3 Ways To Grow Your Photography Business During The Offseason

grow your business in the offseason

Winter is pretty widely regarded as the slowest season for photographers — and for many, that’s great, because it offers a time to rest and recharge. There are also some opportunities for alternate streams of revenue. But if you really want to make sure you use the offseason to its full potential, it’s also a good idea to spend this time investing in growing your brand and positioning yourself to have a great new years.

In their new Guide, Recharge Your Business: The Wedding Photographer’s Offseason Checklist, ShootDotEdit offers some more tips for how to turn your offseason into a productive time of year. The guide, which is based on webinars they held over the course of 2014, is filled with actionable tasks that can be done during the offseason to grow their businesses. Here are just a few of them:


‘Tis the season. Gift the creative in your life something special – check out our curated holiday gifts


Work that blog. Blogging is one of the most powerful tools photographers have for marketing — not only can a blog be great for SEO, it can also sell products and help potential clients get to know who you are and why they want to work with you. This is the perfect time to dive into that.

“Take inventory of your most popular items that clients bought this past year and create a few blog posts that showcases the items,” recommends ShootDotEdit. Or, you can identify your dream clients, and try writing blog posts that capture people like that.

“Write down who your favorite clients were over the past year. Think about the commonalities between these clients. Why did you love working with them? The answers you come up with
can help you to truly understand who your dream clients are. Once you solidify this, begin to write content that they would want to read. By writing content that your dream clients want to read, it will keep you top of mind for them, and they will be interested in regularly visiting your blog for new content.”

Create smart Facebook targeting. “The holidays are the most popular time of year for people to get engaged,” notes ShootDotEdit, who point out that 16% of all engagements in 2013 occurred in the month of December. “Knowing this, how can you use Facebook to your advantage to properly market your images to recently engaged couples and book clients?”

Instead of hammering away about wedding shoots, which many couples may not be planning yet, try capturing the engagement audience with Facebook ads. “By targeting your marketing, you can get your message out to the right people and book more of your ideal clients.”

Set up standard emails. Is this a boring task? Yes! Will it save you time in the new year? Absolutely. Having form emails that convey your brand and message can cut the amount of time you have to spend responding, without sounding robotic.

“By setting these up now, you will add consistency to your communication, saving you time and helping your clients receive accurate information.”

Want more great tips from ShootDotEdit? You can download the guide for free right here.


‘Tis the season. Gift the creative in your life something special – check out our curated holiday gifts


Hanna Brooks Olsen FOLLOW >

Hanna Brooks Olsen is a writer and editor for CreativeLive, longtime reporter, and the co-founder of Seattlish. Follow her on Twitter at @mshannabrooks or go to her website for more stuff.