Category Archives: Online Business

Online Business, Photography

How to Generate Business for Your Photography Company – Part Two

By Michael Connors
President and Co-Founder

 Here’s a quick refresh on what we covered last month in Part One. 

  1. 80% of people hire the first person they talk to even if they talk to 4-5 others.
  2. The more people that know who you are the better off you will be.
  3. Hair Salons – Great way to generate business
  4. Reason to knock on business doors
  5. What photos make the biggest impact and why

Now, let’s move on to Part Two!

One of the easiest ways to generate business is from your existing customers. There are several clever ways to do this.  

First, each time you send out any orders to your customers, always add a thank you note and a promotional offer for them to redeem. This is one of the most important things many photographers miss. Though some photographers send out offers separately, it doesn’t have the same impact, plus it’s going to cost you more!

A warm thanks for their business is always appreciated. For example, the call to action might read:

“We also photograph kids, families and seniors. Here is a coupon for a family photo shoot. We would be honored to capture memories of your wonderful family. Thank you again for your business!“

A special discount can also be offered if they purchase additional images from the event.

For sports photographers that only do sports events, their call to action might be something like this:

“By the way, we post all our upcoming events on our website. If you have grandparents or family coming to the event, call us a few days before and we can show up a little earlier to get some fun photos of your family with your child in their uniform.”

Next, if you’re a wedding photographer, you have a captured audience of guests who are potential new customers at every wedding you photograph. Networking here can undoubtedly help you build your clientele for all types of photography that you offer.

There are many ways to do this. One way is to go up to each table and introduce yourself.

“Hi, I’m Michael from Michaels Photography. Let me get a picture of all of you at this table. Smile! Here is my business card that has the information on how to see these images I’m taking today.”

If they’re like most guests, they’ll want the photo(s). Now that you have introduced yourself personally, you have made a personal connection. These customers now know your company name and recognize your face. When they look at your name again on your business card, they’ll remember to go to your site to view their images.  Will the guest buy images? Most likely. Even if they don’t buy, what’s important is them getting to know you.

For a portrait photographer, the most important thing is to post all images online for a week or two.  When your photo session is done, walk your clients to the door, thank them and let them know that you’ll have their images ready within two weeks. Encourage them to share your website with their friends and family to view the photos. It’s like if you had just handed them a stack of your business cards.

Two things that you may want to consider  when posting the images online is to mark them up 20- 25%.  Or you can charge visitors to  the website just to view the images. This has worked better for me personally than I thought it would.  For  them to enter the event page, you charge a fee upfront and give them the credit back at check out.

If the Internet was made for any one, it’s for the photographer. What other company has a perfect way to get their customers to bring their friends and family to their site. As we all know, photos are always fun to share and show off!

You need to promote your business any time you can. That means always having business cards on you. I suggest you have your elevator pitch on your card. What I mean by this is what you do and where you do it at! I recommend adding your photo on your business card. Tests show it’s much harder for people to throw a card away that includes a photo.

The same holds true for the home page of your website. Include a photo of yourself and your location. I visit many photography sites searching hard to determine where the business is located. Sometimes not even a phone number is included, which is a bad business move. Remember, customers typically are looking for a photographer in a certain area. If you travel anywhere, then say where you’re based and that you serve the entire U.S.

Again, always remember the 80% rule – people hire the first person they talk to! When it comes to phone calls, make sure you return all calls that go to your voicemail ASAP.

Plus, have a personalized message on voice mail. If you do answer phone, make each person calling feel welcomed that they contacted you. Remember, they reached out to you, make them feel special. Many times through the years I thought when I answered the phone it was a sales call and almost hanged up before I found out it was a potential customer. Be careful not to assume. Answer the phone with a smile.

 Recap

Keep in mind these key points:

1) Thank each client and ask for more business with every order.

2) Post all images online, even if you already have their order. Friends and family may want to order images.

3) Business cards and the home page of your website must have your elevator pitch on them. What you do and where you do it at. Add a photo of yourself as well.

4) Tune-up your message when it comes to the phone. Your voice mail needs to be friendly and if you answer the phone directly, make everyone feel welcomed and important.

Contact us today to help your photography business stay competitive! 

Want to learn more? Register now for our upcoming webinar:

Shopping Carts Part 1: How to Monetize Your Photography Website

Date: Thursday, October 19, 11 a.m. PDT / 2 p.m. EST

Duration: 1 hour

Online Business, Photography Portfolio, Storefront

How to Generate Business for your Photography Company – Part One

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By Michael Connors
President and Co-Founder

generate customersYou’re up and running with your photography business. You’ve purchased all of your equipment and supplies, such as camera, lighting, business cards, software. Now, how do you go about getting your first customers?

Two rules I have always lived by,

  1. My estimate is that 80% of people hire the first person they talk to even if they speak  to 4-5 others.
  2. The more people that know who you are the better off you will be.

Hence,  if we use the 80% rule, we need to try to be the first company potential customers talk to!

