The Pro Photo Business Forum

I often get asked what the difference is between advertising and sales.  For some, it can be a blurry line, however there is a really simple way to classify your actions as one or the other.

Anytime you are in direct communication with a prospect, inquiry or client you are in an act of sales.  Yes, a magazine ad communicates, but to the masses.  When you are replying to an initial email, or answer your phone, or meet face to face, from the first word you are selling.  Indeed, from the first second a prospect looks at you, you are selling.

If you noticed above I listed direct communication with clients as well as inquiries.  Through marketing and sales past clients can be converted into repeat clients.  Happy clients want to be converted into repeat clients.  To accomplish this, start a newsletter.  A newsletter acts as a marketing tool to convert past clients into repeat clients through its ability to start a new direct communication with a past client.

As a wedding photographer, one of my most popular products that I sell is my time. What do you do when you are at an event, contracted for a start and end time of your services, your time runs out but the event isn’t over?

I photograph a clock. In this case, my iPhone.

Photographing a clock is proof that after that particular shot you were shooting on overtime for your clients and you can charge accordingly.

I never approach a client during an event to let them know that their time has run out, I simply ask if there are any additional images they would like me to create before I go. If you do not have the opportunity to talk to your clients, then you have a choice. You can leave as contracted, or you can stay and continue shooting.

If you stay and continue shooting then you give yourself opportunity for additional sales. You can show your clients the additional images, and perhaps they will want to purchase them. Your clients may also want to only purchase a portion of your extra images. My policy is to sell the first image equivalent to the amount of overtime I worked, and the rest are free.

For many wedding photographers, selling parent albums can be a difficult task. Most customers today are satisfied with an online gallery and a DVD of their wedding day images. This makes the sale of a wedding album a luxury product on top of another luxury product. The sale of a parent album is then a sale of a luxury product, on top of a luxury product, on top of a luxury product.

As a wedding photographer, one of your jobs in selling your services is to continually suggest the sale of your products until you hear the word no. More often than not, the offering of a parent album is where you will hit the “No” barrier.

Appeal to the couple. Suggest that the purchase of a parent album for both sets of parents would be a great way to say, “Thanks for everything.” Offer the sale of the second parent album at a slight discount from the first.

Wedding photographers that have a physical sales room have an advantage. When the wedding is over and you have processed the client’s images, offer to show the results as a slide show at your studio, making sure to have both sets of parents attend. Have sample parent albums in clear view next to the slide show and sitting in front of the parents as they sit to view the slide show.

Making sure to acquire the physical and email addresses for both sets of parents at the time your clients reserve your services is essential to selling parent albums. If your clients have purchased an online gallery of their wedding day images, make sure to include a time sensitive discount for the purchase of a parent album when emailing the password to access their private online gallery. More than likely you will fail to make the sale if you email this time sensitive discount to the couple and not to the parents directly. Do not give up. Deliver the time sensitive discount again when mailing the parent DVDs directly to the parents.

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.