Hey! Long time no see!
So it’s 2025 then. That happened. One minute it’s 1999 and I’m wondering whether my new Firetrap jumper makes me look old enough to get into an over 21’s club, and the next minute it’s 2025 and I’m standing at a wedding fair open day thing wondering why nobody is coming over to speak to me.
The Firetrap jumper turned out to be a mistake, I didn’t get in and all my friends from PC World did, so I went home. True story.
Anyway, how’s the year started for you? I’m hearing mixed stories from my friends and from social media. Some people seemed to book 100 weddings in January alone and others are looking for alternative employment or other ways to make money in what seems to be a tricky wedding market right now.
I booked 6 weddings in January, for 2025, 26 and 27 and that’s a really good month for me and I thought things were looking up, then… tumbleweed. It’s a rollercoaster of a job. I’m still only at 50% capacity for 2025.
I told you last time I was going to start trying things away from social media to try and see what works, and as that was 3 months ago (sorry) I thought I’d come back with an update.
For the first time since I think my second year as a wedding photographer I ventured back into Google Ads.
Back then I filled my diary for the first two years just using Google Ads. 35 weddings in year one, and 42 weddings in year two. It was a massive success for me and is the reason I was able to go full time, but I was only charging £450-1250 for my packages back then, and mostly those bookings were for my £450 and £650 packages!
When I went full time I jumped to £1500 as my ‘all day digital’ price, and while I still got some traction from Google Ads it was nowhere near as much. And then SEO took over for me and I didn’t need Google Ads any more.
At the height of ‘the SEO era’ I was receiving almost 1000 enquiries a year and filling my calendar that way. I had no price on my website back then and that always results in a lot more enquiries.
I still get a huge number of SEO clicks to my website, but nowhere near that number of enquiries, partly because I show prices now.
Anyway I tried Google Ads. And I spent about £300, at an average of £2.50 a click – that’s about 100 click throughs to my website from an ad that contained my price (I wanted to pre-qualify the clicks) and following some of what is apparently the current best practice for Google Ads…
Zero enquiries. Zero bookings.
I have never in my life exhibited my work at a wedding fair or wedding open day. For no other reason than I’ve never needed to.
As I said, SEO worked well for me for a long time and generated more than enough enquiries for me to book up quickly and (relatively) easily.
Not so much now.
So I booked on to a few open days at venues who recommend me.
The first one was an Asian weddings open day at a venue down south. I do a lot of Asian/Indian weddings and I have a big portfolio for that venue and they had 140 couples booked in for the open day.
I was very hopeful even though I was one of 4 photographers exhibiting.
I ended up speaking to around 14 couples that day – the ones who stopped at my table. Many of them didn’t have a date or venue. Some of them didn’t have the budget for me.
I booked two weddings from that open day. My target was one but when I heard they had 140 couples booked in, I saw pound signs and thought I’d do a lot better.
The second one was a cool urban studio style venue in Liverpool and a full weekend open event. I’ve shot a wedding there so I know that people getting married there have the budget for me.
They had 160 couples booked in for the weekend but this one was a disaster for me. I didn’t get a good spot at the venue, and I maybe spoke to 4 or 5 couples across the whole weekend. I’d estimate 40-50 of the 160 couples showed up and the ones who did were so early in the planning stages and were there to see the venue really, not the suppliers.
I got zero enquiries or bookings from that one.
The third one I’m doing this Sunday, and I’m still going with a positive attitude and open mind.
Another thing about venue open days especially is that if you’re a recommended supplier at the venue, being part of their open day will only strengthen your relationship with them and is a good way to stay on their recommended list I reckon.
This is definitely one of the most powerful marketing tools, but also incredibly fickle and competitive.
There was a time I was recommended by a lot of venues but over time the recommended list either becomes so long it’s pointless, or you get kicked off it because a new venue manager has come in and you’ve not worked there recently, or you’ve just not schmoozed them enough.
I’m rubbish at schmoozing.
Anyway I reached out to a few venues where I’ve worked recently and got on well with them, and it’s somewhere I’d like to work again. I got myself on one venue list, with no results as yet but I’ll keep you posted.
I also attempted to re-introduce myself to a handful of venues who used to recommend me and none of them replied to my email.
I’m going to try to be more active with this in future but for now I’d say this is a difficult one.
Do I think you can run a wedding photo business without social media? Yes.
Have I found the way yet? No. But I’ll keep trying.
But I’m becoming convinced that at a higher-than-average price point and not being bang on-trend stylistically, it’s going to take some experimentation and working out for me.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far, with results…
– Paying for meta verified definitely upped my overall reach.
– Paying for meta ads upped my reach significantly but despite over 500 profile views from my ad, zero enquiries so far this year.
– I posted a story saying I’d cut my head, and got almost 1000 story views. I posted a story the next day with a photo and short caption and didn’t even get 100 story views. According to that mosseri guy, stories are only good for engaging with your existing followers and I’ve never thought of them that way so I’m thinking of ways I can use them differently. So far no idea.
– Reels are good for reaching non-followers even if your views are low. I’ve had reels where they’ve got under 1000 views but over half are from non-followers.
– I bought a BTS camera and I filmed loads of BTS at my wedding last week. Unfortunately most of the footage includes my chin and nostrils, but with some crafty cropping I’m going to make some reels. I’ll let you know how that goes. I was between the Meta RayBan Glasses and the Insta 360 GO camera, and I went for the Insta 360 GO because I don’t wear glasses and I don’t really want to wear glasses at weddings. But I may change my mind because of the nostril thing.
I had a good January. Those six bookings took a lot of short term pressure off me and gave me some cash to experiment with for Google Ads and Meta Ads, and put a bit of money into the open days.
I mentioned ‘the SEO era’ a couple of times. I don’t think SEO is fully dead, I think a lot of it depends on your price point, and I think a new approach to SEO is needed instead of the ‘create a zillion venue pages and blog a zillion weddings’ approach which used to work for me. I think you have to be much cleverer with SEO these days, and even then – are the cool young couples searching Google for their wedding suppliers now? I don’t have the answer to that, I’m just asking… but I would doubt they are and we’re in for the biggest SEO shake-up ever with AI and natural language search taking over.
Venue open days are a little bit soul destroying on the one hand but can be great at keeping you ‘in’ with a venue. Maybe. Who knows.
Advertising is a long game, and for me at my price point (I’m not expensive but I’m slightly above average) isn’t a magic bullet sadly (I really hoped it was) but I’m going to continue to experiment and learn.
Overall, I’m enjoying the experimentation phase and actively looking for solutions is always going to be a better approach than sitting on my hands and moaning about the state of the industry or economy. There are lots of weddings out there.
I hope you’re doing ok!
Thanks for reading.
Adam
PS – If you use the SEO edge app to track your SEO rankings, I’m not convinced it’s very reliable any more. My rankings vary WILDLY from network to network and refreshing from different locations.
PPS – If you fancy a day out shooting some stuff and trying some new techniques we’ve got two tickets available for Monday’s FedWed styled shoot in Cheshire. And listen, styled shoots get a bad rap as ‘fake portfolio’ but while they can be good portfolio enhancers, they’re amazing spaces to experiment with new equipment, new techniques and bounce off other creatives or just get ideas from the way other people work. So don’t write them off just because the industry moaners are moaning. Whether you use the photos for portfolio or not, a styled shoot is a pressure-free play day where you can really connect with shooting and yes, generate some all-important fresh content for socials or blogs or whatever. Styled shoots are not evil. I’m getting that on a t-shirt. If you fancy it just reply and I’ll send you the ticket link.
