Marketing And Advertising

The best advertisement you will ever have is recommendation by word of mouth. Estimations from various sources vary; as to how many couples choose their photographer from word of mouth recommendation. In all the research I have come across, the lowest figure for choice of photographer by recommendation is 50%, some say it is as high as 75%!

It is reckoned that every person who has been highly satisfied with your service will tell approximately ten others and that anyone who you have gravely dissatisfied will tell more than double this amount! This should convince you of the importance of creating a good image and providing a first class service. However, until you reach the status of gaining work through recommendations you must be content with local advertisements. To start with you should consider the following methods of advertising:

1. Notice boards in local factories, offices, shops, community centres and hospitals.

2. In the local newspaper, accompanied by one of your photographs from a friend or relatives wedding. The local paper will be more than happy to print the picture, along with information about the Bride and Groom, the venue, and most importantly for you, name of the photographer.

3. Advertise through local caterers, car hire, flower shops and cake suppliers. When people plan their wedding they often speak to one of these services before the photographer. Offering them a financial incentive or sharing the cost of advertising can result in increased bookings.

4. Negotiate with a local shopkeeper or hotel proprietor to hang one of your Bridal Portraits in a prominent position with your name and telephone number alongside.

5. You could also consider writing a short article for the local paper. You could supply information accompanied by photographs on how readers should go about selecting a photographer for their wedding day. The local paper is always hungry for news; use it to your advantage.

6. Relationship building. If you can build a good working relationship with your local church ministers, some of them will recommend you when the ‘bride and groom to be’ approach them.

7. Internet advertising is becoming more popular. It is not expensive to set up a basic website with an email referral for enquiries.

8. Network, network, network! Tell everyone what you are doing.

9. Business cards, give them to everyone.

10. Wedding agencies, they arrange everything for the couple.

11. Local taxi companies are an excellent medium for getting word around. The drivers meet literally hundreds of people each week.

These are just some of the methods to attract customers for your newly developing wedding photography business. Photographing a wedding and using the shots you take at that wedding to provide content for the above will also help.

SMS marketing has revolutionized the way advertising has been done because it is cost effective and no extra expenditure is required.

Content: Most of the advertisements today are spot advertising but there are advertising methods which do not require that the target audience be at a specific place and this is where SMS marketing breaks all the barriers of advertising.

SMS marketing is a welcome change from spot advertising because the target audience can be anywhere at any time unlike spot advertising where the target audience have to be at a specific place and at a specific time. This is also quite affordable because sending text based advertisements require no additional expenditure for setup. SMS marketing allows the sender to send multiple text messages to anyone, anywhere and at any point of time and that too at relatively low cost.

One good thing about SMS marketing is that it provides instantaneous results and it can be proven through statistics. For instance, take the example of United States, where there are 270 million cell phones and the number is increasing day by day. There are 2.5 billion text messages that are sent on a daily basis. The reason why text based marketing is so popular is because ninety four percent of the text message gets delivered and are read by the text message recipient, as shown by recent studies. In this type of advertising the chances of reaching your intended contacts are higher than any other advertising methods because you are sure that the text message sent by you has been received by them and they have gone through it. SMS marketing is an easy mode of advertising and with it you can reach your target audience effectively.

It provides desired results and at low cost, and that is not all. It is extremely easy to operate and the only thing that you have to do is to create a message and select the groups/contacts you want to convey your message to and send it. The speed and the ease of use are also quite beneficial for the senders. Data in the form of text messages are not cumbersome and are extremely easy to transfer, which means that you can send thousand messages in a minute. Most of the business organizations use this method of advertising because they are able to reach thousands of contacts within minutes. SMS Marketing also has the ability to increase retention. Through this mode of marketing you can reach the same person as many times you want to. Once you have the number of that person, you can reach him any time and this increases retention.