HOW TO BOOK MORE BRIDES USING...

01. KEYWORD RESEARCH

02. ON PAGE SEO

03. LINK BUILDING

04. HUB PAGES

05. LEAD MAGNETS

06. SOCIAL MEDIA (FREE CHAPTER)

07. PRINTED MEDIA

08. REFERRALS

09. PERSONAL APPEARANCE

10. EXISTING CLIENTS

11. THE SAME DAY SLIDESHOW

12. THE NEXT DAY SNEAK PEEK

13. THE GHOST ASSOCIATE

14. THE TEN DAY TURNAROUND

15. ENGAGEMENT SESSIONS

SOCIAL MEDIA

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Like it or loathe it, social media is a necessary evil to grow your wedding pho-tography business. If used efficiently, it’s a great way to reach more brides with your work. However, social media can also be a massive time waster too.There are many social media networks that can potentially help promote your wedding photography business, with several new net-works springing up every year. It’s easy to become sidetracked or overwhelmed with the latest new social network, especially when it seems like you’re the only one not using it.

Whilst it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have a presence on all of the different social networks, it’s far more effective to concentrate on a few, rather than to spread your efforts too thinly on many.

Facebook and Instagram have stood the test of time as effective tools to promote and grow a wedding photography business. Both platforms can be used for free to book more weddings, and indeed many suc-cessful photographers have never spent a dime on either of them.

Let’s look first at ways to book more brides by using Facebook for free, i.e. organically.

ORGANIC FACEBOOK MARKETING

Regular posting to your Facebook page is a great way to increase brand awareness, and could well lead to booking your next wedding.

To be able to post regularly to Facebook, you need to have a lot of con-tent to post! Since we’re wedding photographers, we should already have access to a lot of photos, which is great since Facebook loves photos.

To make sure that you always have a selection of content ready to post to Facebook, you should have the image selection process in your wedding photography post processing workflow.

Usually wedding photographers perform a final check of all their edit-ed images, and use one of the short cut keys to sort Portfolio pictures in Lightroom. For example, clicking the ‘5’ key adds a 5 star rating to a photo, which in my own case marks that photo as a portfolio photo. You should also have a key set to mark the photo as one to share on Facebook.

One issue with posting content to Facebook is that it will only ever reach a small percentage of your followers. Some studies have shown this reach to be as low as 2.6%!

Whilst there are many factors that go into the reach of your Facebook post (as well as ways to potentially increase the reach), one thing’s for certain – you’ll need to try much harder to get your message to your Facebook followers without spending any money.

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One other thing to remember is, just because you have a fancy Face-book business page now, don’t neglect your personal Facebook account. You’ve probably built up a huge number of Facebook friends over the years without really trying, and now it’s time to put them to use!

I’m not telling you to start marketing to them like you would on your Facebook Business Page, but don’t be shy about letting them know what you do and what you want. Don’t assume everyone knows you’re a wedding photographer looking for brides – you need to put that out there, and occasionally remind them in a subtle way.

Facebook friends tend to be sympathetic of a good cause. Everyone’s out there to make money, but as a solo business person (a struggling artist), you may be surprised who is ready to help with a shout out to their own friend network.

As soon as I went full time pro as a wedding photographer, I posted to my Facebook friends about my change of profession. I also men-tioned that I’d be really grateful if my friends could spread the word and keep me in mind for anyone getting married. To date, that’s been my most shared post ever.

Everyone has their own agenda, but it doesn’t hurt to remind people occasionally of what you want to achieve. You’ll never get a yes if you don’t ask! An example might be something along the lines of, “I’ve got a few spots left to fill this year for wedding photography – anyone keen?” Keep it friendly – no sales talk here.

You’ll find that posts on your personal Facebook page often do better than those on your Business page. This is due to many factors, most of all interaction - ever notice how it’s much easier to get a post Like on your personal page than your business one?! Those who run their photography business through their personal Facebook page actually

have a big advantage in this regard.

Another way to effectively leverage your personal Facebook network is to message people directly. Your posts may only reach a small per-centage of your friends, but messages are hard to avoid!

Don’t think of it as spam, or groveling either. One tactic I used in the past was to message female friends on Facebook and ask their opin-ion on a recent blog post I was particularly proud of.

I’d ask what the girl thought of a particular image, or whether she thought I needed to remove something etc. The point being, I wanted to make it seem I valued that person’s opinion. “Hey Katie, as an awe-some graphic designer, I wanted to ask your opinion on something…”

Don’t worry, this isn’t being manipulative! It’s just making the other per-son feel valued. When they’ve given their opinion and you’ve thanked them, they’ll usually need to find a way to leave the conversation eas-ily. More often than not, that will mean a throw away comment by the other party such as “I’ll keep you in mind for my friends getting married!”

If you’re really lucky, the friend will go right ahead and tell you she knows someone getting married. All you’re doing here is keeping your business and your skill as a wedding photographer fresh in the other person’s mind.

This method of ‘marketing’, for want of a better word, takes a little time, but can be extremely effective. Friend-of-a-friend, or word-of-mouth referrals are usually the best way to receive business. After all, you’re much more likely to visit a café that a friend has recommended to you than one you see recommended in a magazine.

As for your Facebook Business page, the key to reaching as much of your audience as possible via free marketing is consistence. This

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unfortunately means regular posting, which as we all know is very time consuming.

