Hey photographer friends! Welcome back to our Photography Blog, Mastering the Wedding Photography Biz with Hunter and Sarah! Today, we want to talk about the ONLY thing that actually grows your business: getting more clients.

 

 

The Only Way to Grow Your Photography Biz: Get More Clients

As strange as that might sound at first, at the end of the day, booking more jobs and making more money truly is the only thing that grows your business. And while things like improving your photography, identifying your ideal client, building an effective website, and learning how to sell to interested customers are all incredibly important parts of running a successful business, none of it matters if you aren’t getting interested clients in the first place. And that’s where the skills of marketing and advertising come in.

 

 

Your Photography Business = A Racecar 🏎

Before we intimidate you with these important but sometimes-scary-sounding topics, here’s an analogy that we think might help gets across just how important marketing and advertising are to your business.
Think of your wedding or portrait photography business as a racecar.

• • Your photography and the experience you give your clients are like the wheels and tires on the car  — since everything is riding on you giving your clients a great experience and product.
  • Your business fundamentals are like the frame of the car.
  • Your website and social media pages are like the body of the car.
  • The engine — the thing that actually propels your business forward — is your sales methods that convert interested clients into paying clients.

So where do marketing and advertising come in? They are the fuel that you put in your engine! You could have the most beautiful racecar in the world with top-of-the-line tires and the most powerful engine known to man. But if you don’t put gas in it, it’s not going anywhere.

 

 

If You Build It… They Won’t Necessarily Come

And yet year after year, we see photographers who are taking wonderful images and have beautiful websites and are serving their clients incredibly well. But they’re confused about why their business still isn’t growing. They’re doing everything right — why aren’t people hiring them more?

 

And often, it’s because they’re operating under the mentality of “If you build it, they will come.” That philosophy works great if you’re making an 80s movie about baseball ghosts, but it doesn’t work out so well for businesses. And where photographers really get into trouble is when they’re able to look at their first year or two in business and say, “Hey, I grew just fine and never did any marketing or advertising!”

 

Sure, maybe you were able to get from $0 per year to $5,000 per year or even $25,000 per year by just being a good photographer, and letting your clients find you on their own. But you weren’t actually driving your racecar. You just happened to build your business on top of a hill, and let it roll down that hill under its own gravity for a little while.

 

 

Do You REALLY Want to Get More Clients?

But if you want to really get in the driver’s seat and grow the kind of business that changes your life, lets you quit your full-time job, or allows you to contribute to your family’s income in a significant way, you will never grow your business into something that is truly profitable and sustainable without effective marketing and advertising.

 

And THAT… is where we come in! Later this month, on August 22nd, Sarah and I are hosting our next live online workshop for wedding and portrait photographers. It’s called “How to Get More Photography Clients: A Simple Guide to Free AND Paid Marketing and Advertising”. 👈 Learn more by clicking this link!

 

 

What We’ll Cover in Our Marketing/Advertising Workshop

In this two hour workshop, we’re going to teach photographers the basics of marketing and advertising, and walk you through an assortment of simple marketing strategies that you can pursue at any stage of your business, and without any specialized technical known-how.

 

We’re also going to cover the methods that we used in the very earliest days of our business — when we didn’t have a single dollar to spend on marketing and all we had was our time and effort — all the way to the more recent days, when we’ve spent as much as $1,500 per month on paid advertising, and how we saw that turn into rocket fuel for our business.

 

And once we’ve taught you all of the marketing avenues that we’ve used or seen our photography students find success with, we’re going to cover the best practices when it comes to all your marketing avenues, so you can avoid the most common pitfalls that we see newer photographers making.

 

 

More Details About Our Marketing/Advertising Workshop

So whether you’re in the earliest days of your business and still working on booking paid jobs that aren’t your close friends and family, OR you’ve been running a photography business for a few years, but just aren’t booking as many jobs as you’d like, then come check out our workshop on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2023 from 7:00 – 9:00 PM Eastern.

 

And as always, if you can’t make it to the live workshop, you can still purchase a replay of the workshop at the same link, and get access to all that same great information — just without being able to attend the live Q&A. If you’re reading this after 8/22/23, then the workshop replay is available RIGHT NOW for purchase!

 

But if you ARE watching this video before the live workshop, don’t wait to get your tickets. As with may of our past workshops, because we LOVE seeing all your friendly faces live as we teach, tickets to the actual LIVE event are listed at HALF-PRICE compared to what the replay will sell for after the workshop itself. So don’t wait to sign up, because the price will double once we’ve hosted the event!

 

Remember, if you want your wedding or portrait photography business to grow beyond where you are now, one of the quickest ways to see growth is to turn up the dial on your marketing and advertising! So don’t miss this opportunity to learn directly from us!