Have some fun at the fair

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WORDS AND IMAGES DONAL DOHERTY Donal Doherty’s Marketing Masterclass

Some photographers swear by wedding fairs while others go out of their way to avoid them, but the fact is they can be a great way to generate business if you approach them properly. Have Some

Fun at the Fair!

HICH SIDE OF the fence are you on? Whether you love wedding fairs or loathe them, there’s no doubt about it – if thought about carefully and you’ve done your research and preparation they have the potential to offer instant access to would-be clients and generate tons of referrals. If you’re a newbie on the scene, keen to try them out for the first time, or you’re a seasoned pro who wants to up the ante, check out these easy ways to maximise the effectiveness of bridal fairs and hear about the experiences of two photographers who’ve found them to be a great way to reach their respective target audiences. W

Before attending Put in the necessary legwork before attending a bridal fair and you’ll reap the benefits. Firstly, make sure to promote it well in advance on your website and social media platforms. You might be thinking that publicity for the event should be down to the venue or organisers, but you need to play your part and getting the word out there as much as possible is a key way to ensure a great traffic flow of newly-engaged couples. Sometimes the organisers will provide a graphic to share or will use some of your images from that venue, so get fully involved, work with the show and spread the word as much as possible.

It’s also a good idea to create an offer or promotion beforehand. Something that always works well is a link up with other vendors attending the fair, and it’s a great way to reach a wider audience and gain more bookings. Think of promotions such as a package where both you

/> and your networking partner - perhaps a florist or an outfitter - will be booked together and let the venue know your offer beforehand so they can promote it.

Likewise, competitions always work well. No doubt there will be several of these going on around the other stands, so try to be creative to make yours memorable. Something visual always sticks in people’s minds, such as filling a jar with jelly beans and asking couples to guess how many are in it. It’s all about creating an enjoyable experience. Think about the value of your prize too: a free engagement shoot might not have as much impact as the potential to win your actual wedding photography.

ABOVE: Donal works hard to make sure that he gets the most out of the wedding fairs he attends. On-stand competitions, plenty of albums to look through and special offers all work well.

This article first appeared in issue 164. For back issues please visit professionalphoto.online

Standing Out Bridal fairs can be chaotic to say the least, with lots of traffic and multiple vendors, so make sure your stand makes an impression. It needs to not only showcase you as a brand but to stick in people’s minds. Think about how you can make yours worthy of stopping at. Leave some sweets on the table for kids - and adults too, obviously! - and always be friendly and have time for those visiting.

Stand at the front and allow attendees to check out your work. Most important of all, be engaging. Ask a couple what their wedding date is to check if you’re available, and strike up a rapport, finding out how they got engaged etc. Show interest and be approachable. I don’t focus too much on pricing at this point as people will forget, but concentrate on leaving a lasting impression. Even if they don’t book there and then, they’ll remember you.

As previously mentioned, having an irresistible offer in place is an easy way to spark intrigue. In my experience, it’s better to add value, rather than discounting your work, so decide what you can do to snap up those bookings on the day.

It’s also essential to ensure your wedding albums are presentable and up-to-date. If you’ve previously shot a wedding at the venue you’re at create a sample album as this affords couples the chance to see exactly what it would be like if you photographed their wedding. Finally, if timing allows it, take some quick photos of the other vendors and the fair in general. Strike up a conversation with them and send them the photos post-event so that they remember you too. Bridal fairs aren’t just about getting direct bookings, but building up relationships with other vendors so that you can increase your referrals long term. You could even consider adding these to your social media and tagging the other vendors.

And finally… If you collected email addresses (GDPR compliant, of course), make sure you follow these up afterwards as these warm leads are your ticket to achieving bookings. Put together an email campaign, with details of any offers discussed at the fair. Try to make the email as personal as possible, thanking them for stopping by your stand and wishing them luck with their wedding planning.

Follow this advice and you’ll get the very most from the wedding fair experience and it will be worth all of the time and expense you put in. Now read about how two very different wedding photographers made sure that the fairs they were attending worked brilliantly for them.

More information: / https://engagelive.co / https://brettflorens.com / briansherry.co.uk

Brett Florens

Given the profile he’s achieved as a trainer you might think that Brett Florens doesn’t have a huge need to promote his business through a wedding fair, but he took the view that it was the perfect way to enhance his status in the area of destination weddings, which is his speciality. Accordingly he invested heavily in booking a space at an event that he knew would be attracting the clientele he wanted to target and he also produced a bespoke stand that was totally in keeping with the message he was looking to put across.

