This year, my business has been in the running for The Best of Yorba Linda contest. I have been completely humbled and awed by the amount of support I have been getting in the contest, and I am so grateful to all my followers, family, and friends who have supported me and my photography business all these years.
At the beginning of the contest, I was not sure how my business would do. I watched as my photography business sat at the bottom of the page on the list of businesses in the Marketing Services category. I wondered if I should even mention it to anyone, but I felt it was one of those things where people would be compelled to vote.
It quickly occurred to me that most of my clients knew about the contest. My followers do not follow The Best of Yorba Linda website or Yorba Linda’s Chamber of Commerce. Many of my portrait clients come from all over So Cal. They drive from Los Angeles or Irvine or La Jolla to Yorba Linda to have their portraits taken by me. I also have different clothing brands I work for, and many of those clients who would be the BEST people for vouching for my marketing services are either out of state or overseas. I realized I needed to go out there and let people know about the contest because most of them had no clue it was even going on.
I started to look at some of the other businesses in the other categories. I realized many of the ones who were ranking in the top three for the contest were actively going around letting people know on their social media, via text messaging, via emails, etc. that they were in the running for this contest this year. Once I realized I had to do the same for my photography business, I decided to get to work. I immediately started to make a post about it on my Facebook page, and right away, I started seeing my business slowly moving up in the rankings.
I realized this year that it is ok to get out there and marketing for your own business. When you’re in the running for something like your local “Best Of” contest–you need to market the heck out of that! The local ice cream shop we go to had a flyer with a qr code for voting when we went to buy ice cream the day right after the contest started. I can’t even imagine how many votes they got from doing that. Making it convenient and easy for their customers to vote was definitely a great way to get more votes. In marketing–I have noticed it truly is those little things that make a huge difference. I am so glad I was able to figure it out in time to actually have a chance at the contest this year.
In a couple of weeks, I will be attending our Chamber of Commerce’s 1oo Year Gala, and even if my photography business doesn’t win, I will still be grateful for the opportunity I had to even get this close in a contest that involved all the businesses in Yorba Linda. I also will never forget all the lessons I learned these last few weeks about the importance of marketing and putting your business out there.
