A Guide to Growing Your Photography Business Using Video Marketing
A comprehensive strategy to grow your Photography Business, gain clients and monetize your content.
Hey Carty Crew. Today, we're setting out on a journey to unlock the power of video marketing in elevating your photography business.
In this visually-driven digital age, video marketing is for every business—it's a pivotal tool for your growth and success.
Let's dive into how you can harness this dynamic medium to amplify your presence and reach in the photography world.
Step 1: Prepare Your Content Strategy
Dedicate Time for Thorough Preparation and Planning:
Schedule weekly hours to strategically plan your content.
Research trends, audience preferences, and your niche’s market gaps.
Use a content calendar for effective organization and scheduling.
Focus on Creating a Personal Brand:
Identify your unique value points and brand voice.
Weave a brand story that resonates with your audience.
Maintain consistency in visuals and value messaging across platforms.
Determine How to Monetize Your Product or Service:
Explore revenue streams like substack, sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and digital product sales.
Tailor your content and add promoting these monetization strategies in your posts from time to time.
Use Instagram features like swipe-up links and product tags to create a sales funnel.
Use Search to find potential clients, use DM’s to share value and start conversations.
Step 2: The VNB Structure
Value:
Aim to provide valuable, informative, engaging content.
On Substack, ensure your long-form content is insightful and unique.
Niche:
Cater to a specific niche, addressing their unique needs.
Select a niche for your Substack newsletter to establish authority.
Broaden:
Gradually expand your reach while maintaining niche focus.
Introduce adjacent topics or broader themes with your Substack as your audience grows.
Step 3: Integrating Substack into Your VNB Strategy
Share Your Work:
Publish and share your photography and written content on Substack.
Promote your Substack on all social media to reach your niche audience.
Consistency is key. The ideal frequency for me on Substack is weekly.
Bringing Value:
Deliver consistently high-quality content on this platform.
Engage with subscribers to foster a community.
Monetizing on Substack:
Use Substack’s monetization model for free, freemium and paid content.
Offer premium content like, BTS photos and video, session breakdowns, lighting diagrams or in-depth articles to paying subscribers.
Host podcasts or do zoom meetups as part of the subscription package.
Step 4: Create High-Value Content
Develop Educational, Entertaining, and Niche-Relevant Content:
Combine informative and entertaining elements. This new niche is growing and has been coined “Edutainment”. Educational, Entertaining content.
Stay current with niche-specific news and info for timely content.
Implement the VNB Structure in Your Content Creation:
Start with specialized content to attract a core audience.
Broaden topics to appeal to a wider audience without losing focus.
Utilize a Media Starter Kit:
Follow a guide for creating compelling content.
There are many free media kits available to download online. (I’ll be making a template for one soon, if this is something you’re interested in, leave a comment.)
Adapt templates and strategies to fit your brand and audience.
Actionable Video Marketing Ideas for Your Specific Photography Niche
Wedding Photography: Create behind-the-scenes videos of wedding shoots, sharing client interactions and final shots.
Portrait Photography: Produce video tutorials on preparing for portrait sessions, including your focus on wardrobe and poses. Showcase various portrait sessions in a single video.
Landscape Photography: Vlog your journey capturing landscapes, focusing on adventures, locations, and the photography process. Share landscape photography tips, be human, show emotion, tell stories.
Fashion Photography: Share behind-the-scenes of fashion shoots, highlighting your collaborations and creative processes. Talk about light, direction, storyboarding, moods and discuss trends.
Food Photography: Create videos showcasing your food photography shoot setups, including lighting and composition. make content of you collaborating with chefs or restaurants.
Sports Photography: Provide insights into the dynamic world of sports photography, highlighting the challenges and thrills of the decisive moment. Make content on how you choose your final images, and how you find and work with clients.
Event Photography: Create highlight reels from events, capturing the energy and key moments, use these short reels as a marketing tool to get work.
Wildlife Photography: Document wildlife expeditions, focusing on patience, skills, and equipment, document your life on these adventures, share your patience.
Editorial Magazine Photography: Develop videos detailing editorial shoots, discussing stories, themes, and magazine collaborations. Include editing insights, client delivery and show the final publication.
Real Estate Photography: Showcase property walkthroughs, offering tips to make spaces inviting and appealing. Talk feng-shui and how agents can create better flow into their staged homes.
Client video testimonials: Ask happy clients to make a video testimonial for you sharing the best part of your session from their perspective. This is an amazing tool to help you promote your services. Ask for this from anyone that you do amazing work for.
Some Final Thoughts.
This is really a no brainer. Each one of these video marketing strategies can significantly enhance the visibility, percieved value and appeal of your work in your specific niche.
By creating content that showcases your unique skills and connects with potential clients, you're not just marketing your services; you're building a compelling narrative around your brand.
A majority of my videos ideas today are evergreen, meaning they’ll be relevant and have the potential to work for you for years to come.
Remember, in the world of photography, your story and your brand are your strongest assets.
There is no better way to share that story than video. It’s the least friction, and easiest to digest content this way.
Use video as a tool for marketing and tell your story in a way that captivates, educates, and inspires.
I know that wrapping your head around this is going to take some time. But, remember, It’s why you know Peter McKinnon, or Casey Neistat.
They been using video to explode their personal brand for over a decade.
If you’d like to see some examples on how I use video for my marketing, please go
👉🏾 here,
👉🏾 here, or
👉🏾 here.
Thanks for reading me this week. See you next Saturday.
P.S. If you’re finding the thought of being on camera absolutely beyond your capacity, but you’re starting to understand WHY you need to get over this hurdle, this might be for you.
I’ve created a 🚀 30 day on Camera Challenge to help you go from where you are right now, a nervous Nelly to where I am with a thriving YouTube channel that shares value to emerging photographers while bringing me over $2k per month.
I’ve been using video across all platforms to expand my reach and grow my personal brand for the past 6 months. I’ve had my engagement, more new clients and more new followers than ever.
If that’s something you’d be interested in, please click 👉🏾 here.
I also made a short mini YouTube course you can watch for free 👉🏾 here.
Here are some ways I can help you. 👇🏾👇🏾
Free Professional Photo Education on YouTube.
This Guide Right here is Gold, always conceptualized the general idea gave from the email. He literally just mapped it out for us without us needing to seek after this information.
Reading and watching your content is very filling! Thank you 🙏🏽