Marketing For Photographers

What Is Marketing for Photographers?

Before diving into our top tips on marketing for photographers, let’s take a second to consider what
marketing actually is.

It’s helpful to think about marketing as a funnel or a journey of engagement, with different stages leading a potential client to engage more and more. Ultimately, you should design your marketing journey to end up with people making a booking.

Guide to Marketing for Photographers

• Use Pinterest 

• Take advantage of Facebook advertising

• Get your work featured

• Update Google My Business

• Co-market with fellow vendors and creatives

• Keep your website fresh

• Blog regularly

• Engage with your social media audience

• Create an email subscriber list

• Be strategic about your emails

• Give clients reasons to rave

• Offer referral rewards

Stage One in Marketing for Photographers: Awareness and Exposure

Stage one is about getting eyes on your content! People can’t engage with something they don’t know about, so first things first, you need to refine your strategies for getting the right people – your target audience – to see your content and be drawn into engaging with it.

Pin It to Win It

Unlike Instagram, where people tend to go to be entertained, people on Pinterest often have a sense of intention behind the images they seek out. They might be looking for recipes, planning a trip or an event, or searching for inspiration. This is just one of the reasons Pinterest is an incredibly rich resource in marketing for photographers here in 2023 – people are already looking for photographs and photographers.

To start out, make sure you have a business account and you’ve claimed your site so that your Pins link straight back to your profile and your website. Always make sure that every step in your marketing journey leads onto the next – every Pin and post should lead to your website.

Pinterest uses algorithms to rank content and decide who and how many people to show it to. This means that principles of SEO, or search engine optimization, apply here too to help you get the most possible exposure on your Pins. Pinterest has over 400 million users, so if you can smash your SEO game and get Pinterest to promote your content, you have access to an incredible pool of leads.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Advertising allows you to pay for a post to be shown to a select demographic of people. The cool thing is that, unlike with simply posting on your blog or your socials, Facebook advertising allows you to control the demographics of who is seeing your posts. This is a great asset in marketing for photographers because you can filter to reach the target audience you’re looking for – for example, if you’re a family portrait photographer, you might create an ad and filter it to be shown to women aged 30-50 who have liked the page of a local children’s bookstore. This may be a pool of your ideal clientele who you wouldn’t easily reach another way.

Facebook advertising should not be your only or main marketing strategy – it’s too hit-or-miss to be relied on as the lion’s share of your exposure. But with the right targeting, this tool can help the right people find you.

Get Your Work Featured  

Getting your work used or featured in a field-relevant magazine or blog will give your name exposure to audiences you never could’ve accessed on your own, and what’s more, you have instant credibility in their eyes by virtue of association! When it comes to marketing for photographers, this is a real win.

This may feel like a pipe dream, but don’t be discouraged – just start small. Submit work to regional and niche publications. Journalists and editors are looking for a story to tell, so work on an angle to pitch alongside your photographs, and send the same pitch to lots of different editors.

This area requires persistence as you build connections, so don’t be put off by the first round of rejections. As you continue to be in touch, the editors and writers will know that, even if your work isn’t quite right for what they are working on right now, if they ever need the kind of content you create, they can call you.

Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool that helps your business rank on Google for local searches. Filling out a full profile on this is a no-brainer in marketing for photographers, just to make sure you are super easy to find online. Keep your profile updated by uploading the photos from each blog you post, and if you have any particularly happy past clients, ask them to leave you a review on there. 

Co-market with Fellow Vendors and Creatives

Working with people who are in the same demographic but not in direct competition with you is a great tool in marketing for photographers. Look for services and businesses who are functioning in the lifestyle of your target client: these could be venues, classes, markets, restaurants or other services, or even vendors and contributors from shoots you do.

One way to leverage these connections is to include links to them on your website when you blog about events and/or shoots you’ve done, and ask to be included on their websites and socials too. Another idea is to offer product photos for them to use as long as they link back to you on their posts and pages.

This connects you to new audiences and gets more eyes on your work!

Stage Two in Marketing for Photographers: Interest and Engagement

So, they’ve seen some of your beautiful images. Now the next stage in marketing for photographers is to cultivate engagement with your content – this is the moment where you are leading people to interact with your online presence and take an interest in your brand.

Keep Your Website Fresh

If your Stage One strategies are working, people will be finding your website and clicking around. In marketing for photographers, this is a big win!

Your website is your calling card, so put effort into making sure it channels your brand and is clear about what you are offering. Keep it updated with your latest information and photography, and make sure it is easy to use. 

Blogging Is Back

Blogging regularly is a great asset in marketing for photographers because it forms the basis for so many other marketing moves.

