Aloha everybody! I guess everyone is deeply involved with marketing right now, as it should be. However I've noticed that a lot of businesses are actually cutting back on advertising and marketing at the moment because of fear of the economy, etc.

Are there any portrait photographers out there who have found an inexpensive way to generate new clients, leads, prospects? If you are getting good results with a particular marketing program, will you please share it here? What is it? How did you implement it?

Let's share ideas and what's working so we can all thrive and prosper!

ALOHA!

I cannot understand why people are not sharing on this topic. Surely sharing what you are doing is not goin to destroy your business. I believe it's good karma so I want to share the following idea. I know it's done often but I liked the way this photographer is doing it.

This photographer visits the local hospital twice a week.

She takes a FREE snapshot of each baby in the maternity ward (with permission of mothers of course)

For the photographer to then send out this FREE PRINT, she needs the mothers name and address.

BOOM there you have it!

The photo is then sent on the front of a card which contains a voucher or brochure about baby portraits.

She strives as a photographer by purely doing this!

Thought it is a fantastic idea.

Visit the hospital twice a week and post. You'd need to routine yourself, but this lady is making it really work.

Would be great if we could have some more great ideas from out there. Those of us that are making a living from photography, have the ideas and they are working to what ever extent. Let's share!

I'm still trying to figure the marketing thing out.

So no ideas that have worked for you that you want to share?

I would happily share my ideas if I had any that worked. I've tried direct mail (I made the printers and post office very happy for a while), placing ads in targeted publications (like the casting papers when I was in Los Angeles), volunteering for the Chamber of Commerce (shot bucket loads of Polaroids of kids on Santa's lap during 8 Studio City Holiday parades), traded photo services and cover photographs for ad space (my last one here in Hawaii netted two phone calls and no jobs), volunteered photo services for local charities (no phone calls), sent copies of my books to local bigshots (might have one good lead), held wine and cheese parties with Stan for local ad agencies (made the local liquor store happy for a day), sent targeted emails...well you get the idea by now. I now have a home equity loan that has paid for the 1,000's of dollars that I have put into this. Like I said, I'm open to new ideas.

I'm a pessimist. I looked at the economy back in October (look at my post from almost a year ago) figured the corporate world I worked in was going into the tank and would be comatose for the next six months. Turns out I was on the money. We cut back on everything and spent the time on vacation, writing books and shooting personal projects. I mean why shoot all your arrows when there are no buffalo?

So now the economy seems to be coming back to life. I feel recharged and ready to go. I've changed camera systems, I've changed the way I work and I have a new philosophy that I think works for the corporate market. I'm happy to share:

No one hires you sight unseen to do a big assignment right off the bat but everyone seems to be marketing as though they are just interested in the big pay off. Not me. I want to start on something easy. Something that will get me in the door and help me build a relationship. I see the executive portrait as a "gateway" drug.

Get in the door on a lower cost project that's hard to screw up and build trust. Deliver like crazy and THEN follow up with the "here are my big production projects" portfolio. Get them to effect trial on something easy to swallow before you go in for the big stuff.

Seems to be working. I'm doing a special on Execs for one month. I've kept my prices the same but I pick up the tab for the MUA. Works okay if you can book three or four in a day. Not everyone can book in this month because of schedule conflicts so I'm happy to give them rain checks. Our bookings for this kind of work are much higher than they were at this time last year.

Keep your costs low and your margins high. Direct your efforts at the most lucrative targets. That's it.