Wedding Photography Market research and feasibility study

Wedding Photography Market research and feasibility study 

(Unit 5) Outcome 1, 2, 8

I have been carrying out some market research lately on the wedding photography business in and around my local area. I have visited many local wedding fayres to find out more information and to gather further knowledge of the local competition I would be facing should I decide to continue and set up a wedding photography business

I have deduced from my research that the town is absolutely saturated with wedding photographers in and around this local area. I have counted approximately 25-20 wedding photography businesses around this area, which can be found on web pages, yellow pages and local phone directories

There are various standards of photography offered by these photographers and prices range from some of the cheapest at £400 to the top end £1500-£2000

Most offer different tiers of service for eg: bronze, Silver and gold packages and many offer a bespoke service especially tailored to suit your needs

The competition is huge and you have to be a good photographer to stand out from the rest. There are a lot of “weekend warriors” out there who have bought a couple of 5D’s or equivalents and produce wedding photography that is far from inspiring. The budget market is out there and there are people willing to pay for a budget wedding on the cheap. You get what you pay for and they are obviously  not bothered about a high standard of quality. They will undoubtedly receive budget standard photography and budget standard photos

I have looked at the top end of the market around here and there are one or two excellent wedding photographers. Their prices are quite high well over the £1000 mark but they do provide high quality photography

Not only do you need to be a very good photographer to succeed in wedding photography but you also have to be a very good businessperson

Not only does your standard of photography have to be very good but your business skills are paramount. You need to be good at Marketing, Finances,

Management, admin and IT, etc. Looking at research statistics on the Internet, you need to be 30% photographer and 70% businessperson to be a successful wedding photographer

I’m confident I have a lot of these skills, and want to expand them further. I’m positive and focused and like the buzz of the competitiveness. This I believe pushes your standards even higher. It’s imperative to have an excellent website built up front that show cases only your very best work. Potential clients get their first impressions of how good a photographer you really are while looking at your first 6-10 images. Produce a sub standard website with sub standard images and you will ruin your photography reputation for ever

I am not ready yet to complete a good website at the moment and my images are not at a high enough standard to show off my skills . I will be working with different models over the summer period to improve my wedding photography, better my skills and give me more experience of the industry

Marketing tools for a photography business

Marketing and publicity of your business are very important and are of paramount importance to promote your products and advertise your business. A photography website is an absolute must for any business to succeed  in this age of technology and the internet. This is the number one marketing tool which can advertise your business globally. It is therefor imperative to get first impressions right,right from the outset. 


It is essential to produce a very impressive website of a very high standard with nothing but your very best images included if you want to generate new business and customers. The site has to hold the viewers attention at the first view, load quickly and to sell your product right from the first instance. It's critical that your home page is very well thought out which captivates potential customers and keeps their interest


My view is to use minimalist content which oozes quality but will keep your potential customers interested,wouldn't recommend adding sound to the site as this slows down loading times and can be very annoying to potential customers.First Impressions count and potential customers will move off your site if it does not produce that initial impact


Prices vary to produce a website from a few hundred to thousands of pounds. Initial costs can soon escalate  as a successful site has to have it's content updated on a regular basis


This grab below shows the homepage from world renown wedding photographer Yervant, again it appears minimalist but also shows a contemporary quality design quality. This type of site would most probably have been designed by a professional web developer

The link below takes you to some of the world's best wedding photographers and their websites

http://www.mastersofweddingphotography.com

The grabs below are all taken from one of the world's best wedding photographers Martin Shembri. His site shows minimal content but is of a very high standard which shows quality from the outset

The website below is a very low cost budget website of a local wedding photography business which has not been thought out very well. All of the content of this website is crammed onto the home page with little or no thought gone into the construction and initial homepage. The home page is very cluttered and appears very busy

The prices are very cheap and there will be certainly be a market for the lower end of the market

I do not wish to criticize any of the photography on these websites as I 'm sure the content is of the highest possible standard. I'm sure there are different markets available to suit everybody's budgets and you get what you pay for.This blog is intended to highlight the different standards of websites available and is not intended to defame any of the business's or photographers 

concerned

The link below shows some of the best photography websites on the net

http://www.expertphotography.com/top-20-photography-websites

Shown here are 35 of the most beautiful websites on the net

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/10/35-beautiful-photography-websites/