Referrals really start to kick in as your business grows and as you work with more clients. There are certain publications that are very successful and certain that aren't.
Most web marketting - in terms of paid listings - will bring in traffic, but rarely a serious bride. mywedding.com and weddignwire.com are good, however, a lot of the others are not noteworthy.
We get a lot of our business from print ads (or rather a lot more than we should). BUT with that being said we have an ad trade so our images (and photo credits) are all over the two magazines we advertise in, and our ads are free (well sort of, we end up shooting 3-6 shoots per month for each magazine). The combo of word of mouth and those two local magazines get us a lot of work.
Web site, local wedding publication (printed annually), local wedding planning web site(s), local bridal association, email marketing (be careful with this one), bridal shows.
I agree! We did a bridal show earlier this year to try it out and you had to buy and ad in their magazine (2 editions worth). We got zero business from the ads. In my opinion, I would never or rarely spend any money on marketing unless it is getting an album or canvas for a really great wedding planner (to show to her brides) that has referred you before.
Our wedding come from referrals, the web (through doing free marketing like our blog, myspace, facebook and other peoples blogs that get on that are friends and in the industry), and wedding planners, bring us all of our business. Wedding photography is relational and you don't get any relationships with an ad. Anytime that you have to tell people about your photography and why its good, you are already doing bad promo, but when someone else tells a bride that you are great, then you are doing marketing that really works.
You can also just get your images into publications for free by submitting images to high end mags (they are looking for images all the time) and then use that free publicity to promote that to clients that come to you from the ways mentioned earlier, which helps to build your status in their eyes. That helps build credibility with planners and brides and helps you book bigger budget weddings.
