Welcome! In this article we will examine album image selection as a value added service. I’ll preface our conversation by noting that there are many ways to approach image selection, such as letting clients select their album images, and there is no right or wrong way. It is about what works best for you, your business and your clients. The views expressed here are generated from my many conversations with photographers over the years.
Furthering the thinking from my last article, which can be found by clicking here, leads me to an organic conclusion that image selection is a value added service you provide for your clients. It will add more value and prestige to your business that ends with a high level of customer satisfaction, which in turn leads to an increased bottom line. To achieve that end result, keep the album as a treasured item for your client and a mobile marketing piece for you, the selected images must be a limited amount of THE BEST OF THE BEST.
Your clients picked you for their photography needs! They truly paid for your art, products and services. Consider these questions; does the typical bride know how to pick out a limited number of your best pictures to produce the most amazing album possible? Is the groom going to be able to help her? Are they going to consider how the images will look on the page? Will they be overwhelmed trying to decide between the pictures you show them? Will they want so many images that you will have to make a collage page? Will a collage page highlight your photographic art? Will a page like that actually be dramatic enough to capture their moment? Is she going to want to slide in pictures from a friend’s point and shoot? How much time will you spend retouching all these images for them?
With a limited amount of your best pictures you are making your album designing experience better. This is because you will not have to retouch “x” number of images, and you will also be able to deliver a higher quality album for them in a quick turnaround time. For instance, when a couple returns from their honeymoon are they ready to take care of their post-wedding photographic needs immediately? Or do they need to write a whole lot of thank you cards? How long will it take them to pick their images? How much time will you allow them to decide on their images? By letting them pick their images you are actually allowing the perceived value of your work to diminish day-by-day. The importance of the album goes down along with opportunities for print sales. Therefore, by providing image selection as a service, you will have the album designed by the time they return from their honeymoon and delivered before they finish their thank you cards.
As a professional photographer you provide the best possible customer experience backed with great services and products in order to ensure repeat business. If they pick their images, how stressful will all this be for you as the photographer and for your client? Is your client going to abide by your rules and regulations to must have and additional images? Forget about all this nonsense affecting your business’s growth. Make the overall album experience easier on you and your client by selecting the images as a value added service. The key to true profitability is efficiency, higher quality products and services, decreased waste, well managed operations, increased perceived value and increased client satisfaction levels.
By providing album image selection as a service, you heighten your service value and prestige, lead to true profitability, take the stress out of image selection, gain back your marketing piece, wow clients and their friends and you will have a great time while doing so, especially since you did not have to retouch 200 images for the album! Next time we will be talking about the relationship between image selection and album design.
Jay Michael Stevens
Forbeyon's Customer Care Manager
Forbeyon is the photographer's sole album destination
Find us at:
website: www.forbeyon.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/Forbeyon
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forbeyon-Inc/92723162750
Welcome to the first of an ongoing series of articles about albums for the professional photographer. In this article we will examine the album as a professional value added product. Not just being a material object, the album is another way for your client to have an emotional re-connection to his or her event or moment. Sure, photos will be framed and hung on the wall and there may be a DVD; but unlike these, the album is a treasure to be viewed at one’s own pace. The experience will be an amazing and visceral time. The reason for this impact is that an album is an emotional, artistic and unique platform for photo presentation. It will become a family treasure, a keepsake allowing your client the ability to relive the moment in a stylish and personal way. Most importantly, your client has the ability to bring it anywhere he or she goes. This is what we call mobile marketing.
These are your images that your client will be showing off to everyone she or he knows. With your studio logo and contact info placed strategically into the design on the last page, your work will receive attention and be known as yours by your client’s family, friends and acquaintances. This is a key feature and benefit of adding an album to any package or making it a hot item that your client cannot ignore. An album also allows all kinds of different marketing purposes by getting it to your vendors and by displaying it in the studio so it will highlight and showcase your business and your best images. Beyond marketing purposes, an album is another avenue for studio branding. With an album, you get another chance to show off your style to your potential and current clients. So by adding an album to your current package you are increasing the importance to your package and increasing your earning potential. By offering an album, in a package or a la carte, you are offering another product that helps you, as a professional photographer, stand above all the amateurs and prosumers trying to undercut your business. This is especially true when you offer an album product from a professional album company like Forbeyon.
Through product differentiation, an album is an exciting and unique value added product that allows your client another way to view his or her pictures and reconnect with his or her event or moment. The album is also a professional product that increases your earning potential, differentiates you from the prosumer market, heightens your studio branding, lets you stand out from the other photographers and can be your strongest marketing tool. See your studio take off in this changing economy by adding this wonderful product into your product and service lineup. Next time we will be talking about image selection and how it relates back to the album as a professional value added product.
Jay Michael Stevens
Forbeyon's Customer Care Manager
Forbeyon is the photographer's sole album destination
Find us at:
website: www.forbeyon.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/Forbeyon
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forbeyon-Inc/92723162750
As you look around your production room, you may find yourself all alone. You may think of yourself as a one man show.
Believe it or not, you are not alone. You are not a one man show. You have a team. You have a lab to print your portraits for you, and your lab is a member of your team.
If you are just starting out in the field of professional wedding photography, you want to take great care in picking your lab. You need to consider a few other things than just price. First and foremost is quality.
What is quality when it comes to portraiture? Everyone’s answer to this question will be slightly different, but most photographers have a few things in common when it comes to the definition of quality. These commonalities are based mostly on photographer complaints when receiving prints back from the lab.
- Bumps between the print and mounting material.
- Bad mounting
- Long turnaround times.
- Damaged corners.
- Bad color
This list has something in common. These are real mistakes that your lab can make. These mistakes can cause the delay of your product, which can make for an unhappy customer, which can delay your cash flow.
As a beginning photographer, cash flow is a real issue for some. You may photograph a couple for their engagement portraits, but not have the money to immediately produce the portraits, which naturally causes delay in your production. But be careful to not let it cause to much of a delay. Your wedding clientele is on a strict time line. You need to make sure that you have the portraits produced in time to have on display at the reception.
This is where your lab can really shine! Make sure the lab you chose has the capability of having images delivered to you in 24 hours! You need the ability to upload your artwork to your lab for printing, and your lab needs to have the ability to take a rush order and overnight the final product to your studio, or directly to your clients home.
Having a lab/team that can get a finished print to you extremely fast can get you out any number of different situations. I talked earlier about someone just starting their career as a photographer and not having the cash flow needed to produce their product in a timely manner, but I know many can put themselves in the exact opposite situation. Can you imagine being so busy that you forget to place an order to the lab, only to receive a phone call from a Bride To Be asking if her portrait is going to be ready for her wedding this weekend? Or, it may be the holiday season, and you must have your completed product to deliver to your client on time.
You may be sitting there by yourself producing your work, but you do have a team. Your photo lab.
Chose wisely.
Don’t even get me started on framers!
Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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Houston Wedding Photographer, Aric Hoek
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