Relationship Marketing for Photo Studios

Here are the links we mentioned in our program for Central Minnesota PPA.

SendOutCards/SeeYouSoon -- Here's the URL for that free test drive. You might want to browse the products and services links on the homepage, too.

Submit Express -- My favorite free search engine registration tool. In addition to submitting your site to 80 search engines (and you thought Yahoo and Google were the alpha and omega of search!), it offers another free tool that rates your homepage's SEO appeal.

Google Analytics -- Psych out the traffic on your Web site with this free service. After you establish your account, you'll be given HTML code to be cut and pasted onto your site's pages. It's invisible to users.

Google Adwords -- If you want to play with pay-per-click, Adwords is the place to start. After all, Google controls 80 percent of online search! Be sure to delve into how you can geographically limit your ad to a region or city; otherwise the budget you've set will quickly be toast.

Google Keyword Tool -- This fantastic free tool will help you learn what words people are actually searching for. They're not necessarily what photographers call their work. (Scratch "images" and "creative.") You can start with descriptive words or phrases, or have Google take a look at your site and suggest keywords based on your own pages.

Yahoo Small Business -- Click [Market Online] for similar advertising and targeting information. Yahoo's advertising options also include geographic targeting.

To see what Google has indexed on your site, type this into the Search field:
index:www.YOURSITENAME.COM (replace with your URL).

Out of sight, out of mind. It's sad but true: Clients whom you consider your own have a way of wandering over time. It's probably not because they've fallen out of love with you. Perhaps they've just forgotten.

Your marketing mission is to make sure that never happens again. Remind your clients of why they love your work -- and help prospects get ready to call you -- with an affordable top-of-mind-awareness program.

Try a highly targeted, light-hearted monthly direct-mail contact campaign with off-the-wall greeting cards. It's fun. It gets people talking. It expands the circle of people who know you by your first name. It takes only a few minutes and costs less than that puny little newspaper ad you had in mind. It's painless. Best of all -- it works.

Birthday cards are a great start -- bet you already get one from your dentist or chiropractor or insurance agent. SendOutCards makes sending them super-easy; enter a birthday for each contact, and the system actually e-mails you a reminder 10 days in advance. Or you can set up a campaign and have them mailed to all of your clients at the appropriate times on auto-pilot.

If once is good, why not send a smile in the mail every month of the year? Don't just stand in line for the Big Name holidays. Be a little more original, and beat the rush. Look for something unexpected, like ....

* The beginning of Daylight Saving Time March 8. (It ends Nov. 1, by the way.)
* National Write-a-Letter-of-Appreciation Week, March 1-7
* March is National On-Hold Month, Optimism Month, and Women's History Month
* National Reading Day, March 2
* April -- Jazz Appreciation Month
* Earth Day, April 2
* National Be Kind to Lawyers Day -- April 14
* Russ & Nancy Hanson's anniversary, April 19

And there are so many, many more, from Vinegar Week to Adopt a Rescued Hamster Day (no kidding). Here in Minnesota, be sure to remember Syttende Mai, May 17 -- the day Norway became independent from Sweden.

SendOutCards' library has more than 16,000 pre-designed choices to get your creative juices flowing. As photographers, though, we get to go one better -- selecting an appropriate photo from our files or shooting one expressly for the occasion. Upload it through Picture Plus, and you're ready to design your own one-of-a-kind greeting that promotes your studio in a fresh and positive way.

The two happiest people on the Monday after the wedding may be the photographer -- and the mother of the bride. We like to take this special moment to say "thanks" with a special message from SendOutCards.

Mom is basking in the glow of a job well done. We congratulate her on a job well done, mentioning specific moments that will make spectacular memories in wall portraits and as centerpieces of the wedding album to come.

We always make sure to take a special photo of Mom and the bride in a private moment. That goes on the cover of our thank-you card. We upload it to SendOutCards with Picture Plus and make a personal card.

Then we compose a handwritten personal note in Nancy's handwriting font. (Russ's font unfortunately looks exactly like his handwriting, not a good thing!) We add the appropriate signature from the variety we have archived with SOC online, usually just "Russ and Nancy."

Then we add the touch that makes it most memorable. SendOutCards permits us to add a real gift card from Starbucks or Barnes and Noble (among other vendors). We add a $10 card and tell Mom, "It's time to relax and enjoy a job well done. Invite Dad or a friend to join you for a leisurely cappuccino -- on us."

We give our own photo products as appreciation gifts in most cases. But in this one ... and given the size of the wedding investment ... that coffee shop card is an absolute hit. We ALWAYS hear from Mom when it arrives. That gives us another chance to talk over the wedding and build our relationship at a time when she's most enthusiastic and readiest to refer us to her friends.

If Mom and Dad aren't involved in funding the wedding, as with our older brides, this approach works just as well with the bride herself. In those cases we use a casual image of her and new husband.

We'd love to discuss some of the other ways we use SOC greeting cards to build relationships for our studio, The LOOK by Hanson Photo.Video. Give us a call at 701-478-LOOK!

When photographers talk about marketing, we've always focused on bringing new clients into the fold. We start the sales process from the absolute bottom up -- the most challenging and, by far, most expensive route to increasing sales.

Yet you already have a reliable volunteer sales force just waiting for you to put them to work -- your clients. That includes not only seniors, brides and mothers of darling babies, but their relatives, their neighbors, their coworkers ... anyone to whom they've shown their portraits who has "oooed" and "aaahhed" over the images you created.

Sure, these fans may occasionally mention or endorse you. But how often do you suppose you come up in conversation? (Only the times you're mentioned in a GOOD way count!)

We use our SendOutCards automated contact system to design and mail customized cards requesting referrals and follow-ups after they've come through our doors. The cards feature great photos (guess where THOSE come from?) along with personal hand-written notes and hand-signed signatures ... all features of SOC's Picture Plus feature.

Best of all, our clients' addresses are maintained in our online SOC database -- along with a record of every card we've sent each of them, including the cover art and the message inside. Since we collect birthdays and anniversaries (brides!), it's handy to have a record of what's been sent when.

When one of our much-appreciated clients has done us the compliment of sending a friend or colleague to our studio, we immediately say thanks several different ways.

First, we send them a personal thank-you card with one of their their own favorite images on the cover and a pleasant surprise tucked inside ... both strengths of the SendOutCards system.

Sometimes we create a coupon in PhotoShop and upload it as a graphic -- for a set of metallic wallet prints, perhaps, for a high school senior; or their next children's session at no charge.

Thoughtful little extras make a difference, too. It's easy to enclose a $10 gift card to Starbucks or Barnes & Noble or a variety of other national vendors, available right on the SendOutCards screen.

We send gifts, too. SendOutCards has a whole line of cookies, brownies, coffees and small gifts for the home that can be ordered online. They're packaged and sent with your thank-you card nicely tucked in the box. Everyone to whom we've ever sent brownies or shortbread cookies has absolutely raved!