Promoting yourself!

ellepixels

Hello.
for those of you whom are actually getting paid for your photographs,
I was wondering, how you are promoting yourself. Do you have flyers, promo card, business cards...
Aswell, when talking with potential clients, wha do you go trew first...
style, price list...

Liza

I live in a small town, so word of mouth works well. Shooting sports photos for the newspaper has been great for exposure purposes. People comment on the quality of the photos quite frequently and usually ask if I shoot other kinds of photography. Now I'm photographing youth soccer and pass out business cards with my website and contact info listed on it. My business email is posted in my Smugmug bio, too. I try to maintain a good relationship with other local photographers and videographers and have gotten work that way as well. This coming Saturday I'm going up in a helicopter to take still photos for our town's promotional video with the videographer. I may let the local paper know about it so he can do a little human interest story about it. Everyone in town reads the newspaper cover to cover, so it's a great way to get free advertising.
Oh, and I'm also the high school yearbook advisor, so a lot of kids ask me to do their senior pictures. I also get a free ad in the yearbook and can post flyers on the bulletin boards at the school.

Hope that helps.

Yvette Marie

If you dont have a website.. get one! its your calling card.. your portfolio... ;o) then I print out wallet sized prints of business cards with my website info and contact information on it and have specific places where I have worked out a deal to leave them... childrens boutiques etc...

maybe you can find a cause you believe in (( mines shaken baby syndrome )) and offer services in lieu of exposure.

Depending on what you shoot, you can also offer free wall prints to some of your favorite hang outs.. Theres a coffee house here (( which is new to wyoming ) sort of a bohemian place... and Im planning on approaching them to see if I can shoot some pictures in there... and offer cool wall portraits for them to hang, as long as I can include some cards.

I am going to offer to replace the ones hanging in the maternity ward as well, in return for complimentary 4x6s to slip in the diaper bags that they give as going home presents...

I guess it just depends on what you like to shoot and who you want to appeal to?? Theres some awesome ideas out there for marketing.. just depends on where youre at in your career and what you want to get out of it!

Scott Buel

I'm very interested in this, too, although my photography business is somewhat different than any of yours. I've been reading lately how blogging is great for advertising becuase the more you write, the more keywords there are to be picked up by the search engines. I think it also helps to have friends with blogs or websites that aren't necessarily photography related put links to your site on theirs.

What else? Free stuff. People LOVE free stuff. I think both Yvette and Liza mentioned free stuff.

You may also want to check out Guerilla Marketing by Jay Levinson. http://www.gmarketing.com/ (I am NOT affiliated with him at all, this is just a suggestion.) He offers cheap and free marketing suggestions. Cheap is good, free is better!

ellepixels

Scott Buel wrote:

I'm very interested in this, too, although my photography business is somewhat different than any of yours. I've been reading lately how blogging is great for advertising becuase the more you write, the more keywords there are to be picked up by the search engines. I think it also helps to have friends with blogs or websites that aren't necessarily photography related put links to your site on theirs.

What else? Free stuff. People LOVE free stuff. I think both Yvette and Liza mentioned free stuff.

You may also want to check out Guerilla Marketing by Jay Levinson. http://www.gmarketing.com/ (I am NOT affiliated with him at all, this is just a sugegstion.) He offers cheap and free marketing suggestions. Cheap is good, free is better!

Hey everyone, thanks for responding!
You all have some great ideas! I Just started my own website here at Smugmug, and i hope to have the site finished and looking great very soon.
I have my business cards ready to go, and a bunch of mom's at pre-k waiting to be approached, lol.
Thank you for sharing you thoughts with me.