5 useful tools for photo product marketing

There are many tools available out there that can make marketing your photo products much easier. Here, we recommend 5 that are great for making your marketing more effortless and, at the same time, much more effective.

#1 Snappa

What do you do if you don’t have a graphic designer on hand? There’s no need to worry, as tools like Snappa or Canva allow you to easily create beautiful graphics by yourself. These can be used for the likes of social media and display ads, or even the newsletters and blog posts that accompany your website.

Snappa, for example, has dozens of templates that can readily suit your needs, alongside a large library of stock pictures and icons.

However, when it comes to the realm of photo products, you will likely need something more than stock imagery to catch the attention of your followers and show would-be customers the advantages of your photo products. Specifically, you need to show how your items are better than traditional, non-customizable products.

Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools that can help you create life-like mockups. You can try out Smartmockups for free and, if you like the results, there are also various paid tools that have tons of photos to help you generate your mockups.

Screenshot from Snappa.com

#2 Buffer

Sometimes it can be difficult to run all of your social media channels effectively by hand. When you operate on more than one channel, it can be hard to keep up with and maintain your schedule.

Thankfully, tools like Buffer, Hootsuite or Everypost will post everything for you and take this weight off of your hands. We recommend that you prepare your posts in advance, by at least a week or month, depending on how much you post. This can then be scheduled through Buffer so, this way, you have one less thing to worry about.

If that wasn’t enough, Buffer also gives you access to analytics, enabling you to check which posts perform the best. This knowledge can be used to craft future posts and learn what your audience responds best to.

Screenshot from Buffer.com

#3 Mailchimp

If you’re running an online store, you cannot ignore the benefits of email marketing. It is still one of the most effective channels for generating growth.

You might have already heard of Mailchimp, at least by name, but you might not be aware of its full potential. This is because its transactional email API – I Mandrill – can take your email marketing efforts to the next level. It enables you to send personalized trigger emails, all based on individual user behaviour. For example, if someone takes actions on your website, such as browsing love-themed photobooks, he or she will get an email directly based on this.

Thankfully, Mailchimp can be easily integrated with the most popular e-commerce platforms, including PrestShop, Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce, so there is no difficulty in adding Mailchimp’s personalized services to your store.

If Mailchimp is not your cup of tea, you can try other email marketing & marketing automation platforms, like GetRespone or AWeber.

Screenshot from mailchimp.com

#4 SemRush

SEO and search engine marketing are highly important for every e-commerce business but this is especially true for the likes of online photo product stores, which operate in a very competitive niche.

Semrush supports you by providing data on both your paid and organic traffic. More importantly, it also offers insight into that of your competitors. You can use it to check with keywords bring the most traffic to your competitors websites, if they utilise paid and display advertising. If they do, you can even see what their ads look like.

This knowledge can then be used to create new, better ads, target new keywords in your campaigns and much, much more.

Screenshot from Semrush.com

#5 Hotjar

If you want even more insight into user behaviour, such as where they click, how far down a page they scroll, when they choose to leave a page and even feedback on how they use your photo product editor, you try the like sof Hotjar and CrazyEgg.

These tools allow you to create heatmaps of your site, alongside recording user mouse activity. With this data, you can identify any issues or problems with your site, such as non-intuitive navigation, poor call to actions or promotions simply being too far down the website, where most users don’t see them. With this knowledge, you can fix your website, enabling it to provide a better experience.

You can also request feedback directly from users, through the likes of polls and surveys that enquire about their experience.

Screenshot from hotjar.com

I hope you will find these recommendations useful. You should keep in mind, of course, is that effective marketing tools and strategies still rely on a strong foundation if they are to give you a big return on investment. In other words, it ultimately doesn’t matter if you have more traffic from Adwords, social media and personalized email marketing if these users have a bad experience on your website, or even with your product editor.

Your store needs to live up to their expectations when it comes to customization possibilities. You can check out the Printbox demo here and see how it can improve your users’ experience.