How to get ahead as a wedding photographer — an interview with a professional | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Pho­to: Going Home Pho­tog­ra­phy & Films / petapixel.com

Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy is one of the few tru­ly sta­ble sources of income for a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. But to suc­ceed in this busi­ness, it is not enough just to have the right equip­ment and know how to use it. After all, if you do not have orders, nei­ther equip­ment nor skills will help you. As with any oth­er busi­ness, you need to know how to prop­er­ly mar­ket your­self. We have trans­lat­ed for you an inter­view with Jason Tables from bhphotovideo.com and pro­fes­sion­al wed­ding pho­tog­ra­ph­er Paige Denkin from Going Home Pho­tog­ra­phy & Films, in which she shares her own mar­ket­ing strate­gies and tips for aspir­ing pros.

Jason Tables: From a mar­ket­ing stand­point, what is the num­ber one piece of advice you can give to some­one who is just get­ting into wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy?

Paige Denkin: Know Your Why [вы хотите этим заниматься] and find your niche. This is always the first step. Next, invest in an SEO (search engine opti­miza­tion) edu­ca­tion and learn every­thing you can about social media adver­tis­ing.

Pho­to: Going Home Pho­tog­ra­phy & Films / petapixel.com

How do you use social media to pro­mote your ser­vices and grow your brand?

I allow myself to mix my per­son­al life and pro­fes­sion­al brand, and social media is the tool that gives me this oppor­tu­ni­ty. In addi­tion to paid adver­tis­ing, plat­forms like Insta­gram allow you to inter­act with the com­mu­ni­ty, build­ing trust and build­ing the ide­al cus­tomer base. Nat­u­ral­ly, the peo­ple who fol­low me and inter­act with me online do so because they like my style, my voice and my work. By being hon­est and trans­par­ent, I build trust with the com­mu­ni­ty and vice ver­sa. This is a nat­ur­al method of build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of your cus­tomers, who often become life­long friends in the process.

Are you invest­ing in online adver­tis­ing? If so, what plat­forms would you rec­om­mend for adver­tis­ing?

Yes, Face­book is still the best option at the moment. They own Insta­gram and allow you to post on both plat­forms at once, which is very con­ve­nient. You can also use demo­graph­ics to nar­row your ad reach so that you only adver­tise to peo­ple who have sim­i­lar hob­bies and pas­sions and are locat­ed where you work. Google Ads is anoth­er option that can be very effec­tive if used cor­rect­ly. How­ev­er, only the pro­mo­tion of posts and the pub­li­ca­tion of adver­tis­ing will not work. It makes no sense to spend a lot of mon­ey on bad adver­tis­ing. The adver­tis­ing process should start slow­ly while you keep track of which ads are bring­ing in the most requests, site views, and so on. You can then invest more mon­ey in adver­tis­ing that works best, devel­op a mail­ing list or sales fun­nel, and ulti­mate­ly become an essen­tial resource for any­one plan­ning a wed­ding or “love escape.”

Pho­to: Going Home Pho­tog­ra­phy & Films / petapixel.com

What about con­tent mar­ket­ing? Do you have a YouTube chan­nel? Blog?

Blog­ging is very impor­tant for SEO, plus it helps build a strong brand and gain the trust of poten­tial cus­tomers. It can be used not only for film­ing and wed­dings, but also as an edu­ca­tion­al resource for the com­mu­ni­ty. It’s impor­tant to be the resource your cus­tomers need. For me, the most enjoy­able form of con­tent mar­ket­ing is hold­ing styl­ized pho­to shoots in new loca­tions. This allows you to con­nect with new ven­dors in new loca­tions, explore new loca­tions for cur­rent and future projects, cre­ate work to advance in new nich­es or attract inter­est­ed cou­ples.

We also have a YouTube chan­nel that we use for our wed­ding videos (we post them on our web­site too) and a Pin­ter­est busi­ness account. The best place to adver­tise is where your ide­al client spends their time. Not all cou­ples are as active on Face­book (as impor­tant as cross-plat­form Insta­gram post­ing is to us), but almost all of them save ideas via Pin­ter­est!

How has the pan­dem­ic affect­ed your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy?

Every­one needs to recon­sid­er where to invest and what the world will look like in the next cou­ple of years. We have built a brand based on inter­na­tion­al trav­el and we have cho­sen not to pro­mote it dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. This gave us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to review the sit­u­a­tion, restruc­ture it and rebrand it. I think the world of wed­dings and “love escapes” will change a lot.

Do you use any offline tools?

Net­work­ing to gen­er­ate refer­rals is still an impor­tant part of mar­ket­ing and usu­al­ly requires inter­ac­tion out­side of social media. We share our work with ven­dors, work with oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers and indus­try pro­fes­sion­als, cre­ate refer­ral incen­tives for past clients, work with real cou­ples in styl­ized shoots, offer edu­ca­tion­al resources for creatives—all of these are ways to build a com­mu­ni­ty, expand reach, and make sin­cere con­nec­tions. with peo­ple.