Marketing Advice

[Karl Mack]

Hi Everyone,
I am looking for some advice on how to reach the right clients and I really hope this is in the right area.

I am a commercial photographer specialising in products etc. So my ideal clients is business owners.
I have found facebook marketing to not work as it mainly hits members of the public and to be honest I am rubbish at social media – Which brings me on the next point. Blogs, I am always finding articles telling me I need to write a blog, This is something I do not want to do nor do I have any idea on what to write about.

I have been using google Adwords for just over 2 years and I bring most of my cliental in through this, however limited budget is giving me limited numbers I think. I have just hired a guy to deal with me SEO and already my rankings have gone up on the google and I think this was a step in the right direction.

I have tried cold calling and Emails with several business and they have had probably around a 10% success rate.

I have also tried jobsites like Bark and Bidvine which I would say also have around a 10-20% success rate for me.

The main one form of advertising I see suggested is referrals, I have actually secured 2 clients already from my SEO guy referring me which is great but what I am looking for is my repeat clients to refer me to other business. What I need help with is how to get them to do it!

On a side not, Most of my clients tend to stick with me which is great, It’s just finding new ones I struggle with.

Thank you in advance for any help

Karl

 

[Ecomccountant]

Like accounting, you buy the person not the product. 80% of accounting leads come from referrals from other clients - however, we spend 80% of our marketing budget on google ads, adverts etc...

Ive found I worry about adwords loads, and i get only a few clients from it, but then those clients refer people. Its a frustration.

 

[Karl Mack]

Like accounting, you buy the person not the product. 80% of accounting leads come from referrals from other clients - however, we spend 80% of our marketing budget on google ads, adverts etc...

Ive found I worry about adwords loads, and i get only a few clients from it, but then those clients refer people. Its a frustration.

Thanks for the reply, Do you offer incentives for the referalls or do you just get them?

 

[Ecomccountant]

Yes, so I offer 1 month off if they refer someone who stays 2-3 months.

Everyone is a winner - the key is making sure they refer you for the right reasons though.

 

[HazelC]

I would recommend LinkedIn as the place to be social media wise for product commercial photographer. This is where businesses are and you could be spotted. You just need to take the time to connect with the right people and share the right stuff.

Noticed you mentioned blogs: If you're not sure what to blog about I can give you some ideas if you'd like? I offer that for free to business owners like you that are struggling with blog post ideas.

You could then use these as articles on LinkedIn to portray yourself as an expert in your industry?

 

[WeddingsInWales]

I cannot answer your question directly but the repeat and referral business you generate, coupled with your dislike of Blogs (me too!) gave me an idea that one element of our marketing might be of help to you (and most businesses with a mailing list of customers).

Last year I read a book (not often I read books sadly) on Marketing - the book was free but my wife complained I was wasting money (because the postage and packaging was all of £3). I duly read the book looking for anything marketing related that I was not doing and came across the concept of a 'Buyers Parade'. It was brilliant. The idea is that every prospect you have enquire, is in a parade of potential buyers, but only when they reach the front of the parade are they ready to buy. Then the parade all moves and the row at the front moves to the back and a new batch of your prospects move to the front row, in the 'buyers parade'.

The writer suggested a series of regular mailings to the prospect list, timed to a frequency that would not irritate them, but remind them about your service from time to time. Then when they were ready to buy, they would think of you. With the GDPR you have a few hoops to jump through and have to unsubscibe those who want to come off the mailing list, but this does have the benefit of purging the prospect list of the disinterested, leaving you with a tighter database of loyal customers making repeat (in your case) purchases.

Given the nature of your business, you would simply write a series of letters on products and photo shoots and marketing campaigns they were used in, for other clients, with links to whatever parts of your website you wish to link to. This increases traffic to the site, from your own customers, increasing time spent on site and helping raise the site for SEO purposes as more people engage with it for longer periods of time on the site.

You may not like BLOGS and you will have to write all the letters in an intensive month or so of work which I duly did, but once done, the letters are timeless and continue working with no further input from you.

Here is an index of the Wedding Follow Up letters. They focus on how a Couple go about planning their wedding day. It is useful advice which people subscribe to even if they are not our cllients. Traffic to the site increases as each letter directs them to more information on the subject, that is found on the website. The weddings letter index shows you all the letters I u sed for wedding prospects and will give you a good idea of how the system works.

This can be adapted to any business or service once you have a list of relevant prospects to mail these automated letters to. I did the same for dog friendly B&B guest letters which were sent to all B&B/ accommodation enquiries and cause many previous B&B stayers to repeat-visit where otherwise they might have gone to a different hotel for their next dog friendly B&B break. I adapted the same system of letters for a cleaning agency I run (one set for cleaners and prospective cleaners and one set for clients - latter never quite finished). I did the same again for our ghost hunting guests.

While I never bothered to do BLOGS, you could oncne you have done the letters, adapt them into a series of blogs also, but I just published the letters themselves on line as above as a further information resource.

After 8 months I was able to compare the ratio of sales to total enquiries received and saw that we achieved a 5% increase in sales to wedding enquiries entered our database using this system, compared with the previous year. This is about £70,000 of 'extra' sales.

However while the ratio of sales to enquiries did increase, the overall volume of enquiries being added to our database each month decreased (no connection with the letters of course). This means the effect of this system was to maintain sales at the same level as before, but on fewer enquiries (meaning I now need to figure out how to increase new enquiries - don't we all!)

