Why I gave up traditional forms of advertising

If you follow my blog or Facebook page you've likely seen me recently getting excited about our announcement of our first ever #heidihortoncouples event. We are hosting this event as a way of treating our wedding couples to a night out, while also getting to catch up with their beautiful faces!

This year we're taking our couples out to the movies - think glasses of bubbly, salted popcorn and a new release comedy on the big screen! That's not to mention our awesome giveaway we're running, where one lucky couple on the night will win a weekend away in Queenstown complete with an anniversary portrait shoot! And I want to tell you how we've managed to bring this awesome new #heidihortoncouples event to life...

More than a year ago I gave up traditional forms of advertising. Newspaper advertising. Expensive wedding expos. Paying $$$ for a one-time business card size ad in a wedding magazine. I just wasn't seeing any return from it and around the same time I realised that our brand is very much people-centred. Heidi Horton Photography was built on word of mouth and our online presence. So after looking at my financial reports one year & seeing how much we'd blown on advertising that wasn't paying for itself, I thought what if I saved that money and put it into saying thank you to our awesome wedding couples?! After all if it wasn't for our amazing couples I wouldn't get to do what I love for a living. It's the photographs from their weddings that market our business, it's our couples, their family & their friends that recommend us and we want to honour that.