To make it as a photographer, you’re going to need to get your name out there to start finding and landing new clients. I remember how little I truly knew when I started out, I believed that just by capturing great images people would come to me. But with so much competition in the marketplace, sheer skill isn’t enough in most cases to build and run your successful photography business, you're going to need to promote your work too.
With all that being said, marketing is an absolutely massive topic with an extensive list of possibilities. This is where the problem lies… Most of us will want to scatter and try all of the approaches at once, when the best approach is to take just one or two at a time and go deep. Then we can layer in more approaches and efforts over time!
With all that being said, the core of marketing comes down to a very simple idea that’s usually skewed by all of the “tactics” that marketers are pushing. This idea? That you have photography services to offer, and sales occur when you communicate with people about this offer. So you need two things, your offer (photography!) and at least one person to tell about this offer.
Remember this last part as you venture further into your photo career - it will always ring true!
Starting as a photographer
If you’re just getting started then the first things you need to be doing are fairly simple. A lot of people will try to skip this type of stuff and “hide” behind their keyboards. They will literally do everything they can to not get face to face with people. This is to your advantage! Most photographers are not putting in the real efforts to get in front of actual people. And for them it’s going to be really hard to run a photo business.
Here are just a few things you could, and should, be doing consistently to start landing clients FAST:
- Call up friends and family and let them know what you do. Ask if they have anyone in mind that would be a good fit for your style of photography. And if you haven’t picked a niche yet, try offering a few of your different niches that you could shoot. You have time to figure that part out.
- Go to places where your ideal client might be hanging out and leave cards, flyers, and connect with the owner. Examples of this could be coffee shops where you can leave cards or flyers, local stores that sell products connected to what you do (a pet photographer could leave cards at a local pet shop).
- Share what you’re doing and that you’re looking for clients on your personal social media accounts. Just by putting it out there you’ll have friends and family who want to help you succeed and will share your posts or maybe even hire you after seeing what you’re doing.
- Ask anyone you work with if they know 2-3 other people who could use your services. Referrals are the simplest way to grow and one of the strongest. Additionally you could offer a discount on the shoot, a free print, or something else to entice them to help you out even more.
The main thing here is simply to put yourself out there. Do that and you’ll be making your first profits as a photographer!
Photography Marketing Channels
There are many different ways to market your business now, more than at any point in history. This is why it’s easy to take a scattered approach and not see any results. For every photographer I work with I tell them that the methods mentioned above should always be in action, and to layer just 1-2 of the following options on in addition until the systems are in place and dialed. But you have to keep after any of these for a while to get them to work, so stay strong and keep after this!
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
This is the one I teach specifically as I believe it’s incredibly important for all local photographers. If your business isn’t local it can help you as well but it’s going to be harder. The simple definition of SEO is this: Making your website speak to Google so that you show up when your ideal clients are looking for your services.
SEO is an on-going process that you’ll want to work on at least a few hours a month, and ideally more if you can. But once it starts to hit, it can literally change your business overnight. It doesn’t cost any money to perform, and turns your website into its own lead generating machine. I’d suggest every photographer take on this strategy if they plan on being in business for a while. It will free you up from the rollercoaster of “where is my next client coming from,” and create a much stronger and more sustainable business.
A big part of SEO is the local map pack, or Google My Business Listing. With a well optimized listing through Google, and a well optimized website, you can show up in the first few positions for your specific area and niche. Let’s say you’re a wedding photographer in Denver, CO, and your site is ranking well. Then when someone typed in this search, they’d see you in the results like this:
Here’s an ultra-quick run through of the basics to get you started:
- Set up and optimize your Google My Business profile. Make sure your description is enticing and thoroughly covers what you shoot, and where you shoot it. Choose your categories, and also select your area of service. The area should cover an area with a good size population base, but not too large. This way Google knows where to show you in results.
- Start growing your reviews. Ask everyone you work with for a review as this is a key factor in how Google determines if your business can be trusted enough to be featured in results.
- Dial in your homepage for your main niche. You can still shoot other niches and have them on your site, but your homepage will ideally cover your main niche. The homepage should address your main niche in the Heading tag right near the top of the page. Here’s a quick keyword formula for this: “Location + Niche + Photographer”. E.g. Denver Senior Portrait Photographer.
