Hi Everyone,

So, I thought I would start this fun topic. I'll rephrase the question here:

What was your single most successful marketing campaign or action you have ever taken?

What was it? When was it? How did it work/what did you do? What were the results? and, well, as any marketing is - how much luck did you feel was involved?

This can be anything from a huge advertising campaign to a spur of the moment thing. Whatever you feel is the very best thing you have done that brought more attention & customers to your business.

(Small note - for this post, lets not have word of mouth as an answer. But rather, how you generated that word of mouth. I'd much rather hear of speific examples that really worked for you compared to shooting weddings & word of mouth slowly spreading)

So, I will go first. Though, I have to say, we haven't done much marketing of any real type. Still though, the best thing we have done, believe it or not, was posting on craigslist. We really didn't think we'd get anything from it. But, we decided to give it a try - free advertising, right? (free = ~2 minutes to post it)

We started posting in December & started getting inquiries pretty quickly. We posted every two days or however often craigslist lets you post. And, we posted regularly for quite some time. I know for a fact that four of our weddings (a total of 15 now for the year) saw our post and contacted us! We never never expected this to come from craigslist. I'd say a good bit of luck was involved - the right people saw & read our posts! Who knew?

Anyway, there is a meek example. I'm sure you guys have done much more interesting things that really had a huge impact. Share & share alike.

I'm sorry that I don't have any good marketing advice to share. I'm just starting out and haven't found anything good yet.

I do have a question though. I've seen elsewhere that craigslist worked for someone. I'd possibly like to jump on this bandwagon (can't go too wrong with free advertising). As a starting point, what/where did you post? What wording in your ad seemed to bring in the brides? Did you include pictures, phone number, links?

While these proved effective in booking some brides, did you find that you had a lot of inquiries that didn't book? Any that were scams/spam? Do craigslist brides spend less money than others?

Hmm, well, as soon as you post anything on craigslist, you pretty much have to expect to get spam. I'm on more lists than I can count due to this (I really should have created a gmail address just for it - I did use the craigslist 'false' email as putting my real email would have resulted in even more spam)

Anywho, I posted in events and sometimes creative. I posted the starting price in the title to weed out those immediatly not in that price bracket. I included a bit about myself, links to the website, etc. I did not put phone numbers or the such there as it can invite spam (which I still got some from people that saw it... I advised them that calling with solicitation like that is against craigslist's toa).

Once contacted, it is all about getting to know the bride, getting to know her situation, making her/them feel comfortable with you, etc. And, as long as you are posting your starting price on craigslist, that'll weed out the budget brides. I'd say it STRONGLY depends on your area as to who uses it. More or less, a shot in the dark really - it may pay off, it may not. Worth a try at least though.

I've never found anything particularly successful. It really depends on your pricing and target clientèle. If your prices are low enough, you'll get work without even trying - but you wont' make a living.

If you're at the uber-high-end, you'll be getting all your work through word-of-mouth. (It's ironic that the highest paid photographers don't spend money on advertising.)

If you're in the middle, you are competing with everybody else on price and value and style all simultaneously - and even referrals don't guarantee you'll get the job.

I can say this: all I've ever gotten from ads on fancy wedding and photography sites are hits from other photographers (and there seems to be an awful lot of them). I've gotten a lot of low-end work from Adwords - but the idiots around here have bid the prices up to absurd levels ($3 to $5 per click).

I've not gotten much of any response at all from local wedding guide ads.

Around here, bridal shows are where the majority of the mid-level bookings take place - but if you don't have a big fancy booth with several attractive people manning it and lots of terrific-looking framed samples and albums, you shouldn't even bother showing up.

one thing
a happy bride



sf

Hi Spencer,

One that really sticks out to me is slideshows... and next would be our Interview video we did 2 years ago (yikes! we need to do another one soon!). We use Showit Web.

Most currently its our new business cards...I need to take a picture of it.

I would elaborate more but I have to get ready for DJ's polo match...

Not sure if this is answer you need but it works for us.


I see you're from Chattanooga! Hope to meet you soon.

Yes to the happy brides - they get people to go look at your web site.

Yes to the slideshows - man, people LOVE those things! (So do I )

But if you're still new, how do you find brides to make happy? I think that's the core question here. Personally, just getting to know reception site owners has been really valuable for me. They've been great about referring clients to me. I just contacted a few of them, said I wanted to come by some time and introduce myself since I'm pretty new in the business, brought some sample albums. Then we just had a good time chatting like friends. Bonus: It's fun to do!

Spencer,

I think websites are great marketing tools. By putting the URL into your signature they can be great ways to drive people to your site.

