Making a Photography Marketing Plan: Stop Marketing Your Business Like a Hot Mess

If you’ve ever had an event like mini sessions or a motherhood event that you threw together last minute, marketed last minute, and then hated your life during it—this is what we’re going to do to stop that from happening again. Let’s not do that anymore.

I’ve been around other business owners who are super detailed with planning. They have their stuff together, they’re planning weeks or months out, and they’ve got everything in order. And I’m like, “I want to be like you when I grow up.” Proactive, not reactive. So today, I’m going to help you do just that. We’re going to make your photography marketing plan.

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But before we dive in—Hi! I’m Melissa—an SEO expert helping portrait photographers get found by dream clients on Google, without the tech overwhelm. Whether you want done-for-you services, coaching, or blogging strategies, I’ve got you covered. Ready to stop being the best-kept secret in your market?

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Want the full conversation? Listen to the podcast episode with Alison & me. Prefer to skim? This post breaks it all down step-by-step so you can start implementing right away.

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1. Mark Down Any Events You Have Planned This Year

So before we get started, grab a notebook. If you have a calendar handy, grab that too. Sit down and write out any events you know you’re going to host this year in your business.

Back in the day, I would do Red Truck Minis. I’d look at my calendar and decide which weekend I wanted to host them. When I was traveling, living in Florida and coming back to Virginia, I’d schedule fall family sessions and spring cherry blossom sessions. I would mark all of that out as you build out your photography marketing plan.

I want you to mark anything you know is going to happen. If you’ve got a motherhood event, a spring event, bluebonnet sessions, etc…. get it on the calendar.

If you’ve got summer offerings, back-to-school portraits, sports portraits, all of that—write it out. Even if you’re a wedding photographer, what does your wedding season look like? We generally know when you need to market, but I still want you to write everything down and just brain-dump everything you might offer this year.

Then think about your booking periods. When do you want more newborn sessions? More family sessions? A lot of senior photographers get so busy during peak season that they’re like, “Please don’t send me anything else right now.”

Write Down What Days You’re Not Willing To Work

At the same time, don’t forget to book some time off for yourself. If you’ve got spring break with the kids, block it off. If you know it’s a busy season and you need some flex days, block it off.
At the same time, think about what you don’t want to do next year. If mini’s are something you don’t want to do anymore, don’t plan for them!

2. Start Putting Some Dates on the Calendar

So far, we’ve just been brainstorming seasons but now it’s time to get some dates on your photography marketing plan. Make it fun. Go buy a little $5 annual calendar from Target. Grab some color-coded pens. I have that giant quarterly calendar. You could print out a couple of those. Make the planning part something you actually like doing.

I actually just did this with my quarterly calendar for the rest of the year for my SEO and marketing business. I sat down and decided: When do I want to work? When do I not want to work? What promotional periods are coming up?

I thought through all of it… including what I want for my family.

Give Your Busy Seasons Breathing Room

This isn’t just for shooting. When you’re planning events and putting them on your calendar, block off breathing room for editing.

When I did Red Truck Minis, that was 17 to 20 sessions in one day. I’m promising galleries in X number of days. If I booked a bunch of other sessions that week, I’d be killing myself—shooting and editing at the same time.

That’s why you put it on the calendar. You might look at it later and think, “Why did I block off a week after mini sessions?” And then you see you wrote “editing.” If you had booked those two sessions that contacted you for that week instead of pushing them out, you’d be hating life.

So think beyond the event itself. Think about the runway before it and what comes after it.

Next, what we’re really going to talk about is the marketing runway: how much time you need before an event to plan and market it properly.

3. Plan Your Marketing Runway

I’d say you want at least a few weeks before any event. Depending on how big it is, you need to start earlier.

Santa sessions? Those need a long runway. We’re talking summer for a lot of people. Even our Santa photographer—September 1st at midnight, I’m setting an alarm to book because if I wait until morning, they’re gone.

You also need to think about reverse-engineering the timeline: when do I need to shoot to allow for editing, delivery, and card orders? Sometimes that means Christmas sessions were in October.

With Santa sessions and holiday stuff, you’ve got to talk about it early and often. I’d say at least a six-week lead time minimum. Months are even better.

