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.

Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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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.

Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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You photograph a portrait session.  You sit down to review your work so they can make their selections.  The couple selects their favorite image, and leaves the rest.

“We really like all of them.  Can we just order this one for now and come back to you to order more?  How long will you hold our images for?”

Sound familiar?  Of course you make the sale of the one image, and you try to sell additional images, but there are times when it just doesn’t happen.

“I understand.  You would like to come back and order the other images you marked as your favorite at a later date.  Please understand, our policy is to only archive the images our clients order from.  There is no need for us to store images that no one wants.

Each week we continue to photograph more and more clients, and as we do we must make room on our server for those newly created images.  Out with the old, in with the new.  More than likely, at our current rate of production, we will have to remove your images in about xyz weeks time.  Would you like us to contact you a day or two before we have to remove your images from our server?”

“Yes.  Please please contact me.”

“Not a problem.  I would be happy to do so.  In fact, why don’t I go ahead and program an email to go out about four days before we anticipate having to remove your un-purchased portraits.  Would that be OK?”

On a bit of a different note.  Would you like a free eBook?

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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As a wedding and portrait photographer, especially if you are just starting out, you want to make sure that you have a long tail.

Your tail is also your product line.  How many items do you offer to your clients?  For most wedding photographers, their tail consists of their time, an online gallery, and wedding albums.

Extend your product line, and watch your profits grow.  After all, your clients are talking with you because they want to spend money with you.  It is your job to continually be offering products until your client says “no”.

More than likely you are offering Engagement and Bridal sessions.  Do you offer a frame with each and every portrait you sell?

Do you offer three to four different lines of wedding albums?  One line of wedding album can be more expensive than the other.

Do you offer different finishing options for your finished portraits?

Do you offer studio versus outdoor portrait sessions?

When was the last time you offered a parent album to the Groom’s family, and not just the Bride’s family?

And, as an extreme way to extend your tail, you can offer honeymoon photography!  Make sure to attend one of our workshops if you are interested in learning more about how to get started with honeymoon photography.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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Houston Wedding Photographer, Aric Hoek

The Business of Marketing your Business

Written By: Houston Wedding Photographer Scott Villalobos

It’s a short yet not so simple statement, infact it’s probably the most complicated aspect of any business and it is especially true of photography. Fact of the matter is it’s probably the first thing that came to mind after I decided to become a professional photographer. How in the world would I make any money with my photography and who would buy it? There is no shortage of information on this topic, to be sure, but with good reason.  If you’ve found yourself struggling in the current economic climate or worse are just starting out in the current economic climate you will benefit by reading the rest of this article.

Identifying the problem – this is easy. You either need to bring in clientele or you need to bring in MORE clientele. Simple right? Not so much. You need to make sales to those clients. Before I go any further I need to give credit where credit is due, many of the ideas I’m about to expound upon are merely the arthritic echoes of those who have come before me.

There is an old proverb which holds true for every aspect of life, and for the sake of this article I’m going to apply it to the business of wedding photography. “There is salvation in the multitude of counselors.“ – Proverbs 11:14. That being said, in my meanderings across the information super highway I have encountered some profoundly interesting personages with much to say on the subject of marketing and success. Rick Brewer is one and his website, getmorebrides.com, is dedicated to the marketing aspects of wedding photography. Another would be Keith Lee of American Retail Supply, Denis Reggie of, well, Denis Reggie, and finally Mark Victor Hansen – coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Now that I’ve mentioned the above I can say the following with unobstructed clarity – FOCUS PEOPLE! Over the top, maybe, but keep reading you’ll get the point in a minute. Focus is essential to becoming successful. I like this statement because we are, after all, photographers and we understand how important focus is to our images. However we’re not talking about taking pictures here, we’re talking about bringing business through our doors. So lets focus our imaginary cameras on the inevitable fact that you must become your biggest cheerleader, the star quarterback, the great American hero within.

If you were asked what business you’re in how would you answer? Your first response might be something wild like; oh I don’t know – wedding photography… And this is where you’d be wrong. The correct answer if you want your business to be successful would be the business of “marketing” your photography business”. This is why you must be you’re your biggest cheerleader. Who else cares as much about your business as you do? Who else is going to put in the blood sweat and tears that you do? Who else besides you is willing to sink all that cold hard cash into your baby while its still in diapers? Nada…

So this is where focus really comes into play. All the talent in the world doesn’t mean squat if you can’t make a sale, and you can’t make a sale unless you can attract customers. It’s a lot like fishing; you won’t ever catch fish in a lake where there are no fish. So move to a lake that not only has fish, but also the type of fish you want to attract.