One way to maximize the potential of your posts is by reusing content. Although sharing the same content multiple times may make you feel like a spammy online marketer, the reality is, if done well, reusing the same content can be a very effective and efficient technique.

To save even more time, you can automate the resharing process by using various tools such as Buffer, Post Planner or Edgar. Currently Edgar is the only tool which allows posts to be automatically recycled, but it’s also the most expensive, so may not be relevant to your busi-ness at this time.

I’d recommend starting off with the free plan of Buffer. Each time you want to share a new post from your website, use the ‘Power Sched-uler’ to schedule multiple other times for the post to be shared. You can also choose multiple social media networks to really maximize your reach.

Using the free plan, you’re able to store up to 10 posts at a time. Click ‘+Add another’ to keep scheduling up until your limit. Be sure to spread the posts out over a couple of weeks at least.

By using Buffer in this way and experimenting with the post times, you’ll be able to gain some additional insight into popular times of day, as well as images and text that your audience respond to. To do this, just click on ‘Analytics’ in your Buffer dashboard.

Once you’ve filled up your Buffer, I’d also recommend using the built in Facebook post scheduler which is available on all Facebook Business Pages. Here is the exact process to use for that:

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Step 1

Upload your image, preferably as a PNG, the best quality image for-mat that Facebook supports. For information on how to do this, see the ‘Next Day Sneak Peek’ chapter, or this helpful ebook.

Regardless of whether you use a PNG or JPG, the dimensions of your longest edge can be up to 2048 pixels.

Step 2

Write your text. Don’t worry about tagging anything at this stage.

Step 3

Click the triangle next to the Publish button and select Schedule. Choose a date and time. Remember to use the information you gained from checking your Insights, or just use a weekday evening, or week-end any time.

If you only want to show the post for a certain time period (e.g. if you’re running an offer that expires at a certain time), fill in the Stop News Feed Distribution section. Then click Schedule.

Step 4

This next part is really powerful, but somewhat fiddly. (I described it in the ‘Next Day Sneak Peek’ chapter but here it is again in more detail.) Click on ‘See Post’ in the box that’s titled 1 Scheduled Post.

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Step 5

Click on the post that appears.

Step 6

Click on the same post when it appears again and a new browser tab will open.

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Step 7

Click the Edit button in the top right of the post that appears.

Step 8

Finally, you’ll be able to tag those involved by writing @ followed by the name of the person/business, or simply click ‘Tag Photo’ and type their names.

As long as the person you’re trying to tag is your Facebook friend (in your personal network as opposed to a Fan on your Business Page), you can tag them here.

This is why it’s so important to add brides and grooms to your Face-book friends after a wedding, so you can tag them with any subse-quent photos you upload to your business page.

You can also tag other business pages, such as vendors involved in the wedding. This can extend the reach of your post, especially if the vendor chooses to share your photo.

If you’re not comfortable with your clients seeing your personal Face-book posts, it’s easy to restrict what they see by delving into your privacy settings.

If you’re using Instagram, there’s a great app called Later that will allow you to bulk schedule your posts ahead of time. The process is a little clunky due to Instagram’s restrictions, but it’ll save you time in the long run if you can schedule things in advance.

Even after your posts go out, you can do things to extend their reach. You should reply to comments as quickly as possible, preferably with words rather than just a lazy Like! This can serve to bring the Face-book user back to the original post, making it fresh in the mind again.

Another great tip is to take advantage of the Facebook Invite function, which is somewhat hidden.

To do this, click on the link that appears next to the Like symbol beneath your post that says something like, “(Facebook Fan Name) and X others”.

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This will open a window showing everyone who liked your post. Beside their name will be a button showing either ‘Liked’ or ‘Invite’.

By working your way through this list and clicking the Invite button, you can potentially increase the number of Facebook fans to your business page.

The sooner you can invite the user the better, since it’s quite likely they

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will have already forgotten the name of your business page, if they even noticed it in the first place at all.

As for what to share, this one is down to personal taste, but as we’re looking for regular posts, don’t worry too much about posting only your very best work. It may be tempting to only show your portfolio pictures on Facebook to keep the quality as high as possible, but you should also be sharing other types of image.

Emotional images such as grandmas crying or bridesmaids laughing may not be in your portfolio, but seem to be popular when shared on Facebook. Also the odd group shot featuring several people you can tag can also be something good to share, since it can bring new eye balls to your Facebook page.

Remember those Hub Pages you created in Chapter 4? You’ll definite-ly want to share those too.

You should be thinking more about how to attract and entertain peo-ple on Facebook via your work, rather than trying to wow them with your portfolio images. Post Likes are a great vanity metric (they make you look and feel good!), but their long-term worth is negligible.

You should be aiming to increase your audience with your Facebook posts, and this means trying to target Shares.

Shares are the key to increasing the size of your Facebook fan base, since they extend the reach of your posts beyond your existing audience.

However, as you probably know, getting a Share on your posts is much, much harder than getting a Like. You’ve probably experienced this first hand yourself – when was the last time you clicked that Share button on something you saw on social media? You certainly didn’t click it just because you liked an artistic wedding photo…

There’s no secret to gaining a Share over just a Like, but one thing’s for sure – your post needs to be extraordinary in some way. This means that unfortunately, unless your wedding photography can be defined as ‘extraordinary’, you’re probably unlikely to get any Shares out of your portfolio images.

