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What are you doing to be prepared for your slow season? How are you going to keep earning income, even if you’re not shooting? This can be a stressful time in your business, but don’t worry! We are here with some tips to help you get through until weddings pick up. |
1) Re-feature past clients.During your slow season, be sure to be re-featuring past clients on your blog and social media sites. This will get them talking about you again and help you bring in some new clients. Make sure to tag them across all social media platforms for maximum exposure. Great occasions to post a re-feature include: birthdays, anniversaries, and when they have a baby. If you are friends with them on social media and notice any major life event, you can make a post to congratulate them and share an image from their wedding or engagement session at this time. |
2) Change out photos in your welcome packet with your recent work.You also need to change out pictures in your welcome packet and tell your clients when they have been featured in it. You could run a cover contest for your welcome packet. People can vote on your blog or Instagram for their choice. This will help create a buzz about your company and get past clients to share your work. The winner of cover contest not only gets to be on the cover, but you could also give them a free canvas or print or mini session. You can choose the incentive. Something else you can do is use some of your welcome packet pages as advertisements. Contact wedding vendors and see if they want to be featured in your welcome packet, free of charge. They will be more likely to set your magazine out at their shop/office because they are a main vendor and it showcases their company, in addition to yours. Here is a sample email you can use to send out to them. Make sure you replace the words in parenthesis. Hi (Vendor Name)! (I loved working with you on (bride and groom’s names)’s wedding. // or // We haven’t had a chance to work together, but I’ve seen some of your work and love it!) I am updating my promotional materials for this year and would love to feature you as one of my preferred vendors for (city name). I showcase these when talking to potential clients and also have some scattered around the area for more people to see. This is something that I will add free of charge. Please let me know if you’re interested. Thanks! |
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3) Contact wedding venues/vendors.Talk to venue coordinators and show them your portfolio. Ask if they can put you on their preferred vendors list or if you can drop by some marketing materials for them to display to their clients. If you’ve already photographed there before, give them watermarked images of events or weddings you’ve shot at their venue and let them know that you can use them on their site, blog or social media. Also be sure to ask them if they need updated head shots or venue/product photos for their website and offer to do this for them. This will make them more willing to share your work and gain more exposure for your company. Here are some wedding vendors that I would contact: wedding ceremony venues, wedding reception venues, bridal salons, florists, DJs, local jewelers, wedding planners, wedding cake vendors, lighting vendors, caterers, dance lesson instructors, photo booth companies, bridal shower venues, and transportation services (limousine companies, party buses, wedding carriage rides). If you haven’t worked with a lot of vendors and are having trouble finding some for your area, look up past local bridal shows and go to their websites. They should have links to all their vendors that were a part of the bridal show and you can go to their website from there. If you have worked with a specific vendor/venue before, contact them and ask them if you can put some images in their shop that you’ve taken of their product/venue. For example, if you worked with a florist and have some awesome shots of a bridal bouquet that you shot last month, contact them and tell them about it. Ask if you can print a canvas of it for them to hang in their shop. If they say yes, print off the canvas and give them some business cards or welcome packets to display near the canvas. (If you do welcome packets, you can get a small pamphlet holder to help keep them organized.) |
4) Send out mailers to potential brides.This time of year there will be a lot of new contacts for you to reach out to. Direct mailers are a great way to reach people. Many people got engaged over the holidays. It’s your job to find these couples and reach out to them. Now is the time they start their planning. You can get a list of brides through The Knot. |
5) Collect new emails.Besides The Knot, you can also contact bridal shows and see if you can get emails from them. A lot of times, they will give these to their vendors, but even if you aren’t a vendor of the show, they might offer this list at a price. |
6) Design a wedding album or an engagement album.This can be something that you can display to potential clients and venues and/or you can sell it to your clients. Before you make an album, look and see if any of your couples are having an anniversary coming up. If so, contact the groom directly to see if he would like to order an album as a special anniversary gift for their anniversary. You could also do this around Valentine’s Day or for the bride’s birthday. Here is a sample email you can use to send out to the groom. Again, make sure you replace the words in parenthesis. Suggested Subject: Your anniversary is just around the corner! Hey (Husband’s Name)! How are you? I just wanted to drop in because I noticed that your anniversary is coming up. Time sure does fly, doesn’t it? If you need any help coming up with gift ideas, let me know. I can put together an album for you or you can order a canvas for your wife from your (wedding/last session)? She’ll love it! I can help you with this process, just let me know and I can send you more details! I’ll even throw in free gift wrapping, so all the work is done! Talk to you soon! |
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7) Feature wedding coordinators and other vendors.Contact wedding coordinators and offer to do their head shots. Then make a special blog post to feature their company and new head shot. They will more than likely share this and that will give you more exposure. I want you to make a goal to try to have one new wedding vendor to feature every week during your slow season. |
8) Contact past clients and see if they want to set up an anniversary session.Do you currently offer anniversary sessions? If not, it is something I would suggest that you add to your list of services. It is a quick and easy way to earn some extra income. These sessions are pretty much an engagement shoot, but after they are married. You can even offer them as mini sessions if you don’t want to do full sessions. Whenever you start to do these (or if you do shoot them, but don’t actively promote them now), I would organize your clients into folders by the month of their wedding and send out an email the month prior to let them know that you offer anniversary sessions. Then each year after, contact them a month before their wedding month and ask if they would like to set up an/another anniversary session. If they have already done one with you, place a couple of photos in that email to remind them how much fun they had on the last one. You could also offer sweetheart mini sessions for past or potential clients around January/February for Valentine’s Day. |
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>>> Have a question about these tips? Feel free to message me by emailing bp4uguides@gmail.com or commenting on this post. |