One way to attract the right clientele is by getting people to advertise for you. I recently shot a wedding at an amazing venue, a venue that attracts the type of clientele that I wish to work for. I was invited to send them an album from the shoot and they in turn would show that album to their potential clients. Two great things are happening here. 1.) I’m getting great referrals from an amazing venue to people that can afford me. And 2.) I’m not competing with the 509 other wedding photographers that show up in the Google search for Houston Wedding Photographers. These are qualified leads that are interested not just in wedding photography, but in me personally.

Here’s a well-kept secret that you should already know but that bears saying for those of you who are unaware of it. If you’re not on page one in the web search engine you might as well not exist. Potential customers rarely go past page one when searching for a product or service.  (This is a whole other topic so let’s not go there for now.)

Save yourself allot of frustration and money and make sure that you market to a targeted, qualified audience. Set clearly defined, realistic, short and long term goals for yourself and have them written down somewhere you will see them every day. Think about those goals every day and figure out how to achieve them progressively. You might even write them down on the back of a business card and put them in your wallet to look at during the day. Meet with and befriend people who can help you achieve your goals, weather they be with venues or organizations that cater to the clientele you wish to attract.

Remember Newton’s third law of physics. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This law applies to the business of marketing your business. If you’re not exerting force or action there can be no reaction. Force yourself into action. However resistant you are to the idea of marketing, learn to embrace it and it will embrace you. But remember marketing is a process not an event, it doesn’t happen overnight, it may be months before you see results. Think of it as planting seeds, sooner or later something’s bound to grow. Plan now to succeed in the future.

Avoid negative people and negative thinking at all cost. There are no positive side effects to negativity. Instead direct that thinking into creativity. Seek out positive, creative, successful people and allow your thinking to imitate there’s. Be like Thomas Edison when a young reporter who boldly asked if he felt like a failure interviewed him and if he thought he should just give up. Perplexed, Edison replied, “Young man, why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp.” And shortly after that Edison invented the light bulb. He did not allow negative people to prevent him from attaining his goal and neither should we.

You are 100% responsible for your results. Evaluate yourself from a third person standpoint. Imagine that you’re evaluating a paid employee. Would you be happy with your results? Do you show up for work on time? Do you go the extra mile and are you creative and innovative? Are you bringing in sales or are you unknowingly pushing them away. Take a good hard look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. If you were working for someone else would your job be in jeopardy?

Brides are a lot like Gazelle. If you’ve ever watched animal planet you’ve seen Cheetah stalking Gazelle. Oh occasionally you will see a Gazelle wondering about the tall grass paying no attention to the Cheetah hiding in the tall grass only a few feet away, that never works out well for the Gazelle, but for the most part Gazelle are somewhat paranoid because they know that there are Cheetah near by and they know that Cheetah eat Gazelle. So they tip toe around looking for grass to eat, but they never take their eyes off the tall grass and they are always ready to bolt at the first sign of danger.

Brides are much the same, they are ready to bolt at the first sign of danger, but what are the signs of danger to a bride? There are many, but one of the biggest is when a photographer won’t let them speak. It may be totally unintentional, the photographer may just be really excited to be selling to a bride and telling her all about his new gear or his – dare I say it – photojournalistic approach.  And really there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing that is unless the bride wants to say something and you don’t give her the chance. This is like spots moving among the tall grass to the potential bride. She could care less about your dual digic IV processor or the difference between L series and consumer grade glass. All she’s hearing is that you don’t care about what she has to say. You may not even notice it, but her eye’s have glassed over, she’s checking her watch and is wondering about the studio she passed on the way to see you.

Learn when to speak and when to keep silent and listen. Really pay attention to what your bride is saying and respond positively. Learn what works and what doesn’t. Learn to put out the right message, and learn how to shorten the process by understanding the process in which brides buy. If at all possible never ever say no to a bride. Saying no to a bride is like saying no to opportunity. You never know what good things might happen by saying yes.  Don’t believe me, go out and rent “Yesman” staring Jim Carrey. Although the movie may be an over dramatized example the principle still applies.

Ultimately you want to dig your well before the drought comes, plant your seeds before the harvest has arrived. By doing the marketing you will ensure your continued success. And when the inevitable disappointments come look at them like Thomas Edison. Not as failures but as learning experiences of how not to market your business. In the end you will become what you think about becoming if, and only if, you put those thoughts into actions.