The problem I know we are all guilty of, is not keeping our sites current. Especially when we run a promo on the website that is for a specific amount of time. For example, Spencer on your site right now is special for June 2007.

The best way I can suggest to avoid this is to say on your website that you do run specials periodically and people interested should see your blog. Then on your blog have a little section that you can post your specials. I find most of us will update our blogs more then our websites...

-bill
(ironic that my website isn't listed here...)

WPJA.

We have had a big success in becoming friends or being friendly with local wedding planners. I will be shooting 2 different wedding planner's weddings next year, can't ask for better advertising than that. They usually tell teh brides I am shooting their weddings and most book with out ever talking to or meeting us.

#2...Happy knotties... believe it or not they help a lot. A bride posted about us on the knot after finding us on craigslist. so craigslist helped but now it is too saturdated.

WPJA might work - I got a few referrals from it when it was new - but now it's got a lot of members, it's more expensive, and if you don't enter all the contests, you won't get that little medallion next to your name - and you'll look like chopped liver next to the ones who do.

Craiglist was a great jumping off place for me. I booked 3 or 4 weddings even without a website. List your qualifications, tell a little about yourself, and email them some photos if they're interested. After I shot a few weddings, I built a website, and raised my prices substantially. I got a big jumpstart from one of my brides who posted my pics on her bio on the Knot forum. Now most of my referrals are word-of-mouth and the WPJA. And definitely make friends with local photographers so that you can refer to each other

+1 Craigslist is just unbelievably saturated in my area. I've had great success getting clients for other "new" branches of photography there (new to me, that is) - seniors, kids, and family portraits. But there are listerally dozens of wedding photographers making posts there every day for the Seattle area. So whether Craigslist will work for you is all up to how many other photographers in your market are already doing it.

Well my best marketing campaign, was not for weddings but maybe it will give someone an idea.

I was selling a service and office workers fit the target audience. I ran an advertisement on a "Joke of the day" email - my link went in the middle of 2 jokes in the email. It ran 1 day but was emailed around for weeks.

results:
Day one: 12,000 hits - 6 sales
day 2 12,000 hits -7 sales
day 3--15 10,000 hits a day - 3 sales a day.

I had hits and sales for about 20 days. total sales about 50-60.

Cost was $450 each sale was worth about $600 each.

"Joke of the day"- Not the best place for a wedding photog to advertise, but you would be surprised on what gets passed on by people.

Patrick

Libbie, would you elaborate on what you did to contribute to your portrait marketing success on craigslist?

This is a really cool topic. Unfortunately, I don't really have anything to contribute, other than word of mouth from happy customers, as nothing has really worked well for me yet. I've got a few marketing ideas in the works, and I'll share them here if they are successful.

P.S. Actually, I could say that my single biggest success in marketing wasn't due to me. My wife passes out my business cards and talks me up incessantly. I've had her boss as a client, thanks to her. She's awesome! (No, I'm sorry - you can't have her!)

So far I must say doing slideshows at the reception has gotten me more of my business than anything. I booked 4 weddings for July and August this summer from slideshows I did at weddings in May and early June. The owner of 1 venue was responsible for 2 of them. He told me he's going to recommend me over anyone else, and its the nicest place that is local to me to shoot, right on a gorgeous alpine lake with towering peaks above. The slideshows have been a hit.

here's one from there.

http://shawnreeder.com/slideshows/josie_nate/

Ooh! Sorry, I only just saw this reply.

I didn't do anything that interesting - just put up a few ads here and there advertising the fact that I offer portrait photography. Craigslist in my area is seriously saturated with ads for wedding photography (dozens of new ads posted every day) but portrait photography only comes up maybe once or twice a week.

I wish I could tell you something more exciting than that!

My most surprising succes is in following up with existing clients. By having proper manners and just being nice to my existing clients I have increased my referrals by about 60 percent. I send a 'thank you for your business' card, birthday cards, anniversary cards, thank you for the referral cards, baby congrat cards and sometimes cards that just say have a great day.

The personal contact is so powerful. Very seldomly do I advertise anything with it, but I get a phone call of thanks and sometimes with that call they book something new or have a referral.

I found a great system that allows me to keep track, and to send cards at a low expense. If you would like to take it for a test drive on me, go to http://sendoutcards.com/27856 and click on my banner.

You can do picture cards, campaigns, and send gift cards and checks. Also, another benefit is they scanned my own handwriting and signatures.

Thank you for the other ideas here. Please keep it coming.
Stuart

happy clients

album party

happy clients

blogging (doesn't seem like it does anything, but it DOES)

happy clients

knot (yes, the knot)

HAPPY HAPPY CLIENTS

other vendors - venues and dj's

did i mention, happy clients?