Learn 6 powerful wedding photography marketing strategies that the top wedding photographers are using to double their wedding leads and referrals.

Marketing strategy #1 : Send your wedding couple a gift!

Unfortunately, being a wedding photographer is a tough business to be in when it comes to repeat business. It’s not often that a couple would ask you to shoot their wedding again!

But in reality there is plenty of opportunity for repeat business! For example, they could book you again for a work event, maybe some corporate head shots, a maternity shoot, a newborn session or some family portraits in the future.

This is why it is so important that you give your couples the most amazing experience possible while you are their wedding photographer.

You want your couples to not only rave about you to their friends but you always want to be front of mind when the thought of a photographer comes up.

That is where a little gift can go a LONG way. This one little gem has made such a huge impact on my relationships with my clients I don’t know how I lived without it.

Check this out…

From now on, every time you book a wedding, wait a couple of months and then send your couple a little unexpected gift.

For example, two months after they book you, send your bride a massage voucher with a handwritten note saying something like “I know organising a wedding can be stressful, why don’t you take some time out and enjoy a 1 hour massage on us!…”

OR

Send your couple two gold class movie tickets, they’ll absolutely love it! Say something like “I know you guys have been so busy organising this wedding, why not go out and enjoy a date night on us!…”

Yes! Doing this does cost a little bit of money. But personally, I’m more than happy to spend $100 (of their $2500+ package) to give them an amazing experience with my business. It will help you to stand out from other photographers, your couples will rave about their experience to their friends and lastly, it will help boost your referrals 🙂

Using Studio Ninja, I get the couples address during the booking process using a questionnaire that is attached to their quote! And then I have a reminder setup that reminds me to “send a gift” to the couple two months after they book me, too easy! I do this for every couple that I book, I never forget and the results have been amazing!!

Now it’s your turn…

Think of something interesting that you can give your couples as a thank you gift, or simply take my ideas. Send this gift to your couples and see what happens! I guarantee the results will be amazing!

Marketing strategy #2 : The next day sneak peek!

I find the results of implementing this strategy to be the most rewarding of all 🙂 especially because it boosts my ego a little as I get to see 100’s of positive comments posted on Facebook about how beautiful the bride looks and how amazing the photography is!!

Here’s how it works…

Step 1

Firstly, for this to work, make sure you become friends with the bride and groom on Facebook before the wedding day. You can always add this task into your wedding workflow in Studio Ninja as you saw in the previous example.

Step 2

The morning after the wedding you need to choose and edit one beautiful photo that you will email to the couple.

This photo doesn’t need to be too crazy or artistic, it just needs to be a really nice photo of the bride and groom looking their best. Give this photo a quick once over in Lightroom (or similar) to jazz it up a bit, but don’t spend too much time!

Now, email this photo to the couple. They will not be expecting this email from you so when they receive it, they are going to be absolutely over the moon that you have done this for them, especially the day after their wedding.

The wording of this email is critical!

This email needs to achieve 5 objectives:

1. It’s really important that you congratulate the couple on their wedding.
2. Surprise them with a beautiful photo.
3. Ask them to upload the photo to Facebook.
4. Ask them to tag you and / or your Facebook business page in their post.
5. And lastly, tell them that you will also be uploading a photo of their wedding to your Facebook business page later that day and you will tag them in it.

Here is an example of the email that I send using Studio Ninja:

“Hey [bride’s name]

I had a such an awesome time photographing your beautiful wedding yesterday!! Thanks so much for having me 🙂

I’ve got a surprise for you! I’ve attached a photo of you guys from yesterday looking gorgeous so you can announce the news of your wedding to the world right away!

If you put the photo on Facebook, I would really appreciate it if you could tag us in it @epicphotography 🙂

Also, just letting you know that I’ll be uploading one of my favourite shots from your wedding to the Epic Photography Facebook Page later today. I’ll tag you guys so you can check it out later!

I’ll let you guys get back to your post wedding excitement and I’ll be in touch soon when your photos are ready.

Cheers,
Chris @ Epic Photography”

Step 3

Now, the final piece of the puzzle!

Choose a different photo that will be uploaded to your Facebook business page. Again, give it a quick once over in Lightroom (or similar) so it looks really good.

