Elizabeth shares a win-win solution she came up with to gain beautiful professional photographs and exposure for her business.

I run an astrology website at It’s In The Stars which creates beautifully designed hardcover astrology reports for couples (LoveStars) and parents (BabyStars) to gain hours of fascinating insight about their relationship and their children. Most reports are bought for anniversaries, birthdays, christenings, Christmas, engagements, Mothers Day, new babies, Valentines Day and weddings.

I had no budget for a photography session let alone casting but needed some attractive images of real people interacting with my LoveStars and BabyStars reports so I could replace my simple product shots of the reports with people actually reading the reports to make it much more obvious how the products were used, to give them “life”.

I approached a local photography studio in Drummoyne – MMG Photography – to see if they’d like to work with me in a win-win-win situation.

In short, I would give couples and parents who booked studio portraits with MMG a boxed gift certificate for an $89 LoveStars or $99 BabyStars report in return for having one or two shots of them holding and reading the reports.

The studio – which is still running the promotion – has been able to increase its bookings during the quieter winter months while the customers received a valuable astrology report at no cost to them (apart from their portrait session which they’d already booked) and I created a higher level of awareness of It’s In The Stars with customers in the local community.

MMG Photography will be opening new photographic studios in the Hunter Valley and Brisbane and It’s In The Stars will provide this promotion to new customers there as well.

Elizabeth Ball