“It’s a numbers game. If people don’t know you exist, you’re definitely not going to get called.”
— Julie Bidwell, professional photographer on photographers and marketing
Let’s be honest, marketing your photography can be tricky. How do you make sure people remember you? In the third part of our interview, Julie Bidwell opens up about how she keeps in touch with clients and promotes her work. You might just come away with a few new ideas to try yourself.
Julie Bidwell is a Connecticut-based photographer focused on food, interiors, and portraits. A Syracuse art graduate, she works with clients across the Northeast and serves as President of ASMP CT, where she mentors new photographers and contributes to the photo community. Be sure to check out this thoughtful and engaging conversation.
Text below transcribed from a portion of an interview conducted by Betty of Cradoc fotoSoftware inApril 2025. To view this and other interviews, please go to our Cradoc fotoSoftware YouTube Channel.
Marketing Your Photography
When I started doing print promos, it was a postcard, and I would just send out hundreds. Then I graduated to doing booklets, like, maybe a 20-page booklet that I would send out again by the hundreds, maybe 800 at a time. Two times a year, maybe I would send those out. I actually did that right up until the pandemic. And then that stopped all print because so many people were working from home, we don’t have their address. And if you send it to their office, they’re going to come back to their office in a month, and there’s going to be a pile of promos. Are they ever going to see the promo? So it just seemed a little bit like a waste of money to be printing and mailing stuff to maybe never be seen.
I mean, it was always a numbers game because say you send out 500 promos, how many are actually going to be looked at? How many of those people are actually going to call? But I found that I always made my money back from them. I haven’t done one since pre-pandemic. I’m sort of planning one right now, but it’s going to be a little bit more zine style than promo style. It will be a promo, but there’ll be a little bit more writing in it, whereas before, it was just photography.
I do Instagram, I do LinkedIn. I try to be pretty consistent with LinkedIn and promoting without being obnoxious about it, which is a fine line. So that’s the big difference in promotion before. Print was pretty much what everybody did and nowadays people are still doing it. I don’t know if it’s as effective as it used to be so I think you just have to do everything. You have to do the social medias, you have to do maybe a print promo once in a while, do reviews when you can. And I don’t know if anyone’s doing in-person meetings anymore. I haven’t had one in a long time, but I think you have to just try all of it.
It’s a numbers game. If people don’t know you exist, you’re definitely not going to get called.
fotoBiz, photographers and marketing:
So one thing I will say, just to plug you guys a little bit, is that fotoBiz is really helpful in keeping track of who I’ve sent what to. So anytime I send out a promo in the notes, I just put the date and then what I sent them. And then sometimes I put a little code on, like, if it’s a new client, I’ll put “New” in that field. And then maybe in a month, I’ll search for all the new ones. And if there’s, like, 20 new ones then I can just batch send those 20 people, and then I just go through and delete the new. Or, if I’m only sending at holiday time, I make up special prints and send those out to “Yes” clients.
So I will put in that field if they were one of the ones that got that promo. In six months, if I’m sending out print again, I can look and say, okay, I’ve already sent them that one. So I find it super helpful for keeping track of who I’ve sent what to and when I sent it.
Photographers and Marketing
Marketing plays a key role in building a successful photography career. Check out this blog on our site that breaks down the importance of using keywords to help your photos get discovered. We’ve also shared another helpful article packed with practical tips for marketing your photography business.
About Julie Bidwell
Julie Bidwell is a Connecticut-based photographer drawn to the art of storytelling through food, interior, and portrait photography. Her love affair with the camera began as an art student at Syracuse University and has only deepened over the years. From working with clients across the Northeast and beyond to engaging with the photography community as President of ASMP CT, Julie is always exploring new ways to push my craft forward.
Website: https://www.juliebidwell.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliebidwellpix/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliebidwell/
Copyright: All images belong to Julie Bidwell. Used by Cradoc fotoSoftware with permission of the copyright holder. Use of images or content by any person or entity other than Cradoc fotosoftware for any purposes is expressly prohibited.
See other great interview transcripts:
- Todd Bigelow
- Jonathan Kingston
- Julie Bidwell
- Steve Whittaker
- Scott Dworkin
