Learn some tips from Jay P and Adelaide on how to get more sales in your photography or videography business, and how to get your services found. We will cover tips on naming your image file, setting up your portfolio on your website, and using call to actions on your website.
If you like these tips, check out our TSL Business Coaching Class.
Video Transcription
– – [JP] So here, Adelaide. Take a look at my portfolio. – [Adelaide] Oh, what were you… what’s this shoot for? Jay P?
– This is Jay P. Morgan and Adelaide Lawren. We’re gonna talk about how to set up your web page or your portfolio, so you can get sales, and more importantly, so you can get found. – Yes. So, what a lot of photographers are doing right now is they just have a click-through gallery of all of their pictures. So, we know that you can’t get found with that because the Google bot, he’s blind. – Doesn’t see pictures. – He doesn’t see pictures, which is very sad. So of course you wanna put a good title in of your picture, and then you wanna have the description in there so we can see it. But that, that isn’t enough. – Are we talking about the description in the metadata? – Yes. – Or…? Okay. In the metadata, which can all be done in Lightroom or in Capture One. You can put all that metadata information. It can be embedded in the photograph before it’s ever uploaded. – So that’s great for the Google bots but that’s not great for your target audience. Why? It’s because you’re not lead, guiding them through the sales process, if they have questions, if they wanna know more about your personality, which is very important in choosing a photographer, they don’t see that in your portfolio. So, here are a couple of things you can think about to change your portfolio, so it can also have more text for the bots to see and also, for the humans to read and to like you more.
So, the traditional way is to have someone click through your photos and see what you do. But this is, this is not how you sell photos. If I were to meet with Jay P. in person and he had his portfolio, and he just handed it to me and walked away, I’d be a little lost. I’d wanna know… I’d have some questions that I would wanna ask him and he’s not there. And so if you can guide them through your photos on your portfolio, it’s more helpful. – We’ll talk about some of the ways you can do that. You know, the cake idea is a great one. – Yeah, let’s talk about that. So, if you’re a wedding photographer, you can have…you can break up the wedding day into a couple of different categories. Maybe the vows you can do. You can do the wedding cake, and you can do the… – Throwing the bouquet. – Yes, throwing the bouquet. – ‘Cause everyone wants to see those key moments in there, so… – And you can show it like three, two to three styles of that and have those three images next to each other. – Right. Two or three styles of each of those events, like, here is two or three shots of how you throw the bouquet different ways. Here’s how I handle that, a couple of lines on how you handle that one event. So they get a sense of what you’re gonna be like at their wedding day and how you’re gonna handle that part of the experience.
– Exactly, and since the sales process has really shift instead of just pushing, pushing yourself out there and saying, “This is what I do,” people wanna be educated more now. So a great thing you can do is you can also have a little bit of text linking it to a blog post that you wrote. So let’s say, you wrote a post about, let’s see, funny wedding dances. And that will help the bride and groom think of a good wedding dance to do when they’re looking at your page, which, they’ll like you even more because you just helped them out. – Those kinds of links on your page that give them a place to go, it gives them information about how to plan their day and see how you’re gonna fit into their day are very valuable. Now, when I think of these things though for commercial photography, I’m a little more cautious. I think this needs to be a little more portfolio driven world, and probably a little less of this kind of information, because art directors are very…they’re very savvy individuals. They’re not just visually savvy individuals, they are the individuals that create the visual world that we live in. – Yes, it’s true. – They really, they… they understand from the get go. And they’re just looking for the person that fits; one, has a great personality, and two, has work that fits what they wanna do. – Yeah, exactly. So art directors, they just wanna look at your pictures. They know exactly what they want, and they’re just gonna look at your portfolio But, someone who’s never worked with a photographer before and they’re getting married, they don’t know, they even don’t know what looks good. They don’t know much about it. They kinda just wanna see something that looks nice and maybe has that style that they’re going for and someone that has a fun personality they know, and they also know that they can trust you.
– So it’s really important that on that website there’s information that will help them to see how you’re going to handle the day and gives you a little more copies so you can be found better on searches and so educate your clients and helps you to be found a little better in the search process. – If someone’s looking at your portfolio page, they’re interested in your work, and so you wanna have another, you wanna have a “Call to action” on the webpage. And this can be something as far down the sales funnel as book a shoot, or check shoot availability. Or, this could be something to invite them to continue to engage with you, so maybe join your newsletter, join your Facebook. Maybe you have a fun Instagram that you want them to follow so they can keep in touch with you. Fifty percent of the people aren’t ready to buy yet, but they’ll wanna buy soon, and so you wanna be able to keep in contact with them, so you can have… So, these “Calls to actions” will help you keep in contact with them or guide them further down the sales process to shoot with you. – I mean, you really wanna connect them someway to you. If an art director loves your work, they may wanna follow you on Instagram, so you gotta give them that option, and show them where to make that happen, so that they’re reminded of you daily as you post to Instagram. – And if a high school sophomore sees your work and they’re, you know, not yet a senior, they’re gonna want to stay in touch with you and then following you on Instagram, joining your Facebook is a great way to stay connected to you. One problem that I see with a lot of photography pages is that the photos can’t be pinned to Pinterest. This is a big problem and it depends on what website platform you’re using.
– I think there’s a lot of paranoia, too. Photographers are doing everything they can to keep their images– – Oh. – –From being stolen. – No, they’re not being st– – So they’re scared to death that someone’s gonna take that image but you really need to get your image with your name on it, needs to be able to be pinned and taken out of the page and put elsewhere so you can share it. – Yeah. Let people share your photos, if they’re really fun wedding photos, people are gonna wanna share them and they’re gonna come back to your site.
– So if you love these tips, there’s this and many more in the Business Coaching class. We’re going to take you through the process of establishing your business, establishing your webpage, establishing everything you need to know to market, to sell, and to take care of your business, both video and stills, both editorial and wedding. We’re gonna take a look at that whole gambit. Meet with us once a week. Each week, we’re gonna talk for an hour about a different topic. We’ll have guest speakers, we’ll have one-on-one coaching, we’ll have some great marketing tips. So join us for the The Slanted Lens coaching class.