Like in any other business, developing the suitable online marketing strategy can turn your photography business into a truly successful one. Let’s face it, in this day and age it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible for a company to thrive without implementing a proper marketing strategy.
Naturally, photography is no exception to the rule. You can be a fantastic wedding, portrait or travel photographer, but this is just not enough if you aim to develop a profitable business. You need to make yourself visible in the online environment, to make your work easily discoverable and shareable by potential clients, to engage with a larger audience and expand your notoriety.
To make your task easier, we’ve rounded up a list of ideas you can use in order to effectively market your photography business. Here’s exactly what you can do:
Build a Killer Online Portfolio
One of the most important things you need to do is to build an online portfolio. Just think about it, how else are you going to showcase your work? You can’t really show potential clients a folder on your laptop or printed images. We live in a digital era that requires accessibility and fast responses, and this is why it’s fundamental to create a portfolio website.
Putting together an online portfolio has tremendous benefits. It’s a great channel to display your skills and creativity, it allows those interested to quickly discover and browse through your work and it helps them understand your sense of aesthetics and your individual style. Just keep in mind that a portfolio is not a collection of your entire work, it’s a collection of your best work! Therefore a well-curated portfolio is essential. Start off with the images you consider the most adequate and periodically update it with fresh content from new projects.
You can easily create your photography portfolio with the aid of a portfolio website builder, such as Format for instance. The process is super simple and fast, since there’s no coding required. All you have to do is select a template from the numerous available and customize it according to your individual preferences.
Watermark your Images
Watermarking can truly help your photography business. This is a great way not only to protect, but also to promote your photos in the online environment. Having a logo or your own signature on a photo will help prospective clients associate you with pictures they’ve enjoyed. It will add a professional touch and build trust. It will allow you to communicate your brand story in a memorable manner.
Adding a logo or signature to your pictures is not a time-consuming task. This can be quickly accomplished through photo editing software particularly built for this purpose, such as our own PhotoMarks. In comparison to Photoshop, PhotoMarks is dead easy to use and allows you to watermark multiple images at the same time in three, simple steps: just add your files, make your edits and select the output folder and format. The app lets you completely customize your text or logo watermark and gives you the option to save your settings as profiles for later use.
Leverage Social Media
Using social media is a must, there’s no getting around it. This is a great way to gain exposure and reach larger audiences that might be interested in your photography services. Here are some tips on what you can do in order to efficiently promote your photography on Instagram, Facebook and other social networks:
- Create a professionally-looking, business account. This will give you far more credibility in comparison to a personal account.
- Maintain a high standard of quality. This means you should post your best-looking images, there’s no room for poorly taken or processed pictures.
- Tag your clients. Ask for their permission beforehand and then tag them in your photos. This will allow you to reach their friends and followers and gain some more exposure
- Organize a giveaway. Ask people to share your business page and offer a free photo shoot as a prize.
- Post moderately. A post every two days is more than enough. The reason behind it is to keep your followers updated with your work and provide fresh content and, at the same time, not flood them.
Use Photo Hosting Websites
Facebook and Instagram are great platforms for sharing photos, but you can go even further with your photography marketing. Because visual content is huge today, there are other alternatives at your disposal to get your photos noticed across the web: image hosting sites.
This type of websites, such as Flickr, 500px or Google Photos, are a great solution for photographers, since they offer multiple benefits. You get tons of free storage to back up your images, you can upload high-quality photos, organize them and create albums. Of course, the best part is that you can connect with other photographers across the globe, increase your notoriety and even sell your photos.
For a detailed list of the best sites for hosting pictures, you can take a look at this article.
Start a Photography Blog
If you want to get on the good side of Google (and you definitely want this!), you should know that the world’s most notorious search engine loves content. The fresher, the better. Creating your own blog and delivering quality, relevant content on a constant basis will improve your position in search rankings and implicitly will make it easier for prospective clients to see your work.
At the same time, having a blog gives you the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge in your line of work and gain the credibility required to attract new clients. Once people will read quality blog posts that will provide valuable information in a non-promotional manner, they’ll most likely begin considering you an expert in your industry. And who doesn’t want to hire the services of an expert?
The good thing about starting a photography blog is that there are multiple topics to tackle. You can write about general photography tips and tricks or perhaps mobile photography. You can write reviews of cameras, lenses and other gear, as well reviews of photo editing software. The possibilities are numerous.
As a conclusion, marketing your photography business is extremely important. This is an industry well-known for its fierce competition and that’s why it’s essential to do more than just take quality photos. Do your research, invest time and energy in the right marketing strategies and you’ll most surely reap the rewards of your hard work.