Here’s a great example. Hair salons will be one of the most important places to market your service. The average person goes to the hair salon every 4 to 6 weeks.  They’ll sit in the chair and tell their hairstylist what is going on in their life — graduating,  getting married, anniversary, company picnic – you name it! Reach out to salon owners and talk to them about how you can help their business (and yours in return). The conversation might go something like this:

“Hi my name is Michael from Michael’s Photography Company. We specialize in family, and graduating seniors and wedding photography. I would love for  you to recommend me to your clients. Of course, since I’ve never worked for you, I know that would be impossible. So I thought I would come in one morning at  no charge and take a group shot of all your employees. It might also be fun to get your employees to bring in their children for a group shot of all your employees’ kids together. I’ll enlarge the images and even frame them for you. All I ask for in return is if you like my work you are willing to recommend me!”  (Note, be sure to include your company’s name on the photo.)

This is a proven strategy to get more business!

Another approach that works very well  is to buy a light tent/ photo studio table lighting. It lights up small items such as jewelry and glassware. Go to your nearest downtown , go shop to shop and introduce yourself.

“My name is Michael from Michael’s Photography Company. We specialize in families and children’s photography. I’ve been looking at several local websites and noticed the photography can be improved, so I thought I would come in to town once a month and help my fellow business owners get better images of their products. I will only charge you $10 an image and give you the image to use as you wish. All I ask when using the image is that you give me credit for the photo.”

Of course, I’m not thinking that this is going to make you much money. That is not the point of this idea. It’s to get out and introduce yourself. Although the first photographer that tried my idea made $1,200 on the first day trying it!

In addition, a marketing technique that I learned from a Ted Talk works amazingly well.

In the talk, a marketing person asked the audience. “What do you think people want to know you for – product, brand or your service?” The answer – none of the above. The familiarity of being like others is what they are searching for. They want the experience of people they look to, the feeling of being just like them. Photography, in particular, has the power to do just that.

Take weddings for example. A couple calls you for an appointment to come in and discuss photographing their wedding. They tell you they’ll be getting married at the Water Front Inn,  When they come in, have an album with pictures at the Water Front Inn ready to show them.

First, when putting that album together, you have to ask yourself what pictures would the couple look at and think “I want to be like the people in the photo.” Most likely, they want to be madly in love, so the only pictures that will make the most impression in the album are photos of couples showing lots of love for each other at that location.  No pictures of cakes, kids, flowers – none of that matters to them at this point. When testing this idea , the couples would go through five or six pages and want to hire the photographer right away. From my experience, price typically goes right out the window, because they want to be  just like the people they are seeing in the pictures.

Need more ideas? Stay tuned…..Part Two coming soon! In the meantime, More Photos is always here to help you. Contact us today!

Online Business, SEO for Photographers

A Digital Success Series for Modern Day Photographers

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When we first talked about SEO (search engine optimization) for photographers, we only touched on the basics.  Main discussion points were page titles, keywords and descriptions.  This week, we will get a bit more specific in regard to SEO and cover some things you can do within your site pages (mainly the content – or meat & potatoes of your site), that can greatly help increase your online visibility.

1)    Interlinking – This simply refers to providing links within the content of your site to other pages on YOUR website.  When you do this, it’s important that you use “anchor text” that coincides with the keyword phrases you’ve chosen.  Anchor text is “naming a link”.  Instead of saying, “to check out our photography forum, click here,” you’d say, “check out our photography forum and enjoy all of the benefits of being a member”.  The link would then go to the page that you have previously titled, “photography forum”.  Make sense?  That anchor text actually reinforces and raises the organic (non-paid) rankings of your target terms.

2)    Backlinks – These are similar in concept to interlinking, only the links come from other websites to yours.  How do you do this?  Well, if you know the website owner, you can simply ask.  If you don’t, then you can comment on blog posts with links in your comments, submit your site to online directories and/ or write articles on platforms like Article base, Ezine Articles, HubSpot and Gather.  There are dozens of other sites where you can submit original work, you just have to look.  Again, anchor text is always a bonus in your links.

3)    Social Media – Do you live on Facebook or Instagram?  Well, you’re not alone.  Having a balanced presence on social media platforms can be very beneficial. Just be sure to do it with limitations, eventually have a way to monetize your efforts and send traffic back to your website and blog.  “Tagging” is something that many photographers are taking advantage of.  When you “tag” a client in a photo (with their permission of course), you’re essentially opening up your work to all of their friends, who are likely of the same demographic make-up, and who are perhaps at the same stage in their life (think marriage, babies, senior photos etc.).  Here’s an example of a news feed post: “John Doe was tagged in Drew Warner Photography’s Album”.

4)    Blogging – This can be of huge importance to the keyword ranking of your website. So, if you have time, try to do it.  Search engines see sites with fresh content as more relevant in their respective industries.  The idea of a blog (or Web Log) is that you are updating followers on the latest news, photo shoots, specials, promotions and more.   A good rule of thumb might be to start with 2 posts a month. Having a blog also gives you the ability to point links back to your website on a regular basis.

5)    Creating Web Pages Around Relevant Industry Partners – Let’s say that you’re a wedding or event photographer.  Do you have a favorite venue, an organization or company that you do consistent work for or someone that is happy to refer you to prospective clients?  A nice technique is to create web pages about some of the locations and organizations you work with regularly.  If you title the page accordingly in your meta-data and include some good content, it’s likely that people searching for information on these venues will find your web page in the search results.  Bonus for you!  Remember, getting a link from this partner is valuable so don’t be afraid to ask.

There’s a lot more to SEO than what I’ve covered above, but go ahead and get your feet wet. Feel free to reach out if you need any help!

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