Go to your Facebook business page, upload the photo and write a new post about the wedding. Make sure you tag the bride, groom, venue and any other suppliers that you know. This is a great way to get some extra reach.

DO NOT click on the ‘Publish’ button! We want to schedule this post to go out later in the afternoon. Click on the ‘Schedule’ button and choose 4pm.

That’s it, you’ve nailed it!

Now just wait for your couple to upload their photo to Facebook, followed by your scheduled post and then just sit back and watch as all the comments start rolling in about how amazing the couple looks and how beautiful your photos are.

This is such a easy way to get 100’s of people to see your work, especially at the peak of everyone’s excitement, the day after the wedding!

Marketing strategy #3 : The online wedding slideshow!

The online wedding slideshow is not only a great way to get referrals but it’s also really good for your website’s SEO too.

In a nutshell, you want to create a slideshow movie of a wedding, upload it to your website and then share it with your couple who will then share it with all their friends and family!

Here are the steps…

Step 1

As soon as a wedding is ready for delivery create a slideshow movie of the best 50-70 photos using Windows Movie Maker (PC) or iMovie (MAC).

Make sure you also sync the slideshow to music for extra wow factor. If you can remember the couple’s first dance song and include that, you will get extra brownie points!

Step 2

Upload the slideshow movie to Vimeo or YouTube.

Step 3

Create a new page on your website and embed the slideshow movie to that page. Feel free to style this page too so it’s on brand and looks and feels amazing when the couple see it.

Step 4

Email your couple and tell them that their beautiful wedding photos are ready! Also let them know that you’ve created a special slideshow movie for them. This will come as a nice surprise as they weren’t expecting to get a slideshow! Make sure you include instructions on how to find their slideshow as they will need to navigate to it. For example:

1. Go to Epic Photography
2. In the main menu, click on Client Login
3. Click on your gallery to view your slideshow

Step 5

The last piece of the puzzle is to make sure you ask your couples to share their slideshow movie with all their friends and family. They will naturally want to do this because they love their photos, but a little push doesn’t hurt.

It’s as simple as that!

My couples ALWAYS email me back saying how much they loved watching the slideshow. Usually there are tears of joy and they always share it with everyone they know! The best part is that they weren’t expecting to get a slideshow, so when I send it to them, they are over the moon 🙂

This is such an easy marketing strategy that results in 100’s of people and potential clients visiting your website, at no cost!

There are also three main SEO benefits to doing it this way:

1. It increases the number of unique visitors to your website = really good for SEO!
2. The slideshow is roughly 6 – 8 minutes long so it increases the amount of time people spend on your website = really good for SEO!
3. It forces people to navigate around and find the slideshow which dramatically reduces the bounce rate = really good for SEO!

I’ll leave all the detailed SEO stuff for another time, but trust me, all the above points make a significant impact to your Google ranking.

Now it’s your turn, start creating slideshows for all your couples and add more ammo into your arsenal of ways to get more wedding referrals 🙂

Marketing Strategy #4 : The quick turn-around!

Like with everything that I am teaching you here, it’s all about exceeding your clients expectations while you are their wedding photographer.

A very easy way of doing that is to finish processing a couples wedding photos and get it back to them as quickly as possible. And by quick, I’m talking 14 days or less!

Now, before you start freaking out, think about it. How much time does it really take to turn around a wedding? You need to:

1. Cull the shoot down to the best X amount of images (1 – 2 hours)
2. Edit / retouch all these photos (4 – 8 hours) OR outsource this process (0 hours)
3. Create the online slideshow and package the photos ready for delivery (1 hour)

I’ve heard stories of photographers taking two, three or even four months to get photos back to the couple. In my opinion this is completely unnecessary.

By making the couple wait that long you are barely meeting your couples expectations or worse, making them frustrated.

It doesn’t need to take that long! You just need to put some time aside and get it done during the week after the wedding.

Imagine what your couples would say if you originally set the expectation of a one month turnaround, but then after just 10 days you email them saying something like “I’ve spent all week working really hard editing your wedding photos because they are sooo good and now they’re ready for you!”

I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now (Studio Ninja always keeps me on track so I don’t forget) and every time my couples are completely taken by surprise and are so happy and thankful.

Your couples will be living in a bubble of excitement for the first 2 weeks after their wedding, so if you can deliver the wedding photos as quickly as possible they will be completely blown away.

