The Pro Photo Business Forum

Before you place your first ad announcing your photographic services, or even if you are already advertising, you must have in place a system to track the results of your advertising. Advertising can be expensive. You could be throwing your money away and not even know it.

You must be able to calculate the efficiency of your advertising efforts. When wedding photographers say their advertising is working, they generally just know that they are receiving calls and booking weddings. You must know more than this.

You must know if your marketing is efficient or not. The best way to give yourself the answer to this question is through the use of statistics. As a business owner that wants to succeed, you have a responsibility to track the statistics of your business. Through marketing you begin to attract individuals to your business. These individuals are inquiries, and you must ask each inquiry one basic question in order to create the statistics you need:

How did you hear about us?

Keep track of the following after your initial contact with your inquiry:

1. How many of your inquiries did you convert into consultations?
2. How many of these consultations did you convert into paying customers?
3. How many of your paying customers have you converted into repeat customers?

The answers to these questions will show you where you are the least efficient. If you see that you are only converting 10% of the inquiries you receive into consultations and 90% of the consultations you have are converted into paying customers, you know you must change the language used when answering your phone or replying to people inquiring about your services via email.

Tracking each and every inquiry will also tell you where your paid advertising is failing or succeeding. You do not need to focus on the ads that are doing the best until you have addressed the ones that are doing the worst.

You should be able to find out the “cost per lead” for each of the ads you have purchased. For example, if you paid $1000 for an ad somewhere and you received 10 phone calls from that ad, your cost per lead is $100. Think of it this way, when that phone rings, you are spending $100.

Being able to find your cost per lead for each of your paid ads is essential to becoming more efficient. This information will allow you to make educated decisions when the contracts for your ads expire. You will know which ads to keep and which to drop. You may decide to change the language in one ad to see if you can create different results. You may decide to take the money from one ad and use it to increase the size of another ad that is working better. If you do not have a system in place allowing you to track your cost per lead, you are just shooting in the dark, wasting your money and time. That is inefficient.

This next point is important. If you do decide to change an element in your weakest advertisement, make sure you only change one thing at a time. In the long run, this will give you clearer understanding as to whether or not the changes you have made are working. If you change too much all at once, you have no idea what specific alteration created the change, good or bad, and it will be harder for you to repeat the action in the future.

The following tip, and many others, can be found in the free eBook listed on the right column of this site. I hope you find it useful.

In your area there is more than likely a magazine that caters to couples getting married. If there is more than one magazine catering to couples getting married, then select the one that you feel that caters to couples with a larger budget for their wedding.

As you go through the magazine you’ll find it is sectioned off by the different categories of vendors available to the couples. Locate the section that contains the different invitation and stationary designers and pick out your favorite one as you are going to have them make you special a card that can easily fit in your shirt pocket.

When I’m photographing a wedding, I concentrate on maintaining a smile on my face. Inevitably, at some point during the event, I’ll be approached by an individual who will compliment me on my service. When this happens, I hand them a beautifully designed card offering them one free family portrait session. When I offer this card, I will very quickly thank them for their compliment, hand them the card, and then move on.

If you decide try this marketing technique, you must understand that you are not at your customer’s event to advertise your services to their guests. You are there to serve. Because of this, make it a point only to hand out this card out to individuals that approach you and give you a compliment. Quickly give them something nice in return, and then continue with the job at hand.

The following tip, and many others, can be found in the free eBook listed on the right column of this site. I hope you find it useful.

As a wedding or event photographer, make sure to take very flattering images of every reception facility that you find yourself in. Make prints of these images, making sure to tastefully include your company name and contact information on the image itself, and then send the images to the facility free of charge. Include an invoice with the images. Show the value of the images on the invoice, and then show a 100% discount. List the reason as “professional courtesy”.

If the images are of good enough quality, then possibly the facility manager will use your images as a sales tool to reserve couples for their facility. The facility manager in essence becomes your agent. When you have made your vendor images, make sure to deliver them in person. Use the opportunity to build a professional relationship and contact. Let them meet you face to face.

