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When you first start your wedding photography business, you spend more time on things that are absolutely necessary to get your business off the ground and make it sustainable. One of those tasks is preparing a strategic photography marketing plan to help you reach and attract ideal clients. While there are various ways to market your brand, it’s crucial that your marketing strategies are aligned with your photography brand too. This way, you only attract the clients who you want to work with. In a world that has endless techniques for marketing your brand, in this blog, we focus on how your website and content can help expand your client list and enhance your overall marketing plan.

Photography Marketing Tips

1. Create A Functional Website

Your wedding photography website is the gateway for your photography business and should be an important part of your photography marketing plan. It communicates your message and also offers your visitors a better look at your brand. In a world where businesses can solely thrive through digital marketing, your website could also be considered as the backbone of your wedding photography business. Or you could also think of your website as the virtual storefront for you and your photography business. Like any other tool, your wedding photo website needs to be sharpened for it to work to its best ability well. So while you might have hundreds and thousands of stunning wedding and engagement photos, we would suggest that you resist the temptation to overload it with too many photos and information. Remember, your wedding photography website should work in conjunction with Facebook, Twitter, and your other social media platforms to form a complete web presence. Strive to have a clear and concise bio page, image gallery, and wedding photography pricing page. Below are a few points you need to keep in mind when you are working on your website.

Suggested Read: Showit: Simplifying Website Building For Photographers & Creatives

2. Your Bio Page

As you write your bio page, introduce who you are as a person, before showing your wedding clients who you are as a business owner and wedding photographer. Your clients want to know they will be working with someone who they can relate to, which begins to build trust in the relationship.

The more you can share about who you are as a person first, the easier it will be to connect with clients who are ideal for your business. When potential clients open your website in their browser, they should immediately see some of your best wedding photography examples. This sets a precedent of what they will see as they continue through the site and if they work with you. Remember, with images, less is more. Rather than showcasing an entire wedding on your photography website, select the top 10 images to highlight. We know that this might be tough, but you got this!

3. Pricing Page

Whether or not you add your pricing list to your website is totally your decision. But if you do decide to do it, the key to creating a useful wedding photography pricing page is to keep the information clear and concise. This avoids confusion and allows your wedding clients to know exactly what they will get (and pay) when they book you. It should be created in such a way that it makes it easy for your clients to find all the information they need to make a decision. Your pricing page should be in a scannable format that can be reviewed in a single glance, and is not overwhelming for potential clients.

Start by setting up proper wedding photography pricing that will simplify the sales process for you and your wedding clients:

• Price: If you price your products or services too low, clients will not order it. Set a price you know the product or service is worth for you and your ideal clients.
• Placement: Your pricing page description of your must-haves should be in a visible area and should be short and concise. Make it easy for your clients to navigate through this page.
• Simplicity: Less is always more - especially on your pricing page. Avoid cluttering this page with unnecessary info that may overwhelm the clients and turn them away from a purchase.

Suggested Read: IPS Photography Business Tips For Wedding Photographers

4. Mobile Functionality

Since 85% of the people in the U.S. alone own a smartphone, it is crucial to create a website that is accessible through all devices. Allowing potential clients to use their mobile devices to access your wedding photography website opens doors for you as a business owner. Not only will your clients be up to date with you, but potential clients can view your photography website while simply browsing the internet on their phone. 

5. SEO Factor

As a business owner, especially one that also depends on their digital presence for expanding their business, search engine optimization (SEO) is the holy grail of finding the perfect equation to rank higher in search engines like Google. With so many companies aiding people in becoming #1 on Google, Google works to constantly change and stay one step ahead. If you are currently in the process of creating or updating your website, you might want to take a look at the current SEO techniques that can help your website rank higher.

Related Read: SEO Tips For Wedding Photographers: The Complete Guide

Content Marketing Tips

Once your wedding photo website is ready to be shared with potential clients, the next step is to work on your content strategy. Your website may look amazing and full of gorgeous photographs, but not adding good content could potentially harm its functionality and appeal. While this might sound like more work to you, the good news is you have an endless amount of content to share with your wedding photography clients!

1. Content Creation And Sharing

Image Credit: ShootDotEdit Customer @lovebyjoemac

Within your photography marketing plan, content creation is key to capturing the attention of your target market. Treat your content creation process just as you would for setting goals for your business: Use long-term and short-term goals to achieve success. A short-term goal is one that will be completed in a short amount of time, whereas a long-term goal can take anywhere from 6 months to a year to complete. Over this period of time, focus on these 7 steps to develop a routine that your clients can count on for your content:

1. Post a highlight image on social media: After you get home from a wedding or engagement session, immediately upload your images to your computer. Once they are in a folder, pick your favorite, add some quick edits, and post it to your social media platforms. 
2. Publish a complete blog post with a comment contest: Creating contests or giveaways for your followers on social media invites them to be more active and engage with you and drives them to your blog and your photography website.
3. Share blog posts on social media: When you are done writing your blog, make sure you share it on your social media platforms so that people are guided to your website to read it. This increases the traffic on your website and raises brand awareness. 
4. Pin images from your blog post to Pinterest: Pinterest allows you to post all your images from the wedding shoot. Followers who click on these images will be immediately redirected to your wedding photography website.
5. Write a personal blog series: Much of your blogging can relate to topics that will help your couples during the wedding process. It’s also beneficial for you to add a few blog posts that tell stories about you as a wedding photographer so that your followers can get to know you.