Marketing Strategy #5 : Getting referrals from wedding vendors!

As the old saying goes “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, and that absolutely applies here. Everyone knows that referrals are the strongest type of advertising, so in this lesson I am going to teach you strategies to get other businesses in your industry to refer brides to you!

To get an idea of how best to attack this strategy, we need to break down the planning process of a wedding. Here are the major steps that happen leading up to the big day!

• Groom buys an engagement ring.
• Groom books a hotel, resort, dinner, boat ride etc etc and proposes to the bride!!

The couple are now engaged and the bride takes over the rest of the booking process **joking**!! Next they need to choose a date, and they can’t do that until they:

• Book a reception venue.
• Book a ceremony venue (if it’s not the same as the reception).

Now that they have a date booked in and a venue, it’s time to organise the following suppliers, not necessarily in this order:

• Book a photographer.
• Book a videographer.
• Choose a dress.
• Find a florist.
• Find the perfect cake.
• Choose a celebrant.
• Book in the entertainment, for example, band, DJ and/or MC.
• Get the wedding cars booked in.
• Send out invites.

The mission is to get as many of the businesses in the list above to refer couples to you!

There are 4 ways to create these partnerships:

1. Network and make new friends with vendors!

The easiest way to create these partnerships is to get to know people in your industry and become friends, it’s as simple as that! There are plenty of ways to do this, below are just a few to get you started:

• Join wedding industry Facebook groups: Get involved and make sure you participate in the conversations. Slowly get to know people and build trust. After a while you will see relationships forming and eventually after enough trust has been built, people will start recommending you to their couples.

• Go to industry events and mingle: The biggest and most obvious one are wedding expos. We exhibit once a year just to top up our bookings, and while we are there we meet some amazing vendors. Buy them a coffee, have a chat, get to know them. We have created heaps of partnerships and new friendships this way. Another good one is to attend industry nights put on by wedding directories or even printing labs. Wedding directories for example want to shmooze their advertisers, so they put on industry nights to bring suppliers together for fun or to educate them on sales and marketing.
• Reach out to people the old fashion way: Find a supplier that you would love to partner with and offer to buy them a coffee and have a chat. After an hour of chatting, building trust and laughing about this crazy industry that we are in, become friends and if you’re a good fit you can refer couples to each other!

2. Offer the vendors something in return!

Sometimes it’s all business, so in order to get your foot in the door with some of the big dogs you’ll have to shmooze a little. There are a couple of tactics I have used in the past that worked really well:

• Offer vendors real wedding photos: Every time I’m out shooting a wedding, I’m always thinking which suppliers would like to receive these photos? For example, I shoot beautiful portraits of the bride and then send them to the hair and makeup artist. They can use it on their website to help them with marketing. I shoot photos of the flowers and then send them to the florist. I try and get as many photos of the venue and details and then send the photos to the venue afterwards, so they can use the shots for promotion. This is a REALLY good way to help out other suppliers while at the same time building relationships and hopefully getting you on their preferred supplier list.A really easy way to find out who all the suppliers are is to send your couple an automated Questionnaire using Studio Ninja!

• Offer vendors a photo shoot: Every year I offer a hand full of wedding dress designers and wedding magazines a free shoot. Sure, I know shooting for free sucks, but a dress designer might create 300 dresses a year for brides and if you can get a dress designer to personally recommend you to their brides, you will be set! I also shoot for magazines in exchange for free advertising which is also a good trade. One day of shooting, honing my skills and getting some amazing folio pieces in exchange for free advertising works for me!

3. Offer the vendors brides an awesome deal!

I’ve used this tactic a few times with reception venues and a few other suppliers and it worked really well.

• Give the vendors brides a discount: When a venue refers a bride to me, I give her 15% off which is a massive discount. So the result is I get more volume, the venue looks great because their customers are getting an awesome deal and the brides love it because they are saving money, win – win for everyone!

• Give the vendors a gift to give to their customers: Think outside the square! For example, I have partnered with jewelers, so every time a groom buys an engagement ring he will also receive a ‘gift’ from the jeweler which is a free engagement shoot for him and his new fiance! The groom loves it, the jeweler is happy because he/she is adding more value to their customer experience and I’m happy because I get to shoot a newly engaged couple who will ‘hopefully’ book me for their wedding too!

