We all love our clients, right? After all, they’re the lifeblood of your photography business – without them, you would be out of business before you could blink!
With that in mind, it’s amazing that so many photographers fail to treat their clients with the love and respect they deserve, and they neglect to nurture those essential relationships that can lead to referrals and repeat business in the future.
I sat down with portrait photographer Marta Hewson to talk about this topic in detail, and to discover how she creates and builds amazing relationships with her valued family of clients that feeds directly into creating positive word of mouth marketing for her photography business.
About Our Guest: Marta Hewson
Photography by Marta Hewson
Marta Hewson was born and raised in Portugal and moved to Canada at the age of 20. She graduated from Sheridan College’s photography program and to further her studies and experience in the field she assisted various commercial and fashion Photographers for 2 more years, where she was introduced to the larger scale of studio shooting.
After starting a family she opened her own studio in Hamilton in 2000. In 2006 she joined the Professional Photographers of Canada in which she became accredited in Portrait Photography and is currently the vice-chair of the Hamilton/Niagara branch.
She continues to follow her passions in this ever-changing field, and now that her husband has joined forces, they inspire each other to grow creatively and push themselves constantly forward.
Episode Summary
Here are some of the great topics we talked about in this episode:
- How Marta got started in photography…
- The top two personality traits of successful photographers…
- What we mean by establishing “value” in our clients’ minds…
- Marta’s biggest source of clients…
- What we mean by “client relationship management”…
- Blurring the line between “customer” and “friend”…
- Celebrating your clients’ birthdays and other life events…
- Keeping business friendships on the right side “friendly”…
- How the client experience affects business relationships…
- Setting and managing client expectations…
- How to deal with negative word of mouth…
- Why ranting about clients should be avoided at all costs…
- The importance of client relationships after the sale…
- Some tools you can use to keep track of your clients…
- Photography is business first and art second…
