Couples who are getting married in this digital age tend to turn to social media to find their dream wedding photographer along with other vendors. Whether it’s Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook, the online “socials” scene has become the go-to resource for brides and grooms looking for advice, reviews, and so much more. So, what better way to get more clients than to create a solid marketing strategy that also includes online advertising? In this blog, we take you through some of the best ways to use social media ads to boost your wedding photography business!
Simple Steps to Create Successful Social Media Ads
1. Start at the Beginning
After carefully considering (and accepting) all aspects of the costs of advertising on social media, you may find yourself stuck at: ‘How to create a social media ad?’. The answer starts with knowing yourself and your brand as a wedding photographer! You have a unique style and identity that you can evaluate and use to build ads on social media that reflect your brand.
Building ads based on your brand means choosing colors, words, and imagery that show what you want to sell and blend well with your website and social media pages. Make sure that the ad design is visually appealing and the content of the ad is attractive to your target market. Simply put, the ads should feel on-brand for your business and sell what your customers want most.
Suggested Read: How To Create Facebook Ads To Book More Weddings
2. Come Up With an Irresistible Offer
To create a social media ad that really attracts attention, consider making an offer that is hard to resist. Offer people something valuable, something that they won’t be able to find anywhere else. Look through posts that your ideal clients interact with to gain inspiration for what your ad should look like and offer. The best social media ads are the ones your clients can relate to, so find out what that is and include it in your advertisement. Your offer could include a free service, an upgrade with a limited time frame, or a discount. When it comes to social media advertising to book more weddings, if you aren’t offering something compelling, your advertisement may just go unnoticed.
3. Design Ads that are Mobile-Friendly
It’s not a surprise that more people today than ever before will view your ads on a mobile device or tablet than on a desktop or a laptop. In fact, we can bet you are reading this post from your mobile phone right now! If you are, then you know the importance of making sure your ad plays well on mobile. Some tips to keep social media ads mobile-friendly include making sure images are large and noticeable and the star of the advertisement, keeping copy (the words you write) short, sweet, and to the point, and being very clear about where to click to learn more or get the offer you are offering.
Many experts now point to video as a great hook to get mobile users to engage with ads. Think about your own user experience when you are on social media and on your mobile phone – what advertisements engage you the most? What ads keep you the longest? What do they say to entice you to click? Those are great points of research as you begin building your own ads.
4. Customize Where You Can
Any expert would tell you that it is extremely important to use the location targeting, tagging, and hashtagging features that are offered as you prepare your social media ads. Instagram and Facebook ads will give you an option to market to specific locations, including zip codes. Targeting an audience by city, state, or region will also increase your chances of reaching the right couples. If your targeting is too broad, though, you may miss your mark, so do your research on where exactly you want to draw new clients from.
Instagram ads also give you the option to choose what audience you want. For example, since you will be advertising as a wedding photographer, you can choose your target audience to be couples who recently got engaged.
Suggested Read: Use Instagram to Grow Your Wedding Photography Business
5. Set a Duration and a Realistic Budget
When it comes to your photography business, a marketing plan should include a budget. And if social media advertisements make it into your plan, they too should have a projected spend associated with it. There isn’t a magic number when it comes to the ideal investment because it depends on all your customizations we mentioned above, but also on whether you choose cost per click, per conversion, per impression, or per video view. Another big factor that affects budget is the duration of the ad, the day your ad is run, and a whole host of other factors. Of course, the longer you run an ad, the more people will see you, so choose wisely!
The Long Game
While your organic reach may be great, there’s always more to be done when it comes to finding new clients and booking more weddings. We hope we have given you a great starting point to begin planning your social media ad campaigns. Just remember, before you create a social media ad, carefully consider all the aspects that go into making that investment worthwhile and evaluate which social media platform best fits your needs. And most importantly, know that any advertising or marketing plan requires time to bear fruit, so it’s a long game, but one that will pay off in the end if done well!
Further Read: Introducing Instagram For Wedding Photographers
At ShootDotEdit, we believe that strategizing your social media game plan is crucial for boosting your wedding photography business. And in order to enable you to do that, we lessen your post-production workload by doing the photo editing work for you. To know more about how we can help your wedding photography business, check out our price plans.
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