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During an economic downturn, people cut back on spending. For many, money spent on photography or a photographer is the first thing to go. To stay in business, a photographer must keep shooting shots that keep customers coming in the door. Maintaining strong relationships with wedding vendors is one way to keep clients coming in the door.
This article addresses the things a photographer can proactively do to maintain strong relationships with wedding venue providers.
1. Meet the marketing manager of the wedding venue provider. This is the person who will likely be in a position to recommend weddings to you. Find out what you can do that would be helpful to this person.
2. Do things that help make the marketing manager’s life easier. Photography is a skill that comes in handy when marketing. Offer to take pictures of the place when it’s not busy. Often the venue has numerous images of the location while it is in use. Many photographers are more than happy to provide wedding photos on location; however, they rarely receive offers to take pictures while the place is not in use.
3. Create a collection of your best work on the spot and post it attractively on your website. Many places do not keep their websites up to date. Your site may very well be the most attractive slideshow you have available. This is a win/win for you and the place. The venue gets an attractive display of its location on the site of a wedding photographer. If the photographer’s site attracts traffic, it will encourage some people to search for the place. The photographer benefits as the venue manager sends people to the photographers’ site to see some of the best images available from that venue.
4. Provide information cards for the place. Design the cards attractively. Put your name and website on the cards too. This saves the venue the cost of photography, design, and card printing (all things a photographer can do relatively cheaply).
While this is not an exclusive list of things photographers can do to maintain business relationships with wedding vendors, following these steps will tend to strengthen that relationship.