As a wedding photographer and business owner, you have to wear a LOT of hats. You’re a wedding photographer, you’re a marketer, you’re a planner, you’re an accountant, and there are SO many other things to juggle and keep track of, which is why it is SO important that you have a great plan for your marketing going into each year. Before you start your marketing plan for 2025, take some time to do a little journaling and ask yourself these 10 questions!
1. Am I Attracting the Clients I Want to Book?
If this answer is no, you’ll want to sit down and create a new client avatar. Really lock in and think through all of the details of the clients you want to be booking. What kind of wedding are they planning? What kind of money are they spending? Where are their weddings taking place? These questions will help you to figure out who your ideal clients are, how they act, and most importantly how you can begin marketing towards them specifically as a wedding photographer!
2. Where do the Clients I Want to Book Spend Their Time Wedding Planning?
Are they browsing photographers on the knot? Do they spend their afternoons scrolling for inspiration on TikTok? Are they expanding their dream Pinterest board? Are they doing in depth venue research on Google? Now take these answers and use them to get begin marketing yourself in front of your ideal clients using the services where they’re most likely to find you!
3. Do I Like Creating the Types of Marketing I’ve Been Creating as a Wedding Photographer?
If you’ve been putting out a single reel a week without much success or motivation, it might be time to try a new avenue of advertising. Take your notes from the questions above and decide if there’s an area of marketing that might fit your lifestyle more, or make you more excited to push out. Lean into those avenues, and consider outsourcing the areas that just don’t get you fired up in the same way.
4. What Sets My Brand Apart from Others in My Market?
When working in an industry that is FILLED with creatives, trends, and so much media, it’s easy to want to hop on the latest marketing trends to try and fit in with the rest of the wedding photographers and other vendors in your market. But that is the opposite of what you want to be doing! You want to identify what makes you stand out in the world of weddings. Think through your style, your approach, your client experience, and your end product and what is unique about it! Clarifying what makes you epically cool helps you to create a marketing plan that will attract your target audience in a way that feels natural and authentic.
5. Which Marketing Channels Brought in the Most Leads This Year?
We are data nerds after all, so of course we are going to have you scope out what marketing platform brought you the most leads this year! Whether it’s Instagram, Pinterest, In-Person Events, Blogging and SEO, or TikTok, it’s important to know where your clients are currently coming from so you know what is working and which areas might need a little more work in the coming year!
6. How Do My Ideal Clients Respond to My Current Pricing?
Is your calendar filled to the point that you can’t keep up? That’s great, and it might mean it’s time to raise your pricing! On the flipside, maybe your clients needing to be walked through a lot of questions prior to booking. Do they typically have a lot of hesitation before signing your contract? In that case you might not be warming up your clients enough before presenting your pricing. Think through some of the questions that clients are asking you prior to booking and write them down. Think through how to answer those questions through your marketing, that way when a potential client inquires to book you as their wedding photographer all they want to do is get to know you and sign their contract!
7. Is Your Marketing Funnel Set Up for Conversion?
Does your Instagram marketing bring a lot of followers but not a lot of website clicks? Think through how you can encourage your followers to take the next steps. Check your IG bio links and make sure they’re less than two clicks away from your inquiry page at all times! Are people going to your home page and not making it any further? You might need to bring more information or blogs to the forefront to entice them to stay awhile! Every Instagram post and marketing effort that you make should eventually lead your clients to your inquiry page.
8. Am I Engaging with Potential Clients at the Right Time in Their Planning Journey?
If you’re posting wedding planning content on Instagram but every new follower already has their engagement photos taken or has had their first meeting with their wedding planner, you’re not putting out content that’s reaching your ideal client at the right time! For wedding photographers and planners, you’re going to want to be interacting with your ideal clients in the early stages of planning. Plan marketing pushes around the time that your ideal clients are usually getting engaged or booking their wedding venue!
9. How can I Deepen Relationships with Previous Clients?
The easiest person to sell to is someone who’s already purchased from you. How can you reconnect with your past clients in a way that gets them excited to refer you to some of their friends getting married? How can you get yourself in front of their friends who got engaged after them? It can be as easy as launching exclusive minis for past clients, or even sharing a blog post talking about how much you loved their wedding day! Find fun and creative ways to reconnect with your past couples so that they continue to sing your praises to their friends and family. It’s also just great to reconnect with these people as you got to spend SO much time with them on one of the most important days of their lives!
10. How Can I Deepen Relationships with Previous Vendors I’ve Worked With?
Referrals are one of the easiest ways to get booked in the wedding industry, which is why it’s so important to build relationships with other vendors. Meeting up with wedding photographers with a similar clientele, planning styled shoots with wedding planners, collaborating with venues on content, and sharing your photos with past vendors are all simple ways to get your work in front of new eyes while also building your relationship with other vendors in the industry! Many wedding photographers and planners cap their years after booking a certain number of weddings, so having a great relationship with other vendors is a great way to get any extra bookings that they just can’t take on!
Those are 10 questions you should be asking yourself as you start to plan out your 2025 marketing strategy as a wedding photographer! Check out some of our other resources on the blog that will continue to help you to book your ideal client.
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