Yes the long awaited part 3 of this multi posting of wedding photography marketing..
I have spent some time looking at how things have done across our website networks which is pretty BIG.. and notice that there is a massive growth in people searching for information on photography marketing and training as well. But if you had been a member you would have already been ahead of the game when it comes to Wedding photography and the stats – Not that I like to say I told you so.. (which of course I love saying) and who wouldn’t.
So in this third part of wedding photography marketing I will tell you how to sell, yes many years ago I had to forgo a life of normality to do all the sales training which is a bit like inbreeding a race of orc’s to do the sales bidding for large companies and it has become ingrained.
So we will look at pricing Profits and the utter rubbish of SALES.. and 50% off and how these work as well as giving free stuff away!
So let me start with FREE STUFF.. yes the stuff that you give away free out of the kindness of your heat and from your own pocket.. NO thats not correct. the customers pays for it regardless. so How do you do it?
Well there is many ways to offer free stuff to your clients without it costing you a penny and thats the way that free stuff has been ‘sold’ to clients, the benefit is that anything given free means there is little ‘comebock’ on you for it as it can be its value or return value which you have given free so thats nothing. nill..
If you look at the big companies out there, you will see that they offer these free incentives and people like the word FREE and getting something for nothing. Take for example our £1,000 give away in our promotions page, each customer is paying £1.00 towards this so effectively we are giving away £1,00o at a cost of nothing to us. well a pound but its a pound, you cannot buy much for a pound these days.
Companies will invent promotions such as a free dishwasher because they have increased their prices on other items to balance out the costs or in many cases to make MORE MONEY. so its taking something away and adding something to get the same result.
SALES 30% off Limited time promotion.
If you are into these types of sale promotion then you would be aware of the legal requirements that you need to offer which is simply that you have to hold the price for 30 days at the greater price, this can be posted on a little known website of yours of in your studio as long as it is public and they can see or check that you have had a higher price for 30 days then you can go as low as you want.
Perspective of clients in regards sales.
Advert reads:
Wedding photography service for all day wedding photography coverage including 3 graphistudio albums, all your digital negatives fully edited and a printed proof book of all your wedding photos.
Our team of X photographers are the best and they take lovely wedding photos that will make you cry with joy.
£2,500
You then advertise the same a few weeks later but with a slight change!
£2,500 NOW just £1900.00 Limited time offer.
Or you could add “with a FREE set of parent albums Now just £1800.00. Special promotion subject to availability”
As you can see the person reading this is not reading the price of £1,900 or £1,800 they are reading this:
I am saving £600.00 /£700 and Im getting an extra two albums. You will find that they will look for the parent albums on your website just to see how much extra money they are saving. and think wow great I made myself £900.00 ( or the total of the perceived saving).
You could look at this in the terms of the logic of credit card sales shopping.
A woman goes out sales shopping with her husbands credit card as the store she likes is giving a 30% off promotion as she like to buy stuff and wow its a sale!
She goes to the shop with I just need to get him a shirt and some shoes, but she finds herself side tracked to the women’s underwear section and thinks to her self she is going to buy a nice new underwear set that costs £90 but there is £30 off the price so he wont mind paying £60 for this special gift. She also looks at some shoes to go with this purchase and a dress to go over it so he can unwrap her later. this brings her shopping total to £235.00 But with the sale she has managed to’ Make money’ (save) £70 so the underwear was FREE. and she’s just bought £164.50 on his card which she will pay off later.
On a side note the shop paid £20 for the underwear, £8 for the shoes and £5 for the dress, and were very thankful for her trade of the £33.00 of stock she purchased.
The credit card was also thankful for the trade as well as they have just made £20.56
She pays off the card two months later and her super sale shopping just cost her £207.83
In summary you should have grasped that if you are going to offer a sales promotion the Limited time offer makes a urgent need for that product much the same as book early to avoid disappointment etc etc. Here is where you will find that you can push clients along with the right type of marketing and at the right stages (paid information Sorry)
If you have read the 3 posts on wedding photograph marketing you will probably be a little amazed that there hasn’t been any hard sale or great hidden secrets and that the information is pretty good but limited so that you have to think. lets take for example 20,000 of your blog watchers applied this to your wedding photography business, you know that you will not get any benefit because all the photographers who offer the same will just blur into each other and I do not want to give a full run down and details for this to happen.
Now for my sales pitch, as you would have read there has been a lot of research in the wedding photography website and site of city photography and for some who may have gone over to the business services link in the first post on wedding photography marketing you can hire me to review your business and website, look at your costs, get you grants and also look at making work easier. Plus increase your sales opportunity as photography is becoming a harder market to stick to and keep.
It could be a matter that not keeping up to speed could find your business drying up.
MORE READING LINKS
http://jonathan-worth.blogspot.com/2010/01/given-things-away.html
http://www.gtwcmt.co.uk/Business/Business_Development.htm
