Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! I had a look over your situation and I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance. It sounds like you've built a really solid foundation with your wedding photo/video business, hitting 30 weddings a year is no small feat, especially from manual outreach in Facebook groups. But you're right to be worried about that channel drying up – it's unpredictable and not something you can reliably scale. To double your business, you'll need a proper, predictable system for generating enquiries.
What you're facing is a classic growth problem. You've maxed out the 'hustle' channels and now you need to build a real marketing engine. The good news is that with a $4k average price point and the capacity to take on more work, you're in a brilliant position to make paid advertising work for you. It's just a matter of putting the peices together correctly. This is a bit of a long one, but I wanted to give you a proper detailed breakdown of how I'd approach this.
We'll need to look at your offer, it's the foundation for everything...
Before you even think about spending a single dollar on ads, we have to talk about your offer. Right now, you sell "wedding photography/video". So does every other person with a camera in Texas. This is a commodity. To stand out and make ads work, you need to stop selling a service and start selling a solution to a problem. The number one reason I see campaigns fail is because the offer isn't strong enough or doesn't speak to a real, urgent need.
You need to become an expert in the nightmares that keep engaged couples awake at night. Forget the demographics for a second. Your Ideal Customer Profile isn't just "couples in Texas getting married." It's a problem state. What are they actually afraid of?
- -> Fear of hiring a photographer who makes them feel awkward and getting stiff, cheesy, posed photos. They want to look natural, like themselves.
- -> Anxiety that the photographer will miss the most important moments – the little glances, the tears, the unexpected laughs.
- -> The sheer terror that the photographer might be unreliable, or worse, not even show up.
- -> Frustration at the thought of waiting 6, 8, or even 12 months to get their photos and video back.
- -> Feeling overwhelmed by complicated packages and hidden costs.
Your marketing, and especially your ads, need to speak directly to these fears. You don't just sell "a photo/video team." You sell peace of mind. You sell the guarantee that they will look and feel amazing. You sell the joy of reliving their day through authentic, emotional images, delivered so fast it surprises them.
So, how do you turn this into a concrete offer? You productise your service. Give it a name and build it around solving these problems. Instead of a price list, you present a solution. For example:
The 'Candid Moments' Collection - $4,250
For couples who want to feel relaxed and get photos that look and feel like them.
- -> Full-Day Coverage with Two Photographers: We don't miss a thing, from the morning mimosas to the dance floor chaos. Having two of us means we capture the big moments and all the little reactions in between.
- -> Complimentary Engagement 'Practice' Shoot: Our secret weapon to eliminate photo-awkwardness. We'll spend an hour together before the wedding, so on the day, you'll feel like you're just hanging out with friends.
- -> 48-Hour Sneak Peek Gallery: Get 20+ 'wow' photos to share with family and friends while the buzz is still fresh.
- -> Guarenteed 4-Week Turnaround: You won't be waiting half a year. Your complete, beautifully edited gallery will be in your inbox in one month, full stop.
- -> Cinematic 5-Minute Highlight Film: A powerful, emotional summary of your day, set to music, perfect for sharing online.
Do you see the difference? This isn't just a list of deliverables; it's a bundle of solutions to their biggest anxieties. Every single bullet point tackles a specific fear. This is an offer you can build an entire advertising campaign around. It's clear, it's valuable, and it sets you apart from the photographer who just lists "8 hours coverage" on their website. This is what will make your ads work when others fail. You have to definately get this right before moving on.
I'd say you need to know your numbers before you spend a penny...
Alright, once your offer is rock solid, the next step is figuring out what you can actually afford to spend to get a new client. So many business owners just throw money at ads with a vague hope of it working. That's a recipe for disaster. You need to switch your thinking from "How cheap can I get a lead?" to "How much can I profitably invest to acquire a $4,000 customer?"
The answer is in your numbers. We need to do a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure out your allowable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). For a one-off service like a wedding, the Lifetime Value (LTV) is essentially the profit from that single job. Let's break it down.
1. Average Revenue Per Wedding: You've already said this is about $4,000. Great start.
2. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): What are your direct costs to service one wedding? Think about the salary for your second shooter/videographer, album printing costs, travel expenses, editing software subscriptions, music licensing for the video, etc. Let's be conservative and say this totals $1,000 per wedding.
3. Gross Profit Per Wedding: This is simply Revenue - COGS. So, $4,000 - $1,000 = $3,000. This is the crucial number. Each wedding you book puts $3,000 of gross profit into your business.
