When to pass out promo material?

[Curtis Cunningham]

I'm doing an event at a hotel tonight for Valentines Day (portraits of dinner guests) and am wondering when is the best time to hand out my promotional material? Is it better to do it tonight after I do their portrait, or include it in a folder when I return their prints to them? I'm thinking specifically of a couple rack cards I have that talk about portraits and weddings.

At the very least, tonight I can hand out a thank you card and include my business card in it. I'm just not sure when to hand out other material...tonight when the proverbial iron is hot, or when their prints are returned from the lab and the promo material would act as a reminder.

What are your opinions?

[Martin_Doudoroff]

I'm sorry you didn't get any feedback on your question. I didn't respond because I wasn't qualified to do so, even just as a consumer. What did you wind up doing?

[Curtis Cunningham]

Thanks for the concern Martin.

In the end I decided to bring along my rack cards for portraiture just in case. But my business card was the main thing that I (or my wife who was helping) handed out to people after I photographed them.

I tried to engage the customers in some sort of conversation as they were looking at the previews. And I handed out my rack cards to those who expressed a more specific need for additional photography.

There were a couple other instances where unexpected opportunities came up that I am going to follow up on this week. One customer told me how their family had some pictures taken by a friend, but for some reason there were some problems with how they turned out. So he expressed real interest in my taking a look at them to see if there's anything I can do. Again I'm following up with him this week.

So in a couple weeks once the photos and easels are back from my lab, I plan on putting each customers order in a folder. In the left pocket of the folder I plan on putting a price list, my business card, a couple of my rack cards (portraits, weddings) and a letter expressing my thanks for their order as well as some sort of an 'ask' for other business. There's probably other things I can do, but these are the best ideas I have at this point. We'll see what happens in a couple weeks.