Senior Photography Advertising help!

iKokomo · Sep 20, 2016

I have done senior photography before in the town that I lived in before, but I have moved to a new city (150,000 / 300,000 metro area) and I am looking for some tips on how to advertise better here.

I have a website, Facebook page and the like, and I have attempted Facebook advertising for a week, but I only got 2 likes on the advertising. No real contacts were made with this. I also have done a Craigslist advertisement using the city's local page. (for over a week) So far nothing.

I was wondering if you guys had any tips and tricks to this or other places to advertise! Thanks.

Any help would be appreciated.

tirediron · Sep 20, 2016

You want to market to HIGH SCHOOL seniors? Where might you find HIGH SCHOOL seniors? Hmmm... now if only there was a place where HIGH SCHOOL seniors were known to gather on a regular basis. I wonder.... maybe a HIGH SCHOOl?

Seriously, there's limited value in "direct" marketing through social media. This is a genre of photography that's virtually non-existent in Canada, but I'm trying my best to get it going. My plan was as follows: I wrote to the school district head office and obtained permission to market to the individual high schools in my area. I spent the summer shooting TFP sessions with local high-school age teens and provided each principal with a professionally printed portfolio containing various examples of the type of imagery I could provide along with a detailed, personalized letter to the principal.

While I'm waiting for their response (I've been told to expect another 2-3 weeks) I'm preparing my on-line plan which includes limited facebook advertising, and ads with the local "e-paper". I'm also preparing posters for display in local relevant businesses which will be placed in exchange for work with the business owners. The in-school marketing will include posters and rack cards. Altogether I expect to spend $750 - 1000 on this.

table1349 · Sep 20, 2016

tirediron said:
You want to market to HIGH SCHOOL seniors? Where might you find HIGH SCHOOL seniors? Hmmm... now if only there was a place where HIGH SCHOOL seniors were known to gather on a regular basis. I wonder.... maybe a HIGH SCHOOl?

Bars, liquor stores, convenience stores that sell cigarettes, dark quiet places to make out. Are you that old that you forgot all those places??? :biggrin-new:

SquarePeg · Sep 20, 2016

There are no young people on FaceBook - the grown ups have taken it over so if you're marketing on FB make sure it's directed toward the parents. All the kids are on SnapChat and Instagram these days.

Most high schools have a school paper which you can possibly advertise in. Grocery stores usually have a bulletin board where you can pin up some marketing materials - I know in our town that is where the majority of the kids work.

KmH · Sep 21, 2016

Parents are the ones that pay the photographer.

A busy local photographer has 2 nice displays in the promenade of the local mall.
From above, each display would look like an X, so there are 8 wall segments where he has hung framed photographs of high school seniors he has photographed in the past. He changes the photos in the winter prior to the Spring start of the High School Senior shooting season.

Google tracks the effectiveness of advertising done through their browser, Ad Words and other means of advertising they offer on the Internet and has said 95% of Internet advertising never gets clicked on.
Advertising on social media is the least effective, which isn't actually say a whole lot.

Direct mail is the best advertising, if you have a good mailing list.
You want your mailing list to have on it families that have children in their junior & senior years of high school that can also afford the luxury of having a photographer make portraits of their child.

The bottom line is that effective advertising costs money.