Prepare your marketing strategy for the year

HOME » Prepare your marketing strategy for the year

Thursday, March 19, 2020

By Jeremy H

While stuck at home, now is the opportunity to explore your brand and how best to appeal to customers. That might focus on rebranding or updating outdated content. Make that 2017 gallery look like a 2020 one. Your work is evolving, and so is everyone's taste in photography.

Eventually, life should go back to normal in the next few months, (hopefully), during this time, you can focus on your email marketing and strategy for the rest of the year. PhotoBiz Marketing allows you to send 2,000 emails a month free to your customer list; this is an excellent way to connect with your clients directly from your PhotoBiz control panel.

While at home, you can start monthly promotions or plan for futures ones. Your promos and concepts will be ready once life has returned to normal. Here are ways to start building your campaigns for the rest of the year.

Seasonal Promotions

Fall and Winter 2020 mini sessions are a good starting point. Think about the types of the sessions you can do. As a family and portrait photographer, plan fall looks and engagements. For Senior photographers planning for 2021 seniors is a smart tactic. You may even be able to do post-graduate photo sessions before students go off to college. Parents would love to be able to capture those moments with their children's achievements. Those memories may be delayed but not lost.

For Newborn photographers, some families are extra cautious right now with their little ones. Plan for your 2021 newborns but offer your 2020 clients Winter experiences to make those missed early moments more magical.

Holiday Ramp Up

With Winter and other holidays at the end of the year, promoting mini-sessions wrapped around those events is a great way to make up for other types of business loss. If you've never done those types of sessions it might be the prime time to do so. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Kwanza, Hanukkah, and Christmas are perfect jumping-off points to get business flowing back to you while also promoting togetherness.

Check out our holiday tips website to get ahead of the curve for the season!

Friends and Loved Ones Sessions

People will want to connect with loved ones more now than ever. It's an opportunity to think outside of the box, and perhaps once people can be together again they'll want to show that through photo sessions. Getting those photos with their grandparents, pictures with friends they rarely see, those are the types of things that matter to people but often get put off. Now is the time to take those photos. Use your creative skills to create a campaign that can drive people together and make sure they have a great time while making new memories.

Open for Business

When regular routines start back, and people can return to their normal activities, this is an opportunity to let everyone know when you're open. Emailing your entire list, a "We're Back" type of promotion, can stimulate your business to get new and potential clients to work with you. When people start to feel better about the global situation, this can be a way back to feeling happier.

Opportunity To Sell Past Clients Previous Sessions & Current Ones

With the world switching to digital, In-Person sales are impacted. With the use of technology like FaceTime, Zoom, or GoToMeeting, and using PhotoBiz Proofing, you are still able to create personalized galleries for your clients so they can purchase packages, prints, and bulk download digital files. It's an excellent opportunity to remarket to past clients who may have waited on downloading digital files or ordering that print they always want to get. Allowing the customer to be able to reach you through this situation can show that you are actively thinking about their moments. It allows you the opportunity to continue your relationships & focus on online sales.

Rescheduling & Gift Cards

You can also focus on marketing rainchecks, rescheduling appointments, and gift card sales to keep people thinking about your services instead of canceling them altogether. It's a way for your to make money for future sessions. It's great for the customer as well as they may see this as a prepayment option and feel they are spending less later in the year.

There are tons of ways to stay busy and keep your business focused on the rest of the year. As weddings and other sessions change, you have time to work on your marketing to keep your business ready-to-go. We'll list our resources on how to build your email marketing campaigns and let you focus on the rest of the year.