How To Promote Your Photography Business Using Paid Advertising

The single biggest reason behind why I see photographers fail when it comes to paid advertising is simply not knowing their numbers.

Therefore, if you want to increase your chances of success you should first start out by calculating what the average value of a customer is worth to your photography business.

Without this number you will not be able to establish how much your business can afford to spend on paid advertising in order to acquire a customer and still remain profitable.

How Do You Calculate The Average Value Of A Customer?

There are many formulas you could use to determine the average lifetime value of a customer, but for the purpose of this article we’re going to walk through a simple equation to help you get started:

Add up all of your existing customer orders over the last 12 months, then divide this value by the number of customers you served over that period of time. The resulting number will equal your average customer order value (GROSS).
Add all of the cost of goods sold (COGS) over the last 12 months together, then divide this value by the number of customers you served over that period of time. The resulting number will equal your average cost of goods sold (COGS).
Add all of your business expenses together for the last 12 months, then divide them be the number of customers you served over that period of time. The resulting number will equal your average business expenses per customer.
Now, take your average customer order value (GROSS), subtract your average cost of goods sold (COGS) and then subtract your average business expenses per customer. The resulting number equals your average customer order value (NET) over the last 12 months.
What percentage of your average customer order value (NET) would you be prepared to spend in order to acquire a customer and still make a decent profit?

But What If I Don’t Make A Profit On My Advertising And Lose Money Instead?

Most photographers are happy to spend thousands of dollars on photographic equipment, yet spending one hundred dollars on advertising that could potentially result in a far greater return for their business scares the living daylights out of them.

If losing money on your advertising efforts is a concern of yours, don’t worry because the reality is when first starting out you will not succeed straight away, but when you do it’ll be well worth the investment.

It’s A Numbers Game…

And it’s a game that can be won by simply knowing your numbers, continually split testing and improving upon your results until you achieve profitability.

Once you’ve achieved profitability it then becomes extremely easy to scale your advertising budget because you will know for certain that for every dollar you spend, you will receive in return two or three dollars which then makes running advertising campaigns an enjoyable experience.