3 Creative Strategies to Become the #1 Recommended Wedding Photographer In Your Market

Photographers have a special advantage when it comes to creating powerful partnerships that send referrals, something other wedding professionals just don’t have.

Have you guessed what it is?

It’s your photos.

Photos are a powerful “currency” you can use to earn referrals and build lasting networking partnerships that send you a constant stream of high quality leads.

But how do you use that currency to get leads without letting others take advantage of your generosity?

You need a strategy!

Check out these creative ways to use your photos to earn referrals, shared by our 6 Figure Wedding Photographer Summit presenters.  (What the heck is the Summit?  Learn more about this 7 day free event for wedding photographers here.)

All of these strategies use activate something called the Reciprocity Principle of influence that works like this: when you do something nice for another wedding pro without asking for anything in return, it creates an unconscious pressure in them to return the favor.  

If you like to geek out on behavioral psychology and marketing, you can learn more about the psychology of influence in Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Now then, let’s get to those strategies!

Photos That Earn Referrals

#1 – Take headshots for other wedding professionals.

Every business person needs good headshots, and few wedding pros actually have them.  They’re so busy running the wedding business that they just don’t have time.

When you offer to update their headshots, you become their new best friend.  You’ve just scratched a big To Do off their list and hooked them up with professional photos that make them look amazing.

Lara White of Photo Mint adds an extra tip you can use with this strategy: take their headshots when you work with them right on the wedding day!  Remind them ahead of time to look their best and simply take an extra 5 minutes to snap their photo before the festivities begin.

When you hook up the entertainer, the venue manager or the planner with gorgeous head shots, who do you think they’re going to refer the next time a bride asks about a photographer?  Yeah, you just got yourself bumped to the top of the list.

#2 – Create a Sticky Album of your photos showing off a venue’s features.

One sure way to earn the referrals of high-end venues is to provide them with photos they can use to showcase their facilities and promote their businesses.  But how do you stand out when every photographer in the market is showering them with photos?

Sticky Albums to the rescue!  A Sticky Album is custom app that allows you to create a digital photo album that can be downloaded and shared with any mobile device.

Put your gorgeous wedding photos of the venue into a Sticky Album.  Present the link to the venue and show them how to use it to promote their facility.

You’ve just given them the perfect, convenient way to share their photo portfolio with the couples considering a wedding at their venue.  They’re going to share that app with every couple who walks through their doors, promoting you in the process, because your business name and contact information are embedded inside.

Use this strategy and you will become the #1 recommendation of wedding venues.

#3 – Put together a collection of your most breathtaking photos showing off the work of a wedding venue or business and promote them on your blog.

You don’t have to give your photos away to use them as currency.  Everyone loves to be praised.  Write a blog post about the most gorgeous venues in your area or the most talented wedding planner and use your photos to show off their work and make them look really good.

Then share the link to your blog post with the wedding pro and thank them for being so amazing to work with.  You better believe they are going to spread that blog post everywhere on social media!  You’ve just done a better job of promoting them than they can do themselves, and you’ve probably earned a friend and referral source for life.

BONUS: Have your blog post printed, laminated and framed, and give it to the featured wedding professional as a gift.  They’ll hang it on the wall and think of you…and send you referrals…every time a bride or groom asks for the best wedding photographer in town.

Learn the Secrets of 6 Figure Photographers

These are just a few of the super powerful strategies our presenters are sharing in the 6 Figure Wedding Photographer Summit.

It’s 7 days of totally free video presentations ALL about how to get more leads
and book more weddings, just for photographers.

Here’s just a tiny sample of what you’ll learn in the FREE Summit trainings…

• The 3 Rules of Viral Marketing that get brides sharing your photos everywhere on social media.

• How one wedding pro used a fruitcake and a Twitter post to get featured on Good Morning America, the Huffington Post and ABC news.

• 5 reasons why brides leave wedding photographer websites in 5 seconds.

• What one photographer does to book 95% of meetings and had one groom say, “Even if you doubled your price, we’d still book you!”

• The 4 step Top Secret SEO Formula you can use to get even a brand new website to Page 1 of Google, earning highly targeted, valuable website visitors the easy way.

• And lots more!

REGISTER FREE HERE!