How do you promote your Photography Business?? Help

[StudentofPhotography]

I would recommend Google Adwords, though it can be expensive, you can really fine-tune your key words and only spend say $5/day or $50/month. But prevent using broad key words. If you live in a big city, like Salt Lake City, use a small town name, not SLC as that is too broad. Fact is, your competition probably does not advertise this way. The Google staff can be VERY accomodating too. I feel like a salesman from this post, lol. $1500 for a Yellow Pages ad is ridiculous! Good luck!

 

[GerryDavid]

In my marketing research, ive read that a low skilled photographer with great business sense will do much better than a great and awesome photographer with poor business sense.

 

[GerryDavid]

First of all, SPEND AS MUCH OF YOUR MONEY YOU NEED FOR ADVERTIZING YOU BUSINESS, BECAUSE IT YOU START GETTING ORDERS AND MONEY IF WILL DEFIANTLY PAY OFF. But Probably one of the best ways to promote you photography business is to put your business on your car and make a big print all over you car that you drive, but make it attractive.

Ive heard that advertising a photography business on your car is a great way to ensure your car will get broken into.

 

[bratkinson]

In my local (free) suburban newspaper today (I call it "The Enquirer", with all the local blah-blah-blah), I found a 5x7 glossy card-stock advertisement for a local photographer. It contained a nice picture of two children on the front. On the back, another nice picture and a Mothers' Day offer of one free 8x10 signature portrait with a session purchased by Mothers Day. At the bottom, it has their phone number, address, and facebook address.

With perhaps 2000-3000 homes distribution between the 3 communities for this paper, I'm guessing $2-3000 for the one-time insert, all done by the community paper publisher/printer. It would be interesting to find out what kind of response it generates.

 

[GerryDavid]

I wish my area had a free paper, for this sort of thing. Back in Canada they had a free weekly paper that was delivered to 60k houses in 5 regions. It was dirt cheap to get an advertisement put in, I dont remember the prices now but a couple hundred would get you at least 10k houses. And considering you can get the advertisements for dirt cheap as well, thats not a bad plan. You can get 1000 4x6 double sided postcards at gotprint.com for $58 *as of last night when I placed an order, it was $12 cheaper a month ago* and 1000 5x7's for about $85.

the us post office does offer a bulk mailing system and its pretty cheap compared to regular stamps, but you have to purchase entire mail routes, so you can pick the nicer neighborhoods, but the other half of the cards will probably get sent to the not so nice neighborhoods as well.

I was reading my ppa professional photographer magazine today *had time to kill* and the one article had a good idea. the guy asks his senior portriat customers if they would like a family portrait before their child goes off to college, not a bad idea. the person that wrote it asks each customer they have if they are interested in the other type of photography they offer, even business clients.