← Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Here's How To Book Winter Photography Sessions In Your Business
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Welcome to the Book More Clients Photography Podcast. You can stop spending hours on Google and YouTube because you just found your number one resource for growing a profitable and sustainable photography business. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mama to two and Oklahoma family photographer. I left the classroom in 2018 to pursue my photography career full time. Now I'm here to help you do the same. In this podcast we're covering the most asked about topics including pricing, marketing, client experience, and all things systems and workflows. You won't find any fluff or BS here. Just tried and true strategy. Are you ready? Grab your kids some snacks and charge those camera batteries. It's time to jump in Foreign about one of the biggest challenges photographers face every year, which is booking sessions during the winter months. If quarter one usually feels slow or unpredictable in your business, this episode will walk you through simple, realistic ways to stay visible, market your sessions, and keep your calendar moving during the winter. Let's dive in. Quarter one. So January, February and March is naturally slower for a lot of photographers, myself included, if I am not actively pushing bookings. Usually we're coming out of a very busy season in the fall and we're just looking for a breather. And because we're so busy from September through December, we kind of take our foot off the gas and we stop marketing our business. And when we do that, we face consequences because then it feels like crickets in January, February and March. And I don't want that for you. I don't want that in my business and I definitely don't want that in your business. So I'm going to walk you through different ideas that you can do this winter. Now these are things that I do myself, these are things that are already on my promotional calendar and outline. And then I'm going to show you five ways to actually market whatever you choose to do. So it's kind of a two part little workshop that we have. You don't want to be multitasking. You can be driving and listen to this, but then you're probably going to want to go take notes when you get to where you're going. And I, I just, I wouldn't do a lot of multitasking because I don't want you to miss it. Now some of the things that I talk about, if you have been a longtime listener of the podcast, these may feel like, oh, I feel like she said this before, but I'm saying it today in a, in a new and different way. So don't skip over this episode. Don't think I'm going to say all the things you've heard before. And there's a reason that you're starting to catch on to some of the things that I say over and over and over again. And it's because this is how marketing works. These are the things that you should be doing in your business. And so now's the time to jump on it if you are not doing this. So let's talk about three main things that you can focus on for some winter session ideas. The first one is the most obvious and that is moving your sessions from outdoor to indoor. It's probably freezing cold where the majority of us are. And I know like here in Oklahoma, there are days in January where it feels like the wind never stops blowing. I have a lot of reschedules that end up happening in January, just kind of depending on the year and the weather. We have had 80 degrees days here in January and we have had like negative one degrees here in January. So I never know what I'm going to get. So rather than booking and like booking family sessions and hoping for the best, I go into it going, okay, how can I already have an indoor location and make that work? The other thing that I wanted to mention because this is new for me this year I had a studio from 2020 until about April of this year and then we moved to a new town and because of that I had to let go of my studio. One, because it made no sense to travel 40 miles to it, that it just seemed kind of ridiculous to me. And then two, it was a building that I was actually borrowing from my mother in law and she remodeled it into her her business's new office and it looks amazing. It's hard to believe that I photographed sessions there, but that leaves me with no studio. So I'm in the same boat as a lot of you. You probably don't have a studio so you think you're out for the count and you should just go find a part time job January through March. Believe me, I get it. But I want you to know that you can be creative with your locations and you can still offer indoor options no matter what your niches. I'm mainly going to tailor today's episode towards family photographers just because I feel like we often have the hardest job in getting our families to let us come into their homes or book out a venue or something for them to come get their photos done inside. So that's mainly where I'm going to give those examples today. But I want you to get Creative with the location of your session during these colder months. Really get outside the box. I am going to give you some more examples as we go through this episode. The second thing, the second session idea that I have for you is I want you to think about running one and only one promotional push. What I mean is I want you to decide if it's going to be January, February or March where that month only you are going to run some kind of a promo. This could be a discount. This could be. You're going to add a bonus to it. Like some. You're going to add something that you never really do. Or if you had a Black Friday offer and it did not sell well, you could try it again. I know I sound crazy. You could try it again in quarter one after people are like, over the holiday rush. You can add more images. You can add on physical, tangible prints and products that they automatically get when they book a session with you. There are many things that you can do, but I want you to highly consider this. This is something that I am going to do. I have actually never done this in any prior year. Usually my Black Friday offer is the one that does the best. And so last year I had a podcast episode come out and