However, all is not lost. With a bit of lateral thinking, you can leverage other peoples’ content to bring attention to your own site. That’s right – you can use the extraordinary nature of other talented (lucky?) peo-ples’ work to your own benefit. It might sound sneaky, but don’t worry – everyone benefits in the end. Allow me to explain…

Let’s assume that the average Facebook user only clicks ‘Share’ on something that is remarkable in some way. Unless you are express-ly asking your audience to share, there’s probably not much chance they’ll click the share button on your average post.

That incredible photo of the newly weds perfectly reflected in a wed-ding ring however… that kinda thing is Sharing material. It’s the kind of photo you want to show your friends as you know it’ll elicit a wow response, and make you look good for finding it in the first place.

So now you have 2 options. The first option is the one 99% of Face-book users will take, and that’s to click the Share button.

Let’s assume for the sake of the example that you’re using Facebook as your Photography Business page and decide to click Share on the ring photo. You want to try your hand at entertaining your existing Facebook followers with some content that’s not your own – a good step.

So, you click Share and the ‘extraordinary’ ring photo enters your own Photography Business page’s stream. A few of your followers see it, click Like, Comment and maybe even Share or Tag their friends. This

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is great, right? Wrong! You’re missing out on a massive opportunity.

You need to be the 1% of savvy Facebook Business Page owners who are Sharing viral content the right way.

In our example, instead of clicking the Share button, first of all click the link and visit the page or the site which posted the original link.

Now, select the URL in your browser and copy it.

Next, go back to your own Facebook Business Page and write some-thing short and preferably entertaining that describes the link. Depend-ing on the style of your usual updates, you may want to consider an update in the tabloid vein – see Buzzfeed’s sensationalist headlines for examples.

Now paste the link after your text and wait for Facebook to pull up the image as a link beneath it. Now delete the link from your update. This step isn’t essential, but just makes your update look much neater.

At this point, you’ll have something along the lines of “OMG! How on earth did this wedding photographer do this??!”, plus the incredible image beneath.

Don’t press Publish just yet though. If you want maximum benefit from your post, make sure to schedule it for a time when the major-ity of your Facebook Business Page’s fans are active – you can use Audience Insights for this, which you’ll find near the top of your page.

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Then check the times that most of your Facebook fans are active, by clicking the ‘Posts’ link. In my case, that’s around 7pm.

Ok, so assuming you’ve scheduled your post at an optimum time, here’s what will happen when it’s finally published:

i) A percentage of your Facebook Business Page’s fans will see it. Since your post is free, this percentage will be very small, but at least you’re maximizing it by selecting the best time to share.

ii) Some of those users will start Liking, Commenting and

fingers crossed, Sharing.

iii) Here’s the genius part - any Likes, Comments and Shares will be directly attributed to your Page. Compare this to the first version of events where all of that interaction will go to the original poster’s page.

iv) Any traffic resulting from users clicking on the link will go to the rightful owner’s page or site. They get their traffic, credit and accolades. All is right in the world :-)

So as you can see, by using this method you can leverage others peo-ples’ awesome content to your own advantage whilst doing them a favour at the same time. You’re also tailoring the post to your own audience, feeding it to them in a way that’s in keeping with your brand image.

Everyone is happy, and the best bit is, your Page has way more poten-tial to be shared to a whole new audience - for every Share or tagged friend via the comments, your post reaches new eye balls, all with your Page’s brand in full view.

Whilst it’s not guaranteed that the new audience will convert into a loyal fan, there is a chance that they will click back to your Page to see who posted this amazing content. From there on in, it’ll depend upon the strength of your existing Facebook feed and wedding photogra-phy work as to whether that user decides to Like your Page.

The plan isn’t a recipe for guaranteed audience building, but it does maximize your chances if you never want to touch your wallet.

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BONUS TIP FOR POWER USERS

A way to squeeze even more benefit from the above link sharing tech-nique is by using a service called Start a Fire (free at time of writing).

Start a Fire allows you to add a ‘badge’ to the lower right hand cor-ner of any webpage you share. The badge contains any two links you want to promote, including a customizable thumbnail image and description.

This means that when you share a viral news story over Facebook, you will not only have the interaction on your own Facebook business page as described above, but you’ll also be able to promote your own work in the process.

As an example, you could set up Start a Fire to recommend your 2 latest (or greatest) wedding posts. Then, here’s what should happen:

i) You post a link to an amazing viral news story on your Facebook business page using Start a Fire to create the special URL.

ii) One of your Facebook fans clicks the link and reads the story

iii) The fan notices the badge in the corner of the webpage, and clicks on whatever content you’ve chosen to share

iv) After closing the content, the user returns to Facebook to Like, Share or Comment on your original post.

Obviously this is a best case scenario, but you can still see the poten-tial in this!

Unfortunately, if you want to do well out of Facebook from a market-ing perspective and not spend a cent, it’s a lot of work. Aside from posting great content, you’ll need a lot of time to actually create reg-ular content and interact with your community, answering comments, following and liking.

The key word here is ‘regular’. The more you put into social media at a free level, the more you’ll get out of it. This is fine for those with a lot of time on their hands, or those who can at least put aside time every day for certain social media related tasks, but for the rest of us, it actually represents a rather addictive vicious circle.

You’ll end up creating content which basically serves to entertain your followers, in the hope that they will like and share. The end goal is to book more weddings, but it’s easy to lose track of this and focus sim-ply on vanity metrics, like increasing your follower base.

