NACE National Experience Conference 2012
Picture this: you walk onto a basketball court in a tank top, ball under your arm, ready to play. Nobody knows who you are. The teams are already set. The players already know each other, trust each other, like each other.
That's exactly what it feels like the first time a wedding photographer walks into the corporate market. And it's exactly why most give up too early.
We've spent two decades generating corporate photography leads in Dallas and around the world, and a significant number of them have come from one discipline: relationship marketing. Not ads. Not hashtags. Showing up, intentionally and repeatedly, until you're part of the starting five.
Here's how the whole system works.
Ideal Audience vs. Dream Client
First, a distinction that will save you a lot of frustration. Your ideal audience is about getting attention — getting people to look at your portfolio and ask, "you've been doing weddings for so long, what's this new thing you're doing?" Your dream client is the person who says, "I have a use for you," or better yet, "I've got a great lead you might want to pursue."
You need both. The audience creates the atmosphere; the dream client creates the invoice.
From Courtside to the Starting Five
Relationship marketing is a longer play than running an ad, so it helps to know what progress looks like. Don explains it in basketball terms.
You show up to the court where you want to play — a venue, a planner's orbit, a community. First time out, crickets. That's fine: they now know who you are. You're in the gym.
Keep showing up and you make the bench. Then one day the starting five gets sick, or double-booked, or they're simply not available — and the coach looks over and says, "those Mamones have been here. They've been showing up. I'm going to give them a shot."
Deliver, and they call you a little more, and a little more. You're winning them games — which in our world means creating loyal clients and making the person who referred you look brilliant. That's your actual job as a corporate creative: make your referrer look good.
And then one day, you're the starting five. Because starting fives age out, move on, or mess up — and somebody has to be ready.
The Room Where It Happens
So where's the court? Most photographers know PPA and WPPI — conferences where photographers learn from other photographers. Wonderful for your craft. Useless for corporate leads, because your clients aren't there.
The event industry has its own associations, nationwide with local chapters: MPI (Meeting Professionals International), ILEA (International Live Events Association), and NACE (National Association for Catering and Events). Caterers, venues, DJs, production companies, and — heck yes — planners, all in one room, once a month. At a typical meeting you'll find 120 people, and you can usually see the attendee list ahead of time and decide who you strategically want to connect with.
Want to accelerate everything? Offer to photograph the meeting. Services at these events are donated, so everyone in the room sees you work — and then your photos of their flowers, their food, their entertainment land in everyone's inbox. Suddenly the dots connect. Bonus: it's portfolio work, too.
Don't Do the Drop-By (Do This Instead)
Follow-up is where most of this dies. Getting a business card and never following up is the worst — so here's the follow-up system that kept our local donut shop in business.
The morning after you meet someone, email them. But don't ambush them with a pop-by, and don't force a rigid appointment. Give them a window: "I'm going to be in your area on Tuesday morning from 9 to 11 — would it be okay if I swing by and drop something off?"
Emily spent years as a hospitality professional, and she's blunt about why this matters: event people are in the throes of it. An unscheduled visitor — however charming — becomes noise instead of an asset. A window respects their reality.
Then show up with two or three dozen donuts, a handwritten note on top, and a stack of business cards. No pitch. Invariably, within weeks — a few months at most — the leads would start coming in, because people could see we were genuinely interested in a relationship.
One more thing: follow the people, not just the venues. Hospitality turnover averages 18 months. Your contact at one hotel becomes your champion at the next one — if you've stayed connected.
Your Competition Is an Asset
In the wedding world, you book the job, you shoot the job — couples hire you, the artist. Corporate clients want something different: a trusted partner who sends a trusted professional and exceeds expectations.
That shift changes how you see other photographers. Some of our most amazing opportunities have come from fellow shooters who referred business that wasn't a fit for them. We do the same in return — food portraiture goes to us, children's portraits go to a high-energy friend who loves them.
Our favorite proof: wheeling our camera bags out of the Four Seasons in Costa Rica after an event, we passed a photographer named Patrick wheeling his in. We swapped info right there on the sidewalk. From that one conversation came multiple referrals — and multiple times we hired each other.
Collaboration over competition isn't a bumper sticker. It's a revenue stream.
The LinkedIn Piece
If association meetings are the in-person court, LinkedIn is the one that's open 24/7, 365 — your brand ambassador while you sleep. Most creatives treat it like Oz before Dorothy opens the door: black and white next to Instagram's Technicolor. But LinkedIn is less about presentation and more about connection — finding your ideal audience and your dream clients, then keeping your finger on the pulse as they get promoted, change companies, and celebrate work anniversaries. Fifteen or twenty minutes a day of genuine comments keeps you top of mind with the exact people who book corporate work.
If that still feels daunting, Don built a 41-page LinkedIn playbook that maps the entire thing — profile setup through outreach strategy — into a 90-day, step-at-a-time evolution, with a 30-minute starter call so it doesn't gather dust on your hard drive. Get the playbook here.