Marketing for weddings

r9jackson

I'm thinking about preparing a small card (around 4" x 6") with a photo of the wedding couple (from their engagement shoot) and on the back have information about my business and how they can purchase prints from the wedding at the specific Smugmug gallery. I would include the cards for all the guests at the wedding. The couple has approved this and have further suggested that I include the card in their mailing of thank you's after the wedding.

My questions: Have any of you done something like this? I would only need about 100 of the card (because it is specific to their wedding), so where would you suggest I buy the cards. I would need to keep the cost down because it would have to come out of my profits from the wedding. Do any of you have samples that I might be able to borrow ideas from?

Are there any other marketing vehicles that could be used to generate current wedding print sales and to generate future wedding business.

Kevin Kramer

I bring my laptop and 22 inch LCD screen with me. I'll take about 100 photos and every five photos B&W it, and then the rest just adjust accordingly in lightroom. I'll run a slideshow that I prepare during dinner, and then as soon as dinner is about to finish up, i'll have my assistant or myself set the slideshow up, and let it run. I leave business cards with the photo of the couple (from the e-shoot which you mentioned) and on the back include the link where the photos can be viewed/purchased. I got these cards here IN GLOSSY
[/URL] and even though it tells you can't print on the other side, don't worry, you can. It seriously looks like I got these cards from a company. I'm impressed with the way they turned out.

When it's time to upload the photos, i'll find that half of the cards that were taken, the people have signed up and are waiting for photos, and then the bride and groom tells their friends and family about them as well. I don't hand out the cards to the guests, I leave them on the stand with the monitor, spread out with half of the photos up, and half with the info showing up.

Hope this helps.

msf

Man, just did a wedding and forgot to give the mother of the bride/groom business cards. Good idea about the laptop.

Kevin Kramer

msf wrote: »

Man, just did a wedding and forgot to give the mother of the bride/groom business cards. Good idea about the laptop.

Yeah. I love doing it. I love watching the bride and groom standing at the computer for just a few moments before the dances and the cake cutting starts.

msf

I didnt even think of this, normally I dont mind showing pictures before they are processed, but I want to make sure the bride/groom wont get nervous if they see a few pictures over or under exposed on the screen, thinking their shot is lost.

I suppose I could have gone through and quickly adjusted the raw and made some new jpgs, but it took my laptop over 3 hours the other day to convert the 450 raw files. : ) But if thats something they wanted to see, I could have billed another hour on the wedding day at my usual rate.

r9jackson

What about a quick Animoto video
I was just thinking that it would not be too hard to create a a quick Animoto video (about 1 minute) from raw files shooting during the wedding. With SmugMug and Lightroom you could create a video in less than 30 minutes and then you could get around the individual analysis of a photo by aggregating a sample in a video.

msf

Great idea with the animoto. of course I see this all after my one and only wedding for this year.

Kevin Kramer

msf wrote: »

Great idea with the animoto. of course I see this all after my one and only wedding for this year.

The best thing to do is if you don't do the animoto, but you do use lightroom, come up with a folder and create your favorite presets. I think I did it to where I have my favorite created presets, and then just run them through there. If i see anything stick out at me like a sore thumb, i'll change it.

msf

what so great about lightrooms slide show? I dont have this program yet. does it do the same sort of thing that animoto does? even custom music?

Glort

One of the smartest things I have done in recent times is invest in a decent inkjet printer and a bulk ink system to suit.

It allows me to do all sorts of short run target specific marketing pieces for just a few cents each and produce them anywhere.

I am doing a couple of weddings next year and am planning on doing 6x4" thank you cards to give the guests on the day with a pic of the B&G.
I will template those up before hand with the wording and layout and then get a pic of the B&G on the day and print them out on site.

It would not be hard to do the same thing with the marketing cards and I think a pic of them done on the day would have a lot of impact.
These would also be cheap as chips to print and may even be worthwhile with OEM ink depending on the price you pay there and the machine you have and how many prints per cartridge it gets.

