Lead generating websites

marketing basics for photographers

Today I am going to talk about lead generating websites as a marketing tool for a photography business

If you master your camera skills and want to learn ways to market yourself as a photographer this might be of interest to you.

I have been using lead generating websites for a while I would like to share that experience with you

The basic idea is that if you have a business, you need clients. How do you find clients and how do they find you?

If you know the real answer to this question than there is nothing to prevent you from achieving business success.

There are many businesses facilitating this process of putting potential clients in contact with other business through a lead generation website.

What they do, is pay google to be on top in search engines for a specific search, in our case wedding photography or portrait photography in your area. People do the search and these sites pay to be on top and get the traffic. The potential client jumps on their website and places and quote request for a service, with a description for his needs.

You pay a fee to be a member and you receive the job description and contact details from the potential customer. You can pay an annual fee or pay for each quote individually, but that depends on the website rules.

The website will send you the contact details of people interested, You contact them and make an offer and sometimes your offer will be accepted and you close a deal.

I have used this system and it works. Today I will just highlight the pros and cons for using such a service

The pros

- You pay a flat fee or pay per each quote and receive contact details only from people interested in your service. This increases your chances to close a deal as you will be speaking only with people ready to enter an agreement

- You have a good idea what the customer wants and you can improve your offer to suit them

- If you do things right you will definitely get work if you are a beginner and I keep getting work if you are consistent

- If the website is popular you will get so many requests , you won’t be able to send to all

- You can choose your area and target market.

- You will recover the cost of advertising many times if you do it right

The cons

- There is a lot of competition based on price and the clients will be price oriented rather than quality…there are exceptions, so it is not all hope lost

- Your clients will associate your brand with the website. Your clients will remember how they found you and they will recommend the lead generation website first , rather than recommending you personally. Unfortunately this is the mindset you will have to accept

- You do not control the game and the lead generating websites will change the rules to suit them, and they do change depending on many factors and there is nothing you can do about it

I have seen lead generation websites, come and go, like any other business there is winners and losers , but at the end of the day, only businesses with good marketing skills will win the show, and you should remember that for yourself as well.

I would recommend to all beginners to try and see if after 100 quotes you do not get a client, than there is something wrong with you . also you need to see this as a numbers game and do not worry if people say no, even if you do spend money to talk to them.

My personal number used to be 1 in 30. I needed to send 30 quotes to get one job, and I used to do 100 quotes per month.

How to find these websites? Very easy. You google your service, your area and words like “quotes”, “budget”, “price”.

If you do not find them , that means there are not there and maybe you can make one as a business

As an example I have used: wedding bids, wedding prices, service central, service seeking and others. There is only one which can deliver and that is service seeking if you are in Australia, but I am sure there are others in other countries. Service seeking has built a serious business to include thousands of local businesses and they all pay a fee to get leads. I have successfully used their service to get electricians, carpenters, plumbers and other trades I needed at one point in time.

I have stopped to use this service though, as the end of the day in order to sustain a business you need a certain level of income, and unfortunately the price oriented mindset of people ending up using this service is preventing that to happen, however this ides is a marketing tool which works 100%, it is measureable foreseeable and have all ingredients of a good business…but for them!

Thank you for watching, any questions, just shoot!
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