I thought I’d better begin with a bit of a caveat here. I once studied the IDM Diploma in Direct and Interactive Marketing. It was a very in-depth course with lots of books and whitepapers and case studies, most of which I never read which resulted in me failing the exam and not achieving that qualification. I got 43% in the exam which annoyed me, not because I failed but because I’ve always loved the number 42 (Hitchhikers Guide fans will know).
But I did spend my pre-photography career in marketing teams. I picked up some knowledge from that time, and also I did pick up some knowledge from studying the IDM diploma, just not enough to pass.
But I’m not a marketing expert, this isn’t ‘advice from a marketing expert’, it’s just advice from another wedding photographer who struggles with it all as much as you do and thinks about it a lot.
Part of the problem with small business marketing is the amount we’re told we need to do by experts. 50 reels an hour, 700 posts before 9am, post on every platform but make sure it’s unique to the platform, make sure it’s engaging, make sure it’s entertaining, but also make sure it’s informative. Make it short, but also long. If it’s long enough it’ll definitely hit people’s feeds but if it’s a tiny bit too long it won’t be shown to a single soul. So maybe 7 seconds. Or 90. Or 1. Posts don’t work. Carousels do. Oh no wait not any more. Don’t bother. Write a story in every caption. But keep it short, people don’t read. Add music. Maybe. Say something controversial. Oh now you feel like everyone hates you. Say something nice. Oh now people aren’t engaging.
It’s exhausting the amount we’re told to do.
Today please just read what I say and think about it. I’m not sending you away to exhaust yourself even more and I’m certainly not telling you what to do.
I also probably should’ve written this in the winter hey when you’re not too busy to think about anything except editing.
But here we are. In the words of Magnus Magnusson I’ve started so I’ll finish.
Marketing is all the things you do to build the personality of your business (the branding element) and promote it (the advertising element) to generate interest and enquiries.
Marketing is every point in which you or your business come into contact with a potential future customer. Every. Single. Point. The text-book-experts call them touchpoints. I remember that from my failed studies.
So yeah, posting your photos on Instagram is marketing.
But so is your logo. And so is your email footer, font, font size and colours. And so is that drink you serve at your client meetings. And so is the way you appear on your zoom calls. And so are the clothes you wear to weddings. And so is that ‘funny’ thing you just wrote on Threads. And so is the typo in that post you just made in a rush.
And so is the content of every photo you choose to put out in public.
It all counts towards this personality of your business you’re trying to cultivate and nurture. And that personality is only as strong as the weakest ‘touch point’.
With this personality you will attract (or repel) potential customers.
That overall personality is what becomes your ‘brand’. You then apply that brand persona to your marketing activities (advertising and promotion) to make sure that consistency is always there, and ‘ideally’ all those marketing touch points feel the same to that potential future client, enough to make them want to enquire.
At that point sales takes over. Kind of. The two blur together. Like the example of how you appear on zoom or the water you serve. Marketing (branding) continues to support you even during the sales process.
If you’re anything like me then you have a nice logo on a nicely ‘branded’ website with a good amount of content for SEO that just kind of sits there. You don’t add new content to that very often because writing blog posts is hard and you’ve been told by someone you don’t know or trust that blogging doesn’t work in 2024. You’ve stopped building quality backlinks because you’ve been told (wrongly) that SEO is dead.
You also have a fairly thoughtfully curated Instagram. You post on that sometimes because everyone else is posting and you don’t want to be left in the dust. Maybe you tag all the other suppliers from your weddings in the odd post or story hoping they’ll share your work.
Maybe you’ve started posting on TikTok because someone you don’t know or trust said to do that too. But you don’t know what you’re posting or why on there, and you’re not keen on ‘showing your face’ in talking videos.
And you wait for that to deliver enquiries. Because it must deliver enquiries, if that’s what everyone else is doing. Right?!
And, realistically, like me you can’t really think of what else to do or just find the whole thing overwhelming and easier to ignore.
“If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got.” ~ not true of marketing activity. Things change.
You can absolutely 100% run a successful business if all your eggs are in one advertising basket, for instance SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Arguably, you’re better off directing 100% of your efforts into that one area than spreading your efforts thinly across 5, 10 or more advertising/promotion activities.
Here is a small list of other areas you could think about which may serve you, your brand, your work, your personality, your business better than just doing what everyone else does because that’s what everyone else does…
I think I need to wrap this up because it’s a subject that sort of never ends and is a bit brain melting.
But I’ll end again with reminding you and myself that when crafting our marketing – branding and advertising/promotion – our target audience should be the people who will pay us to take their wedding photos. Everything we create, say and do should be with a view to reaching them and connecting with them.
Engaged couples.
Not other photographers.
The wedding photography industry is rife with echo chambers that reinforce existing opinions and keep us in a comfort zone, while stroking our creative egos. That’s bad.
Look further. Listen more. Challenge your opinions.
I had a long chat yesterday with a photographer friend about how what used to be cool isn’t cool any more. What used to be creative isn’t creative any more. What used to be documentary isn’t documentary any more. What people want isn’t what people used to want.
So this issue on marketing goes hand in hand with everything I said last week about our work, and everything I said the week before about the market itself.
With marketing it isn’t about doing a little bit of everything. It’s about finding what works for you and your business. Then testing, learning, refining and doing more of what works.
And when it stops working, test something new. If it works, learn and refine and keep doing it. If it doesn’t work, dump it and test something else.
But, ya know, maybe just put a pin in this until wedding season is over. I’m sorry I brought it up in August!
Thanks for reading.
Adam
PS – superchARJ is always free and the fact you’re here is encouragement enough for me to continue, but if you do fancy supporting my long term passion for industry positivity, creative connection and knowledge sharing in some way please consider joining FedWed.
