Free and Inexpensive Marketing Tools for Photographers
- eCommerce Marketing Tools
- White Label Shipping Marketing Tools
- Using Prints as Marketing Tools
- Acrylic and Metal Prints
- Canvas and Paper Prints
- Getting the Word Out and Making an Impression
- Recommended Photography Gear
- These Acrylic Photo Prints Will Elevate the WOW Factor of your Photos
- How To Promote your Photography Business
- 4 Surefire Photography Marketing Tips
Photo by jacoblund via iStock
I have seen a lot of interesting things as a photographer. But one of the rarest of sights for a professional photographer is a job that simply falls into my lap.
I’m being facetious, but the point of that paragraph is that professional photographers, like so many other businesses, need to engage in some form or another of marketing, getting the word out that you’re available.
Many ideas cover what marketing tools a photography business could use, so I’ll be covering some simple marketing tools for photographers that can be found in our networking partnerships with online professional printing companies.
I’ll highlight some of the ones I’ve found and used from Artbeat Studios, a high-end professional printer with a full lineup of eligible products and services that can be adapted as marketing tools.
Table of Contents:
eCommerce Marketing Tools
Photo by metamorworks via iStock
Our online presence is one of our best marketing tools as a professional photographer of any genre. For most of us, that means having a website.
There are so many ways to host a website as a photographer, from a barebones free or very low-cost and simple web page to a full-featured customized multi-page website with editable elements that can be updated regularly.
If we want to add eCommerce integrations as part of our marketing tools, we’ll need a web hosting service package that allows it, so there will likely be a monthly or yearly fee. That’s the cost of doing business, after all. It requires a bit of an investment from us.
The benefits of an integrated eCommerce solution in our photography business website can be very profitable. These integrations also make the process of selling our work and fulfilling orders so simple.
Here’s how it generally works: You set up your website with one of the many eCommerce tools available from your hosting services. Depending on your hosting package, You can add several to a WordPress website, but I like keeping it as simple as possible.
Artbeat Studios has an excellent eCommerce integration service. Your website has the images displayed and the pricing you’ve decided. A customer places the order on your page, you collect the money, and the order gets printed and shipped by Artbeat Studios.
eCommerce integration is a valuable part of photographers' marketing tools because we don’t carry any physical inventory. It’s all done on demand by the printing company.
White Label Shipping Marketing Tools
Photo by nattrass via iStock
Have a look at this video from Artbeat Studios YouTube channel. It’s an unboxing of a large metal print that just got received:
Now, imagine that person is your client, and the large metal print was shipped directly to them without you ever needing to touch it. That’s white-label drop shipping. White label refers to there being no identifier of the printing company.
From the customer’s point of view, that image went from your website to their hands in a straightforward ordering procedure. That’s good customer service and means you can increase your sales without inventory onsite. It’s one of the most important marketing tools a photography business can have.
Using Prints as Marketing Tools
Along with eCommerce and drop shipping, having a variety of physical prints on hand as examples is valuable. These prints are often worth their cost as marketing tools for our photography business.
Even if our primary source of income as a professional photographer is booking our services, such as a wedding photographer or real estate photographer, having fine art images of our photography, either in the genre of our specialty or other styles, is an “always on” marketing tool.
A wedding photographer may have some large prints on display of previous weddings (properly released in our contracts, of course) to give the current client an idea of what their wedding images could look like on their walls.
I like to use these silent marketing tools in my office or studio with fine art images of the landscapes, cityscapes, and wildlife images I’ve captured that someone could order right there, regardless of what type of photography service they hire me for. It’s additional and passive income.
Large prints or multi-part prints from high-end printers such as Artbeat Studios are eye-catching marketing tools for photographers, whether selling the images displayed or as generic examples of what each individual customer can receive from their portrait sitting, wedding event, or other photo service.
Acrylic and Metal Prints
Images printed as large-size metal prints or acrylic prints are excellent examples of physical items that can be used as photography marketing tools.
Those large, flat expanses of imagery capture people’s attention. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been sitting with a client or even just a potential customer, and they look at a print on my wall and ask if it’s for sale. Of course, it is! That’s the power of displaying your best artwork.
From the Artbeat Studios YouTube channel, here is a video discussing metal vs acrylic prints:
Metal prints and acrylic prints are also the perfect sales tool for displaying at events such as local art shows. Whether indoors in a gallery or outside at a fair booth, metal prints and acrylic prints are durable and eye-catching.
Artbeat Studios Metal Prints come in a variety of finishes and are available in sizes suitable from a small desktop display to large prints measured in feet.
Artbeat Studios Acrylic Prints can be ordered in various thicknesses and in a wide range of sizes. Both the metal or acrylic prints have several options for hanging on a surface, including low profile frames, though I think they work best unframed, letting the image stand out on its own.
Canvas and Paper Prints
Canvas Prints in regular canvas or metallic canvas and the four styles of Paper Prints from Artbeat Studios are additional marketing tools for photographers that will work as I described metal and acrylic prints above.
There’s a lower cost to these prints than metal and acrylic. However, you still get the stunning display of your excellent images to speak to customers as passive photography income generators, either for booking new sittings or gigs or as stand-alone art sales.
Getting the Word Out and Making an Impression
Photo by ozgurdonmaz via iStock
Used as photo marketing tools, all of these ideas are valid and simple to implement. However, no one will see, much less use, our tools if we don’t have people visiting our website or our brick-and-mortar studio or office.
Promotion is easier than a newcomer to professional photography might think at first. As simple as the ideas are, free or low-cost social media accounts and actual business cards for in-person interaction are very effective marketing tools for photographers.
Try out these ideas and give some more ideas of what’s worked for you as free or low-cost marketing tools.
