Create an idea disc for your prospects
We're in the images business. Having many sources of eye stimulation for clients is as important today as it ever was. We show them albums, portrait samples, a web site, and perhaps even slide shows on a computer or TV at the studio.
But are you offering anything that they can take with them? Do you have a visual presentation that you can mail? Here's a different twist on an old idea.
Sure, you can send them to your web site to view your beautiful samples in an award-winning (and sometimes slow and frustrating) Flash presentation. But with most prospects spending less than 90 seconds on a web site, is this really the best way? When potential clients are on the web they are under the temptation to keep on clicking, keep on researching. Their time is short and they have other photographers to check out. You cannot afford to lose those prospects that have already made contact.
The Dirty Little Secret
Today's most dangerous trend in the business of wedding and portrait photography is that your customer is increasingly being marketed to by either your suppliers or your suppliers' competitors. This applies to labs, album companies, video product companies, other specialty novelties, and just about every other thing you sell out of your studio. More and more, you will run into clients who want to handle their own final products. This trend is driven not only due to cost factors but by the clients' own creative desires and tech savvy. More and more clients want their photographer to take the images and give them digital files. While this trend may have been started by "pioneers" who were new to the business and would do anything for their first jobs, it has become an expectation from most clients outside the upper income brackets.
Bridal Shows
Wedding photographers are generally split into two camps on bridal shows. Some swear by them, while others feel they are a waste of time. Both are correct.
Some photographers are convinced that the brides who go to bridal fairs are in the lower income range, therefore not worth marketing to. In reality, there are bridal shows in most cities that attract three different wedding budget price points.
Some promoters are specifically looking for the more affluent brides, and therefore sell booths and displays to higher end vendors, including top photographers. These shows are priced accordingly. To exhibit at these fairs, and for them to benefit you, your work must be excellent, artistic or very impressionable. Couples in high income brackets will not hire inexpensive photographers, nor unknowns. A reputation among the affluent society is very helpful.
The Old and New Marketing for Weddings
If you're new to the wedding business you may not realize that studio marketing was considerably different only a few years ago. In fact, for decades there were proven formulas that photographers would follow and they generally worked. The more marketing you did the more business you had. It was quantifiable based on how often you did what the others did, or how much you outspent each other.
Today the rules keep changing frequently, and it is important that you stay tuned not only to what successful photographers are doing, but that you even stay one step ahead of the trends. It is now particularly important to keep up with these trends because in many cases it is the clients who are setting them and demanding changes to your business model. To play only the old fashioned way will mean to be left in the dust in a very short time.