Why Content Marketing Is A Photographer’s Best Business Ally
Every sale of your photography service or product starts with a connection. Whether it’s someone discovering your work through a blog post, following you on social media, or a referral from a past client, those initial touchpoints lay the foundation for a relationship.
Over time, if you proactively support your business through content marketing, you can expect to deepen those connections with prospective clients and eventually have some of them lead to enquiries and bookings.
Through the creation of regular and engaging content pieces – emails, helpful tips, or getting your photography featured in the media – you can create awareness, build familiarity and trust, emphasise your credibility, and develop a sense of authority in your niche.
This is why content marketing for photographers is so powerful.
The ‘know, like and trust’ factor helps to make your photography service or product far more compelling than any advert ever will, and will truly make you stand out from the crowd.
Build a connection, attract clients
Whether this process – from connection to conversion – takes hours, days, weeks, months or years is dependent on a wide number of factors.
Of course, it may never happen. We shouldn’t expect to sell to everyone who follows us online. But, without a doubt, the likelihood of someone becoming a client is increased dramatically if there’s a connection and a relationship between you and them.
If you haven’t realised it already, your content is powerful. The words and stories you share are just as important as your photography when it comes to your marketing.
The journey from connection to conversion
The client attraction, nurture and sales process, in simple terms, is heavily dependent on you building trust in the eyes of your ideal photography clients and staying top of mind.
Strategic content marketing is a way of ensuring that you are considered by them as not just another photographer but someone they:
- choose to follow
- come to know, like, and trust
- want to work with, and who they will purchase from when the time is right.
When a prospective client discovers you and values the content you share, becomes engaged and has a genuine interest in what you do, valuable connections begin to form.
As I highlighted at the beginning, every sale begins with a connection:
- Discovery: Someone finds your work through a blog post, social media, or a feature in the media. They become aware of you.
- Engagement: They decide to follow you, subscribe to your newsletter, or explore your website. They are unlikely to be ready to buy at this point, but they are interested and curious to know more.
- Nurturing: Through regular, valuable content—whether it’s an email series, social posts, or blog updates, your content helps them to learn more about what you do and how you can help them.
- Conversion: When they’re ready, and perhaps with some encouragement or incentives to buy now (such as limited-time offers and sales content complete with compelling call-to-actions), they get in touch or book your photography services.
Why content marketing works for photographers
Content marketing for photographers isn’t about the hard sell. It’s about creating a bridge between you and your ideal clients, meeting them where they are, and providing value that speaks to their needs.
For this reason, it’s particularly ideal for photographers who aren’t comfortable with selling and appearing ‘salesy’ or who consider themselves introverted.
Your marketing content does the selling for you by demonstrating your expertise, and photography style, and through the sharing of compelling case studies and endorsements of your photography service. What’s not to love about that?!
Content marketing for photographers
There are many channels where you can share your marketing content. Of course, social media is a popular choice as the barrier to entry is low and the captive audience is potentially huge.
Similarly, you can boost your visibility significantly by leveraging established audiences such as via the media (newspapers and magazines) as well as on podcasts and relevant blogs and websites. Although it isn’t easy to secure these placements, it’s not beyond your reach.
For photographers, implementing content marketing could look like this:
- Social Media: Posting regular, engaging content that boosts your visibility and highlights your unique style and approach
- PR and Media: Getting featured in online publications, writing guest blogs or appearing on podcasts to showcase your expertise
- Blogging: Sharing behind-the-scenes stories, client success stories, or tips for getting the most out of a photoshoot experience.
This strategic content – that educates, as well as articulates what makes you different, how you help clients and the results you deliver – establishes and builds trust and authority over time.
It helps to ensure that when a prospective client is ready to book a photographer, they think of you first.
Connect with prospective clients through content
As you can likely tell, I’m a big advocate of a content marketing approach, and I’m proud to say that I practice what I preach. I have worked in marketing for more than two decades and throughout my career have always created content to help my clients attract their dream clients.
Whether through publicity – editorial articles, interviews and features – blogs or email marketing campaigns, I’ve always been focused on strategic storytelling and the creation of valuable content to support the sales process.
After all, it’s the stories, the tips and the expertise (the content) that ultimately build appeal and help convert leads into customers.
Free content marketing tips for photographers
Interested to learn more about content marketing for photographers? Then, sign up here to receive my Content Connection newsletter.
It’ll help you to start using content marketing more effectively to make those all-important connections that lead to perfect-fit photography clients.
