Many wedding photographers place a lot of emphasis on their website. And at first thought, this makes sense, right?
After all, we live in a digital, visual world, and photographers are a digital, visual bunch — so why wouldn’t the bulk of your focus be on a digital, visual way to display your work?
This is why:
While a beautiful website can certainly enhance your business, the time and money it costs to build, maintain, and tweak the website can quickly drive those benefits into the ground.
You’re a photographer. If you want your business to be the best it can possibly be, you should be out in the world taking gorgeous photographs; not hunched over a desk trying to figure out how to code.
Fortunately, this website headache doesn’t need to be a headache at all, because your website isn’t actually as important as you might think it is. Instead, we’ll discuss the importance of your clients’ websites.
In reality, your most valuable leads will come from word-of-mouth referrals, so that’s where your focus ought to be.
Okay, So How Do I Get Word-Of-Mouth Photography Referrals?
You stand out from your competition by setting your sights on delivering a custom experience to couples who are desperately looking for someone they can trust with their big day.
When a bride and groom are at the point of shopping for a photographer, you can bet they’re more than a little stressed out.
Not only do they need to meet with endless vendors and sign countless checks, but they need to feel like these people they’re doing business with, most of whom are strangers, will show up for them when they need them most.
As a wedding photographer, you are arguably the single most important component of the wedding vendor equation. If you don’t show up and document the experience, it’s like the day never happened.
So couples, more than anything, want to feel confident that they can depend on you. They want to know that they can trust you with the most important day of their lives without worrying about whether or not you’ll deliver.
That said, it becomes less about the pictures you take, and more about the relationships you build and services you offer.
Build Trust And Gain Loyalty By Offering What Your Competition Can’t.
One of the best things you can do for your business, is be willing and eager to do the things your competition won’t do, or simply don’t know how to do.
When a bride and groom are getting married, they not only need to plan the logistics and styling of the day, but they need to orchestrate all their attendees.
Friends and family need to know where the couple is registered, where the venue is, what the nearest hotels and hotel blocks are, and, of course, the details of the day itself.
That’s a huge organizational weight to manage on top of everything else they are already stressed about.
Now, imagine telling them that you can lift that weight completely off their shoulders by building a website with all the relevant information for their guests.
Chances are, they’ll find that pretty attractive. And it also happens to be a service that most photographers don’t offer.
If It’s Such An Attractive Option, Why Isn’t It Offered More Often?
Many wedding photographers won’t offer this service because building a website for each client can be incredibly costly and time consuming.
Even the “easy” DIY website builders aren’t stellar options because, while they can cost as little as $10/month, when you add that cost to each client and pair it with the time it takes to build the site, what initially looked like a cheap and easy add-on simply isn’t worth the payout.
Fortunately, there’s a way to cut both the time and cost of this endeavor, and be able to offer this game-changing service to your clients with little to no hassle on your part. And that’s by finding better tools to help you with this strategy
For example, with StickyFolios, you get unlimited websites. So instead of having to pay à la carte for each client, you can make as many sites as your little heart desires for one fixed price.
Additionally, StickyFolios templates are designed to be super straightforward. To get it done, all you have to do is send a prewritten Google form to your couple so they can fill out their details, and then you can easily throw their info online in just a few minutes.
The templates are designed in such a way that once you’ve built one, you’ll be able to make a ton of others in very little time and for no additional cost.
Being able to offer this service to your clients doesn’t only strengthen your relationship with them, but it also allows you to tap into the exposure that comes from the website right away. In other words, you don’t have to wait until after the wedding to cash in on the attention like most photographers.
In the end, what you’re left with is happy, loyal clients, a bunch of exposure to their happy, loyal friends and family, and — ultimately — a full calendar.