Now, how much of that $3,000 should you be willing to spend on marketing to get that wedding in the first place? A healthy ratio for a service business is a 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio. This means for every $3 you make in profit, you can spend $1 on acquiring the customer.
So, your maximum allowable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is $3,000 / 3 = $1,000.
This is a game-changer. You now know you can spend up to $1,000 on advertising to book a single $4,000 wedding and still be very profitable. This removes the fear from ad spend and turns it into a predictable investment.
But we can go deeper. You don't pay for customers directly; you pay for leads or enquiries. So we need to work backwards from your CAC. What is your current lead-to-booking conversion rate? Let's say out of every 5 qualified enquiries you get (people who fill out your contact form and are a good fit), you book 1 of them. That's a 20% conversion rate.
Maximum Cost Per Lead (CPL) = CAC / Number of leads to get 1 customer
Maximum CPL = $1,000 / 5 = $200
Now you have your magic number. You can afford to pay up to $200 for a single, qualified enquiry from your website. Suddenly, seeing a $50, $80, or even $150 cost per lead from a Meta ad doesn't seem scary anymore, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Without it, you're just guessing.
Here's a simple table to visualise the caluclation:
| Metric | Calculation | Your Number |
|---|---|---|
| Average Revenue Per Wedding | - | $4,000 |
| Costs per Wedding (COGS) | (Second shooters, albums, travel, etc.) | ~$1,000 (Estimate) |
| Gross Profit per Wedding | Revenue - COGS | $3,000 |
| Target LTV:CAC Ratio | (Industry standard for healthy growth) | 3:1 |
| Max. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) | Gross Profit / 3 | $1,000 |
| Lead-to-Booking Rate | (How many leads to get one booking?) | 1 in 5 (20% Estimate) |
| Max. Affordable Cost Per Lead (CPL) | CAC / 5 | $200 |
You probably should focus on Meta ads for this...
So you have a killer offer and you know your numbers. Where do you go to find customers? For a highly visual, B2C service like wedding photography, the answer is almost certainly Meta (Facebook & Instagram). Google Search can work, but it's often more competitive and expensive for weddings. Meta lets you get in front of people with stunning visuals before they're even deep into their search, and the targating options are perfect for you.
The first and most important rule is to set up your campaign with the right objective. You MUST use a Leads or Sales (if you have a 'book now' deposit function) objective, optimising for a conversion event on your website (like a 'lead' firing when someone submits your contact form). Do not, under any circumstances, use "Reach" or "Brand Awareness." When you choose those, you're telling Facebook to find the cheapest people to show your ad to, who are by definition the least likely to click, engage, or buy anything. You're actively paying to reach non-customers. A conversion-focused campaign tells the algorithm "go and find me people who are most like the ones who have already filled out my enquiry form". It's a completely different instruction and the key to getting results.
Next up is audience targeting. This is where we'll put your ideal customer profile to work. I'd structure your campaigns in seperate ad sets for different stages of the funnel:
1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Finding New People:
This is your prospecting campaign, designed to reach couples who don't know you exist yet. You'd start by testing a few different audiences against each other to see what works.
- -> Audience A (Life Events): This is your strongest starting point. Target people in Texas with the demographic/behavioural targeting of "Newly engaged (3 months)", "Newly engaged (6 months)", and "Engaged". This is as direct as it gets.
- -> Audience B (Wedding Planning Interests): Target people who have shown interest in pages and topics like 'The Knot', 'WeddingWire', 'Brides' magazine, 'Zola', specific high-end wedding dress designers (e.g., 'Vera Wang', 'Pronovias'), or popular wedding venues in Texas. This finds people who are actively in planning mode. Avoid broad interests like "Weddings" as that will include guests, vendors, and all sorts of irrelevant people. You need to be specific.
- -> Audience C (Lookalike Audience): This is your secret weapon once you get going. After you have at least 100-200 leads from your ads or can upload a list of your past 30 clients, you can create a "Lookalike Audience." Facebook will analyse the characteristics of those people and go find millions of other users who are remarkably similar. A 1% Lookalike of your past customers is often the highest performing ad set you can build.
2. Middle/Bottom of Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) - Retargeting:
This is where you bring back the people who have shown interest but haven't taken action yet. These are warm audiences and will have the highest conversion rates. It's criminal not to have a retargeting campaign running 24/7. Your retargeting audience should include:
- -> Website Visitors (Last 90 Days): Anyone who has visited your site but hasn't submitted your contact form. Show them an ad with a different video or a gallery of your best work.
