Wedding and Portrait photographers ?????

[Homey]

Hello all.
I have a few marketing questions for you.

First a little background.
I have been traveling a lot the past 8 years and to be honest its getting old. I made a decision that I am going to try and stay home more and shoot more local stuff. To make this work I believe I have to do more weddings and Senior Portraits. In the past 8 years I have only done a few weddings, maybe 2 or 3 a year and a handful of senior portraits a year. I am not worried about the work I do, its just not what I was doing. I would schedule a few things around times I knew I would be home and that would be it. I have a medium saturated market and to be honest the photos I am seeing online from my competition here is nothing to be worried about. There are a few talented photographers here but not that many.
Anyway I know there is room here for me and I know I can deliver a great product to my customers.

Here is where I am out of my element. In the past 13 years of my Pro photo career I have mostly dealt with Editors, be it Magazine or News Paper, web sites, art directors and several event directors. I have never had to market myself for doing local weddings and portrait work.
So I am asking you all what advertising works best for you? How is your add money best spent? I would like answers for both the short term as well as the long term.
Do you advertise at Bridal stores? At local high schools? Attend Bridal expo's?
Radio? TV? Phone book? Which ones of these actually work the best?

I noticed that when I searched for Photographers in my area on google. Does Google or another search engine work for you?
If so how do you get your business to show up in the google search?

Thanks in advance for the advice...

Steven

 

[Oxide Blu]

Affiliate with bridal registries, bride magazine, TheKnot.com. They all generate lists of brides and wedding dates. Use the lists to generate mass mailings. I had a set of 6 cards, all diff colors, diff layouts, diff images of wedding parties and romantic images. Stagger the mailings. That generated the most new business for me. The other major source of new business comes from referrals and people that meet you at work. When you are photographing a wedding you are working around a whole bunch of potential new customers; the bridesmaids, the bride's sister or best friend. There will be a lot of young women in same age group as the bride at her wedding. All of the unmarried ones are potential new clients.

For your direct mailing card you MUST use quality cards, not the 10,000 cards for $20 that artists use to promote a gallery show. I used Marathon press to print my cards.

http://www.marathonpress.com/

I also ran an ad in a local bride magazine but it didn't generate enough business to pay for itself, but the bride list from the magazine + direct mailing my cards did.