- Create content covering all the questions your clients ask or may ask. This makes the sales cycle easier as you’ll have customers with less questions, in addition, it will show Google that you are truly the expert in your field which increases ranks!
- Tell the world about your site and content. Google passes trust to our sites from other sites that it already trusts. By telling people about our content we have a chance for those site owners to put a link to our website from their sites. These links are all like popularity votes that show Google we should be a popular site too!
This may be one of the quickest breakdowns on SEO I’ve ever written, but hopefully you now have at least a feel for how this works! If you want to head down this path, check out my guide to SEO for Photographers, here.
Social Media Marketing
This is where most people head, and it makes sense. It’s a comfortable place to start where photographers are already familiar with the systems. This is also a free option to start marketing your business and it’s a great way to keep people up to date with what you do and share your work.
The big difference between social media and SEO is that social media is fleeting and interruptive. With SEO, people are actually looking for a photographer at that moment, and they find you. With social media, they are looking for entertainment, cat GIFs, and very short punchy content. I think you can probably see why my focus is on the SEO side… However, I do think a social media approach can work very well with the right efforts. AND, Google will rank you higher if you have some active social media because they trust that you are in business.
Here are few ways you could market your business on social media:
- Post photos from recent shoots and share a story from the shoot. This is excellent content that showcases skill and what it’s like to work with you. A behind the scenes look. People that visit your site will likely check out whatever social profiles you have listed as well before they decide to call or book with you.
- Host a giveaway competition. There are a lot of great platforms that make it easy to run giveaways where people get entries for sharing the competition on their social profiles. This will help build your email list but you’ll also end up with a lot of spam subscribers. If you over a prize that’s highly relevant - free photo shoot specific to your niche - then it will help significantly!
- Connect directly with anyone who’s interested in your posts. This could be a like, a comment, or something else. Reach out and thank them for commenting or liking, then discuss their photo needs if they have any in a natural way. The simplest way to do this is with a DM or direct reply on the comment itself.
Paid advertising
I couldn’t leave this one out. It’s not my favorite approach because most photographers will try this too early. I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about funnels and how you need them. But in reality it’s quite complicated to build out this system and will be very expensive to get dialed. This is a “down-the-line” approach if you don’t have the funds yet and aren’t booking clients regularly.
Most people choose Instagram or Facebook to run ads. They both run through the same platform which makes it easier to manage. There are a whole lot of approaches to running ads on these platforms, and if you’re a local photographer or have a studio, you’ll have a good advantage here. Running ads in a local area to your services is far less expensive.
To set up ads you’ll want to watch some online training. The setup is quite extensive and you should expect to spend at least $500+ minimum before you even start to see ANY results.
The most common error I see is that photographers link from a quick ad straight to their booking page which contains no real information. People need to get to know you first! The ad should set them on a little bit of a journey where they learn about you and your services before asking them to hire you.
If this is a path you want to head down early on, beware that it’s not as simple as “build an ad, print money”. There is a lot here to learn! However, if you are “down-the-line” and things are going well in your business with some solid and stable income, this is an excellent way to grow.
Expectations and Results
With any approach you take you should set a good amount of time for refinement and learning. Almost no approach ever works the first time! In fact, almost everything you try WILL take longer than you expect - and that’s how you need to set your expectations. If you fizzle out on one and decide it doesn’t work after 10 hours of effort, you’ll never know that you may have been onto something and were so close to succeeding with it!
I’m not saying all of this because I’ve heard it somewhere before… I’m saying this from lived experience. As a photographer I tried everything I could think of, but I often didn’t give any of them a fair shot. I also know that I worked too many angles at once and never went deep enough. Had I done that things would have taken off much faster. You have to go slow to go fast.
Final notes: Stick with any single approach. And remember that the #1 way to get clients in general? Referrals and direct connections. Marketing funnel experts will want you to believe that you need 5000 leads to land a client. But in the real world, you could walk up to one person, have a quick conversation, and have a client that same day!
Article written by Connor Walberg