by guest contributor Stephanie & Jeff Padovani
How would you like to get other wedding vendors to recommend you to their ENTIRE group of past and present brides…without having to beg or buy them off?
The easiest way to get another wedding vendor to promote you like crazy is to help THEM out first. This is where most photographers get stumped. “But I don’t have any leads to send them; that’s why I need them to send me weddings in the first place!” Before you get discouraged, know that there is always a way to help someone. Just imagine the challenges they have as a starting point.
Think about the challenges a blogger faces every day. What’s something you have that could solve one of a blogger’s biggest challenges? Bloggers are constantly fighting Writer’s Block.
You have these amazing, gorgeous photos. You have all this expert knowledge in your head. You can write a guest blog post for them!
It’s a Win-Win scenario. They get great content for their blog…that they don’t have to write, for free!…and you get them to promote your business to their fans and followers.
There’s a principle of psychology called Reciprocity at work here; when you do something nice for someone else, they feel compelled to do something nice for you in return. That’s exactly the dynamic you’ll be exploiting when you hook another vendor up with an awesome blog post that includes your beautiful photos; it builds a powerful networking relationship that sends targeted referrals your way. An added perk: helping someone out feels really good, too!
I learned a unique twist on guest blogging from my friend Kathy DalPra of Bride Appeal. It’s called “blog swapping,” and it results in waves of viral sharing, tweeting, Facebooking and emailing about your photography business.
Blog swapping lets you expand your reach and get in touch with whole new audiences of brides.
You’ll be positioning yourself as an expert and putting your business in front of a targeted list of qualified brides, generating website visitors and red hot leads for your business. It’s called “blog swapping” because you write a post for them, and they write a post for you.
It works like this:
- You write a guest post for another local vendor’s blog.
- The vendor promotes it on their blog and social media, giving you their trusted endorsement.
- Brides or grooms read your blog post and click through to your website. You turn those website visitors into leads!
- Repeat steps 1-3 except this time the other vendor writes a post for you.
As a photographer, you want to target the blogs of other vendors in your local area who work with exactly the type of clients you want to book. If they have a big social media or blog following, that’s even better.
These vendors might be:
- Wedding planners.
- Venues.
- DJs.
- Officiants.
- Florists.
- Other photographers.
Do this enough in your local market and you’ll literally be EVERYWHERE. And the more brides see you, the more leads you get and the more weddings you book.
Wedding superheros Stephanie Padovani and her husband, Jeff, share oodles of wedding marketing tips like these at BookMoreBrides.com. Sign up for their FREE 7 day online training event for wedding vendors to learn how to get more leads and book more weddings.
