The Pro Photo Business Forum

I have a saying, “100% of the photographs I do not take, will not sell.” So it stands to say that the more photographs I take the more opportunity I give myself. Wedding photographers have always known this to be true, which is why over time we’ve seen an evolution of what we offer our clients as final products.

Today I’m going to share with you a radical idea.

Honeymoon photography. I know at first it sounds like a crazy idea, but why not take a few minutes and read a bit further.

I don’t know who the first wedding photographer was, but you can bet that his or her first photographs were of the ceremony. And one can easily assume that wedding photographers soon after expanded their services to include the reception as well. From there came the Bridal session, and then the engagement The session.

One would think that with the natural progression of things, after adding first the reception then both the bridal and engagement portraits, that adding honeymoon photography would be next. But it would seem that this is not the case.

As it turns out, the industry of wedding photography skipped the natural progression and invented a completely new product, which is spread through most of the country. The day after sessions and trash the dress sessions have become an overnight fad. And why is this? My guess is that the mere thought of offering honeymoon photography to our clients seems so utterly impossible to sell that we had to add a completely new product so we can create more images to sell tour clients.

So I say now is the time to start offering honeymoon photography tour clients. It’s the final frontier for wedding photographers. It’s the next step. It’s the next thing we can offer that will allow us to take more photographs of our clients to provide us with more opportunity to sell additional images.

Join the Pro Photo Business Forum and lets discuss how to make this happen for your photography studio.

Examples of my honeymoon photography can be found on my site at http://www.solarisstudios.com 90% of the images that you see which are destination images were taken on my client’s honeymoons.

Some have said that the written word is the most powerful force in our universe.  I have been, and always will be, searching for the right language to use when replying to people who contact me about my wedding photography services.

The first words you use to reply to a prospect will communicate volumes to the reader/listener.  Immediately they will instill trust and confidence in you, or they won’t.  Indeed, the words you choose will be pivotal on your success.  Your words can produce a sale, or leave you dumbfounded, thinking to yourself “why did I say that?”  Your words can leave you questioning yourself for days to come, wondering what it was you said that caused your prospect never to call you back, or caused them to reserve your services.

I often ask myself what the sequence of words are that I can use which will cause a prospect to book my services right then and there?  I believe those words exist.  I also believe that those words are different for each and every prospect that comes through my door.

Trying to find the right words to illicit a response is not trickery.  The people that take the time to contact or visit with me want to spend their money on the services I offer.  It is up to me to educate the prospect as to why they should spend their money with me, as opposed to a fictitious photographer who has a business next door and charges the same price that I charge.  It is my responsibility to sell my services to the best of my ability, without being misleading or obnoxious.

As photographers, we are extremely lucky, because our images can speak for us.  There are times when I find that talking less is more, and letting my images talk for me can say volumes.

I will forever continue my education on the use of language.  It’s one of my favorite things.

As a wedding photographer, I like to have what I call wow products to show my potential clients when they come into the studio for a consultation.

When a potential client visits my show room, everything is in its place. Things look, smell and feel right. The stage is set for a presentation.

At the end of the presentation, I present my clients with my wow products, the first of which is Honeymoon Photography. In order to make the presentation of this wow product more memorable, this product is displayed in some of the most unique wedding albums I can find.

By presenting the product in this manner I accomplish many different goals.

1. When the prospect leaves they are sure to remember my studio and their experience.
2. The most important accomplishment is the fact that I have given myself an opportunity to sell my largest product. You can’t sell it if you don’t show it.
3. Even if the client doesn’t invest in the option for honeymoon photography, they still know that there is an upper level of wedding albums available to them.
4. A higher end of wedding albums makes the rest of my wedding albums look that much more affordable.

Wow products are so important when you a wedding photographer. It’s coming up with the idea of what those wow products should be that is so difficult.

Well, I am so excited right now!  The Pro Photo Business Forum went live yesterday, and I’m just on cloud nine.  At least the forum has gone live.  My fabulous web designer, Leanne, has been working very hard at converting my design instructions into a reality, and I’m so pleased with the results.

Today I wanted to share with you an idea that can last your entire career as a photographer.  If you are just starting out as a wedding or portrait photographer, I would like to suggest that you join a few professional photographic organizations.

As a wedding photographer, you should really attempt to find a local guild of professional photographers.  Most major metropolises will have one.  One of the main benefits of joining a local professional group is the fact that you will create resources that you can fall back on if you are ever unable to make it to a contracted wedding.

If it is the morning of a wedding and you wake up with a 102 fever, or something worse, it may be impossible for you to make it to the wedding.  But, if you have joined a local group of professional photographers, then you can contact the director of membership and have him/her send out a blast email to the entire group asking for emergency help.

Now, let me also say that you really need to have an “inner circle” as well.  This group would be the group of photographers that you would refer business to if you yourself were unable to photograph an event due to unavailability.  Your “inner circle”  should always be your first call in the case of an emergency.  Your professional organization is your fall back position.

Happy shooting.

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.