Posting relevant content to your website will increase traffic to your website through improving your ranking on Google, making you easy to find. A well-stocked blog will also build your credibility with prospective clients: they can hear your tone, read about your expertise, and these blogs create opportunities for people to see your portfolio.

You can use the content from your blogs in social media posts, Pins on Pinterest, and marketing emails – streamlining your process and creating cohesion across your platform.

A Few Easy Steps Improve Your SEO

We mentioned improving your ranking on Google – the way to do that is through Search Engine Optimization. Google ‘crawls’ your website to figure out what searches it should appear in, and then it uses an algorithm to determine how it will rank its search results. There are things you can do to increase your website’s chance of being on the first page of Google results for relevant searches.

 Here are few easy steps:

1. Use keywords: When you come up with your blog titles, include the kind of words that your target audience will be using to Google and the kind of information they will be searching for. The more specific you are, the more relevant Google will deem your post. 
2. Use links: Every blog you write should include links to your own website and to others. When you link to other websites, it increases your credibility in Google’s eyes.
3. Answer questions and share expertise: As a professional, you have expertise in your field! Use your blog to answer questions and provide helpful information that is truly useful.

Your blog can be a great tool in marketing for photographers because you can use it to draw your potential clients deeper in to engage with you. Always have a call to action in your posts – whether that is to contact you, or join your mailing list, or to sample a free gift or a discount. You always want your blog posts to be funneling people further along your marketing journey.

Engage with Your Social Media Audience

A key part of marketing for photographers is to set aside time each day to respond to any comments or DMs on your socials and to check your tags to see if anyone has tagged you in something you may want to repost. You should also be leaving comments on others’ posts and engaging on Instagram with other creatives and potential clients and collaborators.

Instagram stories and Instagram LIVES can be a great marketing tool for photographers to build rapport with their followers and cultivate a sense of personality. Because they disappear, they can be a more informal window into your process, and an opportunity to story-tell around your work.

Creating a sense of personal connection on your social accounts will help to create loyalty and engagement with your followers.

Stage Three in Marketing for Photographers: Action

In marketing for photographers, once you’ve got people aware of your brand and engaging with your content, you want to work on your endgame to lead people into taking action to book you.

Email Marketing

Getting potential clients onto your website is a big win in marketing for photographers – getting them on your email subscriber list is even better. When people visit your website, it’s the marketing equivalent of a first coffee date. Access to someone’s inbox is like being invited to their home – it allows you to continue to build a relationship.

Give a Reason

Create the ‘steps’ that will lead them to subscribe – how are you driving people to your email list? A key here is to make it very clear why someone would want to receive emails from you in the first place! There are an array of tools in marketing for photographers that you can use to entice people: a combination of website pop-ups, social media promotions, and deals and offers.

Having an incentive is a great idea. For example, you may want to offer a free guide, a handbook, a unique offer, or an entry into a contest as an incentive to join your email list!

Create a Funnel

Someone subscribes to your email list – amazing! Remember how we used the concept of a funnel or a journey to describe marketing for photographers? This idea comes into play here. What steps come after someone joins your email list?

After they subscribe: consider creating a ‘welcome’ sequence of emails. Platforms like Mailchimp will help you automate this. You might make special offers to new subscribers, or send them tasters of your portfolio – consider what element of your work you want to highlight. Top tip: use plenty of buttons throughout the email to give people ample opportunities to click through and engage with you.

Be Strategic About What You Send

Every email you send should have a clear, specific purpose and goal. Don’t just oversaturate in a bid to keep your name in inboxes– people will catch on and stop opening your emails. When it comes to email marketing for photographers, thoughtful emails a couple of times a month are better than spam every day. For more information on what your schedule should look like, check out this helpful article on how often to send marketing emails.

Give Clients Reasons to Rave

Happy clients are a huge resource – perhaps the biggest asset in marketing for photographers! Think about ways that you can create opportunities for people to rave about you on social media or refer you to their networks. This might look like surprising them with framed photographs in the mail or giving them bespoke gifts.

Only you know what is appropriate in the relationships you’ve formed, and if it feels right, ask some of your happy clients to speak on video testimonials to put on your website and social accounts.

When you post on your socials, always tag the people or the brands who are pictured – when they repost, they are referring you to their whole pool of followers, too.

Offer Referral Rewards

This is a great way to reward customers and get your name out to others! Offer discounts or rewards for existing clients when their referrals end in a new booking. Not only does this create loyalty among your existing clients, but it also introduces you to their networks and gets you bookings – a triumph in marketing for photographers.

Final Thoughts

There you have it – the ultimate guide to marketing for photographers in 2023! There is a huge range of ideas here for you to develop because, at the end of the day, marketing for photographers is as unique as the work you produce. Keep in mind the three stages and make sure you are always designing your marketing to move people along your marketing funnel!