Don’t get me wrong, a bigger audience is definitely a good thing. With a bigger follower base, you can potentially reach more people for free, and having lots of ‘fans’ is also powerful for your brand image. It’s a sad truth that a photographer with 10,000 fans on Facebook will look ‘better’ than one with only 100, regardless of their work.

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However, this vicious circle of social media use is an enormous drain on your time, and there really is no end. Uploading a photo from your recent wedding and some text is a simple task, but it actually takes a lot of time and thought. To make matters worse, you’ll probably only ever use the post once.

Even if the post ‘entertains’ a handful of your fans and you get some Likes out of it, how much bigger did you make your audience? Get any new followers? You’re literally just creating content to entertain people on social media, for your own vanity.

Yes, one of those people may love your image, visit your website, then book you for a wedding, but even so, this is a hugely inefficient process.

The purpose of this book is to help you book more weddings in as little time as possible, so let’s look another option – paid advertising.

PAID FACEBOOK MARKETING

Before you baulk at the concept of paying for something that has always been free, consider this – Facebook and Instagram are enor-mous, multi-million dollar businesses. They exist to make money, not to help you keep up with your friends and laugh at cat videos for free!

Facebook and Instagram represent the best advertising opportunity of the century, and you’d be a fool not to take advantage. How else can you target newly engaged couples who live in a 20km radius of you?!

So get the idea out of your mind that you can use social media for free to net your next bride. Those days are over! You’d be lucky to reach 60 people of your 1000 person fan base for free these days. That’s

an absolutely terrible return on investment, the investment being your time.

Paid advertising on Facebook represents a huge opportunity since so many other wedding photographers refuse to spend money on a ‘free’ network. This is even more so for Instagram, which looks to be head-ing in the same direction as Facebook’s display algorithm model.

Remember your end goal with social media. It’s not to get as many fans as possible – it’s to book weddings! Do yourself a favour and stop wasting your valuable time trying to entertain people on social media - whether you realize it or not, that’s what you’re trying to do!

Free use of social media for your business still has its place as described in the previous section. Now though, let’s look at the best way to use Facebook/Instagram advertising to book your next wedding.

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HOW TO SET UP A FACEBOOK AD

Step 1

Click on the triangle in the top right hand corner of your Facebook screen and select ‘Create Ads’.

Step 2

Select ‘Send people to your website’, and enter the URL of your home-page or landing page in the box.

For advanced users, I’d recommend also setting up a Facebook pixel to track your campaigns more accurately. You can read more about conversion pixels here. There is no conversion pixel anymore, there is just one Facebook pixel that is put on every page.

Then click on ‘Set Budget & Audience’.

Step 3

In the Locations drop down, select ‘People who live in this location’. What you select here will depend on the distance you are willing to travel to shoot the wedding. As an example, I usually set this to a 30km radius of my hometown.

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Step 4

Select the age of the people you wish to target. I’d go for 20 to 40, but you can choose whatever age group you think makes sense for your market.

Step 5

Select Women as the gender. Men obviously also book weddings, but it’s best not to introduce another variable at this point by selecting both genders.

Step 6

Choose the language.

At this stage it’s worth noting what should be happening on the right hand side of your screen. As you’re choosing the various options out-lined above, Facebook will be calculating an Estimated Daily Reach of your ad.

Depending on the audience you define via the option you select, you may need to keep an eye on this estimated daily reach to ensure your audience is neither too big, nor too small. Here’s some advice from Facebook on how to make this judgement.

Step 7

The Detailed targeting section is incredibly powerful, and this is what will make a big difference in your ads’ effectiveness. You can exper-iment with various different metrics, but the first to try should be Demographics – Life Events – Newly Engaged.

Just start typing ‘Newly Engaged’ in the search box for the various options to start appearing.

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Step 8

Decide whether you’d like your ad to be seen by people who are already your Facebook Fans or not. There’s not really any advantage with either option.

Step 9

Choose the Placement of your ad, i.e. where you’d like it to appear. You might like to leave all the options checked for your first test, then after 2 weeks, see which one performs the best for you.

Currently the options are: Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, Desktop Right Column, Audience Network and Instagram, since Ins-tagram is owned by Facebook.

It’s worth keeping in mind that you’ll need to prepare square images if you decide to include Instagram advertising in your campaign.

I usually ignore the Mobile News Feed completely, despite a lot of my traffic to my homepage coming via mobile. The reason being, my website doesn’t load particularly quickly on mobile devices. I’m also worried that users will lose interest when they are forced to type out my contact form on their mobile phone.

I tend to get the most success from the Desktop News Feed place-ment since it allows for more text.

Step 10

Set your ad budget. Think about the total amount you’re willing to lose after a couple of weeks without any results. It’s like when you go into a casino. You’re preparing for the worst-case scenario. Then divide that amount by 14 to set your Daily Budget.

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I won’t tell you how much you should spend, but every business should be able to afford $5 a day for 2 weeks.

If you’d like to see results quicker (if you’re testing a few variables, for example), ramp that ad spend up to reach a bigger audience.

Don’t go crazy with your first campaign though – remember my casi-no analogy!

Step 11

Set the schedule - a start date in the future, and an end date in 14 days time. The duration is up to you, but I find 2 weeks is long enough to provide some useful data, but not so long that you’re likely to forget about the campaign!

Double check the total amount that you’ll spend on the campaign, then leave all the other settings as they are.

Step 12

Choose an Ad Set Name to be able to keep track of it, and then click ‘Continue’ to move onto the fun part – choosing your ad images.