I was recapping how well my Black Friday sale did. Well, this year I only sold two. So I'm here to tell you. And I did the exact same thing that I did last year. This year, that's it. And so there are going to be years where it sells out and there are going to be years where people are just. They're bombarded and they're not going to purchase. So that kind of gave me. That made me feel better because I wasn't going into 2026 with a bunch of discounted sessions anyway. I only have two. And so I am going to choose one of those months to for one type of session, I'm going to offer a discount on or one package only, however you want to say that. And it'll be a limited time thing, but that's going to help fill a month that naturally for me is the hardest to book. So think about doing that in your own business too. The last winter session idea that I would have you focus on is to either go all in with milestone sessions or mini sessions. These can be two completely different things. The minis are obvious. You could do black and white minis. You could offer Easter minis. You could offer grandparent minis. Those are some ideas of what you could do specifically for the spring. I say spring. Really winter or you could focus on milestones, which is going to be more in how you frame that. So you just have to pick a milestone. What kind of milestone is do you want to pinpoint for people to book you with? Right. Like it could be six month baby milestones, it could be toddler milestones, it could be Hey, 10 year olds, you guys kind of get lost in, in the mess of things. And so I'm focusing on 10 year olds, like it could be whatever you want it to be. So those are three of the main winter session ideas that I am focusing on in my own business and that I would love to see you do as well. Now, regardless if you take any of those session ideas that I just gave you or you run with something completely different on your own, that is fine. So let's talk about five ways that you can market January, February and March sessions. The first one, this is really important and this is the one that you pretty much have to promise me that you're going to do theme your months and focus on one type of booking in each of those months. That way your marketing stays consistent. So here's what I mean. Maybe in January your number one focus is lifestyle newborn sessions. That's it. You're, you're just going for those January due dates and you are going to photograph as many newborns as you can in February. Maybe that's when you're going to do one of those mini session ideas we just talked about. And that is your main focus, that is your main source of income for the month. And then maybe in March, now the weather's starting to change. We're trying to get a big jump on springtime. So maybe you go back to solely focusing on family sessions in March. So this is what I mean. So every month you're still within your niche, but every month you are focused on booking one thing that's going to help your marketing so so much. The second idea and way that you can market your winter sessions is to leverage your past clients. I know, I know you're rolling your eyes. I say this all the time, but you have to understand that this works. This absolutely works. The goal with your past clients is to either get them to come back and book you or to have them refer someone that is going to book you. That's it. That is the whole reason that you want to focus on past clients. So you could send a message, an email, a text, whatever you want. And you could say, hey, I just wanted to let you know that I am offering X, Y, Z in January and I wanted to offer you first access at one of those spots if you're interested. If you're not, that is totally fine. Maybe you could forward this message to a friend or a family member that might be interested. That's all you have to say? It's one quick message. And you know what? Here's the thing. Even if they don't respond to you, or they don't give you a referral, or they don't book, it's okay because they just read it. And then maybe they left you on read. It doesn't mean that, that they're annoyed by you or that you're bothering them. It's just maybe they got busy or maybe they didn't quite know what to say to that and that's okay too. But the answer will always be no if you don't ask. I just taught my son this the other day. I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but this is exactly what our conversation was. Was I was teaching him, son, the answer is always no if you don't ask. I remember what it was. He had gotten a less than great grade on his, on one of his math papers. And I'm like, I know his potential is much better than what he did. And I knew he likely rushed through it and made silly mistakes. So I had him redo his paper. And then I sent a note to his teacher saying, hey, I know you probably don't regrade things, but I was just curious. I was looking at these papers and I know he can do better than what he turned in. Is there any way that he could bring these papers that he redid and you would regrade them and you know what? She did and he got a higher score. So again, the answer is always, always know if you don't ask. So with that being said, don't be afraid to reach out to your past clients, especially if it's something that they naturally would book anyway. So, for example, let's say that you haven't seen this family like in a year and a half, it's almost at the two year mark, and you reach out to them. That's probably a great time to reach out to them because they probably haven't had family photos done since the last time that they were with you. So hopefully that makes sense. Don't be scared again. Just get over your fear and just do it. The third way to market your winter sessions is to drum roll. Please collaborate with a local business. But here's the caveat. I want you to be very intentional with the local business that you choose to collaborate with. And so your goal is to find someone that either has the exact ideal client that you have. Like their audience is full of the people that you would be excited to book and work with or collaborate with that business that offers a space you can shoot in. So really think about that. I kind of want your brain to do some spinning