How to promote portrait photography?

[scrapbooker]

Any ideas on how to promote portrait studio photography. I plan to do shoots on families, kids, babies, models etc.I am good at selling so have thought about street canvassing but there must be a easier way to get portrait work

[jnantz]

advertisement in a local paper
a show of your work at a local shop
( or wherever your perspective clients hang out ) ...

or a shameless promotional stunt.

have fun!

[Greg Blank]

Its a loaded question, if you were good at selling wouldn't you know all this :)

Well after 16 years of promotion I would say anything could work but the lead of return is about 6 months from your start date. But my personal experience is avoid newspapers and yellow pages. They are very expensive and few people look for anything this way, maybe online yellow pages. If I was interested in doing models, seniors and babies I would advertise at my local mall, children's pictures deal with the cheapest element of society unless you have a name and can target wealthier clients, people spend more on pet photos:). I would get a wall display at the mall and be prepared to spend 300.00 a month easily for that space. The cheapest ad space is on your vehicle or a sign on your lawn, considering zoning restrictions.

Word of mouth, do some shots hire some models have some glossy photo business cards, 4x6 or bigger and pass them around to modeling agencies. Although can't say my experience encourages this practice.

Billboards could work, if you have about 3k to drop on a good location or several lesser ones. Radio & TV might work if money is no object.

If you stay in business more than a year you'll have all sorts of telemarketing offers to "advertise with" including those annoying people that call me about twice or 15 times a year selling lists of newly moved in families just waiting for my call to shill my photo services to them.

Word to the wise if someone calls you, to advertise and they are unwilling to send you a detail of the ad program or provide an address, call back phone etc etc....they can't be trusted.

The best promotion is doing good work!


Any ideas on how to promote portrait studio photography. I plan to do shoots on families, kids, babies, models etc.I am good at selling so have thought about street canvassing but there must be a easier way to get portrait work

[Paul Fitzgerald]

Go to church, literally. Most churches have weekly newsletters.

[Robert Skeoch]

When I was right out of school I went to Karsh's studio for a tour and to show him my portraits. The advice he gave then might be of use. "Get a display window.... and put one large print in it.... change the print every week."

I'm sure it would help if your window was where people were walking.... like the tunnel to the commuter train, or an area with many fine dining locations.... I would stay clear of a tourist area myself since it's the locals who will be your clients.

This assumes you want to sell your pictures to the "sitter". I find portrait's much more fun when I do them for a magazine than for the person in the photo.... you get way more freedom since the "sitter" doesn't have to like the photo since the magazine is paying.

I've always maintained there were only two types of portraits.... those that the "sitter" was paying for and those that someone else was paying for. If you study the work of the great portrait photographers you might find the work was often done for someone besides who was in front of the lens.

-Hope this helps.... worth what you paid for it.

-rob

[dsphotog]

Hi Rob,
Good observation.
Like Annie L. for example...

[Wallace_Billingham]

Another great idea that used to work for me back in the day was to network with hair salons.

Go into them and tell the girls that work there that you will pay them $10 for every customer they refer to you that buys a print package. Then give them coupons with all of your contact information on it and a place for them to write that they were the referer.

The above will also get you a bunch of wedding business, and you only pay when you make a sale.

Women who pay big bucks for hair, nails, and tanning in such places will also pay for portraits to capture the result of the hair, nails, and tan in prints

[jnantz]

the window + changing the portrait there is great advice.
i have been working on doing just that at an upscale salon + bridal boutique
near where i live ...

commercial labs like whcc and places that do plak mounting
make this sort of advertising very affordable..

you might also think about donating a sitting or 2 to a silent auction
or public radio/tv station. for the silent auction, leave your portfolio
so people can see what your work is like and the public tv/radio
will give you air-time and mention your name and services over and over again
during find raising drives.

[gevalia]

I am not in the portrait biz so please take my advise with a grain of salt.

I'm down at the framing shop a few times a year. He's quite a good framer and does a lot of local work here in CT. He had told me before that a few times a month he goes to shows in the tri-state area and sets up a booth. His main goal is to sell custom frames. But he has a large stock of paintings and photographs to do so. He pointed out a large pano of waves crashing the rocks with a lighthouse that he sells many framed copies of.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Depends on the budget and the potential income level. You could do Google or Yahoo featured keyword listings for about 50 cents per click. Your listing would have to be detailed to ensure that only people in your region would click so you don't get people in Poland clicking on your listing...

[Florida-Photo]

There is no substitute for word of mouth and networking, and all of the above suggestions are valid (and there are some great ideas - thanks!).

We have also had great experience with search engine optimization - making sure your website shows up in the search results for the right keyword searches on Google and other search engines. (So much so that I started doing it for other photographers and small businesses)

Example: If you go to Google and search for "st pete beach wedding photographer", our site (Simple Treasures Photography) will be the first organic listing. Another example is "kalamazoo photography", where you will find our client Always One Photography (http://www.alwaysonephotography.com) on the first page.

I'm not trying to self-promote - just trying to make a point about the power of search engine optimization: 62% of internet searchers never look past the first page of the search results.

In my opinion, SEO is one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising, beacuse the person is sitting at their computer, actively searching for the service you provide - you just have to make sure your site shows up in their search results!

Conversely, almost every other form of advertising is asynchronous - meaning you have to rely on the person remembering your name, phone number, or URL, at a later point in time (sometimes days or weeks later) when they decide to search for a photographer.

Of course, you have to have a professional website with good pictures, reasonable prices, and all the usual stuff or all the web traffic in the world won't do you any good! But if I had a hypothetical $100 to spend on advertising, I would spend $70 on SEO, $15 on some type of pay-per click advertising like Google Adwords, and the rest on business cards, brochures, static displays, etc. etc....

And once your website is optimized, it is relatively easy to maintain your high ranking, and you pay nothing for the web traffic that gets to your site through these organic listings, so there is a long-term benefit for a short-term investment.

The one downside to SEO is the number of shady characters out there who will promise to "put you on the first page of Google" for X number of dollars. This is not always possible (it depends largely on how competitive your market is and how well your competititors' websites are optimized), and real SEO takes time. But once you find a reputable vendor, it really is a great investment.

Finally, if you are the do-it-yourself type (or just want to be knowledgeable about SEO so you can avoid getting scammed), I highly recommend the book SEO for Dummies by Peter Kent (http://www.amazon.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-Dummies-Peter/dp/0764567586). It is worth every penny!

Hope that helps.

[Lynn Jones]

My wife and I used slide shows. Since our studio was 50 feet or so from the street we couldn't do much from there, but we had an 8ft Gazebo that was 10 feet from the street and I hung a rear projection screen (translate: a plastic shower curtin) and projected continuously all night long. Since we don't do slides any more but digital projectors are not that expensive now, CD's work just fine. Convert your front facing window to an RP screen and project at all the times that works for you. Once a week, we would advertise in the local paper "IS YOUR PICTURE IN OUR SLIDE SHOW?" Then we would keep photos of the preachers who did most of out weddings, the mayor, the chief of police, the city council members, and a selection of our customers. I would change the show every week, and (in Texas) when it was bluebonnet time, kids in the flowers, at graduation time dozens of senior portraits and whatever else worked.

At one time this became so popular that the police wished that we wouldn't do that because there were some fender benders taking place while the drivers watched. I put up a large sign telling the drivers to park on the roadside while watching and at the same time, I photographed (for free) the entire police force, there were about a dozen of them in our town, gave them all a free photo (offered more photos for sale) and projected them for a week about once monthly.

A version of this can really work for you.

Lynn