Choosing the right image is very important, and it’s something you can test quite easily.

At the time of writing this book, you can upload up to 5 different imag-es to run at the same time. You can choose to show only one image at a time, or up to 5 images at the same time in a carousel, all at no extra cost.

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The ‘Multiple images in one ad’ option tends to be the most eye-catch-ing – you’ve probably seen these image carousels pop up in your Facebook newsfeed already.

As for the type of image, it’s easy at this stage to waste a lot of time being too picky about images that you feel represent your brand. Don’t fall into this trap. You should remember that the images serve only to grab attention, and to incite the viewer to click.

Another tip here is that you can actually use the free stock images created by Facebook, with no copyright issues whatsoever. Again, no one will remember, let alone care what image they clicked on to reach your website. Using a stock image can be a great time saver, especial-ly for your first Facebook ad campaign.

There’ve been some studies which show what type of images get the most clicks on Facebook. Apparently, a colourful image featuring a blonde girl results in the most number of clicks, but I’d take this with a pinch of salt.

Some recommend using text on the image itself, but you’ll need to comply with certain rules if you go down that route. Let’s keep it sim-ple at this stage and just use regular images.

Step 12

Choose your Facebook Page from the ‘Connect your Facebook Page’ dropdown menu if it doesn’t appear automatically.

You can also choose to have your Instagram account represent your business rather than your Facebook Page at this stage too.

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Step 13

Next comes the ad copy - the text that will accompany your images. It’s possible to write different text for each image, but this will intro-duce a lot of variables to your test, so I advise to keep all the text the same initially.

The ‘Text’ section appears above your image carousel in the Desktop News Feed. You should experiment with different approaches to your content here. I favour including the price of my base level package (or rather the Associate’s package), just to try and reduce the number of clicks to those who can already afford a certain budget.

It’s worth remembering though that many Facebook users who click the ad won’t even read your ad copy, no matter what you include in the text at this stage.

The ‘Text’ content will be the same for all images in your carousel, but you’re also able to change the ‘Headline’ and ‘Description’ of each individual image in the carousel. To do this, simply click the boxed numbers which represent each image in the carousel and add text to each.

You’re limited in how many characters you can use in the Headline and Text sections based on the ad placement, so be sure to click on the various Ad Preview windows to preview how your text looks in each.

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Whilst good copy can go a long way, it’s arguable as to whether Face-book users will even read the text in the Headline and Description sections. With so many other distractions in their news feeds, users are likely to look at your photos, and possibly scan over the text at best, but I wouldn’t waste too much time crafting amazing ad copy for each individual image.

In addition, the more variants in ad copy you have, the more variables there will be in the test. When you come to analyse the results after 2 weeks, you’ll have a tough time trying to decide why one image was clicked more than another.

For this reason, I’d actually recommend keeping the Headline and Description the same on all images in your carousel, at least initially.

I’d also leave these two check boxes checked:

Step 14

Choose your Call-to-action Button. Again, this is another one you may like to test but I suggest sticking with ‘Learn More’, which is a nice, subtle push to your website. I’ve seen some wedding photographers using ‘Book Now’, but this is too early in the process in my opinion.

On the right hand side of your screen, you can see a preview of how your ad will look in the various locations. You may want to tweak your images and text to ensure it looks great in the places you want your ad to appear.

Step 16

Double check everything looks good and then click the green Place Order button. Congratulations – you’ve just created your first Face-book ad!

LANDING PAGES

Creating a landing page for your Facebook ad campaign can have a big effect on the outcome of your advertising.

Think of a landing page as a webpage that’s been created for a single focused objective. It can be connected to your site (i.e. www.yourdo-main.com/landingpage), but it doesn’t necessarily have to be, and in some instances as we’ll see, it’s better if it isn’t.

The beauty of a landing page is that you can customize it to suit each particular ad that you run. If you use a set template, you can easily replicate the landing page with a few tweaks, and welcome traffic from an entirely different campaign.

So why would you want to create a whole new web page if you have

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a perfectly nice looking website for your photography business? Well, another beauty of the landing page is that you can eliminate all distractions.

You may not consider the links in your homepage’s menu as a distrac-tion, but the idea here is to eliminate everything on the landing page that isn’t directed to one sole purpose – getting the lead, i.e. getting the client to fill in your contact form.

Every link and every thumbnail on your homepage is a way to lose your client, sending them off in a different direction to the one you need them to be headed.

In an ideal world, the flow from your Facebook ad would be: client clicks Facebook ad > landing page loads quickly > client sees similar image to ad they just clicked on > client reads short copy/sees imag-es > client fills out contact form.

This flow to the end result of the client giving you their email address is called a conversion, and getting as many people from the original click to the contact form involves conversion rate optimization.

To increase your conversion rate, you’ll need to work on creating the best landing page possible. However, this doesn’t mean hiring a fancy graphic designer – you just need to be smart about what to include and what to exclude from your page.

People have very short attention spans, so you’ll need to maintain their attention for long enough that they’re willing to fill in your con-tact form. This means using great images and text, and remembering to be brief.

Whilst there’s evidence that long sales pages work in online market-ing of products, what you’re doing here is different. You’re not trying

to convince a client to book you at this stage, you’re just making them interested enough to contact you. The sales can come later.

On your landing page you’ll need an image that is similar to the one used in your ad, or preferably the exact same one. When you’re send-ing the user to your homepage this isn’t so important, but now you can be more specific.

