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Communicating with clients is difficult enough, but with the added stress of a global pandemic, a lot of people are realizing they have no idea how to keep up effective communication with photography clients right now.
Your photography business clients are still likely in need of your services, especially if your business is operating in a safe manner. The issue, then, becomes how to let your photography business clients know that you are still up and operating.
Some of the tips on this list are more obvious than others, but the key to effectively keeping your photography business clients through covid is to use every single tip on this list. You want to create a uniform message and then spread it as much as possible. Like regular marketing tips for photographers, most marketing tips during covid just rely on consistency.
Tell Them
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This is one of those really obvious tips to let your photography business clients know you’re still open: just tell them.
The key to this tip, though, is to craft a good message before doing so. Your message needs to be unified and concise, so that you can update clients on various parts of the internet with it. It should include information about how you’re working to keep your photography business clients, and employees, safe. It should also include exact dates, since different parts of the country are in different phases of reopening and this can change on a weekly basis.
One great way to keep your photography business clients updated is to use a communication platform like Podium.
Podium allows you to track all of your communication with your photography business clients across all of your social media accounts, your email, your text messages, and review sites like Yelp. It also keeps track of how long it takes you to respond to each client, so you can better retain them and attract new ones.
If the key to maintaining photography business clients during covid is consistency, then using an app to help you be more consistent makes a lot of sense.
Plus, Podium has a lot of benefits that will likely help your business after covid ends. For instance, you can send invoices from the Podium app via text message directly to your clients, which has helped me to improve my payment turnaround time.
You can sign up for a free Podium trial here.
Update Your Website
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Use the message you crafted above to update your website. I suggest making your covid message the first thing your photography business clients will see when they land on your website.
I know from personal experience that I will dedicate about ten seconds to clicking around on a company’s website trying to figure out if they are still open or not before moving on to the next business. You don’t want photography business clients bouncing off of your website because they couldn’t immediately figure out if you’re still open or not.
Plus, if you put this message directly on the landing page it will help you remember to change it as your state changes mandates on what businesses are allowed to operate that week.
If you don’t want to change your landing page, then you can also use a little pop-up box with info about your covid operations that people see immediately when they come to your website, but that they can easily click out of if they don’t need that information.
At the very least, you should definitely have a page of your website dedicated to covid facts that people can easily click on right after the landing page. Don’t make this information hard to find.
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Keep Updating Your Social Media Channels
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One of the best ways to let people know you’re still operating is to keep posting about your operations. This is especially true for businesses that don’t have a website or for businesses that have a website that isn’t visited as often as their social media accounts (which is likely true for many photographers).
If you can update your social media accounts more often during the pandemic, then do it. If your last Instagram post or Facebook video was a week ago, that could leave your clients wondering whether you are still actually open since operations can change in the span of just a few days.
It’s also helpful to put information about your operations on your Instagram and Facebook profile. Likewise, if you are already updating your social media channels regularly, then start including information about covid in these updates. Let people know how covid is changing your day-to-day.
Use Your Email Marketing
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If you’ve listened to any of the photography business tips we have posted here before, then you likely have a great email marketing campaign already going. So, it will be really easy for you to use this email marketing to send your customers regular updates to let them know how often you’re working right now and in what capacity.
Even if you are in one of the states that are not open, you should still be sending your clients email updates to let them know what you do. When do you think you’ll be back up and running? Are you taking reservations for sessions during the lockdown?
Use Outside Sources
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I find that business owners are typically paying attention to things they can directly control, like their social media channels and their website, but that aren’t typically paying attention to outside websites, like Yelp and Google.
But, here’s the thing. New clients are likely not finding you through your website. They’re probably finding you through websites that host client reviews. So, if your business is shut down for a period of a few months and you open back up, but Yelp doesn’t realize that you have, you’re missing out on a slew of comments.
If you haven’t already, you should take ten minutes to find your business on sites like Yelp and Google and figure out whether they have your updated business hours, etc. If they don’t, it’s a really quick fix to reach out to their customer service line to have it updated.