How to Market Your Wedding Photography Business for FREE
Hey there, photographer friend! I’ve been in your shoes. When you are first getting started with your wedding photography business, you probably don’t have tons of funds to invest into marketing. But you know what? You don’t need any money to market your business! I built my business entirely on FREE marketing, and you can too! I’ve put together a list for you below of ways that you can market your wedding photography business for FREE!
Post Regularly On Social Media
Posting regularly on social media is so easy but so overlooked by photographers. I built my business mainly from using social media as a free advertising and marketing tool to reach new wedding photography clients. The specific social media platform or platforms that you should be focused on are going to depend on who your ideal client is and what your price point is.
As I’ve gained experience with wedding photography, my prices have increased. And I’ve found that as my prices have increased, I’ve needed to change up my marketing strategy. When I was first getting started with wedding photography, I was pretty inexperienced and my prices obviously reflected that. At that time, I was able to book the most engaged couples through Facebook groups. That was where my ideal clients at the time were searching for their wedding photographer. When my prices were more about average/slightly higher than average, and my ideal clients started becoming a little more high end, I found that I booked the most wedding photography clients through Instagram.
Instagram specifically has been an amazing marketing tool for me. For the past 2-3 years, about 75-90% of my couples found me through instagram. Now that my prices are a higher than they were the past two years, this number has decreased to about 50%, because I’m focused on different marketing tactics to reach my new ideal clients. Instagram has brought me so much business, and still does! So I would be happy to share some of my best Instagram strategies with you:
Use relevant, specific hashtags. Focus on location specific hashtags like #IndianaPhotographer
Geotag your locations. This allows couples near you to find your account.
Interact with others. Like and comment on posts from other local wedding vendors. This helps to build relationships and helps other vendors’ clients find you.
There is so much more than I could dive into when it comes to Instagram, but it would be a little too much for this one blog post. Hopefully these three tips can help get you started.
Start a Blog
If you have been putting off starting a blog, I totally feel you! It took me so long to start my blog. I thought of it as just another task to add to my to-do list when I was already getting plenty of business without one. The reason I was finally convinced to start my blog is that it’s super helpful for SEO. It brings people to your website instead of them just staying on your social media accounts. You OWN your website and blog. Instagram/Facebook own your social media accounts. Instagram and Facebook are great ways for clients to find you, but you want to funnel those people to the space that you own.
One thing that really helped me when I first started blogging was building blogging into the workflow I was already using. I was already editing sneak peaks after every wedding day. So instead of posting those sneak peaks on Facebook, I started posting them on the blog. Most of my couples share their blog post since it’s the first time they’ve seen some of their wedding photos. This brings all of their friends and families to my website. It’s great for SEO, AND it’s great marketing for me. When people are already on my website, they are more likely to take a look around while they are there.
Use SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This essentially means that I want people to find me when they are searching on google for a photographer. There’s a few different ways that I try to improve my SEO in order to get found on google:
Blogging. I talked about this above, but there are lots of SEO benefits to blogging. Google rewards websites that frequently update and add new content to their websites. Blogging is a great way to do this.
Using Key Words. Think about the words that people would search in order to find your website. I want people to find me when they search “Indiana Wedding Photographer.” But I also think about other key words like venues in my local area. I get found a lot but using key words like “Laurel Hall Wedding.” People book their wedding venue before they book their photographer (usually), so I want my photos to pop up when engaged couples are searching for photos taken at their wedding venue.
Naming Your Photos. When you export your photos from lightroom, name them using key words. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can name each photo a different and very specific key word relating to that photo. I usually name all of my photos based on the title of the blog post (for example Indiana Vineyard Wedding1.jpg; Indiana Vineyard Wedding2.jpg; etc.).
There is so much more that goes into SEO! Way too much to put in this one blog post, but hopefully these three quick tips are helpful!
Share Your Galleries with Vendors
Sometimes as photographers, we get very protective over our photos, and we can be a little but stingy with our galleries. I know that we have all been burned before by someone stealing our photos and not crediting us. I get it! And I understand copyright law. I understand why some photographers want to charge vendors to use their photos. However, I think the amazing relationships that we can build with other vendors is worth the risk of someone potentially using our photos without crediting us. Plus, if someone doesn’t credit you, I have a great way of giving myself “sneaky credit.” I just comment on the photo saying something along the lines of “I loved photographing this wedding. It was so great getting to work with you!” That way, people who see the photo will know who took it, but I’m still being super kind and non-confrontational.
After every wedding day, as soon as I finish editing the full gallery and send it over to the bride and groom, I send over the full gallery to each of the wedding day vendors as well. The vendors are always SO appreciative, because this isn’t something that every photographer does. My thought process is that those vendors put so much time and energy making the wedding amazing, and my images would not be what they are without the work from the vendors as well. Other wedding vendors who are not photographers need amazing photos of their work for social media and their websites. If you are one of the few photographers who send full galleries to wedding vendors, they will be so much more likely to recomend you to clients over other photographers who are more stingy with their images.