When the user clicks on your Facebook ad, seeing the same image straight away on your landing page will provide immediate reassur-ance. It also serves to hold the user’s hand, guiding them to the next step – reading some ad copy.

The text you use here should start out the same as your Facebook ad copy to preserve the trail you’re trying to create. Next you need to sell your wedding photography as best you can, all the while remember-ing to be brief. If you find writing hard, you can hire a copywriter. Use Fiverr or Hire Writers if you’re on a budget.

At the end of your text, there needs to be a ‘call to action’, i.e. you need to tell the user what to do next – in this case, fill out your contact form.

You may choose to use a button here, or arrows pointing down the page or other design elements to direct the user. Be careful that your page doesn’t start resembling a cheesy sales ad though! It all needs to be in keeping with your brand image.

Regarding the contact form, keep it as simple as possible. On your main site, you may have a fancy contact form that captures all kind of data (referral, place of wedding, etc etc), but on a landing page I’d rec-ommend simply asking for a first name, an email and a phone number.

In an ideal world, a first name and an email address would be enough, but since you’re paying for this traffic, you need a fallback if the user enters their email address wrongly.

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The contact form needs to be fast and easy to fill in, reducing friction and making the whole process as simple as possible for the user.

Always keep your goal in mind when designing your landing page. You’ve already piqued the user’s attention with your Facebook ad enough to click it, so now all you need to do is retain their attention and keep the ball rolling quickly to the contact form.

As for actually building the page, there are a few options. WordPress makes it easy to create a standalone page that’s not linked to from your site’s homepage, but it also makes it hard to remove your site’s menu from specific pages. This means there’s a high chance your user will click away from your landing page.

If you can figure out a way to hide the menu on just one page of your WordPress site, this would be a great option since it means you can still use your branded url. It’s usually something to ask your Word-Press theme’s developer, or again, someone on Fiverr.

There are many free landing page plugins available for WordPress, but in my experience, they are all limited in some way. It’s easy to waste a lot of time trying to tweak them to do what you want, so I’d recommend steering clear of them and investing in a paid option.

My two favourites are Thrive Landing Pages and the landing page cre-ator which is bundled with Get Response, an email marketing service. Since Get Response requires a subscription, I’d recommend using Thrive Landing Pages which is a more affordable, one-off purchase.

The landing pages that come bundled with Thrive Landing Pages tend to be a little more online marketing focused, but it’s easy to start from scratch and build something that resembles your brand with the drag and drop interface.

Landing pages take a bit of time to set up, but you should find they’re a great way to increase conversions over simply directing your ad traffic to your homepage.

A specific situation where I have had success with Facebook adver-tising and a custom landing page is in booking destination weddings.

HOW TO BOOK A DESTINATION WEDDING IN UNDER 10 DAYS

Whether we like to admit it or not, for us wedding photographers, des-tination wedding photography has a certain allure to it.

Perhaps it’s the prestige we feel when a client values our work so much that they’re willing to pay for us to fly somewhere for their wed-ding, rather than hiring a local photographer. Or perhaps it’s simply because deep down we all want to travel, and getting paid to do it makes it even more enjoyable.

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Whatever the reason, shooting a destination wedding is often at the top of our wedding photographer bucket list!

The reality of traveling for destination weddings is of course not all the glamour it may seem. Aside from the fact that it’s rarely more lucrative than a local wedding and makes little short term business sense, it can also be tiring, stressful and lonely.

I wrote a post on travel tips for photographers which tackles some of the issues that overseas photography work brings with it, but it’s clear that arriving safely with all your gear intact and performing as you would do locally is a skill in itself that takes experience to get right.

This being said, destination wedding photography certainly does have its benefits. Shooting beyond your normal environment is a welcome break that can open your eyes creatively and provide a mental refresh for what is often a somewhat monotonous job.

In addition, having work from a destination wedding in your portfolio can open new doors by adding value to your brand, elevating your work from local competitors.

So how do you go about booking your first destination wedding if you’ve never shot a destination wedding before?

“Show what you want to shoot” is the default advice from successful veterans, but for eager newcomers to the world of destination wed-ding photography, this Catch 22 situation is frustrating.

How can you show destination wedding photos on your site if you haven’t shot a destination wedding?! The paradox reminds us of when we first started out as wedding photographers, needing to somehow build our wedding portfolio out of thin air.

So here’s my fast track guide on how to book your first destination

wedding. The ‘in 10 days’ is merely to illustrate that this method is a short cut – the first time I implemented it I actually booked an over-seas wedding in just 7 days, with zero prior destination wedding experience.

Before I start, one caveat. If this is your first destination wedding pho-tography gig, you need to be prepared to work for much less than you are accustomed.

Traveling for photography work is an acquired skill, and without this experience, you shouldn’t be charging your clients the same rate as you do in your home town.

Also, unless you’re in the small percentage of wedding photographers out there with outstanding and unique wedding work, the client can easily book someone local who may well provide a similar level of service for a cheaper price.

Think of your first few destination wedding photography gigs as a way to build your portfolio and add value to your brand. If you can breakeven after all the travel expenses, count yourself lucky.

After you’ve had a bit of experience, you can work out a way to charge for both your travel and your service, but for now, remain humble!

THE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO BOOKING YOUR FIRST DESTINATION WEDDING

Enough of the preamble – let’s jump into this, and get packing for our first destination wedding!

