"Can I Photograph Your Wedding?"

As I mentioned last time I have been learning alot about business, but now my biggest, and most important challenge, is to begin advertising and finding clients. After all the overriding goal of this business is to make money, and I can't do that without some clients. My SBA class last week was about marketing and I met with my aunt last week who works in marketing and advertising. I definitely got a clearer picture of the general principles of marketing, and some ideas of more specific things to do. This is going to be a big challenge for me because first I need to find some couples getting married; but then I need to convince them to allow me to photograph the most important day of their lives. Oh and by the way I have only photographed one wedding before, and you will need to pay me $2000, so how about it? Obviously my sales pitch will be more refined, and I know that I have the ability and creativity to do an incredible job, so my confidence will definitely show through.

My First Wedding (That I Photographed)

Back to "getting" clients, I think that the best way to start will be a type of grassroots campaign. I am going to print up brochures, make a list of all of the wedding related businesses in the area and start going door to door asking if I can leave some brochures. My hope will be to spread my name as far and wide as possible in hopes of receiving a few phone calls, and then maybe booking a few weddings. I have a feeling that it will be somewhat of an exponential curve; it will be slow going for awhile, but as I start to photograph a few weddings the bookings will come more frequently. This whole process may take in excess of an entire year, and I am prepared for that. If I can photograph 10 weddings by the end of next year, that would be very beneficial. After I begin to see what my "typical" client might look like, than I can spend some money on advertising. Try things like buying a mailing list and sending out direct mail pieces; which is actually more successful than one might think.

One of my favorite pictures ever, Thanks Marcus


I also need to begin to create a more targeted market or client. Right now my ideal target market would be a couple from the ages of 21-28. I would like to try and target the younger couple getting married because I feel that I have some insight to getting married at a younger than average age. I feel that I would be able to relate to someone closer to my age. I also don't believe that there are many photographers specifically targeting this age group. Knowing this target market will also influence the places I do some advertising, for instance I will try and market more heavily on college campuses in the area. This will definitely be a huge challenge, and the majority of my time the next few weeks will be spent on some of these tasks. I did read that about 15-20% of all engagements happen in December, so that is good news for me.

Oh by the way if anyone knows of any places that I can leave some brochures and business cards please let me know. Please also feel free to pass my name along to anyone you know who is getting married, or who needs a photographer in any way. Word of mouth is going to be EXTREMELY important for me right now, so any help that I can get from any person or place will be greatly appreciated. As always thanks for reading and Happy Thanksgiving!

Fall Foliage of Colorado