How to Get Wedding Photography Clients?
Originally published February 24, 2021 , updated May 1, 2021
Finding wedding photography clients isn't easy for beginners. Especially when you are just starting. So, if you find yourself in such a satiation and want to get your first client, bear with me.
First of all, you need to learn about where to find clients? However, finding an opportunity doesn't mean getting clients.
To book your first wedding as a photographer and get clients continuously, it needs a pre-planning, preparation, and strategical marketing plan (Both online and offline).
Now, the first client is always hard to get by. Here you will learn a few ways to make this search for clients a bit easier. Besides, learn about the marketing strategy for a sustainable wedding photography business.
There are a few significant days of a person's life. Wedding is one of them. This is the day when a man and a woman stop being alone and vow to be together through sorrows and happiness for the rest of their lives.
This is natural that they would love to have their moments of this day captured in frames. That is why a new breed of photography comes into play – wedding photography.
When they take the vow when they dance or get blessings from their parents and greetings of friends and other family members, the moments of happiness are something that they would love to treasure for life.
After overcoming all the tension and uncertainty, the magic happens. The job of the wedding photographer is to capture those moments.
But the problem is, you are not the only one who is looking to capture. You have other competitors who will even do it for free.
Photography has its own glamour and values as a form of art, and this glamour and artistic values draw in countless enthusiasts in this field.
But the problem is that when enthusiasts become serious about their hobby and want to become professional photographers, things start to get a bit complicated.
In this industry, photographers are entering in numbers, and the market is already saturated. Whatever genre you may be looking forward to entering may already have fierce competition. Now, it does not always mean you need a portfolio when you start.
However, in this comitative business era, a successful freelance business should have a solid marketing plan.
But that should not put you off.
With clever strategies and good marketing, it is still possible to get your clients. You do not need all the clients all to yourself, just enough to make a name for yourself. Initiation is the hardest part.
Here, in this article, I will discuss how to get your first job in this field.
Now that you know what you must have let us begin job hunting. You have your own family and friends, and they have their friends and families too. That means you already have your own potential clients. Next is to find when someone among them is planning the wedding.
Try making relationships with them through your friends and family members and requesting them to accept you as their wedding photographer. As I said earlier, you must have confidence and all the necessary equipment for your client to put trust in you. Offer them free services.
Like this, you will soon be able to have quite a big collection of photos that you can now use to build a portfolio of your own. Shoot amazing photos and show them to your friends and family members and promote them online.
This is the fastest way to get hired by someone whom you don't know. In this method, you have to find out the job post online.
There are several places where you can search for clients.
If you have your own Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook accounts, you would probably know how important it is to spend money on your digital marketing. With artificial intelligence doing all the background work to find the best client, you will have to select what kind of people you want to reach.
If you fail to plan a digital marketing campaign, you will not find clients who are willing to pay you. Use your social media accounts more wisely to your advantage.
Paid marketing is one of the best methods of online marketing. This plan is straightforward. You have to invest money to display ads to potential clients.
There are several ads networks that work best for photographers, they are-
Getting referrals is not that hard as it seems. However, it may take time to build up a circle of peoples who may refer or suggest your business.
Here are some quick tips-
Have your website, Facebook page, and other social media network pages. Soon people would start following you through Facebook, and that is important. You will be able to market yourself to the public now digitally.
When you have more photos to show, try to select the best from the newly taken ones. There is no doubt that your skill will improve over time, so choosing from the most recent best works will be better for your business.
You should always remember that you are not enough. Whatever you do, no matter how much effort you put into your marketing or portfolio, finding more clients is still a challenging job.
The reason is that people tend not to put their trust in someone they do not know.
Therefore, you must make a good relationship with other photographers, do them some favors here and there, visit their studio and show your interest.
If you can keep a low profile and earn their trust, they will guide you to the next client.
Sometimes they get a job offer in which they will not have any interest, and then if you have earned their trust, they may send the offer to you.
You will see that people keep giving out opportunities to others in your photographers for wedding circle when they cannot do it themselves. It is common in any professional circle.
Photographers know who difficult it is, and they help each other find jobs. They know if they give something away to others, one day the others will do the same favor to them. This is a given. You will be able to find a job through reference.
When you are new, the professional circle is your only lifeline. Even when you are an expert, this circle will always point you toward your next client. By now, you must have your own portfolio to show to your next client if you need to find a job.
This is a very good technique to get the attraction of your next client. You may ask why. The answer is that wedding comes after the engagement. So, if you can impress the client with their engagement party with your camera magic, you will most probably be booked for their wedding too.
So, the strategy here is to give free engagement photography services at a regular interval. Free service offers people a way to save money. This is something everyone loves.
Consequently, you will be able to plan out various experimental techniques in addition to regular engagement photography. You take enough shots to satisfy your client, and then on the side, you also take some photos for yourself where you can do some experiments to find out new ways to improve.
If the clients are satisfied with your engagement photography, they may book for their upcoming wedding. You can also plan to give free wedding sessions. The strategy is to make clients compete for your service, and yourself compete with others to get job offers.
These are the tasks you have to do to get your client willing to pay for your work.
What if you do not have a client? How do you build a wedding photography portfolio? Easy! Ask your friends to help you out.
Ask them to be your model for wedding photos. After they agree, you can do all kinds of experimentation with your models. This is called a styled photoshoot.
You prepare models and style them as bride and groom. You can contact famous design houses and offer them to advertise them in your photo credit freely if they help you out with various dresses, ornaments, and everything. You can also take help from wedding event management companies and offer them free advertisement through your photo credit.
Here, You can also use makeup artists for styling. Then you direct the photoshoot with your models.
Subsequently, please choose the best ones from the collection and put them in the portfolio. After your portfolio, you get in the field and start building your connections through various groups or attending multiple workshops.
Another important note is to use relevant hashtags to reach out to people who are already into these hashtags.
You will see people using hashtags in their accounts. The hashtag is an element that binds all the interested parties who follow a tag and all the relevant posts under one umbrella.
You click on one of the hashtags, bringing up the posts and people under the tag. For example, #weddingCeremony, #weddingphotographer, etc.
When you open a portfolio, you do not write anything. You keep the photos there. If you create your blog, you will showcase your talent with pictures and make some background stories to write for those photos.
With effective SEO, you will be able to get more interested visitors to your blog. Open Patreon page and create packages and services you offer and post your portfolio photos there.
Customer reviews are very important. Their kind comments will surely help your potential customers to put their trust in your work and talent.
You do not want to be seen as too cheap to trust or too expensive to diffuse clients even before contacting you.
Also, redesign your pricing or service charge according to the current market situation.
With a reasonable pricing plan, people who came to know you through reference will visit you first as you ask for the same money, just like any other photographer. When you start regular jobs, you should stop giving free services.
To sum it all up, you need to have a rich portfolio for genres of your choice if you do not have enough experience working with big companies. Another path for you is to get into the network of your family members and friends. Each of your family members or friends may already have a very close and big enough social circle.
Try to get into those circles and request them to advertise you. Please show them your impressive portfolio and give them your email and website address or online portfolio.
This will slowly make you known to many people who would like to have their private parties shot. You can give some free services for promotion's sake, and the clients will bring more clients who are willing to pay you money. Always add more photos to your portfolio. This will help you later on.
These are guaranteed strategies. However, it all depends on how much effort you give and relentlessly keep working on your ideas and techniques. The tips I have given here are all things you should do properly to get wedding photography clients successfully.