“I do a lot of research before making my investment because it’s important for me to pick the right show to attend,” he says, “and I’ll only do one every two years or so. My most recent event was the Bridal Show in London that was pulling in visitors who spend around 42% more than average and that’s the high-end market I’m looking to introduce myself to.

“Because I want to push the fact that I cover destination weddings I wanted a dramatic big picture that I shot specially and this very much said who I was and attracted people who were

ABOVE: Brett travels to his chosen show with a lightweight frame for his stand that can be assembled quickly and easily by one person if necessary.

RIGHT: Brett's finished stand at the Bridal Show in London featured a huge bespoke image that conveyed the theme of destination weddings.

Brian Sherry

The USP behind Northern-Ireland based wedding and portrait photographer Brian Sherry’s business is the fact that he has a fully portable set up that allows him to take his studio to people rather than them having to

BELOW: The brides Brian encounters at wedding fairs are looking for examples of his work and reasons why they should book him.

looking to get married abroad while perhaps keeping away others that didn’t relate so much to the image. For me that’s good since I only have a limited time and I could be talking with someone who just wants to drop by for a chat while someone else who could be a really good lead passes by.

“I had two albums on the stand: one specifically targeted a very fashion orientated bride and the other her mother. So the bride sees the album that’s aimed at her and while her mother is standing around I show her the album that’s aimed at her. So they see two very different albums but both like them and that makes a strong impression.

“I also choose very carefully where my stand is located and at this show I was adjacent to Bobby Brown make up, which attracts the type of client I’m looking to appeal to. The bride will have her m/u

done and then she’s in the right place to come over to me. Meanwhile right behind me was UK dress designer Suzanne Neville and I wanted to make friends with this company and to let them know what I’m about so that we can build on that relationship and I might eventually get to shoot their catalogue.”

So much for the big events, but is it worth photographers targeting smaller local shows where the audience attending might be more general? “Absolutely,” confirms Brett. “Not only do you want to introduce yourself to potential clients but these shows are a wonderful opportunity to meet other suppliers in the wedding business such as florists, wedding planners and outfitters and you’ll have the chance to network and make some great contacts.”

ABOVE: There are two albums for visitors to look through on Brett's stand and one is designed to appeal to the bride and the other to her mother, who will often be accompanying her.

come to him, which is useful since it he lives in the middle of nowhere. This isolation also means that he needs to spread the word about his business since he doesn’t have a shop front people will pass.

“In the three years I’ve been covering weddings I’ve attended around eight to ten wedding fairs, but from these I’ve only acquired around four to five direct bookings,” he says. “I’ve always met plenty of engaging brides, but I find a lot are there just to have a look at what people might have to offer.

“However, I took some tips from Donal’s website, particularly the point about being more engaging with the brides, asking them how they and their partner met and running the little competitions. I had a jar of paper stars and offered the person who guessed how many were in there a £400 voucher off my wedding packages. The way they entered was by providing their email addresses and their guess, and that way I was able to forward on the information from the wedding fair to the 64 who took part the next day. It was one of my best responses ever.

“In general I think wedding fairs can be a bit hit and miss. I would advise people to get in touch with other vendors and to find out some information about the fairs you’re interested in before you book. You need to do your research and make sure the event is going to be right for your business.”

ABOVE: Brian's USP and one that he wants to promote at wedding fairs is that he has a portable studio and can travel to his subjects.

Life after Blogs Lisa Devlin BE THE BUSINESS MY PROFESSIONAL LIFE

Is the wedding blog on its way out as photographers find other ways to market themselves? Times are changing and Lisa explains why bloggers are having to work harder to stay relevant.

HAT’S YOUR number one method for marketing your wedding photography? If you’d asked me or any number of wedding photographers this question five years ago then getting featured on wedding blogs would probably have been our top answer. There was a point where I would have said it was the holy grail of marketing. Getting a wedding featured on one of the most popular wedding blogs was a guaranteed way of booking more clients.

