For the last 6 years I have been working, photographing, selling, marketing, retouching, learning the business with my mom in our studio. We knew that there would be a time when she would 'retire' and I would continue on my own. That time came in August.

An opportunity to be apart of an area wedding show presented itself to me. I had to take it. The waiting lists for our wedding shows are forever long. I was so not prepared. No business license, no state sales tax id, no county merchant license, no website, no blog, no logo, no branding, no booth, no wedding contract. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. And I had 2 (yes i said 2) weeks.

Fourteen sleepless nights later, I had everything I needed. So off to the wedding show I went. My husband and boys helped me set up. I talked to brides all day long. Saw familiar faces from when mom and I previously photographed weddings. Saw new faces. Made new friends and contacts with the other vendors in the wedding show.

Overall, the show was good. My booth was nothing fancy. I had 3 canvas banners hanging, a couple of chairs and a few samples.  I did have marketing pieces that I handed out and bags with my old logo on them.

I decided to hand out the bags with my old logo for one reason: I needed the exposure. I figured even though the logo was old, my name was not.  I had a tremendous response to the old logo bags. People were talking....and they were talking about ME!

I left the show with 3 solid leads on weddings for next year. Very pleased as I am only wanting to photograph 12 weddings total next year.

One week later, I started thinking that I really need to get my name out there for not only weddings but for portraits also. Again, another opportunity presented itself: a night shoot. This was an event for local photographers to get together with a couple models and just shoot. The models were high school senior girls. Both girls had already had their senior portraits taken. I was so pumped when I left the event, that I went home and processed 6 images and got them up on Facebook. Much to my surprise, both girls choose my images from ALL the images that were taken that night as their profile images. Instantly, I was exposed to 1700 high school students.

While at Missouri Professional Photographers Association's fall seminar, I had the opportunity to finally meet a photographer and his wife in our area that I had never met before. While visiting with them, I let Sarah know that I was photographing under my own name and would appreciate any referrals they would send my way and that I would do the same for them. Within 2 days, Sarah had referred someone to me for newborn portraits. Thank you Sarah!

All three of these scenarios have one thing in common, WORD OF MOUTH marketing. I have no budget for marketing right now. Therefore, I am relying on others to market for me.

In order for Word of Mouth marketing to work, there has to be a buzz. The very best person to generate the buzz about you and your business is YOU! That's right! I said you! (Thank you Gene Ho for teaching me that).

Start talking about yourself and others will start talking about you too! It's a simple principle. Learn it, love it, live it, and use it to watch your business grow.