Now that you have this general idea of vendor prints, put it to good use. Send images to the florist. Who made the cake? Who made the dress? Who sold the wedding bands? I’ll bet they would love to show your images.

One last thing to keep in mind with vendor prints is the pecking order in which a wedding is planned. A couple will almost always book their ceremony and reception facility first as this solidifies the wedding date. After their facilities have been reserved, the bride and groom will begin to look at vendors that can only be in one place at one time. These include the band, the officiant, and, of course, the photographer.

What does this tell us? It tells us that the most beneficial people to give vendor prints to are the facility managers and the facility catering directors. For me, referrals from cake makers are few and far between.

While photographing an event, make it a point to find the facility manager and introduce yourself. Ask for their business card. When you make an appointment to drop off the images to the facility, try to schedule your meeting with the manager you met. During your meeting, ask if the facility has a preferred vendors list that they hand out to their perspective clients. When you return to the studio, send a thank you card to the manager, thanking them for their time. Direct them to your website so they can see the quality of your work. This will make them more willing to add your company to their preferred vendors list.

The following tip, and many others, can be found in the free eBook listed on the right column of this site. I hope you find it useful.

Can you imagine the nightmare of double booking the same date? While this is a very obvious problem to avoid, what is important is to understand how this can happen, and more importantly how to avoid it.

Perhaps it’s late because your prospect couldn’t meet until after they got off work. At the conclusion of your consultation your clients reserve the date. You create a contract, collect your retainer and have the contract signed by all parties. You’re tired and fail to place the date as booked in your calendar, or the date gets erased from your calendar.

This can happen for a variety of reasons: human error, a computer crash, a malicious employee, or more.

Another couple comes along inquiring about the same date. You check your calendar and see that the date is still open. The couple comes into the studio and books the date.

This time you successfully place the date into your calendar.

The date of the wedding soon arrives. You show up at the second couple’s wedding and receive a phone call on your cell. It’s the first couple wanting to know where you are! Not only will you more than likely be sued by the first couple, you will be so off your game at the event you are covering, you will probably produce less than professional results.

While this situation is very unlikely to happen, it is your responsibility as the owner of your studio to make sure that it doesn’t happen.

To prevent this disaster, keep all of your open contracts in a safe. Every month, on the first of the month, pull them out and compare them to the booked dates on your calendar. If you come across a contract that has no correlating reserved date on your calendar, you have just prevented yourself from a possible double booking.

Now, do this process in reverse. Check your calendar, and look at each weekend for a booked date. For each booked date you find, make sure you can locate a signed contract that correlates to the date. This will prevent you from booking a wedding and marking down the wrong date in your calendar. It also ensures you have possession of all your active contracts.

Your client has hired a professional. What does that mean in their mind? Several things.

1) A professional is a technician. The quality of your images needs to be greater than that of the guests with their point-and-shoots and DSLRs.

2) A professional is an artist. You need to see things that others don’t, providing images that the client will perceive as fresh and unique to them.

3) A professional acts like a professional. On the wedding day he/she speaks to others with professionalism and tact, even when things aren’t going well. The professional photographer is kind but firm when the situation calls for it (formals come to mind), and he/she stays out of the way and avoids drawing undue attention to themselves.

If we focus on these three aspects of being a professional, we are sure to receive many compliments on our work before, during, and after our weddings.

Bryan Lindsey, BCL Photography

Each week the PPBF gives its readers a new challenge designed to help their studios grow. Sometimes the assignment involves shooting, and sometimes the assignment calls for a particular action to be taken. Whatever the assignment, you can be sure we will do our best to help you grow as a professional photographer, and not just as a photographer.

Congratulations to Last Weeks Challenge Winner, Jonathan L Golden Photography!

Jonathan has won three moths of free access to the PPBF and to the Swag Bag! In addition, Jonathan has also won a $50 gift certificate to be used on his next order to BWC! Congratulations Jonathan!

This Week’s Challenge: Round!