before I give you a couple of examples because someone probably popped into your brain and that's the one I want you to focus on. A couple of examples. Coffee shops, venues, boutiques, hair and makeup artists. Are there offices that maybe they're only open Monday through Friday. You could utilize their space on a Saturday or Sunday. Think outside the box. Collaborate with that local business. Tell them what your ideas are, tell them what your promotion is, Find a way that it's going to be a win win for the both of you. And then there you go. Number four, don't hate me, but number four, be consistent in your marketing. I know y' all hate that word. Y' all hate the word consistency, but can I just tell you that that one word could literally change your life. I know. Here we go, right? It really, really can. It's something that I've been focusing on in the month of December and. And I feel like a completely different person. I went from wanting to hang the towel up in my business, being really unhappy with how I felt, being tired and sluggish all the time, to feeling like a brand new person. I'm on fire. I feel healthy because I have implemented and gotten really consistent on everyday habits in both my personal life and business life. So being consistent in your marketing, I know this one is not sexy, but it is vital. It is the backbone to that fully booked calendar that you want so badly. Are you showing up and are you selling multiple times a week? When I say selling, that doesn't have to be a yuck word. In fact, as I say this, I remember I did an interview with a sales coach, someone that her way of thinking about selling is just a breath of fresh air. I'm gonna link that for you that in case you missed that episode or in case you want to hear it again. I'm going to link that episode for you with Andy and you can find that in the show notes and go back to it. I don't have the number off the top of my head or I can't even tell you when it was that we recorded, but I want to say it was about a year ago. So I'm going to link that for you in the show notes. Really listen to that going into 2026 because I think it's going to help you stay on fire. So here are some ways that you can be consistent in your marketing. Again, selling doesn't have to be gross. You don't have to feel bad to sell. It could look like Sharing Availability updates How many sessions do you actually have available to book? Two spots left in February. I can take six sessions in January. I'm looking for six moms with due dates in January or February. You could share behind the scenes of you editing or you even up leveling your skills. Maybe you don't have sessions on your books right now. What can you show? Can you prep for sessions? Can you clean out your camera bag? Can you learn something new giving quick education? For example, why I don't need a studio to create beautiful family imagery for you. Boom. You could post polls. Would you rather and have people vote? Or which many would you be most interested in booking A or B? Utilize your stories and not just your feed post. I love the reels. I love the carousels. I love seeing your photography work. But I also want to see your face in your story so I can get to know you as a person and so I can find some common interests between the two of us. Get consistent in your marketing. Show up four to five times a week. Even if it's one time a day. You can do this and it will change the course of your business. And the last one, thank you for sticking with me. I know I have rambled a lot, but I feel like I want each of these points to just I want to drive at home so bad for you. The last one is to send an email to your list once a month. You worked hard to build that list. Even if there's less than a hundred people on your email list, you worked hard to get those names. These are human beings that would potentially book you for a session. And so if you're not utilizing your email marketing, then you're leaving bookings on the table because you never know when someone's going to watch you consistently show up month after month after month in their inbox. And then one of those months they're going to say, okay, you're right, I'm on board. You've told me six times, I'm on board. Let's go. So utilize your email now. If you don't know what to say or you don't know how to make your email look pretty but also get it to deliver. I actually created some email templates for you. These are Flodesk email templates. They are available in my Etsy Shop. We're doing an Etsy Shop refresh this month. So go to shopbrookejefferson.com that will reroute you over to my Etsy shop and grab you some of these email templates or marketing templates or whatever is in the shop that you need to do a little refresh in your business. Grab what you need. That's why I created them for you so that I could help you save six hours on making all these things and I'll just do it and then give it to you. So make sure you go check that out if that is something that you are wanting to do. Okay, we made it. That is the whole episode. I wanted to share quicker ways that you can book more sessions in the winter months and I truly hope that you found value in this episode. Whether it was an idea or whether it was a reframed thought. I. I just, I hope you did. I hope you love it. If you didn't know by the time you're listening to this, we are in the middle of a 30 day marketing challenge. It is completely free and it is not too late for you to jump on board. In fact, I would love it if you would come jump on board to this marketing challenge. I spent a lot of time putting this together and it is really good. Bite size, bite size things. I'm sorry, Bite size, Daily actions. There we go. There's my brain that is going to help you. So you really only need 15, 20 minutes a day. Open the email. It takes about 2 to 2 to 3 minutes to read through, tells you your action item and then you're going to spend about 10 minutes going in and doing it. So if you have not done that, go to brooke jefferson.com challenge sign up for the marketing challenge. It will start you automatically at day one and you're going to love it. You are going to love it. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode. I will see you next Thursday. It.