Spreading the word...how do people find your business?

[christm]

I sell some of my photos and nearly all of them are sold via the website. I set it up in February this year and its running okay. Its not a job income, just some nice side money, for new equipment now and then.

Im still a student and so I'm quite pleased with my achievments so far.


www.templemurray.com

I am currently writing a new website which should be ready around January.

 

[wandalassiter]

Hello all,

I have been using another powerful marketing tool to promote my business. It is like participating with the members of a certain community. Just like that Mediahalo provides everyone to self market in entertainment industry.

Hope you would also enjoy using it in addition with the benefits you get from it.

 

[LarissaPhotography]

We get a lot of word of mouth customers. Our website also brings a lot of business. Some people search for us on Google. We also get new customers from existing customers showing off their pictures on our website to friends.
We're going to be trying the phone book this next year, so we'll see how that works.

 

[msf]

I regularly advertise in Craigslist.org (although I try not to do it more than once a week so as to not appear to spam or desperate or just plain annoying. Especially since there are so many photographers advertising on Craigslist already). This is by far the best advertising I've done and it's free.

I am booking weddings LIKE CRAZY through Craigslist.com... and It's FREE!

What category are you guys advertising on craigslist? Im curious whats best for both portraits and weddings.

I can see the ad being placed in these categories:
community - artists
community - local news
for sale - general
for sale - arts and crafts
for sale - photo and video
services - creative
services - skilled trade
gigs - creative.

What works best for you all?

I wonder if you can stick in a page counter with stats into craigslist, so you get an idea of how many people are seing the ad.

 

[msf]

What category are you guys advertising on craigslist? Im curious whats best for both portraits and weddings.

I can see the ad being placed in these categories:
community - artists
community - local news
for sale - general
for sale - arts and crafts
for sale - photo and video
services - creative
services - skilled trade
gigs - creative.

What works best for you all?

I wonder if you can stick in a page counter with stats into craigslist, so you get an idea of how many people are seing the ad.

bumpity bump bump. Im still curious what category works best for everyone here.

Im trying the community - general for now. I added a statcounter.com to see how much its being viewed, and so far its about 11 people a day, but they are not staying to long.

 

[LarissaPhotography]

I usually look to see what other photographers are using for the service I'm listing before choosing a category.

 

[msf]

Does anyone here do cold calling? Randomly call people up in the phone book in the area to see if they are interested in having a portrait done? I bet this would just annoy alot of people and create a negative image for the company, but I could be mistaken.

 

[CrimsonFoxPhotography]

I am booking weddings LIKE CRAZY through Craigslist.com... and It's FREE!
Also considered posting an add in the local tri county paper.. but not sure if that would be a good investment. It would get your name known through your community, though, and thats a plus.

Hi,

What kind of wording are you using on Craigslist? Are you cutting and pasting info from your site, simply listing your packages, or writing up a unique ad? How long is it?

 

[modlife]

Great topic Allison!
I started with two stages. In the first stage, I designed my website. In stage two, I put an ad in Respond.com. (Respond is area driven). You can sign up for free, but the leads cost $3 per lead. You can set your own lead fiters, and the minimum monthy lead fee is $50. Sounds expensive, but one wedding booked can equal several thousands of dollars, so 50 bucks a month isn't so much.
When people called from respond.com, I would direct them to the website and set up a meeting....then it was all up the presentation. (Which I have described somewhere in these threads.....somehwere LOL).
Once the weddings started to roll in, I branched out a bit with a small ad on the knot.com ($80 a month), and joined collages.net for an additional $80 a month just to help sell reprints (which can be substantial when they are presented in the way that collages does it with audio slideshows and soforth.)
Being a member of WPJA has been by far the best marketing tool I have, because it targets a specific population to the specific way I shoot weddings (candid).
That's pretty much all I have done, and I'm happy to say, my first year in business is going much better than I had ever anticipated.
I have never participated in Bridal shows, mag/newpaper ads/ or direct marketing, but I understand those things can work very well also.

Respond.com has increased their pricing to $10/lead - $100 minimum account balance, and $199 and $499 per year.

Has anyone else used them? I'm considering this, as they seem to have a lot of quality leads for qualified companies.

 

[modlife]

My forte is search engine optimization. Nuff said.

I'm finding that this works the best. I'm starting to blog about SEO, detailing what I have found if you feel like reading. In under a month I've taken the #2 spot for the google search of "atl photographers" just by focusing on SEO. It's more than doubled the hits to my websites in 30 days and turned into a little business.

-Josh

 

[tleduc]

I've been trying for a while to break into the business. I finally feel that I have an angel that will appeal to others in my area. Thank you for the great ideas to help improve my market.

 

[a_kraker99]

Mostly word of mouth but I have been doing facebook ads for a while now and they are awesome. You can pretty much narrow it down to the exact type of people you want targeted.

 

[mamun]

I branched out a bit with a small ad on the knot.com ($80 a month), and joined collages.net for an additional $80 a month just to help sell reprints (which can be substantial when they are presented in the way that collages.

 

[msf]

I had an idea today. I could get a tshirt, and print my logo on the left chest on the front, and a large graphic on the back with my company name and a breif explanation of what I do. Perhaps even a cute kid portrait. Then I could wear this in public when im out and about. I wonder how effective this would be. :0)

 

[newbe]

I like the info that you provided about staarting a business. I am just starting out myself, and dont know where to start. What is the membership you mentioned, WPJA? Can you suggets a sitethat will help with selling nature photos.
Thanks for your help
Newbe