Word of mouth is crucial for business owners, including photographers. When you have the general public giving nice reviews and recommendation for your services, you are basically having a community of people doing free advertising for you.

Leave Clients Happy

The most important thing to take into consideration is the service that you provide. The better and more pleasurable the experience is for clients, the more likely they are to say good things about you. When a client has never used a specific service/business before, it is always helpful to have as many people as you can speaking highly of you.

Any photographer can promise a wonderful experience, but promises and advertisements are just that, words. You need people backing you up and supporting you who can speak of they received from you personally. It makes you more credible and shows that you have had happy satisfied customers.

Just make sure that you give each client the same level of time, care, and professionalism. A couple of bad experiences could give you a bad reputation real quick. Stay consistent and treat each and every client equally.

Give Them An Incentive

Sometimes all your clients need is a little bit of incentive to help you get your name out there. There are several ways you can do this.
For example, consider giving them a discount for future sessions for every new client you get referred by them.

Not only will you gain new clients, but chances are you will have just gained a returning client who will appreciate the discount. It’s like killing two birds with one stone, and the discounted price will be well worth it for your business in the long run.

Sharing on Social Media

We live in a digital age where a majority of the population uses social media platforms to showcase their photos.

Whether it’s their engagement/wedding photos, family photos, or photos of their precious little new addition to the family, people just want to show off the things that make them happiest!

Photographers typically share sneak peeks from their sessions on their own social media platforms. But what about the digital images the client received?

If you provide digital images with your sessions, it is imperative to have it in your contract that your name is attached to any images that may be shared via social media.

This may seem a little selfish and many photographers are intimidated by requesting this of clients, however, there is nothing selfish about this at all.
The exact set of “rules” you set between your client and yourself is totally up to you. But there needs to be a way you receive credit for your work. You can give them a set of watermarked images for social media sharing only, which will obviously showcase your name. Or, you could even have them link your business profile along with the images when shared. Using both methods works even better!

As photographers, we are passionate about what we do. We invest way more time into each session than most clients even realize. It’s only fair that we get some credit for our hard work. And using these methods is just another way to use word of mouth marketing, only in a more “digital” way.

To Sum It All Up

Word of mouth marketing could hands down be one of the greatest things for your business. Marketing in itself can be very time consuming and sometimes very costly.

Having a group of people (the bigger the better) reassuring others that your services are worth every penny really goes a long way in the industry.
If you make sure the services you are offering are consistent and pleasurable with each and every client, and you are leaving them completely satisfied and happy with the results, the word of mouth marketing will just come naturally.

However, if you want to use incentives to have them more encouraged to spread your name in a good way, that is perfectly fine also. Just make sure you are providing the skills and services and professionalism that you are advertising.

Also, always remember that it’s a two-way street. A couple of bad experiences can lead to word of mouth marketing too, just not in a good way. Get people saying good things, make them want to give you good reviews and recommend you to others!

The more great things others are saying about you, the more excited others will be to share the same experience and use your services. The goal should be to have the whole town knowing your name and seeing your work.

And last but not least, word of mouth doesn’t have to cost you a dime, nor your time, as you will have others doing the work for you.