how to get more clients

How to Get More Clients for Your Freelance Photography Business

If you don’t know how to generate clients, there’s a good chance you will never be able to make freelance photography a full-time gig. But if you don’t know anything about client acquisition, reading something like this can be a real downer.

Thankfully, attracting clients to a freelance photography business isn’t as complicated as you might think.

Keep reading and I’ll show you how to get more clients for your freelance photography business. Implement what you learn and it won’t be long before you have to turn people away, as you find yourself overwhelmed with client work.

Let’s begin!

Define Your Ideal Photography Client

Before you do anything else, put some thought into the kind of client you want to work with.

For instance, do you want to work with people who need photographs for their wedding? Or perhaps you want to work with people who want family portraits? Maybe you want to work with publications.

Whoever you want to work with, make sure you define your ideal client in as much detail as possible. Question the demographics of your ideal clients. If you want to work with publications, think about the kinds of publications you want to work with. Once you have this all down on paper, marketing your services is going to be a lot easier.

If you’d like to see an example of a photography business that has niched down you can learn more here. This website will show you what a photography business looks like when it offers wedding photography for Chinese weddings.

Think About Pricing

Before you market your services, you need to also put some thought into pricing. There are a few things you need to do here.

Firstly, you need to define the absolute minimum you’re willing to charge.

You need to make sure you’re not undercharging your services. Doing so will make it hard for you to earn a living from your photography business. If people try to request a lower price than what you’re comfortable with, you need to be okay with turning them away.

Pricing will also have a big impact on the kinds of clients you’re going to work with. There are clients who are willing to pay for quality work. As long as your work is of high quality, you’ll be able to charge a high figure.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you charge a low amount, you’ll find that your workload is going to be difficult to manage. You’ll have a lot of clients to manage and a lot of deadlines to keep track of. But if you charge premium prices and only work with a few clients everything will be a lot easier.

How to Get More Clients Using Paid Ads

One of the fastest ways to attract clients for your photography business is by running some paid ads.

There are three platforms you can focus on –

  1. Facebook Ads
  2. Instagram Ads
  3. AdWords

Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads are essentially the same, as Instagram is owned by Facebook. One of the good things about Facebook Ads is it’s easy to target your ads with precision.

For example, suppose you offer wedding photography services. Using Facebook Ads, you can target your ads so that they’re shown to people who have just gotten engaged. Such individuals are likely searching for wedding photographers. As a result, this form of targeting can be highly effective. You can also do the same for Instagram.

The other option is AdWords. AdWords lets you promote your business in the Google search results. This means that you can advertise your photography business when people are actively looking for a photographer. This is helpful because it puts you in front of people who are ready to spend money.

Succeeding with AdWords comes down to targeting the right keywords. If you want to identify the right keywords think about your ideal client. Then think about the kinds of keywords they’d type into google to find the services you provide. You can also use the Google Keyword Planner to help you find worthwhile keywords.

Word of Mouth

If you want people to recommend your services to other people you need to tell them ahead of time. Even though people might have found you to provide excellent services, they might not think to recommend you. By mentioning it to them, they may make a point to send people your way.

You can also incentivize people to recommend your services by offering a referral fee.

This can be a set figure or a percentage of the amount a new, preferred client generates. By offering a referral fee, people will benefit as a result of recommending people to you. This will, therefore, increase the odds that they send someone your way.

If you’re going to provide a referral fee, make sure you’re aware of your margins. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you’re making a loss, because you’re giving away your profits.

You might also want to think about offering services outside of your standard photography services. This might include printing the photos in a special book. This can help you bolster your profits, thereby making it easier to take the hit on a referral fee.

Photography Profits?

Running a freelance photography business can be incredibly rewarding. But if you don’t know how to get more clients, you won’t be in business for long.

In this post, we’ve taken a look at some of the things you can do to generate clients for your photography business. You can run paid ads. You can also rely on word of mouth to generate business.

Whichever method you adopt, make sure you know who your target audience is first. This’ll make it easier for you to reach people who will be interested in your services. It’ll also make it easier for you to charge premium prices. That’s because people will view you as a specialist and so will be willing to pay higher prices as a result.

Want to learn more about how you can earn some extra money? Check out our ‘earn money’ section to see some of our latest content!

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