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Overview:

Using a combination of a targeted landing page, a modest Facebook advertising budget and some basic sales psychology, you can vastly reduce the time required to book a wedding outside your locality.

1. THE LANDING PAGE

I cover the topic of landing pages in more depth in this post on online marketing for photographers, but all you need to know at this stage is that it’s beneficial to use a landing page rather than simply directing paid Facebook traffic to your homepage.

Step 1

Create a blank landing page. You can use specific landing page soft-ware or just create a new page on your website. If you go this route, I

recommend you remove your website’s existing menu and any other elements that can cause distraction.

Step 2

Choose a headline (the ‘H1’) that mentions the exact location you are trying to target. You can choose a country, or a city in that country if you have a specific location in mind.

Don’t worry too much about optimizing for search traffic at this stage. The goal here isn’t to make your landing page rank in Google – it’s to convert visitors into leads, i.e. to get a bride’s email address!

As an example, I used ‘New Zealand Wedding Photography’ as my landing page’s headline.

Step 3

Insert one of your best portfolio photos as the ‘hero’ image. Make sure it’s not location specific (i.e. doesn’t show the Eiffel Tower in the background). Just make sure it’s one of your best.

Step 4

Under the image, write some short content, being careful not to say outright that you’ve shot in said country, but rather, try and allude to the fact that you have.

There is a subtle difference between outright lying (never do this!) and leading the client to think what they want via your writing and images.

Here’s an example of the text I used:

Hi there, I’m Mark. I offer Creative, Candid and Modern Wedding Photography in New Zealand. If you’re getting married in New

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Zealand, I’d love to be your photographer!

Whether you’re getting married in Wellington, Queenstown, Auk-land, Lake Tekapo or anywhere in this wonderful country, I’m excited to hear more about your wedding plans.

Get in touch using the contact form below and I’ll tailor a custom wedding collection to your budget.

It’s worth noting that this text is markedly different to what I’d nor-mally have on my website. I’m casting my net much wider with this approach – more on this soon.

Step 5

Add around 5 more portfolio-worthy images that are also non-loca-tion specific.

Step 6

Add a contact form with Name, Email Address, Phone Number and Wedding Location.

If you have any other elements you think will add value to your ser-vices, such as a graphic to show awards won or recent blog features, feel free to include them here. Just don’t go overboard as your page needs to load quickly. Then hit Publish.

Recap

By now you have a targeted landing page which suggests to anyone who lands on it that you’ve shot a wedding in your target country. It may even suggest that you’re from that country, depending on the text you’ve used.

The next step is to send some targeted traffic to it, and for this we require good old Facebook ads.

2. THE FACEBOOK AD

Facebook Page owners who lament the bygone days of strong organ-ic reach are missing the bigger picture – thanks to Facebook Ads, everyone now has access to the most powerful (and affordable) advertising medium of the 21st century.

As wedding photographers, we are missing out on a huge market if we choose to ignore paid Facebook advertising. With this in mind, let’s jump right into creating our first Facebook Ad.

Step 7

Click on the small downward pointing triangle in the top right hand corner of your Facebook screen and select ‘Create Ads’.

Step 8

Select ‘Send people to your website’ and choose a campaign name.

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Step 9

In the ‘Locations’ drop down, select ‘People who live in this location’ and start typing the destination you’d like to work in.

You may have to unselect the location you are currently based in by hovering over the country name and clicking the ‘x’.

Step 10

Choose the ‘Age’, ‘Gender’ and ‘Languages’ of the audience you want to target. I chose 25-35 year-old women who speak English.

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Step 11

Next comes the ‘Detailed Targeting’ section, an incredibly powerful feature which controls the reach of your ad. You can experiment with various metrics, but the first to try should be ‘Demographics – Life Events – Newly Engaged’.

Just start typing ‘Newly Engaged’ in the search box for the various options to start appearing.

Step 12

Ignore ‘Connections’ and move on to ‘Placements’, i.e. where you’d like your ad to appear.

I tend to get the most success from the Desktop News Feed place-ment since it allows for more text, but again, this is one to experiment. Just click the ticks to unselect them.

A lot of your website visitors will no doubt be coming from their mobile phones, but unless your landing page looks good on a mobile (is ‘responsive’) and loads quickly, you may want to ignore the ‘Mobile News Feed’ ad placement for now.

You may want to consider advertising on Instagram here too, but remember that your images will be formatted to a 1 x 1 format and other text truncations may occur.

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Step 13

In ‘Budget & Schedule’, set your daily ad budget to $10, and set a start and end date 10 days apart. Double check your total ad spend will be $100, then leave all the other settings as they are.

Step 14

Under ‘Format’, select ‘Multiple images in one ad’. This image carou-sel tends to be the most eye-catching, and allows you to show off a variety of work for the same cost as a single image.

Then you’ll need to upload up to 5 portfolio-worthy images. Remem-ber that your ad will often be displayed quite small, so avoid any image when the couple is too small.

To upload and edit subsequent images, click the numbers that appear when you click the ‘+’ symbol.

Step 15

Under ‘Page & Links’, you’ll need to write your ad’s text with a focus on your target country, e.g. Candid New Zealand Wedding Photography – Secure your date today.

I wouldn’t worry too much about crafting amazing ad copy for the additional text in the ‘Headline’ and ‘Description’ of each image in the carousel. With so many other distractions in the newsfeed, it’s argu-

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able as to whether Facebook users will even read these tiny sections.