Increases in sales for our lesser services (dog friendly B&B and ghost hunting) have not been measured, but taken together we are achieving a 5% increase in take-up by prospects on our database using these automated follow up / advisory letters. We use AWeber to manage the lists of prospects in each niche category.

Traffic to the website has increased, and the sites seem to be doing OK for SEO as we keep driving customers - prospects and current clients - to continue to look at the website.

 

[Root 66 Woodshop]

I think FB and linkedin are only going to help you get your name out there... it doesn't bode with some industries unfortunately...



@WeddingsInWales When are you going to allow people back in to investigate without the two groups? I've been to you twice now and each time enjoyed it... shame the prices are stupidly high at the moment from the other teams... We only paid 30 quid each last time we came...

 

[Ray272]

I use upwork a lot to get stuff done outside my skill set. Lot of creative type contractors using this and it seems very buoyant.

 

[Karl Mack]

I would recommend LinkedIn as the place to be social media wise for product commercial photographer. This is where businesses are and you could be spotted. You just need to take the time to connect with the right people and share the right stuff.

Noticed you mentioned blogs: If you're not sure what to blog about I can give you some ideas if you'd like? I offer that for free to business owners like you that are struggling with blog post ideas.

You could then use these as articles on LinkedIn to portray yourself as an expert in your industry?

With Linked in, do you have to put on your actual name etc. I have tried my best since Myspace to remain annoymous on the web. I have issues with the internet and privacy and usally use alteranive surnames or shortened version of my own. I once met someone who knew all about me before I'd introduced myself and that was a serious security call.

 

[Karl Mack]

I cannot answer your question directly but the repeat and referral business you generate, coupled with your dislike of Blogs (me too!) gave me an idea that one element of our marketing might be of help to you (and most businesses with a mailing list of customers).

Last year I read a book (not often I read books sadly) on Marketing - the book was free but my wife complained I was wasting money (because the postage and packaging was all of £3). I duly read the book looking for anything marketing related that I was not doing and came across the concept of a 'Buyers Parade'. It was brilliant. The idea is that every prospect you have enquire, is in a parade of potential buyers, but only when they reach the front of the parade are they ready to buy. Then the parade all moves and the row at the front moves to the back and a new batch of your prospects move to the front row, in the 'buyers parade'.

The writer suggested a series of regular mailings to the prospect list, timed to a frequency that would not irritate them, but remind them about your service from time to time. Then when they were ready to buy, they would think of you. With the GDPR you have a few hoops to jump through and have to unsubscibe those who want to come off the mailing list, but this does have the benefit of purging the prospect list of the disinterested, leaving you with a tighter database of loyal customers making repeat (in your case) purchases.

Given the nature of your business, you would simply write a series of letters on products and photo shoots and marketing campaigns they were used in, for other clients, with links to whatever parts of your website you wish to link to. This increases traffic to the site, from your own customers, increasing time spent on site and helping raise the site for SEO purposes as more people engage with it for longer periods of time on the site.

You may not like BLOGS and you will have to write all the letters in an intensive month or so of work which I duly did, but once done, the letters are timeless and continue working with no further input from you.

Here is an index of the Wedding Follow Up letters. They focus on how a Couple go about planning their wedding day. It is useful advice which people subscribe to even if they are not our cllients. Traffic to the site increases as each letter directs them to more information on the subject, that is found on the website. The weddings letter index shows you all the letters I u sed for wedding prospects and will give you a good idea of how the system works.

This can be adapted to any business or service once you have a list of relevant prospects to mail these automated letters to. I did the same for dog friendly B&B guest letters which were sent to all B&B/ accommodation enquiries and cause many previous B&B stayers to repeat-visit where otherwise they might have gone to a different hotel for their next dog friendly B&B break. I adapted the same system of letters for a cleaning agency I run (one set for cleaners and prospective cleaners and one set for clients - latter never quite finished). I did the same again for our ghost hunting guests.

While I never bothered to do BLOGS, you could oncne you have done the letters, adapt them into a series of blogs also, but I just published the letters themselves on line as above as a further information resource.

After 8 months I was able to compare the ratio of sales to total enquiries received and saw that we achieved a 5% increase in sales to wedding enquiries entered our database using this system, compared with the previous year. This is about £70,000 of 'extra' sales.

However while the ratio of sales to enquiries did increase, the overall volume of enquiries being added to our database each month decreased (no connection with the letters of course). This means the effect of this system was to maintain sales at the same level as before, but on fewer enquiries (meaning I now need to figure out how to increase new enquiries - don't we all!)

Increases in sales for our lesser services (dog friendly B&B and ghost hunting) have not been measured, but taken together we are achieving a 5% increase in take-up by prospects on our database using these automated follow up / advisory letters. We use AWeber to manage the lists of prospects in each niche category.

Traffic to the website has increased, and the sites seem to be doing OK for SEO as we keep driving customers - prospects and current clients - to continue to look at the website.

What an absooute belter of a reply.
So, would you add all enquiries and current customers to the mailer ? and use something like mailchimp?

 

[HazelC]

With Linked in, do you have to put on your actual name etc. I have tried my best since Myspace to remain annoymous on the web. I have issues with the internet and privacy and usally use alteranive surnames or shortened version of my own. I once met someone who knew all about me before I'd introduced myself and that was a serious security call.

I suppose you don't need to use your real name on there, and there are accounts with business names, instead of personal names. But for ultimate trustworthiness, I would go with real name.