Lead generation ideas for photography marketing…
Lead generation is without doubt one of the most crucial skills a photography business owner needs — apart from creating images that is.
Fact: Photographers who can market themselves will always outperform those who can't, irrespective of the quality of their images.
Why is that?You may have a fantastic gallery full of wonderful, beautiful images but if nobody knows about you, if nobody sees them, they might as well not exist. You'll lose sales and market share for the want of being able to get your images in front of the right people.
If you run a photography business then it's your responsibility to drive as much traffic to it as you can. This article may be just what you're looking for…
Lead generation matters!
Without it you're not going to get much traffic and no traffic equals no business.
The good news is that lead generation isn't that hard. In fact, it's really easy once you put your mind to it. The bad news is you've got to put your mind to it and actually do something about it.
Serendipity is NOT a #marketing strategy!!! Share on XThat's where this article comes in. We're going to look at some different ways that you can find and drive traffic to your business. Notice I used the plural there? "Ways" instead of "way"? That's because you need multiple lead generation (aka marketing) channels working for you to be successful. If one doesn't work or suddenly breaks your business won't grind to a halt because you have others still generating leads for you.
Imagine the Acropolis from Ancient Greece. It looks like the diagram below: a very heavy roof supported by a number of stone columns or pillars. If one pillar should crumble the roof remains intact because it’s still supported by the surrounding columns.
This is exactly how your marketing lead generation should be. Your business is just like the roof of the Acropolis and each of your lead generation channels is a marketing pillar that supports it. If one channel fails, your business won't collapse because you have other channels available to support it.
Exercise to the reader…
Take a blank sheet of paper and draw the roof of the Acropolis, leave a gap and sketch in the foundation below it. Next run through your current marketing activities and for each one draw a pillar. Then write it's name on the pillar.
BTW, you don't get a pillar for anything along the lines of "my images speak for themselves". They don't!!! — That's a sign of naivety, laziness or sheer stupidity.
Now take one pillar away. How well supported is your roof?
Build a lead generation strategy for the future…
A photography business is very easy to market and great fun too — it's extremely visual by nature and that immediately gives you a huge advantage over virtually every other type of business.
Take a few minutes to brainstorm ideas for how to showcase your business and kickstart your lead generation machine. To get you started, I've included a dozen ideas below.
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Use these to think up your own ideas. Try to come up with realistic, practical things you can actually implement.
Your next job is to work out how you can put your ideas into practice. You've got your list but it's completely useless until you actually do something with it. Pick the easiest thing to implement, plan how you're going to use it and make it happen. Then move onto the next easiest and do the same but don’t stop the first item. Keep going until you have a lead generation machine driving new traffic to your business.
Wrapping up…
The more lead generation channels you have working for you simultaneously the better. BUT marketing takes time: time to plan, time to implement and time to run. The more time you allocate to marketing the greater your chances of building a successful business. Make it your top priority when you're not on a shoot or working on images. When you are, leave enough slack in the system to devote at least 2 hours each day on finding new clients.
If you're serious about marketing, you'll need a plan. Not some esoteric nonsense nobody in the sane world gives a damn about; a properly prepared, well thought out plan to market your photography business. This article is a very cut down version of Step 2 of our marketing plan template…
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Over to you…
…if you've found something of interest in this article, please leave a comment and let me know or use one of the buttons to share with your friends and followers.
