Eye on Business / How Other Small Businesses Can Help You Grow Yours!
Welcome to Eye on Business, SSG’s new blog segment dedicated to bringing you helpful information to grow your senior photography business. I’m Jodee Ball, sleep-deprived owner of <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/JP-Ball-Photography/208585998297?fref=ts">JP Ball Photography</a>, and I’m privileged to join the SSG team!Introduction aside...let’s get down to business! Today’s post is all about how other businesses can help you grow yours. As a small business owner, you should be aware that you are not alone in this big, bad business world. So you don’t have the marketing budget of Nike or even the well-known photographer down the road? Neither do I. But with a little creativity and some faith in your art (That’s right, you produce ART! - another post, another day), you can effectively market your own business with the help of other small businesses. And you can do so with either a minimal budget or even an empty one!JPBP just finished a fun, collaborative event. We teamed with a local boutique owner who just finished a room dedicated to formal dresses. It’s prom season and we decided to join together to host a prom event for the boutique. This was planned rather quickly so we relied on social media to get out the word, along with advertisement inside her boutique. So far, so free.We asked girls from the area to send us a photo with their school’s name. Our goal was to rally girls from many of the area schools. We knew that once we shot and posted pictures, they would be shared across the various cities/towns that surround us.We called on local businesses to join us in donating their time for makeup and hair. Again, so far, so free. And once again, with the help of social media, we are now connecting to one another’s clients. It becomes a win-win for everyone involved.To finish out the event, we are gifting images to the girls who modeled and the owner of the boutique is submitting a press release to the fashion section of the city’s newspaper. All of the businesses who helped with the event will be named in the article and our images will be featured.So, what would you, a senior photographer, benefit from co-hosting such an event?<ul><li>Better connections with owners of relevant small businesses (who will recommend you to others!)</li><li>Beautiful girls to model and images to showcase in your portfolio</li><li>Connections to high school students from greater surrounding areas</li><li>An opportunity to exercise creative freedom when shooting</li><li>Experience that will help you create larger, more impacting events in the future</li></ul>Can you think of relevant businesses that could potentially help you grow your senior photography business? If a collaborative idea strikes you, stop in and chat with the owner! You may be surprised where the conversation takes you!<em id="__mceDel"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6608" alt="" src="http://seniorstyleguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/SSG_1.png" width="640" height="800" /></em>