A simple project this week… or is it? Photograph a round object, but light it in such a way as to make it’s round shape greatly apparent.

We have two prizes this week!!!!

First Place Prize:  A FREE copy of “Social Media Marketing for Photographers” by Jeff Smith!!!!

In my book, Social Media Marketing for Photographers you will learn how to create content that reflect the right image of you and your business, while linking all of your internet marketing resources together to convert potential clients as quickly as possible.

- Jeff Smith

Second Place Prize: $50 off your next regular priced Leather Craftsmen Print and Bind Album. Offer expires 10/1/10. Contact david@leathercraftsmen.com to redeem.

How To Enter:

1) Complete the assignment and place the results on your own blog, linking back to the challenge post.

2) Post a comment on this blog entry that you have completed the assignment with a link back to your blog entry. A link will be posted at the bottom of this assignment pointing back to your blog entry, thus creating a reciprocal link and helping with your SEO.

3) The winner of the assignment will be posted in the following weeks assignment.

We would love it if you can place the Weekly Challenge Icon at the beginning of this post in your blog post to show your readers your participation in the weekly challenge.

Here are the entries for this week’s Weekly Challenge!

No entries have been entered….. yet. Be the first!

Every professional photographer knows the importance of backup gear.  At least two cameras, two flashes, two lenses, etc.  And I submit that most professionals have way more gear than that.   However, the other night as we were preparing for a Wedding a thought came to me.

Let’s set a scenario right quick:  It’s Friday night, 5PM.  You’re getting your equipment together for tomorrow’s Wedding in which you need to arrive at 9AM.   You’ve cleaned your lenses, formatted your CF cards, verified time and location, and are working on charging batteries.   You take the batteries out of your cameras and insert one of them into its charger….. and nothing happens.  You chuckle to yourself as you remember you need to turn on the power-strip that the charger is connected to… except.. it’s already on.   Perplexed, you switch batteries on the charger with no avail. You come to the realization that your battery charger is no longer working.  You do have a back-up, right?

Now.. if you’ve purchased two similar cameras at retail, then you most likely have two identical chargers… regardless of the brand.   I chose not to sell my extra chargers because it made my task of charging all the batteries that much simpler.  But as I was looking at the charging table we have set up at the studio – I thought about how problematic it could be to not be able to charge batteries the night before a wedding or big event.

Fortunately, many cameras that accept battery grips have AA battery attachments that can be used to power the cameras.  But, that assumes that you know where that attachment is.  However, full body professional cameras rely on their brand specific batteries for power with no other (easy) alternatives.

I’ve attached an iPhone photo of my charging station that I’ve temporarily made for our studio.  Since we’re still settling in after a big move – this will be a little more permanent as soon as I find the appropriate place for it.  Until then – you can see the redundancy we have in battery charging, which allows us to recover from a problem should one ever occur.

One final note, we keep our chargers unplugged when not in use.  This saves on the minuscule bits of power they use when not actively charging – and also helps to prevent any stray power surges from wiping out our entire collection of chargers.

It may not seem important at first and I’m sure it doesn’t happen often – but small bits of preventative action can save you loads of stress down the road.

Each day we clean the studio. All the lights are put up, and the cords wound and put in their places. The cameras are placed in the safe. Our presentation room is cleaned.

This way, when our first session of the day comes in, we start fresh. The selected background is rolled out for just that client. The lights are put out for just that client. The camera is assembled for just that client.

It may not be the most efficient way of doing things, but for that customer, we are providing custom customer service.

Lucky you. You’ve received an inquiry about your wedding photography services. Nice!

You immediately reply back via email… only to be greeted by the sound of crickets. A day later you reply again, and still nothing. One more time? Sure. Why not.

At some point though, you’re going to draw the line and give up on that lead. You walk away scratching your head wondering where you went wrong.

But wait! Don’t through that lead away. Why not refer the lead to your friends? You do have friends in your area that shoot wedding also don’t you? Why not refer that lead to your friends? They may have better luck, and refer you back in turn.