Awesome content cheers for posting this. james

Some top advice here, and I agree it is extremely important to diversify your marketing strategy, don’t just focus on one channel.Working in marketing I come across umteen businesses that just do the opposite of your advice re stay local. They don’t even consider it, they just broadcast their message without thinking how to focus on their target market, and even better, their local target market.What Patrick said in his comment is a good point, provide your customers with a means of staying in touch and your success rate will be much higher. Or should I say, your ‘targeted’ success rate.The problem is, and I know this from experience, you can advise people what to do, but for them to get off their backsides and do it is a different matter. They seem as keen as mustard when you tell them about it, but unless they have a schedule and stick to it, they will let their online marketing go stale.

Mark, thanks for your comment.

I do use Yelp a lot as a customer when I’m traveling. It’s a quick way to find a good restaurant in a new town.
You are also right on the money when you say that commercial photography probably won’t get booked through a ‘homemaker’ or a consumer. How B2B or commercial photography is marketed is very different that one would market a B2C or retail photography studio. Yelp is very much a B2C platform – I can’t see a kitchen appliance wholesaler putting any stock in the reviews of a restaurant’s patrons to figure out where to sell his commercial ovens.

Lastly SEO is more like marketing and less like sales. If you place an ad in the paper, you don’t pay for results, you pay based on how many subscribers are going to see the ad. I’ve always said that SEO only gets you into the door. Your images and your brand are what gets you the job and your follow through and the experience your client has on the shoot will get you the repeat business.