Starting a new photography business is an exciting endeavor, with so much to plan and implement. Your ultimate goal, of course, is booking shoots with clients. If you want to make a success of it, then you must be able to market the business effectively.
Bear in mind, when you’re just starting a business you may not have a huge marketing budget. In this post, we’re going to share some free marketing tips with you to get your photography business going in the right direction.
Create your own website
Build a website to showcase your photography portfolio and let people know about the services you offer. This step is crucial for anyone running a photography business, but many people shy away from websites at the beginning because they think it has to be expensive. Nowadays it’s actually extremely easy to build your own basic website using free tools like WordPress even if you have no coding skills or feel that you’re quite tech challenged. Eventually once you’re making money in your business, you can hire someone to do your site for you, but when starting out it’s totally fine to Do It Yourself.
Start a blog
Posting regularly to a blog on your website is not only a great way to engage the people who visit your website but it’s also a great way to boost your site’s organic rankings on Google so that even more people can find your business when they’re searching online for a photographer. Your blog allows you to post updates about your services and display your work.
Use email marketing
Although many email marketing tools require a monthly payment depending on the size of the list you have, some companies will offer a free tier that can allow you to add as many as 2000 people to your list. Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your ideal clients so you can send them updates, blog posts, and even paid offers for your services that might be useful for them.
Get on social media
Social media is an amazing free marketing platform, and although you don’t have to be and also shouldn’t be on every single platform out there, you should identify the main 2-3 platforms where your ideal clients are hanging out and that you enjoy using so you can post regular and high value content that they will want to engage with and that can help them. This form of marketing is an absolute requirement.
Connect with bloggers and influencers
Depending on the niche of your photography business, you’re going to find lots of bloggers and influencers online in this area who you can partner up with. For example, if you’re a travel photographer, then you could partner up with travel bloggers and come up with an agreement for displaying your work on their blog.
Get on online directories
Online business directories are great places to list everything about your business so that when people are looking for a photographer they will come across the links to your site and blog. Research directories online and spend some time reaching out to them so see you can have a listing.
