7 Tips on How to Consistently Book More Weddings as a Wedding Photographer

Download this PDF for your personal checklist and email templates here!

As a wedding photographer, I completely understand the constant ups and downs of booking season versus slow season. I know how it feels to try to market your business, and still get nowhere. Over the past 9 years in the industry I have come up with a few fool-proof ways to grow my business, increasing my revenue year after year.  Lets face it, this is a saturated market for wedding photographers. But I promise you, if you stick to it and stay focused on providing an excellent service, you will be successful and sustain a profitable business year after year. Here are some valuable tips on how I am able to continually grow my business and fill my calendar, without spending (much) money. Here are some of our best tips on How to Book More Weddings as a Wedding Photographer.

1. Treat your vendors like gold! Vendors have been my lifeline to continually filling my calendar month after month. If you keep up with serving them and their photography needs (not just your client’s), they will continually refer you and your loyalty.
   • Send an email before the wedding: Introduce yourself and let them know that you are going to share the images with them after the wedding, also asking them if there are any specific images you can help them out with for their wedding business (details pics for the florist, pics of the dancefloor with the DJ in the photo, pretty food photos of the appetizers for the caterer…etc). *** Here is the PDF version of this guide, along with the Bonus Email Templates that I personally use to send to my vendors before each wedding and after! Feel free to COPY & PASTE! ***
   • Day of – Be kind and courteous and careful how you speak and act in front of everyone. This is just good business tactics that you should carry with you everywhere. You need to bring business cards to pass out to them so they can contact you for photos as well. And don’t forget to DRESS PROFESSIONALLY!
   • After the wedding – pump out some great sneak peek images for your bride and groom, but also your vendors! You must tag them on social media, but don’t forget to make sure you also email the entire group of vendors and link them to your blog post, (so they can look at the sneak peek photos on your blog, increasing your SEO, and most likely they will want to have the photos themselves to post on their social media outlets and crediting you).
   • I always try to include some hashtags in my email too: sending your vendors hashtags that they can just copy and paste, makes their life SO much easier! Try to include a couple detailed specifics of your photos, venue specific, location specific (city), and some other large ones like: #weddingplanning or #weddinginspo
2. Albums and Prints: ALWAYS offer an album to your coordinator and/or the venue themselves. Always include images in these albums that showcase their venue, their works of art, their creations…and of course some dreamy bride and groom photos of your own work for potential future brides and grooms to view.
3. Behind the Scenes Photos:  Always try to get your second shooter to snap quick behind the scenes videos and photos of you in action! This is so huge and so important for your social media stories, so clients can see you in action.  Clients want to know you and feel like they are a part of you and your life. So its really a great idea to get behind the scenes photos of you doing what you do best! Don’t forget your vendors – be sure to send any behind the scenes photos/videos you get throughout the night of your vendors, to your vendors.  They will love you for that!
4. Follow up with past brides and grooms and ask for a Review! Lets face it, its an online world these days, and people research purchases for a long time online, before buying. Reviews are key to this research for a potential bride and groom.  I always suggest reaching out to clients and asking them if they had any other questions or order needs before closing out their account.  They typically respond with, “no everything is great – thank you so much Jodi, we just loved working with you..etc…”  I then respond back with something like, “It was my pleasure, you guys were a dream to work with, if you have a spare moment in your day it would be an honor if you would leave a quick review of your experience with me. This means the world to me and my business and would be so special to me if you don’t mind. Here are the links:”  I then link Yelp, The Knot, Google etc…and instruct them to just copy and paste the review to whichever sites they choose. This ALWAYS increases reviews for my business!
5. Leave Reviews for your VENDORS! They will LOVE you for this! I always ALWAYS do this, as it is so imperative for our community to build each other up and to help one another out. I then shoot the vendor a quick email letting them know I left them a killer review and hope they enjoy that (they most likely will ecstatically thank you, and do the same for you)!
6. Clean up your website – Make sure your work is exactly how you want to be portrayed. Does every image in your gallery or on your website tell the story of who you are as a photographer and what your client can expect from you? Put it out there in the universe and be sure to update photos that will attract more of the dream client you want to attract.
7. Network, Network, Network! – This is huge for me. When I was first starting out I didn’t want to network. I actually thought I had to protect my business and not meet with other photographers etc. But let me tell you something…networking has been an incredibly healthy part of expanding my business (I now shoot a couple big commercial and corporate jobs twice per year, which are both worth 3 times what a wedding makes me), all just because I go out and network at local events, dining events, and charities. Make friends with other photographers and videographers. Make friends with other planners and venue coordinators. Stay in touch with them and make sure you are in the forefront so that these people remember your face, and who you are.

I hope this has been helpful for you. Please reach out and feel free to add other things that you have found to be helpful to maintaining and growing your business and income.  Here is a downloadable PDF that you can use to help you maintain these 7 steps and follow through with each wedding/client you encounter.

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