I know this is a common Question I am just looking for some input from you guys. Last year was my first year, after many years of second shooting and primary shooting for another company, that I went out on my own and went Legit "insurance, LLC registration, lovely taxes, ect". I am currently in college and felt that now would be a great time to try to get established while I don't have a great number of financial responsibilities. Last year I did a lot of low budget weddings just to try and push WOM , connect with other vendors, and just help get some income to re invest in the business. I have yet to pay myself a dime for my work it all goes back into my company. This year I have bumped up my prices competitively in the Colorado market. I did a lot of research and really looked at my prices as well as got a lot of feed back from brides about there photographers and what really sold them. Mainly threw public records getting in contact with newlyweds. I made about 200 phone calls and am doing free family portraits for anyone that helped. So I feel that I am priced accordingly for my market. I recently did a bridal show and booked one destination wedding off of that, In Costa Rica. I also use Google ads and have recently booked my first true high end wedding off of that, but as of right now that is all I have on the calendar for next year. This makes me want to fall back on doing low budget weddings but I don’t feel that that is were I fall in the mix and am fighting that urge to make the easy dollar, because in the long term that is not were I am setting my goals to be and truly not were I want my WOM being.
Question
I am really struggling at getting inquiries. I am really looking to see how you feel that it is you produce inquires. I know there is no perfect answer for this and every market is different. As well as the fact that Word of Mouth is the BEST thing in the world for wedding photographers. But what did you do when you started out to really get out there and get your foot in the door? What did you do to set yourself apart? I am really good at closing the sell so I fell if I can push more inquires I can really set myself apart.
I don't really recommend shooting for free. However, if you are going to do it don't shoot ugly weddings for free. If its going to be free it has to present you with a ridiculous opportunity for growth. Also, if you are going to shoot for free, give yourself a drop-dead limit for how many you'll do. Like 1, or maybe 2. If you can only afford that many you'll need to make sure that you don't squander the opportunity on unattractive weddings.
Leverage your network. You know someone that knows someone that is getting married.
Do a wedding show - one of the easiest ways to get in front of your target market. Do some research and find one that you can stand out in.
Got an assistant? Put up slideshows at the reception. Show this captive and interested audience your work.
There you go, certified brotha-help, guaranteed to fail if not watered with ridiculous hard work and dedication.
Hi,
We are in university too! We took two years to really solidify our business. We did low end weddings for beautiful university students. We built up a lovely portfolio and we gave very high quality product, we gave out a cd of facebook size photos and that was one of the biggest and cheapest marketing ploys that brought us other clients. Now we are booking with lawyers, doctors and higher end clients and it is really blowing us away. We had to work crazy hard to make the low end weddings look like a million dollars but it is really starting to pay off.....that was a lot of rambling to say we did weddings at a low-midrange price and we did a lot of them....that got us super use to the flow of weddings and now we have a pretty solid profolio.
To build up my portfolio and experience, I shot $500-$800 Craigslist specials. I think the hardest part of this is getting my work in front of enough eyeballs. I pay to advertise on The Knot, Wedding Wire, and a bunch of free sites. I blog and make sure to link to venues, florists, and use specific key words in the posts.
We started out with only 3 weddings this year! This is really our 1st year of being in business. I must say 1 of those weddings was WOM. The other 2 I had to work hard to get. I spent many nights searching Craigslist in the events & creative section of "gigs." I also put up a lot of free ads on Craigslist and wedding websites. We made cute flyers and posted them up on boards at local grocery stores or anywhere that had boards.
Giving away free sessions can work, but you don't want to do a ton of them. We gave away 1 free senior session this year, which in turn brought us 4 paid seniors that we would have never had!
We also put on benefits and are helping out charities this year which helped get out name out there even more. Because of all the hard work we've put into this first year, we've actually quadrupled the amount of weddings we have so far this coming year (with more pending contracts this past week!)
It is something you gradually get into and most photographers don't start out with being booked their 1st year (most). I find that a lot of our inquiries are word of mouth these days. I have yet to hear from any brides who have found me on the 'free wedding advertising websites."
I would say do a lot of studying (bookstores are fantastic for this), 2nd shoot, workshops, practicing, and time...
Although i talk re wedding expos all advertising wether it be bridal magazine, yellow pages or anything can be geared to get the low level commitment i'm suggesting here and it will crank up the effectiveness of your efforts.
The one thing i also hear a lot is that photographers cannot get into wedding expo's as they are already booked up with photographers. I had that when i first started so i ran my own. It's little more than a glorified sunday market and having your name as presenter on all advertising is also good positioning.
I'm surprised the usual "we don't talk abot this stuff here" folks haven't jumped in yet. I've asked before and I'll ask again... if anyone knows of a forum where THIS KIND of discussion is common and encouraged rather than stomped and spat on, please do share.
Thanks! And thanks to those who have already contributed their thoughts.
what chris, ed and TRReichman said.
Read Chris's pdf, and keep pushing forward, your most important tools business savvy and pr, everywhere you can and as much as you can.
Chris - how many inquiries do you get a week/month? I don't get that many, but I feel like I get enough to keep me busier than I might want, and my prices are high enough that i don't feel the need to book oodles and oodles of clients. Maybe PM me and we can commiserate.
