Every year it never fails. Emails from high school students flood my inbox asking if I would like to take out a business ad in their yearbook.  When I first started my senior portrait business, I would’ve thought this was a great idea.  Thankfully, I took the advice from my mentors and opted out.  I have come to realize that the best advertisement for my business is word of mouth. When my clients are texting about me to their friends, tweeting, gramming, or posting on FB about their session, I am getting the BEST PR I could ever ask for.

So how can you get them to talk about you?! Even though you are probably really awesome, and your images are amazing, when you are dealing with high school students you need to do a little bit more to get them to excited to talk about you.

I have found that rewarding them is an excellent way to motivate them to tweet away!

At the end of their senior portrait session I give them a trifold paper explaining my rewards program.  They can earn dollar rewards in the form of a credit towards their ordering session. They are asked to post their sneak peeks on social media, tweet or add a FB status about the session,  and refer a friend to book a session just to name a few.

To get this started, I suggest creating a list of how you’d like for them to advertise for you.  You need to decide what is most valuable to your business and what will reach your ideal cliental.

Depending on the task, set the dollar reward amount appropriately.  I reward my seniors more dollars for a booked referral than I would for a tweet about their session.

I also suggest giving them a time frame. Their ordering session is about 2 weeks after their session. Therefore I give them a short amount of time to repost sneak peeks and a longer amount of time to earn a booked referral credit.

Make sure you are clear with your expectations and the rules of the task.  The best way to communicate those to your client is by listing them directly on your rewards program handout or in an email.

Currently the way I keep track of their rewards is by documenting what they accomplish directly in their client folder.  The client folder goes with me to their ordering session and I can easily access my record and their total reward.

Now, don’t be surprised. There are plenty of clients who don’t take advantage of this rewards system.  I have found that the clients who don’t take advantage of it are mostly the ones who aren’t very present on social media or just don’t have the time to mess with it. It’s rare, but it happens.

This way of rewarding my clients has truly been the best way I’ve received business.  I think it would be smart for you to give it a try!

Today’s guest blogger is Melissa Hunt of Melissa Lynn Hunt Photography in Concord, North Carolina.  Melissa is a monthly contributor to Seniorologie and runs a successful photography business that consists of high schools seniors, families and weddings.  Melissa also has a special project called The Natural Beauty Project where she photographs women to show off their natural beauty, inside and out!