Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Four framing markets, one workshop, and Officeworks killed the walk-in
Custom framing is four businesses sharing a workshop: art and photo custom framing (the bread and butter, $180 to $1,200 per piece, conservation mat and UV glass, hand-cut mouldings in Larson Juhl or Wessex hardwood), sports memorabilia and jersey shadowboxes (the high-AOV emotional pieces, $400 to $2,500, ride the AFL grand-final week and World Cup peak demand), commercial gallery installation (working with galleries on exhibition framing and the install-day hang itself, predictable repeat work), and cinema and poster framing (movie memorabilia, vintage poster collectors, niche but profitable). Each is a different customer, a different keyword, and a different sales cycle. Meanwhile Officeworks, Fast Frames and Big W's photo department have convinced the casual customer that a $40 rack-frame is the same thing as conservation framing. The independent framer who is a Certified Picture Framer and uses TruVue conservation glass has the better product and worse marketing.
Good framing marketing is the four markets kept separate, with conservation and CPF trust signals loud across every page. A custom-framing hub with one suburb page per area you work, finished-frame photos from real jobs, the mouldings you stock (Larson Juhl, Wessex), the conservation materials (TruVue glass, acid-free mat), and an honest 2 to 3 week turnaround. A sports-memorabilia hub for jersey shadowboxes that lifts to a daily ad during grand-final week. A gallery-installation hub for the curators and gallerists who need a framer on a hang. A cinema-and-poster page for the niche collector market. PPCAU membership and Certified Picture Framer accreditation called out everywhere. Get the four markets ranking separately, get on two local-gallery preferred-framer lists, and the bench books three weeks deep, walk-ins or not.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around which of the four markets actually pays (art and photo custom, sports memorabilia, gallery installation, cinema and poster) rather than chasing every framing keyword. Briefs the other agents so the suburb pages, the ads, the social grid and the gallery-and-corporate outreach all push toward the markets you genuinely want more of, not the casual walk-in that Officeworks took.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus a CMS subscription, and makes spinning up a new niche or suburb page a five-minute job. Ships separate hub pages for each market (custom art and photo, sports memorabilia, gallery installation, cinema and poster), with niche-specific schema, finished-frame photos, the moulding library, and a quote form that asks for piece dimensions and the material it'll be protecting, to your live site in two taps.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move framer rankings: suburb keywords on every product hub, PPCAU membership and Certified Picture Framer accreditation called out as trust signals, the conservation materials you use (TruVue glass, acid-free mat, Larson Juhl and Wessex moulding) named in copy, separate keyword targeting per market so the sports page doesn't cannibalise the gallery one. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.
Launches separate Google Ads campaigns per market: art-and-photo custom-framing ads in the suburbs you work, a sports-memorabilia ad set with a bid boost during AFL grand-final week, finals week, and World Cup season, a B2B gallery-installation ad set targeting curators and gallerists, and a cinema-and-poster ad set for the collector market. Drops the broad 'framing' bid that puts you against Officeworks on price. Switches Meta on for the visually-rich finished-shadowbox posts where it actually converts.
Turns every finished frame into a post in your real accounts: a signed-jersey shadowbox in raking light, a conservation mat being cut to size, a gallery-day hang from yesterday's install, a vintage cinema poster archival mount. Builds the trust signal that wins the customer who's about to settle for an Officeworks rack-frame. You upload one photo per finished piece, the agent drafts the caption in your voice, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces customers Google before they pick a framer: 'conservation framing explained: why $40 is not the same as $400', 'how to frame a signed jersey: the conservation checklist', 'how much does custom framing cost in Melbourne'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that pull in the customer with the signed print weeks before they default to Officeworks.
Your first 30 days.
- Site imported, hosting bill killed
- Annual plan around your two priority markets delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile corrected to 'Picture Frame Store' with all four markets listed
- Three custom-framing suburb pages indexed and ranking on the long tail
- Sports-memorabilia Google Ads live with conservation-glass trust signal
- First fortnight of finished-frame captions queued in your voice
- Conservation-vs-rack-frame explainer drafted for the custom-framing hub
- Gallery and corporate-art outreach sent to three local galleries and one consultant
A framer who hand-cuts an acid-free mat, picks the right Larson Juhl moulding for a 1950s wedding photo, and protects the signed Brett Whiteley print with TruVue Museum glass is doing something Officeworks cannot. The work is making sure the customer with that print finds your name before they default to the rack at the checkout. That's the suburb-page library, the market-by-market ad set, the social grid that posts every finished frame, and the gallery and corporate-art relationships that smooth the predictable repeat work.
Agencies are too dear to run four separate market campaigns plus gallery outreach for $3.5k a month. Tools are cheap but the suburb pages stay theoretical and the gallery emails never get sent. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the custom-framing pages, launch the sports-memorabilia ads in grand-final week, post the finished shadowboxes, and brief the galleries and corporate-art consultants you want on a preferred-framer footing. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Stop losing the signed print to a $40 rack-frame.