Are you a real estate photographer trying to find the best way to market yourself and your business? If so, then this blog post will be perfect for you. In this article, we explore some of the most effective ways for photographers like yourself to get clients without having much experience in the field.
A large part of marketing yourself as a photographer is making sure your name gets out to the right people, perhaps real estate agents who are currently listing properties and want someone to capture their properties on film or a new home builder. By getting your name out there you can be there right in front of the person that needs your services when they finally decide they need a professional to help make their property stand out from the other ones in their neighborhood.
There are a number of ways to market yourself as a real estate photographer, some more traditional than others. I’ve tested a lot of different marketing techniques and wanted to share the top 6 that work!
1. Referrals
This is where one client tells their friend that you did a wonderful job of photographing their last listing and were very easy to work with. This is the MOST effective way to get customers. It’s so important that you will want to keep careful track of who is referring their friends to you, thank them and cultivate future referrals. You also want to directly and clearly ask your satisfied clients to refer their friends to you. Some will not even think of referring, but when asked, will be happy to refer to you. On the back of your business card and on your invoices, put something like, “The biggest compliment you can give me is to refer your friends to me.” Good agents use this technique very effectively for their own marketing and will understand immediately. So your first step is to create some satisfied customers to start referring their friends and associates to you. Somehow, you need to get to know some listing agents.
Ways to Get to Know Listing Agents
Here are some ways to make personal contact with listing Agents:
- Direct phone calls.
- Visit them at open houses.
- Give presentations at office meetings.
- Do portrait shoots at real estate offices.
Making personal contact is always the best approach. Knowing something about their listings will give you something in common to talk about. Also, when you go to a real estate office, if you know who all the “big dogs” are by name it will help guide you to making contact with the top agents.
2. Face-to-Face or Direct Phone Contact
An effective way to get new clients is to use your list of top listing agents, call them up, and tell them what you can do for them. These agents are important enough to potential customers that you may have to make a personal appointment with them to get your message across. It’s important to be concise and have presentation materials to leave with them. Another effective way to handle initial contact with an agent is to email them or send them a flyer or postcard with your information. Then in about 3 days, when you know they have the piece, call them on the phone and discuss the material you sent them.
Before you talk to a listing agent, take the time to do your homework and review their current listings. Look at their photography. Come up with specific ideas of what you can do to help them make their home marketing more effective. They’d love to talk to someone that has specific ideas for them about their listings. Note that when you have something very specific to talk to an agent about (the photography on their current listings), talking to them is much easier than “cold calling” where you really don’t have anything specific to talk about that you know they will be interested in.
3. Face-to-Face Office Meetings
This is the second most effective marketing method. When starting out, most real estate photographers need to do this to “bootstrap” their business. In the more developed real estate photography markets where other photographers have been doing this, it may not work as well as in areas where there is very little real estate photography going on.
You can call any real estate office, ask for the managing broker and tell them you’d like to come to the next office meeting to make a short presentation of your photographic services. In this context, short means not more than 5 or 10 minutes. To convey information in this time frame you’ll need handouts with all the key points, example photos, and key benefits, so all agents get a copy to take services. It’s useful to carry a copy of your portfolio in a loose-leaf book or on an iPad so if you get the chance to show people your work you have it ready to view. Going to office meetings is a less effective method than contacting agents directly because the top listing agents frequently don’t attend meetings; they are out doing deals instead! If you go to office meetings, do your homework ahead of time. Know the names of the top listing agents in that particular office and be able to recognize who they are. These are the people you want to connect with. Don’t be surprised if the top listing agents aren’t even at the meetings. These office meetings are designed by the managing broker to motivate the newbie agents. The top listing agents are self-starters and don’t get much out of office meetings.
4. Team With Home Stagers
The best listing agents work with home stagers, so a great way to connect with them is to find the stagers in your area and get to know them well enough to cross-market each other’s services. For example, you could offer a stager a reduced price to include your services along with theirs in a package deal for listing agents. The stager will probably already have a list of agents that are regular clients. Any agent that spends money on staging also spends money on photography. Also, stagers need photographs of their work to promote their services and many of the stagers I’ve met are lousy photographers, so there is a natural opportunity to strike up business relationships with stagers.
5. Postcards or Flyers
You need some form of professional-looking printed media that you can hand out to prospective clients or send them in the mail. A great way to do this is to create a jumbo or panoramic size gloss postcard that shows off your work and promotes your services. Use only the best shots in your portfolio and hire a design professional to do the layout if you don’t have these skills. Use large photos to display your photography. The great thing about a jumbo or panoramic postcard is that it can be used either to handout or to mail. Use these jumbo postcards like a business card, but be careful, they are much more expensive than business cards.
Most real estate offices have agent mail slots out where anyone can leave mail items for agents. This is because, traditionally, Marketing Techniques flyer distribution vendors distribute flyers for homes this way. So you can take a stack of your postcards or flyers and put one in each agent’s mail slot in an office. Be sure to talk with the receptionist and ask permission. Different offices may have different rules about putting things in agent mail slots. Distributing marketing materials like this can save a bundle on postage. Don’t depend on postcards or flyers as your primary or only method of marketing. Use them to remind the agents you’ve talked to or met that you are still out there looking for work.
6. Email
Real estate agents are used to both sending and receiving email marketing. However, a large percentage of them don’t like this type of marketing and have their SPAM filters turned on high. However, opt-in (where clients choose to receive an email newsletter from you) is one way to keep in touch with clients. If you use email marketing, it is useful to do a follow-up phone call a day or two after sending the email. A good approach with email marketing is what is called “drip marketing.” This is where you send an email to all the agents you have shot for or worked with. Send an email to them all once a quarter showing them some of your recent work. The primary idea of drip marketing is to keep in contact with your regular customers so they don’t forget you.
