Your best marketing advice

[jowensphoto]

What has been your most successful way of marketing your business? Or the least successful?

 

[CMfromIL]

Well, I'm not a professional photographer but as far as marketing goes I know a few things.

1. Word of mouth is probably the most difficult, yet most powerful medium for translating potential clients to actual clients. If you have a satisfied customer, and they tell their friends it's a very powerful motivator. Conversely, tick off a customer and they will tell 20 friends (or more) about what a lousy exeperience they had.

2. A good social network can work wonders. Similar to word of mouth, works on customers basically singing your praises.

Least effective (IMHO) are wordy, small advertisements in the newspaper. Old medium, expensive, and have a very short shelf life (1 day or so). Similarly yellow page ads are a waste of time. When is the last time you bothered to open a phone book, let alone the yellow pages?

Radio can be effective, but mainly to keep up awareness not to drive traffic to your store.

 

[Alan_Chapman]

Hi what type of photographer are you? different marketing works for each field of photography. you can get a free ebook from Alan Chapman Photography Marketing - on the 7 photography marketing habits of successful photographers.
Photography marketing is my field if you have any more questions just ask
Cheers

 

[raider]

where do we send the difference from the check you disburse?

 

[GerryDavid]

Ive tried delivering 4x6 postcard advertisements by hand *on a bike really* last summer, didnt get a single job from that, and I did it for at least 6 months, some months I was able to deliver only a couple hundred, other months I was able to deliver over 500. Not a single job, even though I talked to a few and they seemed very interested and said they would call. I did put some of these up in grocery store bull boards and I got a couple jobs from those. Much easier, faster and cheaper method. I now try to keep an eye open for community boards and im always finding new ones.

I am offering custom timeline covers this summer that will have my studio name on them but most of my recent portraits are either not on facebook or are not using the timeline view yet.

I am using the spokesmodels method, it worked ab it last year, I changed the terms to make the rewards much better, hopefully it will do better than last year.

I just bought Jay Conrad Levington's guerrilla marketing book which will hopefully give me some useful information. It was only $10 on amazon. I am thinking of buying a few different marketing for dummies books, it will be like $15 total but im not sure they will be worth the time to read. I tried to convince my wife that she should read them but it didnt work. She reads like 20 times faster than I do.

Facebook is my main marketing method, I havent found google plus to be worth going on. Are people still using it?

I am tempted to get some stickers of my logo to hand out to my customers and to use at my display at the county fair in September, if I do the booth again. Its $150 and 5 days investment, plus another $50 in gas. Ive done it for 2 years but I think Ive only got 2 paid jobs from it. If I do it this year Ill probably just have the display up and skip being there.

 

[Alan_Chapman]

Hey Gerry, did your postcard have a Unique selling point, a rock solid 100% money back guarantee, testimonials (with their image) from happy clients and a special offer with a tight time deadline Eg call NOW! or miss out? for a post card to work these 4 elements are essential. County fairs can be an awesome way to get business, but you have to have the right message to engage the prospects and give them a WOW! show special. Just showing some photos and hopping someone likes them is not going to work. Hope this helps
Alan Chapman
Photographer's Marketing Coach

 

[GerryDavid]

You can only fit so much on a 4x6 card. I had my company name on the top, a few of my best images showing a range of subjects, senior, family, children usually, and usually a few coupons on the bottom and a message, and a call to action statement, call now to make an appointment, etc. the coupons were valid for a month from the date I estimated to deliver them.

Ive heard it recommended not to offer a 100% money back guarantee for a creative service, to risky. Even if they love the pictures and they decide the money should go towards something else like a car repair, you may loose out on a weeks worth of work just like that.

And testimonies take up to much space, I got a few shorter ones now so I may put them on the next one, but when I read a testimony in general it doesnt influence me one way or another. For all I know they wrote it themselves and put a different name on it.

Im currently trying to design a new summer advertisement but no expiration date on it, just a space for an address label for me to print specials to put on it later. That way I can use all 1000 and not throw any out like I did last year. The lab I used was gotprint.com and they were about $50 for 1000 cards, only $2 cheaper for 500 and only $2 cheaper for 250. Which is why I went for 1000 each time. I'll probably put a couple testimonies on them if I find the space. I dont wnat to make the images to small or its not worth putting them on there. *Im the sort that finds 8x10 prints to be on the "small" side. I like to see detail. I plan to use 8x10 portfolio books for family pictures.

On to new stuff...

I have a revised loyalty program/rewards that im going to make some business cards for, each one is worth $10 and they get a $10 card for every $100 they spend. The catch is its only valid for 6 months, after that its worth half the value for the following 6 months. And they can only redeem 1/3 of their purchase total with these cards. I got a couple things in place to prevent counterfeiting them such as a unique code on each card using thier name and date, and a special hole punch that you cant buy in walmart or michaels.

And I am tring to design a "thank you" postcard to send out after a month from each portrait, reminding them of the rewards card and to let their friends know about us for the referral program. for the referral program they get $10 for every $100 the referral spends.