For fall family sessions, you can probably start marketing late August or early September. Here in Virginia, peak fall color is the last couple of weeks of October. So I start advertising early in September to fill those late October spots.

Planning your announcement dates

So once you sit down and say, “Okay, I’ve got the dates. I know when I want to do this,” you need to back up and ask, “When am I making the big announcement? Am I doing a VIP list? When does my landing page need to be ready?”

The earlier you start, the better, because you need a long runway and you need to be talking about it consistently.

I would much rather you start marketing something 12 weeks ahead of time and be 75%, 80%, or even 100% booked four weeks out. That’s way less stressful than waiting until two weeks before and thinking, “Oh my gosh, nobody’s booking.”

Start teasing it on Instagram. Share sample images and sample products. And you need to order those ahead of time.

Even if you plan to start marketing eight to twelve weeks out, if you want sample products and images to show, you may need to think another four to eight weeks before that so you actually have visuals ready—especially if you’re offering physical products.

4. Plan Your Content in Your Photography Marketing Plan

When we think about content for each event, we’ve mentioned things like landing pages—but don’t forget about the emails you’re going to send and mapping those out too. I’m a huge proponent of a VIP waitlist because, for starters, it lets you test your offer.

Let’s say you want to do back-to-school portraits with little kids sitting at a desk looking really cute. If you’ve got a sample image and you start putting it out two or three months ahead of time—maybe mid-summer for a back-to-school event—and you push it out and push it out and push it out and nobody signs up, that might tell you people just aren’t interested.

It could simply be that it’s not what your audience is looking for.

But if you put it out, create a landing page, and suddenly you’ve got 12 people interested, now you’re thinking, “Okay, this is a good idea. Yes, I want to pursue this.” It really lets you test things.

Also, blog posts. If you want them ranking for that season, you have to write them early. So you need to back that up on your calendar too.

Make Your Blogs Evergreen

When done well, your blogs for certain themes can easily show up year over year. Take the time to write one solid blog post, and then watch it rank for you year-over-year. For example, my co-host Allison and I both have Cherry Blossom posts that we rank for consistently year-over-year.

5. Put It All On Your Calendar

I like having a physical calendar—something big I can write on. A whiteboard works. It just needs to be something you’ll actually use. So let’s say you put your fall mini session dates on the calendar. Then you block off a week or two afterward for editing.

Now back up eight to twelve weeks and mark when marketing starts. From there, you can start filling it in:

• One email a week
• Instagram posts a couple times a week
• One, two, maybe three blog posts during that timeframe

Honestly, you can use Google Calendar. Create a separate marketing calendar and just start dropping things in:

Instagram post on this day.
Email on that day.
Facebook post on this day.

And suddenly it feels like a system. It feels organized. It feels like something you can manage.

Keep Your VIP List Running

Don’t forget while you’re working on your photography marketing plan, once you’re fully booked—or even after the session—you can turn that landing page into a waitlist for next year. Start collecting names early.

Because once you book up, more people will come in and you’ll think, “Should I add more spots?”

I would much rather sign up for a list and have you email me than bookmark something and put a reminder on my calendar to check back later.

Creating a Photography Marketing Plan

Block off about two hours this week to get this process started.

Like I said, I just did this for our SEO business. I was looking at December and thinking, “Okay, I don’t want to work in December, so I’m blocking it off.” But then I had to realize, if I’m not working in December, how am I going to make money? So I had to stack the other months to make sure I can afford to not work my butt off in December.

This is all very fresh in my mind.

So block off that time. Sit down and start with an audit: What worked? What didn’t? Then create your master list. What are you going to offer? From there, start planning out dates.

Even if you only get as far as planning six months—or even a year—ahead, that’s huge. I have absolutely thrown together last-minute spring or fall mini sessions and then thought afterward, “Well, that was stupid. If you’d planned earlier, it would have gone so much better.”

And remember, this isn’t just about marketing. My co-host Alison and I talk about this all the time. You want to create a business that fits your life—not one that you’re constantly sucked into.

If you liked this post, we think you’ll love these:

Search Engine Optimization For Photographers: How Photographers Can Get Found (And Booked) Online

How Photography Market Research Helped Me Book Dream Clients

Photography Marketing Strategies That Actually Books Clients

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