of your style of photography, direct her to your website, connect with her on a personal level to form a connection, and this means that when you email her the photos, you already have an open conversation about wedding photography!
#3 - Interact On Instagram
You already know that any conversation about how to market your wedding photography business is going to touch on Instagram. Social media can be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal, and Instagram is a great way to connect with clients.
Build rapport with your audience through Instagram Lives and stories. People want to trust that you can tell their story, and so it helps to create loyalty and excitement about your work if your social media gives a sense of your personality, your hard work, and your craft. Glimpses behind-the-scenes on your work will help people to feel connected to you.
Make sure that you are taking time to interact with your followers, replying to comments and DMs, and tagging all your clients in anything you post about them - this increases the chance that they will repost it and show your accounts to all their followers.
#4 - Social Media Giveaways
A tried-and-true method of increasing your reach and your following on Instagram is to run a giveaway. Partner up with someone whose audience is the demographic you want to reach but who doesn’t have a huge overlap with you in terms of followers: a wedding vendor of some kind may be the most likely partnership, but think back to the brainstorming you did about your target client’s lifestyle and think beyond the box. You could run a giveaway with a bakery or a yoga studio or a gym! Offer something you know your followers would love, but that isn’t going to steal too much capacity - a mini-photo shoot, perhaps, with a time cap.
#5 - Pinterest Is Your Best Friend
When you’re planning how to market your wedding photography business, do not ignore Pinterest! This platform is a goldmine for wedding photographers: Did you know that Pinterest users collectively pin around 900 million wedding pins every year?
Make sure you have a business account and you’ve claimed your site so that your pins link straight back to you. When it comes to designing your pins, add in a mix of graphics and straight images - a combination tends to do well. If making graphics is new to you, look into sites like Canva which help you to simplify the process.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) applies on Pinterest too, so check out our guide to using keywords on Pinterest to make sure your pins get discovered.
We’ve seen incredible success when wedding photographers get this right! If you don’t know where to start, our 5-Day Pinterest Challenge will kickstart you on Pinterest and get you to the next level.
#6 - Feature In Niche Publications
Getting your work featured on wedding blogs and in magazines is a fantastic way to reach people who would otherwise never have heard of you. This can feel overwhelming but start with local publications first. The keys here are persistence and creativity - and you’ve started your own wedding photography business, so you have both!
There are wedding blogs, which you can get into by pitching wedding-related stories, and there are niche interest blogs and publications that your ideal client may engage with. Either way, if you can come up with a story angle to attach to your images, they are more likely to catch an editor’s attention. Don’t be discouraged if this doesn’t work at first - persistence will help you build a connection with editors and let them know what kind of content they can come to you for.
#7 - Connect With Other Vendors
We touched on this when we talked about running an Instagram giveaway, but partnerships with fellow wedding vendors can help you with how to market your wedding photography business in lots of different ways.
Include a list of recommended local vendors on your website when you blog about the weddings you’ve done, and, in return, ask to be included on the websites and socials of other vendors. People booking one thing are likely to take recommendations about where else to look, so this is a helpful way to build credibility and increase your reach.
Another way to dip into the client pool of other wedding businesses is to offer to take some photographs of their products or services - if you are working the same wedding, this is really easy to do! - and ask them to tag you and link back to your socials when they use the photos.
#8 - Use Your Website
All of the ideas so far have been focused on getting exposure. Hopefully, this exposure funnels people, if not straight into your inbox, at least onto your website. In marketing, if you’re getting people to your website, you’re doing something right.
When they land there, you want this website to be as impressive and engaging as possible. When it comes to how to market your wedding photography business, your website is your calling card, so make sure that it shows your style clearly and showcases your best work. Keep it up-to-date, beautiful, and easy to navigate. Make sure that your approach to COVID-19 precautions is easy to find - couples may be looking for signs that you are responsible and prepared to adapt.
#9 - Your Blog Is Your Secret Weapon
Your blog is an incredible way to draw traffic to your website, build your credibility with prospective clients, and get them excited about working with you. Check out our guide to how often you should blog to answer your questions on how to market your wedding photography business through consistent blogging.
Your blog is a powerful tool to increase your Search Engine Optimization standing. This algorithm determines Google rankings and the exposure of your website. In other words: will you come up when people Google about wedding photography in your area?
Regular and specific blog content will help you do this! Return to that image of your ideal client - What questions do they have? When it comes to weddings, you have experience and expertise that they don’t! So, answer their questions. Our article on 9 Wedding Blog Ideas will help you get started here.
#10 - Streamline Your Process
You don’t want to spend hours a day writing content about your craft instead of doing the craft itself - so something that is helpful as you plan how to market your wedding photography business is to look for opportunities to save time.
One of the perks of keeping an updated blog is that it will help with how to market your wedding photography business by streamlining your content creation. The photos you use and the copy you write for your blogs can be repurposed for your social media, which helps you to be cohesive and saves you time.
#11 - Delight Your Clients
Happy clients are a huge resource! If your clients love you, they will open up a whole new pool of work to you as they refer you to their friends. Not only do you want the whole experience of working with you to be stress-free and enjoyable for them, but you should create opportunities for them to rave about you.
One idea for how to market your wedding photography business by getting happy clients to talk about you is to send a sample album, either printed physically or in a USB format, in a beautifully wrapped package. Give the couple a heads up that you’ll be doing this and encourage them to film an unboxing as they see the photos from the day for the first time.
Another way is to offer discount packages along with referrals - so that your clients know that you will give their friends a good deal and they are motivated to share about you.
Ask your very happiest clients if they would be willing for you to film a short interview about working with you, and have that on your website.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this has answered some of your questions about how to market your wedding photography business! You can see that there are so many unique ways to build up your audience and cultivate your clientele base, and each of them contributes to a thriving business. If you’d like more ideas and more support in marketing your wedding photography, we can help!
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