Under ‘Destination URL’ and ‘See More URL’, enter the URL of your new Landing Page.

Step 16

Choose your ‘Call To Action’ Button. I suggest using ‘Learn More’, but feel free to experiment here too.

On the right hand side of your screen, you can see a preview of how your ad will look in the various locations.

If you’ve chosen to advertise to mobile users, make sure your text still makes sense when it’s truncated.

Leave all other options alone for now, then click the green Place Order button. Congratulations – you’ve just created your first targeted Face-book ad!

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Recap

Setting up a landing page and Facebook Ad campaign may take you a few hours to get right, but once you have them set up, with just a few small tweaks you’ll be able to run other campaigns to target com-pletely different locations. I currently have landing pages set up for 3 different continents!

Notice how in the example above I didn’t include any pricing in my content. This is important and I suggest you do the same. With this technique, you’re casting your net wide to try and attract as many potential leads as possible. By leaving off your pricing, it allows you some room to negotiate.

If after 10 days you haven’t received a single lead, look at the results of your Facebook ad campaign. You’ll be able to see whether users were clicking on your ad or not, and should be able to ascertain whether the problem was with your ad design (image/text) or on the landing page itself.

If you have Google Analytics installed on your landing page, you’ll be able to examine metrics such as the time visitors spent on your site, which should give you some indication as to their actions after click-ing the ad. For even more detail, you could install a heat mapping software to track the users’ movements on your landing page (my recommendation of a free heat mapping tool is here).

The above process isn’t an exact science, but the benefit of having it all set up is that it’ll be easy for you to make adjustments to either your landing page and/or the ad campaign and test your changes immediately. Then it’s a case of making small adjustments until you get your first lead.

Once you get that lead, you’ve won the first half of the battle. Now the challenge is to convert the lead into a client.

3. THE BOOKING (CLOSING THE SALE)

Everyone has different methods for booking the client, but the one key thing is that you need to get your lead on the phone – don’t email her your pricing. Just email her to thank her immediately, and let her know that you will phone her the next day to hear more about the wedding.

If your lead doesn’t answer, phone back the next day, then the next. Then give up and move on.

If your lead answers, keep the conversation as much about her and her wedding as possible. Then explain that whilst you haven’t shot in her home country, you have had a lot of experience shooting locally.

Don’t lie to your lead about having shot a wedding in her country, how-ever tempting it may be at this point.

You should have researched where she’s getting married, so be sure to ask a few questions specific to the location to show your interest.

At this point I usually explain to the lead that it’s my dream to shoot in her country, and for this reason, I’m happy to work as closely to her budget as possible. A little honesty goes a long way, and saying some-thing like this shows your enthusiasm. After all, what local wedding photographer would say it’s their dream to shoot her wedding?!

After the phone call, I write an email with a link to my regular wedding photography prices. In the email I make it clear that I’m including my local pricing just to show what’s included in each package, and that I’m willing to try and meet her budget.

You need to swallow your pride at this point, and keep in mind your goal – booking your first destination wedding! Forget about making money and focus on the huge opportunity this one new client could

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provide to your business.

Don’t worry that discounting your pricing will harm your brand like it could do normally. You’re targeting a completely different market to your usual one, so you can afford to experiment a little.

Including your regular wedding photography prices serves to elevate your perceived value. In this way, when you offer to shoot her wed-ding at a reduced price, your lead will feel she’s made a real saving and should be more likely to make the booking.

You’ve booked a Destination Wedding! Now what?!

If you’re fortunate enough to book the client using this method, be sure to make the most of the wedding. For want of a better phrase, you need to shoot the sh*t out of it!

Think of your whole time in the new location as an opportunity to grow your destination wedding portfolio. You need to return home with tons of great photos not only of the wedding, but also photos that highlight the country in question.

Take your camera out the days before the wedding. Take photos of the town, the locals, your hotel – anything that shows the local flavour.

On the day of the wedding, shoot twice the number of images you’d normally shoot. At the end of the day, ask the clients if they’d like a complimentary day-after session. Or, working backwards here, ask them before the wedding if they’d like a complimentary engagement session.

Keep in mind that with every photo you take whilst abroad, you’re building up marketing material which will help you to book your next destination wedding.

Even if you decide destination wedding photography isn’t for you, hav-ing a destination wedding on your website definitely adds value to your services, and can set you apart from your local photographers.

I booked my first ever destination wedding in just 7 days using the exact steps outlined above and a Facebook Ad budget of only $50. Within a week of publishing the photos, (and posting the sh*t out of it!) I’d booked my second wedding in the same location.

I hope you have similar success too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Condon is a Sydney based Brit-ish wedding photographer. Through his work with popular photogra-phy website Shotkit, he has gained knowledge and experience working with some of the world’s most suc-cessful wedding photographers.

Mark compiled the More Brides book to help smart wedding photographers grow their businesses by implement-ing unorthodox techniques to stay ahead of the competition.

“Wedding photography is a competitive industry. Being a great artist is only a small fraction of what it takes to build a successful photography business.

I hope the information in More Brides gives you the inspiration and motivation to grow your business and create the life you want.”

Photo by Daniel Stark

Other popular books by Mark:

Discover the camera gear of the world’s best photographers.

www.shotkitbook.com www.lightroompoweruser.com

Supercharge your Lightroom experience.

The Shotkit Book Lightroom Power User