4. Refer your customers to the vendors!

The last strategy I have used to create business relationships with other suppliers is refer my couples to them first!

For example, there is a band that I love working with. Whenever a couple asks me if I can recommend a band, they are the first company that I think of and refer my couples to them.

The couple is grateful because it saves them shopping around and it looks good for me because it proves that I know my stuff. Of course I always tell the couple to let the band know that Chris from Epic Photography sent them 🙂 and after 3 times the band contacted me and said they would like to add me to their preferred supplier list!

** One last bonus! **

Why don’t you create a referral partnership with other photographers. Yes I know we are competing for the same clients, but if you are already booked, why not recommend that couple to an awesome wedding photographer that you know.

Imagine how quickly you’ll fill your diary if you could find 2 or 3 photographers and agree to help each other out. It’s a win-win for everyone 🙂

I know that getting referrals from vendors takes effort and isn’t as easy to implement as the other strategies discussed in this 6 week course, but it’s very powerful and should not be ignored!

Marketing Strategy #6 : The power of blogging!

It’s great for your websites SEO

Google is always changing it algorithms and no one knows what they are going to pull out of the hat next. But in the history of Google, there are two SEO standards that have stood the test of time:

1. Quality unique content, and
2. Quality backlinks from industry related high ranking websites.

We’ll discuss backlinks another day. Today is about blogging or in SEO terms, creating ‘quality unique content’ for your website.

Here’s my personal story:

My wedding photography business, Epic Photography was so far away from page 1 that I couldn’t even find myself! So 2 years ago I decided to start blogging.

I started posting about all the weddings I photographed, one post per wedding.

I wrote about the couple, about what locations we went too, some experiences I had during the wedding, some really cool things that happened and lastly I would add a portfolio of images from the wedding. Easy!

This required a bit of work, but after doing a couple I got in the swing of things and could create a new post in about 45 minutes.

Then amazing things started happening! My website went from not existing on google, to fluctuating between page 3 and 4!!

I then applied backlinking techniques (which I’ll discuss in another course) and BANG!! My website started bouncing around page 1 and 2 and my Google enquiries went from 1-2 per month to 2-4 per week!!

Blog posts rank on Google too!

Another thing I noticed was that my posts started popping up on google too. I would blog about the different weddings that I photographed including information about the ceremony location and the reception venue, and then after a month or so, Google would index my posts and rank them.

I would find myself Googling a venue that I blogged about and BANG, I found my blog posts popping up on page 1 and 2.

This is an awesome way for brides to find you. Brides started contacting me because they would research their venue and stumble upon of my blog post too!

Check out the following examples:

If you Google ‘Yarra Yarra Golf Club Wedding’ my website appears as #3 on the list, under their official website and Easy Weddings.

If you Google ‘Maia Docklands Wedding’ my website appears as the #2 search result, just below the official Maia Docklands website! That’s a pretty good result if you ask me 🙂

To use Maia as an example, this is a venue that I LOVE shooting at, so I really wanted brides to find me when they were looking at getting married at Maia. I added the main keyword, ‘Maia Docklands Wedding’ into the title of the post, in the image alt tags, in the heading and throughout the body text and after a few weeks, Google found it and ranked it!

The best part is, since Google found that blog post, I’ve been getting more enquiries for weddings at Maia. An amazing outcome, for a total of about 45 minutes work!

Blogging shows your couples that you are busy and experienced!

Having a portfolio of images is fine and generally works really well, but most of the time I have found that couples want to see a whole wedding shoot, not just my best portfolio shots.

Brides can relate to you and your work when they see a whole wedding from start to end. They can get a better understanding of your style and will have a clearer expectation of what they are going to get if they book you!

They also get a good understanding of your personality in the way you write! So when writing your posts, be happy! 🙂

I have found that most of the sale is already done before the couple even met me. They’ll read my blog, see my images and if they like what they see, the deal was almost done.

That’s a wrap!

I wanted to say a HUGE thank you for reading and I really hope you got a ton of value out of this short marketing course. Remember, make sure you take ACTION and put these strategies into your wedding workflow!

I would love to know what you thought of this course, so PLEASE, if you have a minute, click on the blue chat icon on the bottom right of the screen and write me a short message 🙂

Now go forth and conquer!