- -> Video Viewers (Last 90 Days): Anyone who watched 50% or more of one of your wedding highlight videos in your prospecting ads. They're clearly interested. Show them an ad with a clear call to action to "Get a Custom Quote."
- -> Social Engagers (Last 90 Days): Anyone who has liked, commented, or shared a post on your Instagram or Facebook page.
By splitting your campaigns like this, you create a full-funnel system. The ToFu ads bring in a constant stream of new, relevant people, and the MoFu/BoFu ads work tirelessly to convert those people into actual, paying leads, helping you hit that $200 target CPL. You'll need to test and turn off audiences that don't perform well, but this structure is the professional way to manage a media budget and scale reliably.
You'll need ad coppy that actually works...
The final piece of the puzzle is the ad itself. You have amazing visuals – your photos and videos are the heroes of your ads. But those visuals need to be paired with compelling copy that stops the scroll and forces a click. The best ads don't just show pretty pictures; they connect on an emmotional level.
The most effective copywriting framework for a service like yours is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). It directly mirrors the fears we identified in the offer section.
Problem: State the pain point they're feeling, in their own words. Use a question to hook them in.
Agitate: Pour a little salt on the wound. Remind them why this problem is so frustrating or scary. Paint a picture of the negative outcome.
Solve: Introduce your service as the perfect solution, the hero that saves the day.
Your ads should be a combination of your best, most emotional, candid photos and videos, combined with PAS copy. Here are a couple of examples of how this would look in practice. Imagine these are paired with a stunning highlight video or a carousel of your best images:
Ad Example 1: Targeting the 'Fear of Awkward Photos'
Headline: Look & Feel Like Yourselves On Your Wedding Day.
Primary Text:
(Problem) -> Worried about feeling stiff and awkward in your wedding photos?
(Agitate) -> You've spent months, maybe years, planning this perfect day. The last thing you want are photos with forced smiles and cheesy poses that feel like they belong in a stranger's album. You just want to relax, enjoy the day, and get photos that actually capture the real you.
(Solve) -> That's our specialty. We're a photo/video team that focuses on candid, authentic moments. We direct, we don't pose. Our goal is to make you feel so comfortable, you'll forget we're even there. The result? Timeless, emotional images that tell the true story of your day. Tap "Learn More" to see our portfolio and let's chat about your vision.
Ad Example 2: Targeting the 'Fear of Unreliability/Slow Delivery'
Headline: Your Wedding Photos in 4 Weeks. Guaranteed.
Primary Text:
(Problem) -> Hearing horror stories about couples waiting 6+ months for their wedding photos?
(Agitate) -> It's a huge source of post-wedding stress. You're so excited to relive the memories, but you're stuck chasing a photographer who has gone silent. You deserve better than vague timelines and radio silence.
(Solve) -> We're a full-time, professional team built on reliability. You get a contract with a guaranteed 4-week gallery delivery date, period. Plus, we'll send you a 'sneak peek' gallery of 20+ images within 48 hours so you can share the excitement right away. Secure a team you can trust. Tap "Get Quote" to check our availability.
This type of copy, combined with your best creative work, is what gets people to stop scrolling through their feed and actually consider you. It shows you understand their problems on a deep level, which instantly builds trust and makes them far more likely to send an enquiry.
This is the main advice I have for you:
I know this is a lot to take in, but scaling from 30 to 60 weddings a year requires a strategic shift from chasing leads to building a system that attracts them. Relying on Facebook groups is unpredictable; a paid advertising funnel is a controllable, scalable asset for your business. Here’s a summary of the plan I’ve outlined:
| Task | Actionable Step | Why it Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Refine Your Offer | Package your service into a named collection (e.g., "The Candid Moments Collection") that solves specific client fears like awkwardness or slow delivery. | Turns your service from a commodity into a unique, desirable solution that stands out. |
| Calculate Your Budget | Based on your $4k price and ~$3k profit, establish a max cost-per-lead of ~$200. | Allows you to invest in ads with confidence, knowing exactly what a lead is worth to your business. |
| Launch Prospecting Ads | Run a Meta 'Leads' campaign targeting "Newly Engaged" users and those with interests like 'The Knot' and 'WeddingWire'. | Systematically reaches a cold audience of people who are
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