Confession time: There was a point where, as soon as I posted a sneak peek on my social media, I would get approached by at least one wedding blogger asking if they could feature the wedding. And I was pretty damn smug about it all. Wedding blogs need weddings and photographers need publicity, so it was all one big lovely selffeeding circle. For a while…

So what has changed? Now wedding photographers could be using any number of means to market themselves but I’m sure that right at the top these days are referrals and social media. And there are two big reasons I can think of for this. Market Saturation The sheer number of people offering their services as wedding photographers has now increased so much that it feels like it’s at saturation point. Type ‘Wedding Photographer UK’ into Google and it currently returns 88,100,000 results.

OK, there are not quite that many of us but imagine you’re a couple starting out on your wedding planning journey. You start having a look on Google to get ideas and immediately feel utterly overwhelmed by the whole process. So, what do folk do when they feel like that about booking anything? They seek out personal recommendations.

It’s why Trip Advisor is dominating the travel industry and why Mumsnet is the go-to place for parenting advice. When faced with too much choice we need filters. We ask those who have been in the same situation before us or who are experts in the field. This is why referrals is right up there as a brilliant marketing tool for wedding photographers. Instagram Instagram launched for IOS in 2010 and on Android in 2012. At first it wasn’t a place for marketing your business, it was a place to show the world what you had for lunch and what tricks your cat could do. Then the mighty Facebook took it over and when, in 2016, it stopped showing content in chronological order and was algorithm-fuelled instead, it suddenly meant that we all had to up our game to stand out.

Every wedding photographer I know now puts a lot of effort into their Instagram accounts. I now directly book couples via my Instagram. For them, looking at hashtags that are relevant to their wedding style or venue is a much more efficient filtering system than Google and, like we spoke about last month, they are using Instagram Collections to collate and save images that they like. As we’re all spending so much time on our phones these days this is just how weddings are planned now. The New Look Blog So, where does this leave the wedding blogs and should we as photographers bother with them any more? The best are still thriving and I asked the UK’s number one wedding blogger Kat Williams from Rock n Roll Bride what she thinks the biggest changes have been in her business in the last five years or so.

“It’s not enough to just be a blogger any more,” she told me. “You can’t just write a few blog posts and expect to make a living from it. As a content creator you have to have your fingers in many, many more pies than you used to and you’re expected to be an expert in every one of them. There’s Instagram (main “Like all of us, wedding bloggers are having to evolve to survive and the ones that do are the ones that are still relevant and still worth being a part of.” W

BELOW: You need to be getting your work out there to attract clients and this image is from one of the regular shoots Lisa does for Rock ‘n Roll Bride. BELOW: You need to be getting your work out there to attract clients and this image is from one of the regular shoots Lisa does for Rock ‘n Roll Bride.

feed, stories and IGTV!), Facebook, Facebook groups, YouTube, Snapchat… Then there’s written content, video content, podcasts… and ideally you’d be creating unique content for each and every platform.

“You absolutely cannot make a decent living by just relying on advertising revenue anymore. Brands and businesses are much more savvy about what they want and audiences are pickier about what they’ll even click away from social media to see these days. I’m constantly having to figure out where to put my content to make sure that people will see it and it’s not just a blog post anymore.

“However, I still think there is a place for blogs, and hosting your own content on a platform that you own is still pretty vital. Just look how much people lose their minds when Instagram goes down for an evening: if that’s your whole business or marketing strategy it’s a very scary situation to find yourself in.”

Rock n Roll Bride is also now a print magazine and Kat is personally focusing a lot more on that and growing her own newsletter. “Blogs and personal websites are still great for SEO and searchability,” she says, “and having evergreen content that people can still find and read. We have old blog posts that still get views from Google every single day, and you simply don’t get that from old posts on social media, whatever the platform.”

Evolve to Survive Like all of us, wedding bloggers are having to evolve to survive and the ones that do are the ones that are still relevant and still worth being a part of. Remember people like filters in a busy market and bloggers all have their own style and therefore attract their own unique following.

I do still submit weddings to bloggers when I feel they are inspiring to their followers. I also shoot for Kat’s magazine every issue and I worked with her on the shoots for the book she published last year. There are plenty of ways to get your work onto blogs even if you don’t have full weddings yet that might be strong enough for a feature. They all need images to illustrate articles and most will accept really creative styled shoots. Some will even accept written guest post submissions, so if you’re a decent writer and have a unique idea for a feature it’s worth approaching them about that too. P

/ photographyfarm.co.uk / @devlinphotos @photographyfarm

I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! I’m loving writing this column but it feels a little one-sided. So, get in touch: I’d love to hear from you and discover what your thoughts are on the topics raised. Connect through my social channels and let’s chat!