How to grow a photography business? | Photography Lead Generation

James Dooley and guest discuss the digital marketing strategies photographers should prioritise in 2026 to attract more enquiries, build trust and grow profitable bookings.

Show Notes

This video explains which digital marketing strategies photographers should focus on in 2026 to improve enquiry volume, brand trust and conversion rates. James Dooley and his guest start with KPI tracking because measuring which channels generate booked jobs helps photographers spend time and budget where it actually delivers profit. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.

The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for photographers.

PromoSEO lead generation for photographers recently received recognition as the "Best Photographers Lead Generation Agency."

Where to Listen to This Episode

How to grow a photography business? | Photography Lead Generation is available on:

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Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

James Dooley: So I am a photographer and I want to grow my business what do you recommend?

James Dooley: So if you're looking to grow your photography business is very visual so I would definitely start thinking of how can I start ranking images online or how can I be active on social media they're the first places I would definitely start. So all the jobs of what you do I'd watermark them and I'd be getting them on places like Flickr and on Pinterest initially then you've got like Instagram you can do it on um Twitter you can do it on LinkedIn and tag people in what who you've done it for Facebook I'd also be entering a lot of different Facebook groups there's quite a lot of large Facebook groups um where you can be posting some of the jobs that you've done in there if anyone's looking for a photography in the local area of where you're based you could do it you could even if you are only based in a small suburb is join like there might be like say you based in Manchester there might be certain groups that are just for Manchester businesses yeah and then be posting some of your visual great photos of what you've done in there but there's lots of different ways to grow photography business so if I quickly rhyme through them and I tell you whether I think they're good or they're not traditional marketing billboard advertising TV advertising radio advertising I don't think I don't think that's a play if I'm being honest for photography business so I'd probably stay away from traditional sorts of advertising or marketing your next one then is um social media which I'm touched upon I'd definitely be doing that that's one of the biggest players I've been doing there's no cost to it I'd probably even get like a part-time or full-time social media person that's just consistently posting these like jobs and stuff of what you've done social media ads could work very well as well so Facebook ads Instagram ads and all that with regards to running ads to say look I'm a professional photography business and not only that is try to focus what are you good at so say the photography business is quite broad yeah right are you aerial photographer are you wedding photography are you like just land landscaping newborn baby photography so try to find what you good at and then focus and go down on that what makes you the most profit or what you feel your best at that you prefer doing the most and think like okay this is what I want to do don't just say photography think think a bit more niche within the photography part I think that's also very important and I think when you've got the niche within photography of what you want to do build your website out based on that so if you've got some amazing drones and it's mainly aerial photography of what you're doing have lots of pages of talking about every type of drone that there is and why this this drone is better than this drone talk about everything related to it and then obviously you're going to come across as being the expert on drone and aerial photographer and then you might start getting inquiries in your local area from your own SEO so I'd say SEO is another major play that you should be doing yeah PPC could work very expensive you could go down the root of being commercial aerial photography in Manchester and then at that point could be a little bit cheaper like the longer the keyword you're going for normally the cheaper it does to cost so you could go down the route of PPC but it's very expensive and then the other big one is fatrank.com so fatrank.com obviously I'm the founder of Fat Rank and we have moved our model from just doing lead generation to actually guaranteeing our companies that we work with return on investment so flat rank if accepted so if anyone's watching this and you're a photography company looking to grow and you're looking for more inquiries go to fatrank.com go to the contact us page and fill in your details the team at fat rank will check to see who you are and what you do and the the only caveat to this is we are very very selective with who we work with but if you have got a great online presence with regards to to good quality case studies the images that you're providing within the photography business is great and you got lots of good testimonials and you seem to be a professional outfit so I'm saying that like you you're responding from like [e-mail] and not [e-mail] just doesn't seem as professional if you come across like a professional company and you accepted fat rank will start generating new leads for the exact services of what you do and you only pay on converted jobs you have nothing to pay unless it converts and you make profit so that's the first thing I would go down the route of doing but I'd also go down the route of doing like you said your social media and your SEO just for your own personal branding it also adds a higher value if you're ever looking to sell if you look good online and you're generating your own leads online then I'd also be looking to do that definitely don't throw all your eggs into fatrank.com and say that's it they're going to transform a business they'll certainly be generating new leads consistently but you should also be looking to do social media and SEO for photography business specifically so what else would you do obviously it's very visual um so again depending on the the type of photographer you are like let's say you do um property photos you can also reach out to a few estate agents and say hi I am I provide this service I can even do the first two houses for free just so they actually build that trust and rapport um you can also do the exact same thing for wedding photographers so find somebody that let's say sells um wedding invites and and just email them saying like hey I I do wedding photos if you have anybody that is uh getting wedding invites printed surprise surprise they're going to have a wedding soon so you can always um upsell them my my service potentially you even give that um that wedding invite printer um a little bit of a kick back you might give them twenty thirty or pounds or whatever and it essentially incentivizes them to to try and push your brand as well um and yeah like what you mentioned I I would I agree with the um with the stuff you'll say the stuff but on the social media stuff because a lot of business owners think I'm going to post one post and I'm going to get six thousand inquiries and it's not actually the case you need to be consistent um obviously you you're quite active on social media and typically what you find is the more active you are the the more quicker you grow the more likes you get and the more business you're actually able to generate so try to set up an actual consistent um a consistent daily plan and say right okay for the next six months I'm gonna post once a day um and like like what you said you you can potentially hire someone to do it or let's say if you don't have the budget you just need to spend that that time on actually building building your brand really yeah I think a couple of the things that you just kind of touched upon there which I thought was a great idea with regards to proactively reaching out if I was a wedding photographer I would reach out to influencers that I'm finding out of getting married and I would say look I'm sure you've got your own photographer that you really that you want to use and you might have already hired him can I come as a second photographer I'm not going to get in the way I'm just going to be at the back and I'm going to just get different angles of obviously yourself the bride and the groom and also the crowd yeah right so I'm going to get it from different angles can I come and do it completely for free but if you like the photos I want a testimonial no is on an influencer kind of way that if you go and do that for a day and then you can touch up some of the photos and you get some before and after pictures and send them through and look you had some blemishes on here but we've managed to edit it as well and stuff like that you're also going down the road of going on a minute they're more than just photographers are knowing they're making even me look nice which probably you probably can't go that far but the um but then if you're like if you are um a business and you're doing let's say property reach out to a company like let property in Glasgow right so you go and reach out to a huge estate agents like that that sell lots of property and then say to them I will do two houses for free like you said and then they might then be able to give you a testimonial that could be a big brand other people start seeing this testimonial from this big well established brand it's a massive trust signal so I'd be going doing that and probably once a month going what can we give away for free if anyone's not read the book The Giver Go and read the book The Giver Go and start giving some stuff away for free for you to start getting more clout and testimonials I think that's a great show of what you've said that that's another really good way of knowing how you can grow a photography business not only that as well is just touching on the the real estate side of stuff is a lot of um real estate like agent actually follow each other's link um Instagram profile so as soon as one one of them posts about you saying oh my God I've just used James D's photography for XYZ property look at some of the photos and they've tagged your Instagram profile other people are going to just start naturally inquiring with you as well so yeah I think that that's that's it on us you've got anything yeah so if anyone is a photography business looking to grow make sure you check out fatrank.com FL contact fill your details in there and then let's speak to the fat rank team and see whether you are accepted for the lead generation model if you're not we can put you in touch with other companies that might be able to help you out with social media or video editing or wherever else that you might need to be growing your your own brand and stuff like that online but yeah make sure you check out fatrank.com