In the past few years’ photo booths have become fairly popular, as an easy, fun and budget friendly way to capture memories with family and friends at various events. As a photo booth business owner, I often get asked one question: How can I use “social proof” to increase my photo booth business? In this post, I will try to outline some of the basics on How to get “social proof “and use it in the photo booth business? Also, I will focus on some details of what exactly I used and what worked for me and my business.
Once you have bought the photo booth and all accessories and supplies needed, and you are all set up to start working you’re going to want to find customers for your business, right? Follow bellow my experience:
My experience with setting up a photo booth business
Next step after buying my first photo booth was to create a worthy looking and customer attractive business website. The majority of your business relations are going to happen online so I highly advise you build one, or have one built for you. While I was designing the webpage, I realized that all I had were a couple of pictures of the photo booth itself and nothing more. At the least I needed to prove to my future clients that this is a legitimate business, from which they would want to buy services. Therefore, I had to show on the website social events, photos and videos displaying previous customers using the photo booth as an evidence of legal business, not only that but I also needed to show them it’s worth renting my photo booth, right? So, I needed a social proof so potential customers can trust my business.
What is Social Proof?
Social proof is a brilliant way to influence your customers and expand your business presence. People buy your product or use your service based on others opinion for it. Regardless what your business is about, if you manage to demonstrate that there is somebody else out there, liking and using what you have to offer, others would want to take advantage of it as well!
So, what exactly is a Social proof? Here is a definition of it from wikipedia:
So, that is to say: If you have done business for others and they are happy with your services, then you have a much better chance of being hired by new customers. That is your social proof that you have something good to offer and they can take advantage of it, just like others already did. Simple enough, right? Just like when you are looking for a restaurant and you have to choose between two. If one of the two restaurants have a line going outside of the building with many cars parked in the parking lot, and the other one looks empty. Which restaurant do you think you would choose? Automatically you will assume that the restaurant with the line outside has better food and service and you would want to go there.
Similarly, consider online shopping. Most purchasers look for the products with the highest rated reviews, right? Do you know why? Because they are looking for the social proof that the product they’re considering is right for them, so they buy it.
How to show Social Proof?
By now you should know how showing a social proof is extremely important if you own your photo booth business. Now let’s focus a bit on how to get social proof. There are a lot of different ways to show a social proof, but the problem for most business owners including myself is that we do not have a building to show a line of customers outside, but we still have to show that we have clients and we provide services. Hence, the only way we can indicated a social proof is via online existence (website, social media, reviews etc.) and word of mouth. Follow bellow a few tips on how to do that.
Website for your photo booth business
As mentioned previous, the vast majority of your orders will be from online reservations. That is why having a well-established website of your business is a key and a first step towards gathering your social proof. Start with properly setting up your booth, next try to gather photos and videos which you could upload on the website. Photos and videos that are taken from customer at events, using your photo booth, laughing and enjoying. Now you have the perfect social proof, and a great, entertaining approach for your customers to interact and remember your brand!
Reviews for Social Proof.
It’s been well recognized from all businesses that product reviews are one of the most influential forms of social proof. With high rated reviews, you will be able to demonstrate future customers the rating of a product and it is also a powerful way to increase sales. As mentioned before, people search and buy highly rated products and services. Use your customer’s reviews on your website, and all across your social media account Facebook, Instagram, Tweeter, You -tube etc. All things considered who doesn’t like high ratings? And if you are beginner with no customers yet, a good way to get reviews on your Facebook page or social media accounts and website is to pay people to review your services. Consider websites like (name of websites) where you can find reviewers to share their opinion. Ask them to leave comments and include photos or videos, which later you can share on your social media and website.
Later on, when you join websites like ‘Wedding Wire ‘, or other similar platform, and you start building up more reviews you can also place links within your website displaying all these high star reviews and comments.
Below is a short bullet point list with suggestions for a good start of your photo booth business.
⦁ Show the photos of the taken by the photo booth. That way you can illustrate the quality of the photos, and that you have cool and fun templates.
⦁ Show Photos of customers using the photo booth (in other words make sure the actual photo booth is shown in the photo. Especially if you have a better photo booth than your competition) Try to use photos that shows customers smiling, laughing and having a great time using your product.
⦁ Show Videos of customers using your photo booth. Here is an example of what we used from our first event.
How to get social proof before you have any customers
As mentioned before when I was setting up the website for my business I have not had any customers yet and I did not have any videos or photos that I could possibly use. So, because of that I decided to rent my photo booth to people for no cost, but I asked for reviews, photos and videos. The process was fairly easy and fun. Finding someone to do their event’s photos for free, it’s an easy task. After all who would say “NO” to that right? All I did was just go to craigslist.com and posted an ad saying “Free Photo Booth Rental” on the subject line. For the craigslist description, I just explained we are willing to do a photo booth event for no cost, as long as we can take photos and videos of people using the photo booth for promotional purpose on our website and any other advertising on social media. You can use other websites that you can post your ad for free, wedding blogs or even Facebook groups where people look for these types of services. It will work the same way as long as you explain the process to them.
As you can imagine my inbox was filled with customers who were more than eager to do their special occasion for no cost. So, I decided to go with a nice lady who was having a “Quinceañera” (Mexican version of sweet 16) event. We organized everything for that event which was not that much. Just had to properly set up the photo booth, and everything went more than perfect! Not only did I get tons of photos and videos but I did my very first event for the photo booth which was also a perfect practice. As we all know doing an event can be anxious and stressful but when you are doing it for free it can take off the stress that would normally feel if I was charging.
After the event was over I added the promotional items to the website and Facebook page and I was ready and confident to start the marketing. Not long after I was able to get my first paid customer.
