Your best advertising source?

Hey everyone,

What is your best advertising source?

Besides word of mouth...

Thanks for sharing.

Organic searches via google is the second best advertising source for me.

My previous clients.

Oh, besides that? Then yeah, organic search. Despite how crappy my SEO is, it still gets me a client or two a year.

Facebook. Not the paid ads, just posting on a business page. About 70% of my new clients come from this.

Behind WOM from previous clients, future clients, friends, Facebook, other businesses etc the second best is organic SEO. I'm cutting advertising spend this year to less than 0.5-1% of turnover. You can't beat WOM.

Put your face in front of as many people as you can on a regular bases.

I advertise in local mothers' clubs. Almost all my new clients come from those for family portraits and events. It also helps I am just like all my clients (mom with small children), I belong to these clubs & am very active in them. This is how I think about it. You have to advertise where your clients hang out so they see you around when they are not yet in the market to hire you. Plant the seeds so to speak. So when it is time to hire a photographer, they will do a search or look at the ads then they will hire you over someone they don't know.

I think that makes perfect sense.

What are Mothers clubs exactly?

Craig

I've only been in business a short time (almost exactly one year) but it's working out great!
Mother club...I guess it's not well known if you are not a mom. It's a local group of moms of young children. Ours has almost 1500+ moms. The club is volunteer run and it organizes events (i.e. how to choose a preschool seminar, Halloween parade, etc.) so moms can get to know other moms and share resources. Ours also has a very active online forum similar to this forum where moms exchange ideas (where to shop for kids furniture, best bakery for child's birthday cake, etc.).

I'm not a Mom, so I guess that won't work for me.

I'm glad it is working for you though.

Congrats...

syclarac wrote in post #16248936
I've only been in business a short time (almost exactly one year) but it's working out great!
Mother club...I guess it's not well known if you are not a mom. It's a local group of moms of young children. Ours has almost 1500+ moms. The club is volunteer run and it organizes events (i.e. how to choose a preschool seminar, Halloween parade, etc.) so moms can get to know other moms and share resources. Ours also has a very active online forum similar to this forum where moms exchange ideas (where to shop for kids furniture, best bakery for child's birthday cake, etc.).

of those 1500 + Moms.... probably 1400 of them are wanna be professional photographers with fan pages on Facebook

facebook, google search, trade show etc..
worse type is magazine advertisements

umphotography wrote in post #16249766
of those 1500 + Moms.... probably 1400 of them are wanna be professional photographers with fan pages on Facebook

Well, there are some wannabes for sure. But I distinguish myself from those by building a proper website, nice portfolio, professional gear & insurance, and dedication to learn and work on it full time. Actually I've had a few of those as clients and found they are good people. They tell me they are photographers themselves but once I got to know them, they'll say something like, "Yeah, I'm trying something...I shoot family & friends mostly...But I'm not a "professional" like you!"

We had a local doula come to our house for private prenatal classes. She saw my camera gear and asked what my business name was. Told her it was just a hobby. She told me that she likes to recommend her clients to other clients and would have given my card to her other clients if I had any. She said she constantly has people asking her if she knows anyone who takes maternity/baby photos.

Christopher Steven b wrote in post #16245278
Organic searches via google is the second best advertising source for me.

This.

I hate that it's true (live and die by it), but I get the majority of my enquires through my webpage vs Facebook, Flickr, referrals, etc.