Free Photography for Venues and Planners
Now, hear me out on this one. I KNOW that we as photographers don’t like to work for free. No one likes to work for free, right? And in general, I don’t recomend doing free work, because it tends to devalue the industry. This is one of the few exceptions for me, personally. Remember how I said earlier that with my current prices, I’ve started gaining most of my clients from different sources than I did when my prices were lower? Well, guess how most of my clients find me now. Through venue preferred vendor lists and wedding planner referrals. These are the two vendors that engaged couples typically book before they book their photographer. Therefore, it is super important to network and build amazing relationships specifically with wedding venues and wedding planners.
One of the most obvious ways that you can offer free photography to these types of vendors is to offer free headshots. I’ve done free headshots for tons of different wedding venues and wedding planners. They are usually so appreciative! Although, I will say, a lot of photographers have this same thought, so venues and planners may already have great headshots from other photographers. Or maybe you’ve already taken headshots for specific vendors and you want to continue to build up that relationship. You can also offer personal photography for free for venue sales managers as well as wedding planners. Get creative. Offer family photos, couples photos, or anything else that those individuals might need. They are going to be so appreciative, and you are going to be one of the first people to come to mind when one of their clients is looking for a wedding photographer.
Plan Styled Shoots
If you don’t know what a styled shoot is, it’s essentially a fake wedding where vendors come together to create something that their ideal clients would love. Styled shoots are amazing. It’s a great way to network with other wedding industry professionals. You can show off your skills and what you’re capable of. You have the flexibility to be creative since you don’t have to worry about delivering very specific photos to a client. You get to take the types of photos YOU want to take instead of worrying about what a client wants. All of the vendors will post the photos, you’ll all tag each other, and you’ll get so much cross promotion. Styled shoots are also an amazing way to get published, which I’ll talk more about below.
I do want to put a disclaimer in here that you cannot build your entire portfolio on styled shoots. Like I said, styled shoots are amazing, but you need real world wedding day experience as well. Clients can’t tell the difference between styled shoots and real wedding days, and it’s not fair to potential clients to make it seem like you have a ton of experience that you do not actually have. You can definitely put SOME styled shoot images in your portfolio, but you also need tons of photos from real wedding days. You need photos from throughout an entire wedding day so clients can see how you shoot getting ready photos in an ugly hotel room, how you deal with a pitch black reception, and how you shoot portraits in harsh sun in the middle of the day. Absolutely participate in styled shoots, but also please accurately represent your real wedding day experience to potential clients!
Submit Photos for Publication
There are so many benefits for getting your photos featured in magazines and online wedding blogs:
Social Proof. When blogs and magazines publish your photos, it helps to reassure your clients and potential clients that your work really is as amazing as they think it is. Being featured on the cover of a hard copy magazine is especially great for social proof. I get so many positive comments from my clients when my photos are on magazine covers. It’s also so fun for the couple who gets to be on the cover as well.
SEO. I know that everyone thinks it’s especially cool to be featured in physical, hard copy magazines, but being published in online blogs is actually what is best for SEO. We didn’t talk about this in the SEO section of this blog, but getting backlinks to your website from other websites is another great way to improve your SEO. The more “authority” the website linking to yours has, the better. You also get tons of clicks to your website if the blog has a lot of viewers.
Getting Discovered. When you get featured in local blogs and magazines, a lot of local couples, who use those blogs and magazines for inspiration, will discover you and your work! It’s a great way to reach local couples who have the potential to hire you.
Now let’s talk about HOW to get your work published. You can find lists online of every wedding blog and magazine. You can go to their websites, find the ones that are a good fit, and submit photos that way. You can also use a service like Two Bright Lights or Matchology where you can submit photos for publications to multiple blogs at once. These services also help to match you with the publications that are the best fit for the session/wedding and for your photography style.
Here’s a few quick tips in order to have higher chances of getting your photos published:
Focus on shooting more vertical photos as opposed to horizontal. Most blogs and magazines prefer vertical photos both for graphic design/layout purposes and for optimizing photos for Pinterest.
Focus on detail photos. I know that your favorite photos are probably the bride and groom photos, but blogs and magazines need to publish photos that inspire engaged couples, their ideal audience. These couples are looking for things like reception floral inspiration, invitation inspiration, wedding shoe inspiration, etc. So focus more on submitting those detail photos than bride and groom photos.
Only submit to blogs/magazines that are a good fit. Some blogs and magazines prefer dark and moody photos. Some only accept images taken on film cameras. Some publish classic weddings while some publish alternative weddings. Make sure you find the publications that are the perfect fit for both the style of your work and the style of the wedding.
Treat Your Current Clients Like Gold
With all of this being said, please don’t get so caught up on finding your next clients that you forget to treat your current clients well. Not only do they deserve it, but it’s also great for marketing. Word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing that your business can have. When your clients have an amazing experience with you, they will tell all of their friends about you and leave you amazing, raving reviews. Treating your clients well is one of the best things you can do for your business.
I hope you found all of the information helpful! Tell me, photographer friend, what is the first thing you’re going to do this week to start marketing your wedding photography business for free??
Would you rather watch this in video format? Here is a link to the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR7MNEGLStw
