4 Marketing Strategies to Book High-End Wedding Photography Clients

Almost every wedding photographer who joins our community shares a goal of booking more high-end wedding photography clients. Whether it’s a luxury wedding hosted at the venue of the year or a swoon-worthy destination wedding, it’s the perfect opportunity to elevate your portfolio – and charge your worth.

After all, “high-end” equates to more money, right?

Last year, we surveyed our global community to find out how much wedding photographers charge for their top package on average. Converting all the responses into USD, most photographers charged between $3,000 to $4,000 for their top package, with only 6% charging above $8,000 for their premium package. Of 900 respondents worldwide, only 1% of photographers charged over $15,000 USD for their highest wedding package.

So, let’s do some simple maths.

If you successfully attracted 100 “high-end” wedding photography clients who all booked your top package at $4,000, you’d be making an eye-watering average of $400,000 annually.

On the other hand, if you raised your top package to $8,000, you’d only need to book 50 “high-end” clients to make the same amount.

…That’s half the work for the same amount of money. 🤓

2 key factors that can directly influence your income potential, aside from your business expenses:

1. The prices of your packages and offerings
2. Your ability to attract high-end clients who are willing to pay those prices

Now comes the big question: how can you tackle those 2 areas?

💸 If you’re ready to level up your pricing strategy, you can check out the full replay from Jai Long’s 3-day bestselling ‘Pricing with Purpose’ workshop – click here to learn more and sign up.

🚀 If you’re confident about your prices but want to up your marketing game, check out Jai’s upcoming workshop on all things marketing! A 3-hour online workshop on the 22nd of May (AEST), grab your FREE ticket ASAP.

Jai Long’s top 4 marketing tips on how to book more high-end wedding photography clients

These are the 4 key marketing strategies that Jai used to exponentially grow his Free the Bird wedding photography business (and income) when he first started – with zero experience. But don’t worry, he’ll walk you through ALL of his top marketing tips at the Marketing Accelerator workshop. This is just a little teaser. 😉

While these strategies may seem relatively simple and straightforward, Jai added his usual “unrealistic” touch to kick it up a notch and it WORKED.

1. Styled Shoots

Yes, we all know how incredible styled shoots can be for building your portfolio, refining your style, and attracting your dream clients, but they can also be time-consuming and costly.

Jai started out by also organising his own styled shoots until he realised they took up too much of his time. So, he started leveraging other people’s time by asking other vendors to organise them – and he’d just come along to capture all the photos.

By doing so, everyone was able to share and promote their work while Jai became omnipresent across everyone else’s social media feeds and websites.

2. Free Work

Yep, you read that right…Jai shot weddings for FREE for 3 months but he did it on his terms. Offering to photograph clients’ weddings for free meant that he was able to build the foundation and nurture the reputation of Free the Bird while creating the best portfolio possible.

Here’s the ‘Jai’ difference – even if it was for free, he still sent an invoice showing the total cost alongside the “$0” charge. This ensured that those clients knew the true value of what they were getting and would value his services accordingly.

3. Published Features

Strategic in his approach, Jai specifically asked each publication what they were looking to feature, who they wanted on their pages, and how he could help them make it happen.

From that outreach, Jai was able to create purposeful content while building many rewarding relationships – rather than blindly submitting his portfolio to any ol’ magazine or blog and hoping he’d somehow get featured.

Published in everything from Hello May magazine to Ivory Tribe and Together Jai, these features positioned Jai as a rising industry expert as well as increased his desirability amongst his desired high-end wedding photography audience.

4. Wedding Fairs

With newly engaged couples in attendance (aka your ‘hot’ traffic audience), wedding fairs and expos are a brilliant way to get your name out there! However, you’ll be competing with other photographers and vendors who are just as eager as you to promote their products and services.

Rather than participating in other people’s wedding fairs, Jai organised his very own wedding fair called ‘Found with Love‘ – this was by far his craziest marketing stunt and it paid off tremendously!

Found with Love helped him to book loads of high-end wedding photography clients, without having to compete with anyone else. Connecting with other vendors, the fair was also an absolute game-changer for expanding his network even further.

Find new ways to innovate ‘old’ marketing strategies

Aside from the occasional ‘aha’ moments, no one’s blaming you if you’re struggling to come up with new marketing strategies. As a wedding photographer with limited time and money, there are only so many ways to market your services and products.

As you’ve read above, Jai successfully used popular marketing tactics like styled shoots, offering free work, publication features, and wedding fairs to get Free the Bird off the ground. He didn’t necessarily try any “new” marketing strategies but he found new ways to make them BETTER by adding his own unique touch.

From day one, Jai’s biggest focus was on building a client-centric business – from giving his clients the most value possible to perfecting the entire client experience, it’s all in the small details.

It’s about getting crystal clear on your goals and being super intentional with everything and anything you do.

Join the Marketing Accelerator workshop and learn the art of marketing from Jai himself

Open to all photographers and creatives, Jai will be covering the 3 core marketing channels: Organic Marketing, Referral Marketing and Paid Marketing.

This is a 100% FREE 3-hour online workshop starting at 10AM on the 22nd of May (AEST) – includes a 1-hour LIVE Q&A session at the end so you can ask all your burning questions!

If you can’t tune in live, there will be a 7-day replay available until the 29th of May (AEST).

Don’t miss out, grab your FREE ticket today!