The Original Viral Marketing

by Josh Hudson, Co-Founder- www.mystudiomentor.com

I was driving through my neighborhood this morning on my way to Starbucks and noticed a sign in the front yard of one of my neighbors. The sign was stuck in the ground and read, “Another New Roof from State Roofing! Ask our Guys for a Free Estimate and how you can Save 10%!” This of course got me thinking about marketing; it seems that my dad Bruce Hudson cursed me with a
business mind that never shuts off. I thought to myself, is this the original form of viral marketing? When you think about it, the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality is really just viral marketing. My mother-in-law’s plumbing company does the same thing; whenever they conduct a service in a neighborhood they put up a sign, talk to neighbors and put out door hangers. Everyone wants
to know what their neighbors are up to. Creating custom family wall décor can have the same effect. We’re not putting up door hangers, but the buzz created by our clients when their friends and neighbors see the 30, 40, 50, or 60 inch portrait hanging in their home can be just as powerful

This same concept is now being used effectively with social media, mainly Facebook. In addition to posting images and video and tagging our clients, we now do the same thing with the finished products. The image above is of Dr. Rogers during his 50 inch portrait delivery! I took the image on my cell phone and had it up on Facebook in a matter of minutes! Part of our studio workflow is hand delivering the finished wall portraits and hanging them for our clients. We bring them a bottle of wine and even encourage them to invite their neighbors over. While we are there, we take photographs of the portraits on the walls and even some Flip videos. These are used for future marketing pieces and we post them on Facebook. Check out one of these videos below! Social media now makes it easier to spread our message to the people who our clients interact with, thus building up a never ending referral network. It is just like the yard sign I saw this morning, but even more viral.

Now with the new Facebook Timeline pages, we can take this concept even further! In addition to posting our clients images we are now creating custom Facebook Timelines for them to post on their page! It’s like a little a digital billboard for our studio that our clients proudly display.
Here is an example of this:

Josh Hudson is co-founder of  www.mystudiomentor.com and creator of Facebook for Photographers.