Best Contest Ideas for the Photography Business

By: Irene Byvalkevych
Date: May 06, 2019
Comment: 0
Category: Awards Management, Awards Marketing

In recent years, the photography industry has been growing steadily. With the advent of new technologies and price-accessible resources, the business has become highly sought after, and social media photo contest ideas have gained particular popularity.

About the industry photo contest ideas

The photography industry has experienced a revolution over the past 5–10 years thanks to the introduction of digital cameras, smart phones, social media platforms, etc. We are now entering a new phase for photography enthusiasts. In order to promote your photography business, you must come up with exciting photography contest ideas!

Why you should run contests for the photography industry

Every photographer can run a successful online promotion, but why should he or she be running a contest? The truth is that you should run social contests because they are the perfect marketing strategy for your industry. To establish a larger social media audience, you can get incredible results from your photography business contest ideas.

The target audience

Professional photographers can sell to many different target markets. There is a variety of target personas for the industry you may want to focus on while organising your photography competition based on your current business objectives, such as families, weddings, automobiles, events, etc.

Challenges and features of the photography industry

This industry remains very lucrative as professionals and amateurs collectively shell out billions on expensive equipment and accessories each year. This is a peculiarity of the market you may use to your advantage when coming up with your photo contest theme ideas.

How to run a contest for the photography industry

Before you pick from among your best photo contest ideas, check out how the contest running process goes in the photography industry:

Before putting your time and resources towards any social media marketing initiative, it’s important to define the goals of the project. Define your contest goals and stick to them.
Specify your audience. Messaging is key, so the delivery of your message to your audience should be customised and accurate.
Build the program. Plan your contest, and come up with requirements and rules, etc.
Pick your platform. Define your call to action and get started!

To run a contest for your photography business in the best possible way, choose a reliable organiser online with the onsite experience you need!

Contest requirements

Before you start, provide your photography audience with specific requirements for the contest on your chosen platform. It may go something like this:

This photo contest is only open to professional photographers. Every entrant must provide a valid document showing their identity and current occupation.

Criteria:

Adherence/appropriateness to theme
Uniqueness of concept
Originality
Clarity of expression
Humor
Creativity
Innovative means of delivering a message
Entertainment quality

Images must meet the submission requirements to be eligible. Indicate the entry dates and the submission deadline. As a contest admin, you may also preset a certain level of difficulty for a contest (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and provide other important information concerning the event you plan to publish.

Types of contests

Depending on the platform you choose, you may have the following:

Facebook photo contest ideas
Instagram photo contest ideas
Contests on Twitter
Instagram photo contest ideas
Photo contest theme ideas
Group photo contest ideas

Try to be as creative as possible when coming up with your contests and awards ideas. Remember that your competitors may be using the same channels and tools as you are.

Best contest and giveaway ideas for the photography industry

The problem is that creating rules and regulations for your photo contest can be a bit of a challenge. However, there are great working ideas that will help you cope successfully and engage the audience according to your campaign objectives.

Use a hashtag

A hashtag contest is a giveaway in which a business asks its followers to post a piece of content on a social network, accompanied by a specific hashtag, in exchange for a chance to win a prize. The users’ content might be a photo, video, review, or some other type of written content.

Voting contest

The key to success with social media marketing is to create engaging and interactive content. A simple way to boost engagement is to ask your users to vote on the submissions. Create ranking, rating, or poll voting contests on the Judgify platform, and view the results in real time.

Tell a story

Storytelling has always been one of the great ideas for a photography business contest for clients. It is an effective way to deliver quality content and engage a serious audience related to a range of issues, such as event charities, environmental and non-commercial problems, etc. With that in mind, ask your customers to provide their own stories on a chosen topic and potentially win the prize.

Best photo contest prize ideas

Of course, there must be something to give away to the winners once your contest is over to encourage their further participation and increase your success.

Coupon for entering

To use a coupon: When entering payment on the checkout page, the entrant will be able to click and redeem a coupon below his or her payment method. When they enter their code, they can then click Apply and get a discount.

Give away a wedding package in the fall

Fall is a popular season for weddings, so why not appeal to your customers with an attractive prize, such as a free wedding photo session!

Give away a new baby photoshoot

Family pictures capture the people in our lives who give us support, encouragement, and strength whenever we need it. A once-a-year newborn photo session giveaway is one of the good photo contest ideas to engage family goals and values.

Give away free photo framing

Good photo accessories are also highly sought after among photography business users. Include this idea in your list to use another time.

Conclusion

If you want to run user-friendly and beautiful contests, collect images, run hashtag and caption contests, feature user-generated content, enable voting, and more via your photography contest ideas for a photography business, you’re in the right place. With Judgify platform, it will be easier to define your industry audience, come up with good contest ideas, and run contests for the photography industry in no time!