What will you do when your customers stop paying because of the economy?

What’s your first inclination?

Go find a “real” job?
Get your stuff into an art gallery?
Blow some money on advertising?
Call back old leads that “fell through the cracks”?

If your plan includes these things, you may as well pack up and go home.  As a photographer, you should be spending some of your time learning how to drive demand for what you offer.  A big part of that is learning how to drive traffic to your website.

I’ve presented proven tactics for driving traffic to thousands of small business owners during live and virtual seminars and every time I’m blown away at how little people know.  (If you want to hear my tips on this stuff, just pre-register for Over[Expsoure].  “How to Drive Traffic” is included in the course.)

Here’s the problem: You went into the “photography” business, not the “marketing” business, right?

WRONG!

Every successful photographer, heck, every successful entrepreneur, learns quickly that success comes from a combination of a great product and great marketing.

So, let’s talk about online marketing and how to conquer this stuff without having to become a total geek (just a semi-geek).

5 Traffic Generating Tactics You Should Master Now

1. SEO – a.k.a Search Engine Optimization. This is what you do to show up when people search in Google or Yahoo.  This might surprise you, but no one is going to find your photo gallery because you have cool pictures.  You have to write some stuff.  The search engines only know how to serve results based on what you write, not the pictures you take.  Most photographers websites are HORRIBLE at SEO.  You should go read Allen Murabayashi‘s blog post “Why Your Blog Sucks” right now.
2. Social Media Marketing – Some social media experts cringe at this term because they think that marketing spits in the face of what social media is all about.  That’s a bunch of hogwosh!  The truth is, we’re all marketing something right?  And social media sites allow people to market through personal relationships better than anything else online right now.  The key here is to understand the difference between advertising and marketing.  Don’t advertise via your social media profiles.  That’s a no no.  What you do want to do is provide value.  Market yourself as an expert and a resource.  The social media world might be a little overwhelming to you right now.  Take it one step at a time.  Go read this post by my friend Joe Manna – 4 Step Action Plan for Social Media Marketing.
3. Utilize Partners – There are a lot of people that run successful sites to market and sell products or services that compliment yours.  Jump on that bandwagon now.  Develop relationships with those people and start sharing traffic.  By doing so, you become a more valuable resource to your customers because you’re “hooking them up” with targeted businesses, products, & services.  This is a great “free” way to drive traffic.  Look how the big boys do it.
4. Online Advertising – This includes email marketing, PPC (pay-per-click), banners, newsletter sponsorships, etc.  There are a couple of things to remember here.  First, only spend money advertising to your EXACT TARGET MARKET.  If you’re advertising to everyone and their dog, you’ll end up getting very little response and wasting a ton of money.  Find places where you can ensure that the audience fits your target.  Second, make sure your ads drive people to a dedicated landing page or squence page, NOT the home page of your site.  Your landing page should have no distraction from the call to action – which should be to fill out a form (so you can capture the lead) or buy something or call you now.  Third, don’t muddy the offer.  Sometimes people think that if a person doesn’t go for offer #1, then they might be interested in offer #2 or offer #3.  So, the ad ends up being way confusing.  One offer – One clear call to action.  That’s the way to advertise for sucess.
5. Analytics – Go get Google Analytics on your site right now if its not already there or if you don’t already have another analytics system in place.  This is where you can get really geeky.  You’ve got to begin to understand where people spend time on your site, why the spend that time, where they came from, why they came, what they want, and how to give them what they want.  You can gather all this info and much more simply from understanding google analytics.  Photoshelter has a great article on Google Analytics for photographers.

So, you don’t need to become a complete geek.  Being a photographer is cool enough to compensate for the web geek traits you need to inherit, right?

But, if you want to really leverage the web to grow your business, you must realize that your online gallery does you almost no good.  Learn the real tactics behind driving traffic and having a successful site.

Share your traffic-getting tips in the comments below.