Kevin Keith is a professional wedding and lifestyle photographer based in Kansas City. He and his wife, Ashley, love photographing weddings and lifestyle portraits across the country every year. Kevin grew up in Kansas but moved to Santa Barbara, California to attend Brooks Institute of Photography where he honed his skills as a fashion and portrait photographer. While he was in California, he found that the Midwest was where his heart is. He decided to bring his talents back to Kansas and began incorporating his fashion style into the weddings and lifestyle portraits he shoots. You can check out his blog here.
He shared some great marketing tips:
- Don’t spend big bucks on print advertising. Very rarely will you see a return on your investment with this marketing strategy no matter how much advertisers promise it will grow your business.
- Write a blog and share your work. Be consistent in writing blog posts; people need to know there is something to return to when they visit your blog.
- Send e-mail n ewsletters to your clients and contacts you meet. Be sure to not only share about your business, but also give readers some resources and information they can gain from so they will continue to open and read your newsletters
- Create strong vendor relationships. What better way to get referrals than from awesome vendors you work with? Send vendors who are a part of your photo session watermarked photos after the session for them to use on their website and to advertise with. It is a great and easy way to build relationships and grow your word of mouth referrals!
- Send hand-written ‘Thank You’ notes to your clients. Snail mail is not obsolete and means so much more than a quick email! Taking the time to write ‘Thank You’ notes shows your care and dedication, because you took the time to write it by hand and mail it.
- Be cautious and smart about doing daily deal sites like Groupon and Living Social. Don’t give everything away, or you will easily get burnt out and have no time for paying clients. If you decide to use a deal site, be sure you have a plan for being able to up-sell the client after they have purchased the deal and also think about how you are going to schedule everyone.
- Connect with clients and visitors on your website by having a photo of yourself and a little bio that they can read. They need to know you are someone they can relate to!
He also went on to explain that we shouldn’t be afraid to think outside the box and come up with creative ways to market our businesses and vendors at the same time. For example, Kevin Keith Photography hosted a photography workshop and all of the vendors involved donated their products for them to use in return for photographs of those products that were used during the workshop (location for the workshop and photo shoot, borrowed wedding dresses from a bridal shop for the models to wear, hair and makeup for the models, etc.). After the workshop each vendor received a beautiful album of photos of their products that they set out in their stores with the photography information included on the album. A great and inexpensive form of advertising for the vendor and your business!
With the ever-changing world of advertising and marketing, Kevin definitely gave us all some new ideas to think about and apply to our business plans. Everyone left excited and energized to begin implementing some new strategies.
Submitted by the OKC SMUG Scribe: Ashley Keith
Ashley is a professional photographer in Overland Park, Kansas and loves photographing weddings, families, children, and lifestyle portraits. She shoots with her Canon 5D and favorite lens, the 85mm 1.8! She loves the OKC SMUG group and how much fun they always have and the rockin’ speakers who share with them!
