(c) Sam Sarkis

You’ve got the wedding party lined up with the bride and groom in the center, bride’s maids and groomsmen all in a row, and the lighting is perfect. You’re ready to take the shot when…Uncle Joe arrives.

Uncle Joe just got a brand-spanking new Nikon Coolpix with a pop up flash and he’s ready to start snapping pictures.

What do you do?

I listened to some veteran wedding photographers discuss this situation, and they had some great advice I thought was worth sharing with you.

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Marketing folks talk about “push” and “pull” marketing. Push is old-school: you “push” information about your studio to clients and potential customers with newsletters, ads, fliers, etc. Pull marketing is engaging the customer, offering something that interests them, and getting them to seek you out. Examples of pull marketing are Facebook, blogs, tutorials, etc.

You need both kinds of marketing. But as a photographer, your ability to take capture great images can be used to create pull marketing.

Here’s how.

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If you aren’t using 2 monitors, you don’t know what you are missing. Ask anyone who has two monitors, and they will tell you that they didn’t know how they ever got along with one.

Virtually every program is easier to use with two monitors. Imagine working in ROES on one full screen and thumbnails of all the images in a job on the other screen. You’ll almost never have to maximize, minimize or move a window again. The second monitor acts as an extended desktop – you can drag a window from one monitor to the other with your mouse as if you just had one very long horizontal monitor.

No matter what kind of PC or laptop you use, as long as you have Windows XP or greater, you can hook up two monitors. Here are 3 examples of products, one of which should work for you.

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If you deal with customers, eventually you will have an unhappy one. You go through the normal steps common to all customer service issues: you listen without interruption, you empathize, you apologize, you take responsibility, and then you agree on a solution.

But after your customer leaves, you still have an unhappy customer.

The best customer service folks add another step to this formula that makes the difference between good and great service. They imagine the inconvenience the problem has caused the customer, and make sure that inconvenience is solved too.

Here’s an example.

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Google gives “credit” for high quality one-way links to your website from other websites, especially ones that have photo content. Here are 4 ways you can take advantage of this to help market your studio.

1. If you are a member of any groups or associations that have an online membership directory, make sure you put a hot link to your website – not just your studio name -  in your membership information so folks can click on it to visit your website.

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The Professional Photographer’s of Michigan Photo Expo will be held on March 18-22 at the Westin Hotel, Detroit Airport.

PPM’s annual convention and trade show features seminars from industry leaders, print competitions and hospitality every night.

As a service to our customers, you can download and print free passes for the trade show held on Sunday, March 20 from 11am-4pm and on Monday, March 21 from 10am-3pm.

While you are at the trade show, be sure to visit our booth. JD will be showing all the latest products, as well as announcing our new Eureka! program for professional photographers.

More information about the show.

At JD, we are always on the lookout for ideas for new products that you can offer to your clients. Most of our ideas come from photographers like you, but frankly, we are open to getting new ideas anywhere.

For example, recently we were looking at a new iPhone app called PrintItUp that generates a mini accordion photo book from iPhone images. We wondered, how could photographers market this to their customers? Would a high school senior or a bride or a mom buy one of these if it only had the photographer’s images? We don’t know where we’re going with this, but would appreciate your input.

Which leads to my point:

• What new products or services would you like to see in our catalog?

• What kind of articles interest you? What do you want to read about?

• What seminars (online or in the JD classroom) are you interested in?

Let me know in the comments below, and we’ll use the list as we get ready for the new season.

After searching through the ninety-three great submissions for this year’s photo contest, we have three images that we believe rose above the competition. (Click on any image to see a larger view).

1st Place:  “Sisterly Love” by Michelle Garcia, Country Rose Designs. It isn’t surprising that this was the only image everyone agreed should be in one of the top three places.  Our panel mentioned the vibrant colors, the framing of the subject, and the great use of depth-of-field.

“I shot this image for a client last fall,” said Michelle Garcia. “When I said ‘kiss’, I thought I’d see a peck on the cheek. But the older sister held it for so long the camera was shaking from my laughter. Fortunately, I was able to get this great shot.”

As 1st place winner, Michelle Garcia will win a 24×30″ canvas wrap with her choice of image. In addition, the judges have decided to also submit this image to the Kodak Photo Competition along with last week’s winner.

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It isn’t very pretty, but 50 million folks visit Craigslist.org every month, and chances are that one of them could be a bride looking for a photographer.  Are you advertising on craigslist?

The advantages of advertising on craigslist are: it is free, it only takes a few minutes to post an ad, it has lots of visitors, you can include your best images and you can direct potential customers to your studio with a hot link.

The disadvantages are that on craigslist you have to “re-upload” your ad every 3-4 days, and that the site tends to bring you clients who are price shopping.

If you have a low-cost starter package you use to attract brides, and if you’re good at up-selling potential customers from the starter package, you should consider advertising  on craigslist. If you don’t like to talk to price-shopping brides, or if up-selling isn’t your forte, you won’t want to be on craigslist.

Even if you’re not a wedding photographer, you could still try craigslist.org for holiday portrait sales, or virtually any other kind of marketing.

Here are some tips:

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Have you ever submitted a ROES order to JD, and the images didn’t come back cropped or rotated correctly?

We see this problem once or twice a month, so we know how frustrating it can be. Fortunately, we can recreate the problem at the lab, so we can tell you how to avoid it. Here’s what happens:

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