Are you feeling stuck when it comes to marketing? It’s a crucial part of our role as business-owners, and yet we often either overlook it or feel overwhelmed by it. In a world saturated with marketing messages, we need creative ways to make our brand known and connect with potential clients.

If we aren’t marketing well, then our brand will be drowned out by all the other voices clamouring for everyone’s attention. And if no one even hears about us, then we can be guaranteed that no one will book us.

So what do we do to avoid this disaster? How do we keep from getting lost in the sea of other businesses and marketing messages? What are strategic ways that we can build relationships with potential leads and turn them into returning clients?

One way that we do this every year (while also having the time of our lives) is through our Halloween Blumebooth… We’re more excited than ever to provide this opportunity this year for our community and all the adorable kids in their costumes!

If you’re unfamiliar with Blumebooth and its success as a marketing strategy the last few years, we’ll tell ya all about it. Blumebooth is a simple photo-booth “treat” we began to offer 12 years ago, and every Halloween since! It truly has become a tradition families refuse to miss. We set up a DIY photo booth area for kids to show off their fun and creative costumes (so we don’t even have to provide the props!), and we take professional high-key pictures of them for their families to keep. Finally, we gather their parents’ emails and send them the final product for FREE.

So, if it’s free, how does this strategy grow our business and make us so much money?

The answer is simple…this event gives us the two most valuable assets any business can have. Did you notice one HUGE thing I just mentioned? We get their parents’ emails! Having a potential client email list that you own is crucial…it makes your future marketing “free”! Because we have all of these families’ emails, we can let them know about future mini sessions and more without having to spend money trying to advertise to them through other channels.

The second asset is just as big…not only do we have these clients’ emails, but we also have already established a relationship with them! All of these people already know us, like us, and trust, which makes them far more likely to return to us for portraits in the future! Instead of having to rely on reaching out to “cold” leads, we can focus our marketing efforts on direct emails to “warm” clients, who have already integrated with us. The returns on this are huge!!

Want to know what running a free event like this looks like? Watch our Halloween Blumebooth in action! Come on inside our free Facebook coaching group and you can watch the uncut video as I explain and operate our booth from last year! 

*Tip: This is a great marketing opportunity to find potential customers in your immediate area! But also keep in mind that every city or region has economic areas where more “ideal clients” live, generally those with disposable income who value luxuries (such as portrait photography) enough to pay for them. For many years before moving to our current home, we hosted our Blumebooth in a friend’s neighborhood instead of our own. If your neighborhood does not house your “ideal” clientele, consider asking a friend in a higher-end neighborhood to host your photo booth.   

The Halloween BlumeBooth is our favorite thing to do this time of year. It makes us incredibly happy to know that many families have made it a tradition to stop by our house to get their picture taken, and then display the photo from each year in their home as standard fall decor. Even neighbors who have moved away still come back to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood!

*Tip: If you don’t plan to participate in Trick-or-Treating this year, that’s OK! Get creative and think about other seasonal opportunities, such as fall festivals. How many festivals are being hosted by cities, churches, and schools this time of year? What is stopping you from reaching out to them and offering to “donate” your own photo booth as added value for their audience? As an example, we will set up our Blumebooth for at least two festivals this season — both of which have invited us back annually since our first conversations offering them this service. For them it means a successful event and happy attendees. For us it means direct interaction and ongoing communication with new customers!

If you’re a member of our ComeUnity and want to try this kind of seasonal event out for yourself, we say go for it! It’s a great opportunity for you to get to know potential customers in your area, as well as really strengthen relationships within your personal community. After all, business is all about relationships and providing value, right?

To make the planning easy on you, we have brought together a list of the gear you might need to replicate this sort of shoot yourself!

And we aren’t the only ones using this strategy effectively! Other ComeUnity photographers just like you are having fun and growing their businesses this way, too.

So what do our final image results look like? Take a look! We’re very much looking forward to Halloween and serving our community this time of year again, and we hope you are too.