Related Read: 201 Creative Blog Post Ideas For Wedding Photographers

2. Email Campaigns

As you create relevant content that targets your ideal clients, there are several ways to keep prospective clients, current clients, and even past clients invested in you. Email campaigns allow you to keep in touch with your clients and nurture them throughout the entire process, from the first point of contact to well after the wedding day. You can use these 4 points to create successful email campaigns:

1. Know what your audience is interested in: When you create email campaigns, you are looking to increase engagement with your wedding clients. Provide your clients with actionable and relevant information that will help them throughout the wedding planning process.
2. Always represent your authentic brand: In every aspect of your business, it’s important for you to maintain your unique brand message. Anything you send during a campaign should reflect who you are as a photographer and a business owner.
3. Continuously nurture to the next phase: With email campaigns, you can split up your audience based on the phase they are in. Couples who are still in the lead phase need to receive content that will help convert them, and couples who are clients need you to help them solve problems.
4. Monitor results and tweak accordingly: Even if you create email campaigns regularly, the results still need to be tracked for you to continue to grow within the process. If the results are not what you envisioned, adjust your campaign and test a different method.

Just like you send emails to brides before the wedding day, be sure to keep in touch with them afterward as well. Many brides spend so much time planning their wedding day that once the event is over, they are still thinking about how great the day was. Keep your brides in the loop by sending emails and newsletters that align to the point where they are in their lives. Newsletters allow your brides to connect with one another and create a community. Alternatively, if you want to educate other photographers with your success tips, newsletters are a great way to do that as well.

Suggested Read: Tips To Maintain Wedding Photography Client Relationships

3. Guides

Image Credit: ShootDotEdit Customer @iqphotos

Similar to email campaigns, creating guides for your clients that help them solve problems as they get ready for the wedding day can also become a part of your photography marketing techniques. There are endless topics for you to write about in your guides - from picking out the dress, to choosing the flowers, as well as what music they should play during the reception. Be creative and think of potential problems your wedding clients will run into. Reaching out to your clients with solutions will make them appreciate you, which turns them into a referral source for years to come. Follow these 10 steps to create a cohesive guide:

1. Choose the concept: For the most part, you want to develop smaller guides that act as a “how-to” for your clients. Choose one topic you can dig deep and provide an abundance of information for them.
2. Decide on the specifics: What audience is the guide going to be marketed toward? Will you make a guide for leads to get to know you and your business, or will you create a tutorial for your clients planning their wedding? Pick the specifics before you start working on the content.
3. Customize content: Since guides are a different format than blog posts, take the opportunity to customize your content so that it is personable for your wedding clients.
4. Design the template: Come up with the main idea for the design of your template. Is there going to be a specific color theme? Will you feature images and graphics throughout? These are decisions for you to make before you get started constructing the guide.
5. Add links: Every opportunity that you can, include links that direct your clients back to your photography website. Most of the links you provide should be relevant to what you are saying in the newsletter. You could also consider adding vendor links if they pertain to a featured topic.
6. Create tracking URLs: For every link that refers clients back to your wedding photography website, create a tracking URL. This tells you how many people clicked that specific link from your guide.
7. Design graphics: Most people enjoy visual stimulation, such as graphics, so be sure to design and execute stunning graphics for the guide. Your graphics should be on par with the standard of your images since they represent your brand.
8. Construct a landing page: Instead of directly giving your wedding clients access to your guide, use a landing page where they can sign up. The benefit of this is that you can receive their information, such as their name and email address (especially if they are not leads yet).
9. Launch the guide: On the day that you decided to have the launch, be sure to set up the appropriate channels to announce the release of your guide. Create an email campaign, send out social media updates, and create a blog post on your photography website to attract new clients.
10. Track the performance: Tracking the performance of your guide gives you an insight into what topics are popular and which are not for your clients.

Remember, photography marketing can also be done for your past clients. For example, you can create guides for customers whose weddings or engagements you’ve photographed already. Once the honeymoon is over, your couple is facing other life-changing events, such as buying a home, sharing finances, and planning for a family. Do a bit of research about these important decisions in their lives and provide a guide as a tutorial for them. The guides don’t have to be lengthy, just enough to give your wedding clients an idea of what direction to head.

Update And Modify Your Techniques

We hope the above photography marketing ideas have helped to give you some insights on how you, too, can market your brand to potential clients. Though it’s something that requires your attention throughout your wedding photography career, marketing is how you keep your wedding photography business alive. It’s how your potential clients come to know about you and how you present your brand to the world. Whether it’s keeping your website and social media updated, or creating useful content that benefits your target audience, your marketing strategy has to align with what is going to entice and attract your target audience. 

Further Read: Find Your Voice: Building Your Wedding Photography Brand On Social Media

At ShootDotEdit, we are committed to helping you grow as a wedding photographer. We know how precious time is for you and we help lessen your post-production workload by taking photo editing off your plate. To learn more about how we can help your wedding photography business, take a look at our pricing plans.