Get more clients for your real estate photography business – offline marketing

Video transcript:

What would I do to get more clients for my real estate or architectural photography business?

I’d want to have an online marketing plan and an offline marketing plan. In my previous video a couple of weeks back I spoke about online marketing, and how to make the most of that.

But the other thing I’d want is to have a strong offline presence so I can connect with even more people, so let’s take a closer look!

Now before we get into that I would like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Urbanimmersive.com, and they provide scheduling, payment and photo delivery tools for real estate photographers, so at the end of this video go and take a look at what they do and see if it’s right for you.

So what would I do to get more clients for my photography business offline?

1. Build connections

First of all, just as I’d be wanting to build connections with people online, I’d also want to be building connections with people offline, so look for ways that you can do that. Now that might be through cold calling them, or it could be at an event, or during an office visit – wherever it is I’d be out there connecting with people.

Now ideally those people I’m connecting with will be ones that I have carefully identified as dream clients, but even if they aren’t an exact match for my business, they might know other people who could be a great match, so I’d be wanting to connect with lots and lots of people and then see what happens.
And that’s because opportunities will come up when you make yourself known.

But what you need is a way to build that first, initial connection with these people and companies that you want to be working with, so that you can move from someone who is unknown to someone who is known.

2. Follow-up with them

Once you have that initial connection, you would then want to build on that connection by following up with them. After all, it’s rare that any of us hire someone after just one connection point, especially someone with whom we have a tight business relationship, like the relationship between a business and their preferred photographer.

So you want to build multiple connection events with each of your dream clients. So we connect once, right, but then we connect again, and again, and again, and again, and again … and on and on for as long as it takes.

One thing I’d do to help with that is I’d have a range of tools to share with prospects that show my expertise – so things like written material, videos, and anything else you can create that makes you the expert.

Now the reason why I’d want to show I’m an expert in my particular space is because that’s going to help to position me as being up and above other photographers in my market, and when you do that it’s a lot easier to bring in new clients and charge higher fees.

With your collection of tools that show your expertise you can then say to someone,

“Hey, it’s been great chatting with you – just to give you a little more understanding of how high-quality photography can help you, would you like me to send you my newsletter for this month where I talk about ……..?”

Or if someone you meet happens to ask you what you typically charge for a photo shoot, then you might reply by saying:

“Every job is different, and I customize everything because each client of mine is unique, so I can’t give you a price until I know what you’re after but I can send you an article I wrote on …….”

And that might be like an article you’ve released on pricing for architectural photography.

So you’re sending them a written piece that is genuinely helpful and not overtly salesy that positions you as someone who has the knowledge and is good to work with because you understand what they are looking for.

3. Make an offer

At some point in that follow-up process you’re going to want to make an offer to the client, and maybe that will be some kind of discount where they get, like, 50% off your standard rate.

Now for that you might like to use a service like Urbanimmersive, because then you can create a discounted pricelist for individual clients, and then switch it back to your full pricing at any time. So you create the custom pricing like this, and you can set individual packages at specific levels, and this gives you full control over how long a particular client gets that reduced rate, because you can switch it at any time.

It's easy for your clients as well, because they just need to login and they can book their preferred shoot at a time that suits, and that's important because you want this to be a simple to use, positive experience for your dream clients that you've been working hard to bring onboard.

Summary:

So once again, the basic process for offline marketing is to build that initial connection, then follow-up with the client over and over again, and at some point in that process you make them an offer to work with you.

Need help?

Now if that sounds great but you’re not exactly sure what to do, then I’d like to provide you with access to my collection of pre-written marketing tools that covers all that I’ve just spoken about.

If you’re interested then go to my website and have a look at my coaching program, and you can submit an application if you think you’d like to join.

That’s it for today, so I hope that’s given you a few ideas for how you can get more clients for your business.

My name’s Darryl Stringer, and if you liked this video make sure you leave a comment and subscribe or Like this Page, and I’ll see you next time. Bye for now!