Tag: photography

Everyone loves a good photo booth. They’re a huge hit at weddings, birthdays, company parties, and holiday events. They can fit pretty much any party theme and they’re a wonderful way to make sure everyone has something to remember the memories made.

But, have you ever thought about everything that goes into setting up a photo booth? Most people would rather hire a photo booth business than go the DIY route.

This means someone has to offer photo booth services, though! That person can be you. Owning a photo booth business may be one of the best decisions you ever make.

Here’s how to actually make it happen!

1. Identify a Target Market

Although a photo booth is easy to work into any celebration, it’s better for your business if you identify a target market. You can’t just assume that you’ll open for business and all of a sudden be setting up a photo booth all over town. You need to figure out whether you’d prefer to do corporate events, weddings, birthdays, or some mixture of these things.

Then, really get to know your target market. Figure out how much a corporate event usually costs. Understand how to get attention from soon-to-be brides and their wedding planners.

Whatever kind of event you’d like to focus on, get a deep understanding of the people who plan them. This is your first step in generating leads and making sales!

2. Research Your Competition

Keep in mind that you’re probably not the only person who’s decided to start a photo booth business. Do some research to figure out who your competition is in the local area.

Figure out how long they’ve been in business and what events they specialize in. Learn more about what sets them apart, then start thinking about how to differentiate yourself.

3. Figure Out a Funding Strategy

Here’s the thing: you can have the most amazing photo booth business ideas ever, but you won’t succeed if you don’t have enough funding to start your business.

Luckily, you can avoid a lot of the overhead traditionally associated with small businesses. You don’t necessarily have to pay for things like a photography studio space or a whole lot of high-end photography equipment, either. You do still need to set some money aside for things like marketing campaigns and branding tools, basic photo booth equipment, and employee salaries if you plan to grow a team.

4. Buy All the Essential Materials

The basic materials of a photo booth include the backdrop, the camera, and the props. A photo booth business, though, should have multiple of these.

Invest in at least 10-20 photo booth backdrops so you’re able to provide your clients with options. Figure out what kind of camera and printing system you’d like to set up with as well, and always have one or two back-ups ready to go. Get storage and transportation devices for your equipment, too.

As far as props go, the more you have, the better.

5. Invest in Marketing and Advertising

Once you’ve done all your market research, budgeting, and bought all your supplies, you’re almost ready to open for business. The next step is to start branding your photo booth company and marketing your services!

This is huge. You need to have a marketing campaign going before you’re actually ready to launch. Such planning helps you hit the ground running and make sales as soon as you do open for business.

A few great marketing tools to do this with are:

• SEO and content marketing
• PPC
• Radio advertising
• Print marketing
• Event marketing

Digital marketing is non-negotiable. It’s up to you whether you want to go the SEO or PPC route – or create a mix of both – but you need to do something to create a strong digital footprint.

Radio ads will help you reach your local audience, and you can gear them to the stations/time slots that make the most sense for your target market.

Print marketing means buying business cards, flyers, and maybe a billboard ad or two. Event marketing, on the other hand, means showing up to networking events to talk about your business and attending conferences like wedding expos or entertainment events.

6. Ask for Help

There’s no shame in reaching out to friends and family members when you’re getting your small business off the ground. Think about it: how great would it be to see if your cousin wants your photo booth at her wedding or if your sister can talk her boss into having a photo booth at the Christmas party this year?

Using your personal connections to generate business is genius. It boosts the amount of work you’re able to do in a short amount of time. It helps you get customer reviews and a bit of experience under your belt, which are both necessary when appealing to the photo booth clients you don’t personally know.

7. Celebrate Your Wins

Keep in mind that success doesn’t happen overnight. Creating a thriving small business takes lots of time and sacrifice.

But, soon enough, the fruits of your labor will start to show! Celebrate them.

Congratulate yourself when you book your first client that isn’t a friend or family member. Set specific milestones to reach as a business owner and do small celebrations every time you hit another one. Each new success story is a big deal. It’s a sign that you’re going in the right direction and that all your hard work is paying off.

Plus, these moments are what keep you going during the times that business does slow down or things don’t go as planned.

Start Your Photo Booth Business Right Now!

What are you waiting for? If you’ve already thought of the perfect name for your photo booth business or you can’t help but daydream about the kind of clients you’ll have, you clearly want to do this.

So, just go for it!

Start making all the plans today to launch your new business in the near future. For more tips to help you go from the career you have now to being your own boss, click here.

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!