Orange County Wedding Photographer Offers Tip: Develop Relationships with Vendors

Apr 15
07:24

2009

Stephen Honda

Stephen Honda

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By developing relationship with venue and other wedding servicers a photographer can increase her business.

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During an economic downturn,Orange County Wedding Photographer Offers Tip: Develop Relationships with Vendors Articles it is often difficult for a photographer to establish new clients. As a result, a photographer should spend effort in maintaining and strengthening his relationship with past clients. There are several strategies for doing this. 

1. A photographer should establish an email newsletter to send out to all clients or potential clients. Most photographers communicate with their clients through email. Therefore f they probably have in their account the email address of hundreds of clients. While it does take some time and the work is a bit tedious, a photographer or one of his staff should go through that account and create an email list of all of his previous clients. After the list is complete, keep it current by adding email addresses of clients or those interested in photography as time goes on.

Write a monthly newsletter that includes pictures, specials and articles of interest. Make it interesting so that it is an email they look forward to getting and will read in the future. As you are in regular contact with them, they will begin to regard you as "their photographer" - a concept similar to what people express when they "I will contact my attorney," or I will contact “my accountant." This method of staying in contact with your clients is relatively inexpensive and so can be applies to all clients or potential clients. There are steps that should be taken to stay in touch with clients who highly value photography.

2. Stay in touch with those who highly value photography will pay off for the photographer because these persons usually spend a higher amount on photography each year. A photographer should give special attention to these clients by thinking through their needs and customizing packages and products for their use. For example you may have done the birth announcement of one of this client’s newborn. Send out a personal email a month or so prior to the baby's first birthday with a short message of congratulations for the completion of the first year and a customized package that will meet their needs. This may take a little bit of time, but will be richly rewarded. 

During an economic downturn, when it is difficult to find new clients, a photographer should focus on staying connected with past clients.

During rough economic times a brides often decide to save money by not hiring a professional photographer or when they do hire one they spend less than they otherwise would. As a result many photographers are finding they do not have sufficient work to keep their business afloat. Developing relationships with other wedding venue vendors create more paying business.

A relationship with a vendor can be established by doing what is in your power to help that vendor get more business. One method for doing this is as follows:

1. Create a section on your website on venues. Add a subsection for the venue you would like to target. In each section include some pointers on how to shoot great pictures for that area.  Add some of your best pictures to the section.

2. Write a quality ezine article on the location. Write about the ways to get great pictures in that particular location. Spend some time on these articles. You will want to use them to later show your dedication to a win/win relationship.

3. Contact the wedding location marketing director by email. Include in your email at least two links. One link to your website with all of the related pictures and one link to the ezine article you wrote. Let him know in the email how many people have already viewed the ezine article. If the article is ranked fairly high on Google under relevant keywords, point this out and encourage them to check it out for themselves. Explain what you like really liked about the venue. Don't at this point ask them to refer you as a wedding photographer. It takes some time to build enough trust for them to feel comfortable referring you. At this point you have not as of yet even met the director or representative. Tell them you would like to expand your website section on their particular location as well as perhaps write a more in depth ezine article on their venue. Ask if you could stop by and get some pictures of their location for your website. Offer to allow them to use the pictures for their marketing purposes.

If they accept your offer, the tour represents your first face to face visit with the marketing director. From that point you need to show you are responsible, easy to work with, accommodating and extremely talented. If you are those things you should be able to persuade most marketing directors to add you to their referral list.

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