An online presence is an essential tool for your photography business, without a doubt, and these tools are simple and easy to use. They take some time and effort and maybe a bit of money if you want to boost your social media in some way. For the most part, all they take is time and effort.
What about before social media? What about before online marketing was even a thing? What did photographers do?
They still did marketing and a lot of it. Only their marketing was done differently. Ironically enough, these unplugged marketing tools are still entirely at your disposal to use and actually take less time, energy, and money to make them happen.
Partner Marketing
Partner marketing is finding someone who might aim for the same client base as you but that does not fit into the realm of direct competition. By utilizing partner marketing, you can help another business reach their audience and by trade, that other business is willing to help you with your audience since they are nearly identical.
There are plenty of matchups out there where people might be marketing to nearly the same audience and can leverage each other tools and expertise to both build credibility in that audience and build a positive work relationship with someone else.
How can this work?
One example is real estate photographers. Real estate photographers are looking for people and companies selling homes to work with so they can make a profit. That’s simple. Architecture firms and workers also work with people and companies to build those homes, right? These two entities could become marketing partners.
In this situation, the real estate photographer would contact the architecture firm. They would share their name and information and not try to sell anything to them. In fact, they want to sell to the architecture firm’s customers. Likewise, the photographer’s audience and customers are people that the architecture firm wants to sell to.
Results
In this way, when the photographer takes some photos, they can also make sure to promote this architecture firm by word of mouth. That way, the news about the firm will spread. In the same way, the architecture firm would also mention your real estate photography business to their audience and promote your business the same way you are promoting theirs.
By working with other groups, companies, and brands, especially those not in direct competition with you can also make amazing relationships. This is a huge route to take when your business is growing or when you are new to the area. Using the help of other people to build your business is always a great way to get your name out. Likewise, making sure that you are helping other businesses and learning from them all while building a reputation that will help your business for years to come.