Create A Great Wedding Portfolio Website
Being a professional wedding photographer, one of the most important things that you cannot neglect is having a good wedding portfolio website. For a creative professional, not having a website today pretty much means next to no business. Sharing your best images on your website makes it easy for the potential clients to view your wedding photography business work. Making it easy for the site visitors to contact you is very important. Keep your wedding portfolio website simple, fresh and concise. No one has the time to deal with complicated websites.
In case you are just starting out as a professional wedding photographer, you should check out these wedding photography portfolios, before building one for yourself.
Pixpa can help you build and manage a wedding portfolio website easily. Get started for free.
Leverage Your Vendor Network
As a wedding photographer, you would always be collaborating with wedding venues, decorators, florists, and wedding bands as they are also an essential part of any wedding. Sharing a good relationship with them can substantially help in growing your wedding photography business.
Some of the ways you can reach out to vendors are:
Proactively ask vendors to put in a word for you with their clients: Vendors understand how vital it is to have clients to sustain a business. So do not shy from asking them to put in a word for you.
Leave a sample album with vendors: Provide your vendors with a sample album of your work, for times when they are vouching for you. This can be helpful to gain clients confidence and reduce the conversion time.
Take pictures of vendors while working together at a wedding: Offer vendors to have their pictures taken by you at a wedding. This gesture can strengthen your relationship with vendors which can play out very well when it comes to marketing your wedding photography business.
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, its 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 youre a good fit you can refer couples to each other!
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Get Featured On Photo Blogs
Theres a ton of wedding and portrait blogs out there that feature photography, and there are some portrait blogs that feature portrait photographers as well. Get featured if you can, then promote it where your clients can see it. Theres nothing wrong with reminding them how awesome you are. Its simply good business.
Make Choosing A Wedding Photographer Easy With Instagram Ads
Planning a wedding is not easy, but finding a wedding photographer doesnt need to add to the stress. Make it easy for future brides and grooms by using these super-effective strategies to expand your reach through . In no time, youll be creating the most important photographs for newlywed couples that they will cherish for a lifetime.
Meet The Author
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How Much Does The Average Toronto Wedding Photographer Charge
In 2021, according to an article published in Wedding Bells a while ago and inflation adjusted, the average wedding in Canada will cost on average $29,000.
According to a Financial Post article, in Toronto, in 2021 will be common for couples to spend, on average, over $44,000 on their wedding. Interestingly, most couples surveyed by BMO, underestimated their wedding budget by 50%.
The amount couples are spending these days on their wedding is significantly higher than $11,000, the amount paid in the 80s adjusted for inflation.
Even more important, the more couples spend on their wedding, the less happy they are afterwards. They can not afford a house in good neighbourhoods, so their children attend low-quality schools, which impacts their future.
In 2021, the recommended amount couples are expected to pay for photography is about 10% of the wedding budget.
That is consistent with our Prices Survey of 150+ studios in the GTA. In Canada, wedding photographers charge on average $2,500 and $3500.
Generally, packages include a photo album, two wedding photographers and 8-10 hours of photography. That would provide coverage for the brides preparation, ceremony, and wedding reception.
Some brides may spend a higher amount on their wedding images if photography is a big deal for them and are looking for famous photographers to document their wedding day.
Remember The Best Wedding Photography Marketing Is Word Of Mouth
“Marketing isn’t just about paying for space or using free social media space. It’s about doing a really good job and getting people to recommend you. We have solidified relationships with people who feel confident to recommend us because they know we’ll do a solid job, keep our word, deliver when we’re supposed to, and what we promise in terms of imagery and quality.
“Ultimately when a bride and groom start to search for a wedding photographer, they’re most likely going to look at social media to see whom their circle of friends and family are talking about. They’re going to ask for recommendations. Weddings are huge. A lot can go wrong. If you can demonstrate that you can leap through the hurdles of a wedding day and leave a shining impression, that will only work in your favour.”
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Promote Photography Business Through Networking
37. Engage with fellow photographers on photo communities
Upload your best shots on sites like 500px and PhotographyTalk and engage with your peers. Youll learn, socialize, make friends and build your brand.
38. Be active on Q& A sites like Quora
Follow topics like photography, and include your website link in your profile description. Also, follow topics like photography and dont be shy about giving your opinion when you have something to say.
39. Submit your work to other photography blogs
Make a list of blogs that feature similar work to yours and then contact the publishers. In addition to getting backlinks you will also get exposure and branding. Dont be disappointed if your work doesnt get published from your first attempt, and dont give up.
40. Connect with local influencers
Try to get local celebrities to book sessions with you. It will help you get more recognition, and more business.
41. Connect with professionals who can promote your photography business
Networking goes a long way. Make friends with hairstylists, makeup artists, florists, videographers and other professionals from your area that will definitely help you.
42. Collaborate with other photographers on various projects
Create A Client Guide
A Client Guide can not only save you time on answering the same frequently asked questions over and over again via emails and social media but can also help you attract new, qualified leads with potential to be converted into clients. All you have to do is create a pdf guide with useful information, tips, vendor recommendations, planning insights . Then offer that pdf for free on your website in exchange for a users email.