Houston Wedding and Portrait Photographer - Scott Villalobos www.rsvpstudios.com

Let’s face it. Just about everyone out there is on Facebook. According to Facebook, roughly 45 million users log on every day in the United States. Everyone uses Google too though. So what makes Facebook so much more powerful? Connectedness. In a Big Brother-ish way, Facebook knows virtually everything about you. While Google can make good guesses about you based on your searches, you’ve actively told Facebook all kinds of things advertisers want. You’ve revealed your age, education, marital status, interests, and all kinds of other things that can help advertisers find you. Not only that, you’re linked to all your friends through updates, news feeds, tagging, and more. Facebook connects people in a way no other website ever has. While it’s a great tool for finding old friends, it’s an even better tool for helping photographers find new clients.

Facebook Ads for Photographers

One of the most powerful ways Facebook can aid photographers in connecting to potential clients is through ads. Unlike Google AdSense which requires you to pay for certain keywords, you pay for placement or clicks for a set of parameters in the user’s profile on Facebook. This allows you to target people who aren’t looking for wedding photographers. You can get your foot in the door before they even begin researching photographers.

Wedding photographers can easily target soon-to-be-brides who will likely be the type of client they’re looking for. On Google AdSense, when someone searches for “New Jersey Wedding Photographer” Google has no idea whether it’s a client or whether it’s just another photographer researching the competition and spending your ad budget. Neither does it know whether the person is looking for a $500 wedding photographer or a $5000 wedding photographer. But with Facebook, you can target women in 20 surrounding towns from 25-40 who have graduated from college. This type of person is likely to have a larger budget.

Senior portrait photographers can seek out married women from 40-55, the group most likely to have children graduating from high school. You can have ads appear for people on their birthdays offering them a birthday discount. The possibilities are truly endless. With Facebook ads, you can target the clients you want to find at the price you think they’re worth.

Facebook Fan Pages for Photographers

You don’t necessarily have to spend money to be a successful Facebook marketer. Facebook allows businesses to create a fan page for free. There you’ll have your own dedicated space to post photos, updates, and more. You can offer your fans exclusive discounts, keep them up to date on studio promotions, and much more. But where your fan page can really become powerful is when you start adding photos.

Facebook Photos for Photographers

Photos are arguably the most powerful way for photographers to use Facebook. Tagging allows us to get our photos from an event or portrait session seen by all the attendees and friends of the client. It’s basically free advertising. As easy as this is, many photographers are missing out on the opportunity by making a few fundamental mistakes.

The dos and don’ts of posting photos on Facebook:

Do:

• Watermark your photos with your studio name and website. In the event people choose to steal your photos, at least you’ll have your name and site on them. Don’t make the watermark too obtrusive, or people won’t want to look at the photos. Don’t make it too discrete either, or it might as well not be there.
• Upload the photos to your studio’s fan page. It should be easy for the viewer to navigate back to a page with your branded with your logo along with your phone number and website. A fan page has all of this.
• Shrink your photos to 604 pixels on the longest side. Facebook currently displays photos at a resolution of 604px on the longest side. If you resize your shots on your computer, although Facebook will still re-compress them, in my experience they will look better.
• Send the link to your client
• Ask that the client tag all people in the photos. This is key. This will ensure that everyone who attended an event will see the photos.

If you do all those things, you’ll be able to sit back and watch the comments, like, fans, and eventually clients stream in. But be careful not to make a couple of simple mistakes that could lessen your chances at winning new clients.

Don’t:

• Post your photos without watermarks. You’re just asking for them to be copied. When they are, they’ll be of no value to you without your branding.
• Upload your photos to your personal Facebook profile. This makes it difficult to find your business information.
• Send small JPEGs to the client and allow them to upload the photos to Facebook. Now no one can find your fan page. You will also not have control of the photos your client posts, whereas you can delete inappropriate comments and resolve other issues on your own photos.

That’s really all there is to it. With a small investment of money for ads and time to create a fan page and begin uploading your shoots, you can begin taking advantage of the tremendous opportunity Facebook provides photographers to reach out to potential clients.

Ben Drucker
PPBF Contributing Writer
Maplewood Event and Portrait Photographer: Ben Drucker Photography

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

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.

Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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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.

Aric C. Hoek BFA, CPP, Author
PPBF Administrator
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