You may be able to add impact by doing a simple college of 3-4 pics from the day. the beauty of these would be that by putting a pic of the B&G on the day on the cards, they will probably be cared for and put somewhere prominent like on the fridge door where they won't get lost.

Inkjets are Cheap, fast, portable and produce brilliant quality pics these days and with bulk ink, can cost next to nothing to run. I am now producing a lot of my own marketing materials that are specifically targeted and it has a lot of impact and well remembered.

chrisjohnson

Glort wrote: »

One of the smartest things I have done in recent times is invest in a decent inkjet printer and a bulk ink system to suit.

It allows me to do all sorts of short run target specific marketing pieces for just a few cents each and produce them anywhere.

I am doing a couple of weddings next year and am planning on doing 6x4" thank you cards to give the guests on the day with a pic of the B&G.
I will template those up before hand with the wording and layout and then get a pic of the B&G on the day and print them out on site.

It would not be hard to do the same thing with the marketing cards and I think a pic of them done on the day would have a lot of impact.
These would also be cheap as chips to print and may even be worthwhile with OEM ink depending on the price you pay there and the machine you have and how many prints per cartridge it gets.

You may be able to add impact by doing a simple college of 3-4 pics from the day. the beauty of these would be that by putting a pic of the B&G on the day on the cards, they will probably be cared for and put somewhere prominent like on the fridge door where they won't get lost.

Inkjets are Cheap, fast, portable and produce brilliant quality pics these days and with bulk ink, can cost next to nothing to run. I am now producing a lot of my own marketing materials that are specifically targeted and it has a lot of impact and well remembered.

Which printer do you have/like to have?

Kevin Kramer

msf wrote: »

what so great about lightrooms slide show? I dont have this program yet. does it do the same sort of thing that animoto does? even custom music?

It doesn't do the same thing that Lightroom does. Lightroom has a basic slideshow feature that you can just setup and let run. I don't put music to it at all because you hear the DJ's music and it's pointless to put music to the slideshow. It's just something that goes up really quick, and painless, and put on random. The bottom line is that for quickness, it works. Download the trial of Lightroom 3.

Shoot 100 photos and time yourself how long it takes to dump the card in lightroom, process every few photos here and there, and then select the slideshow option, and just let it run. I don't do any pan and zooms on it.

Animoto on the other hand I'm interested after the wedding. I need to look into it more.

msf

I like animoto, its a bit slow to upload, and for a dollar or three you get full size videos on the free plan. for something like $10 you get unlimited regular vids for the month. $3 is for the hd.

Glort

goldenballs wrote: »

Which printer do you have/like to have?

The ones I have are discontinued now ( Mp630) but an equivalent is a MP640 or IP4700 which has the same print head etc.

There are a couple of new models just out here, can't remember the Numbers.
I like Canon and although what I have is not the be all and end all of inkjet printers, they produce very sale able prints and great looking promo pieces cheaply, quickly and reliably.

I actually thought they would be pretty disposable when i bought them ( so I bout 3) but they have stood up well and despite the hammering I have given them, I can't even detect a fall off in quality let alone function.

picapic

r9jackson wrote: »

I'm thinking about preparing a small card (around 4" x 6") with a photo of the wedding couple (from their engagement shoot) and on the back have information about my business and how they can purchase prints from the wedding at the specific Smugmug gallery. I would include the cards for all the guests at the wedding. The couple has approved this and have further suggested that I include the card in their mailing of thank you's after the wedding.

My questions: Have any of you done something like this? I would only need about 100 of the card (because it is specific to their wedding), so where would you suggest I buy the cards. I would need to keep the cost down because it would have to come out of my profits from the wedding. Do any of you have samples that I might be able to borrow ideas from?

Are there any other marketing vehicles that could be used to generate current wedding print sales and to generate future wedding business.

i have created marketing cards usinf 6x4 photo printed before, can be good. also on of the best priced for cards etc are vista print

beauc1ks

Try out the following link: http://us.moo.com/

I am very pleased with their printing quality and prices.