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What Is An Ideal Client
Have you ever noticed that some wedding photographers book the edgy, tattooed, rock star brides and grooms over and over again? Those photographers style and personalities seem to perfectly compliment their clients?
Or maybe its the adventurous mountain-top elopement photographers, who travel the globe and are constantly booked with adventurous mountain-climbing couples?
Or maybe its the girly-girl, pink-peonies-and-pumpkin-spice-lattes-photographer who is always booked with sweet, feminine weddings full of peonies and pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking brides?
Theyre booking their Ideal Clients.
And good for them!
Now, how can you do that??
Well, I can tell you, it doesnt just happen by chance, or wishful thinking.
These photographers know three things:
Could Wedding Videography Be A Profitable Helending Good Business
Nowadays, wedding videography is not only very popular among brides and grooms, but good videographers get paid a lot for getting the most out of the video. Because technological advancement and drops in prices have made it much more affordable to produce wedding videography, it is still readily available.
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Automate Posting To Social Media Websites
Many platforms have been designed to allow you to control all of your social media accounts from one central hub + schedule posts. This has many potentials to be helpful, though we have only tried this on a couple of occasions and found it does not work for us . There is a substantial time investment to correctly use these tools and produce all of the posts to be scheduled weeks or months in advance.
One thing to keep in mind if you decide to automate some of your posting is to still retain some personality. Our fear with automation is that it can lead to producing content that is a bit robotic or inauthentic, which is not a good trade-off for more content.
Automate Your Social Media Posts
That being said, you have to be super careful not to waste a bunch of time on these platforms as they can be really distracting. I mean, I can go on Facebook to put a post on my business page, and an hour later Im viewing cat videos and forgot to post altogether.
The struggle is real, friends.
So, in order to keep from wasting too much time, use a free service like IFTTT to automate your posts. This allows you to post in one place and then have it automatically post that same content on other platforms. This is how to get the best response with the least amount of time wasted.
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Packaging When Delivering Photos
How do you share images with your clients? If youre sending them a selection of prints & a USB flash drive with the entire gallery consider getting some nicely branded packaging for it, like Wooden Banana for example. Those beautifully designed wooden boxes wont leave anyone indifferent, rather inspire a strong desire to share it online with their social media friends, as well as offline with anyone who comes visiting their house.
If you dont yet, also consider offering printed albums to your clients. Software by Pixellu, Pic-time and Fundy for example, offer amazing design layouts, smooth client communication channels for agreeing on the page structure & images used, as well as great deals on printing from leading print labs.
Encourage your clients to film their unboxing process their happy reactions, the fun comments & tears of joy. What better marketing content can you get? Nothing beats real, raw, happy emotions!
How Do You Calculate The Best Return On Investment
Find three photographers whose wedding photos you really like and whose pricing and packages fit your budget. Assess the value of their packages, including extra fees such as the cost of photo albums, travel fees, and cost of digital files.
In Table 2 below, Package 3 has the lowest price, but it is not the best investment because you will need to pay extra for extra time, the second shooter, high-resolution digital images and a wedding album.
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Seo Getting Found On Google
SEO means search engine optimisation . Its one of the best ways for wedding photographers to market themselves. Here are a few quick and easy things you can do:
Search terms: Think about what search terms you want people to find you for. You can research these using Semrush. For example, London wedding photographer, Natural Kent wedding photographer, fine art wedding photographer in Devon. Use these search terms on your site, but try to keep it to one page per search term and one search term per page. Write blog posts using different terms you want to rank for, use it in your tagline, write it on your homepage, use it in your image naming and your Google snippets.
User experience: The user experience is the MOST IMPORTANT thing for SEO. If someone is confused, lost or overwhelmed by your site, or its not what they were looking for, theyll leave. And Google will rank you lower. If you want to know how to easily give your user a good experience, we do, check out the Kick Ass Course, which has helped hundreds of photographers improve their website dramatically and get loads more bookings.
Links: Gather internal and external links an external link means someone else is linking to your site. Create good, shareable content and other sites will want to share it. Internal links are links on your site to other relevant pages on your site. This gets the reader moving around, which tells Google youre interesting and worthy of a high ranking.
Create A Brand For Your Wedding Photography Business
Creating a brand for your wedding photography business is an essential step to stand out and get recognition as a professional wedding photographer. Your brand includes your business name, your logo, and all the visual elements you use Keep the key elements of your brand identity consistent throughout your, business cards, brochures, sales material, and website. Make sure that your brand identity exudes professionalism and feels premium to evoke trust amongst your clients.
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Track Your Marketing Efforts
This tip is not exactly a marketing strategy to increase your brand awareness or sell your services but a way to measure the results of your marketing efforts. If you set some long-term or short-term goals for your business, you need to track your progress in order to review, evolve, improve and re-apply those strategies. You can use various online tools to track your progress or analyze your key performance indicators . However, make sure you give it some time before setting final benchmarks. This will help you stay realistic and understand your marketing needs better. Your goal could be more traffic on your website or more clicks on your portfolio tab. Either way, you need to first do a test run before you finally decide your tracking parameters.
