Too Many Photographers use Facebook as a Selling Tool

Facebook should not be used as a selling tool.

The only way you can sell on Facebook is by social selling and building relationships with your fans. If you try and use Facebook just to sell then people will start unliking your page and your followers will move away. Your Facebook page should be a hub of information, it should be there to give value to all of your followers.

If you are a wedding photographer, you should not just be selling your wedding services on Facebook you need to be talking about the best places to get dresses, the best venues for weddings in your area, what’s the ‘in’ thing to have – the must have thing this season, the current wedding trends etc.

Share funny videos from Google of weddings gone wrong, share wedding quotes, share wedding fashion tips, images from celebrity weddings this is the sort of content your followers will love because it appeals to them. Make your Facebook page the place to go for people who are getting married or planning a wedding in your area.

Once they see your Facebook page is a valued source of information then they will hold you in a higher regard because you are not just trying to sell to them on a regular basis. Followers are more likely to recommend your Facebook Page to others and share your posts with their friends because it’s a real source of information that helps other people in planning a wedding too.

Start to think of Facebook as a more information giving service other than something where you can try and promote and sell photography on a daily basis. Ideally you should only be promoting or self-promoting by doing adverts or trying to sell something on Facebook once every ten days. So, if you are posting once a day would mean that every one post out of ten should be selling meaning every other post should be informative, telling stories, showing emotions or sharing pictures from other people’s weddings.

I’m putting together a great Facebook Training Guide for Photographers within my Awesome Photographers Private Mentoring Group, I’ll be covering Facebook Posting, Content Marketing and sorting out your Facebook Advertising once and for all.

For more information about this amazing Group and how it can turn your business around with fantastic mentoring support and all your essential questions on pricing, branding, website marketing and much more then come a give us a trial for 30 days at www.22s.com/theawesomephotographersgroup

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Goal Setting for Success

Goal setting is a massive part of creating a successful photography business but so many photographers just don’t do it.

It’s essential to set goals for every different area of your photography business. It’s not just about how much money you are going to take or how many new clients you’d ideally like.

Set regular marketing and branding goals such updating your website, writing 10 blogs per month, having 50 Facebook posts per month, increasing your Linkedin connection rate by 1500 over 3 months.

Have goals in every single area of my business and track those goals weekly. I’ve developed a great Photographers Goals Tracker System I can send to you or you can download it from my Awesome Photographers Facebook Group if you’d like to become a member at www.22s.com/theawesomephotographersgroup

Most of all make your goals big, it’s no good having average sized goals. When somebody thinks of a goal they are usually very conservative, if I ask you to think about how much extra money you want to make in the next 12 months it would probably be a very conservative amount and you might say £40,000 or £50,000 which is easily achievable.

If you go for something a lot bigger and say ‘right well I want to increase my business by £150,000’ you are going to have to work a lot harder to achieve that it. Now think about it even if you don’t reach your goal and only get half way towards achieving your target you’ve still hit £75,000 which is 50% more than your original goal.

Really push your goals and have a good objective of what your goals are for every single avenue of your business, then track your goals on a weekly basis reassessing them each month to see which areas need working on more.

Always look at the bigger picture for your business and tweak your goals to keep on track. It could be that you are going to need more clients, so you are going to have to get the website finished quicker, or you’ll need to increase your followers on Facebook and grow your connections on LinkedIn, all of these actions will ultimately lead to increased brand awareness and potentially more clients.

Have goals in every area of your photography business and track them on a regular basis because if you don’t have goals how do you know where you are? How do you know if you are ever going to get there if you don’t know where you are going in the first place? It’s an essential part of developing and taking your business to the next level and it certainly works

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Top Tip 20: How Much Are You Worth

DON’T BE SCARED TO CHARGE YOUR WORTH

Over the past few months I’ve been working with some truly amazingly talented photographers, but as photographers, a big downside to our personality is our limiting beliefs. This often comes from a fear of rejection or lack of confidence in your work EVEN when everyone around you thinks you are totally AWESOME!!

In order to SUCCEED and build a financially stable photography business, your fear and limiting beliefs need to be conquered. The only way to conquer these beliefs we have is to go totally against what our fear tells us not to do.

If you lack the confidence to increase your prices from fear of rejection because for some crazy reason you have it in your head that you aren’t worth what you want to charge, you then need to take the bull by the horns and just do it. You’ll never know how much you can charge for your work until you charge what you should be charging.

Remember, as photographers we are in a very lucky position. The services we offer and what we do brings our clients great joy. The small invest our clients pay for our products often brings them years of happiness and the emotional value of their purchase is simply priceless.

We work for commercial clients and our images help to build their brands and put money through their tills. We help hotels book more customers, restaurants fill their tables, estate agents sell houses and business people create an incredible and trustworthy LinkedIn profile. What we do carries a lot of weight and value for our clients, we are a solution to their needs and our fees are an investment in their business growth.

Yet still, we are afraid to charge our worth. Accountants and dentists charge a premium for services that, to be honest, don’t often bring their clients much joy and happiness at all. Do you really enjoy paying a premium to get a tooth pulled out or find out you have a huge tax bill to pay?

If a potential client asks you for a quote its because your work appeals to them, they like your style and have viewed your images either on social media or your website. So, take it as they love what you do, they wouldn’t be asking for a price if they didn’t. Find out what your clients really want, listen to their needs and requirements first then give them a price with confidence because you know you’ll be their perfect match.

Top Tip 10: Over Deliver

PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE YOU OVER-DELIVERING

The key to creating clients for life is to over deliver time and time again.  Always aim to give your clients more than they expect, over deliver and they’ll love you for it and sing your praises to their family and friends.

When you tell a client they’ll have their photos in 7 days you should over deliver and supply them in 4.  The real beauty of over delivering is that you were going to deliver them in 4 days anyway.

Build FREE and UNEXPECTED items into all your packages.  Wedding photographers, when you deliver the clients album include a FREE 20”x16” canvas or framed print of their favorite image.  This small gesture will simply blow your clients away because its something they just weren’t expecting and for the cost of around £40 the reward to your business will be priceless.  You can guarantee the free canvas will be talked about for months to come, they’ll tell everyone who sees it that you gave them it for free as a thank you for choosing you as their wedding photographer.

These small acts of gratitude to your clients are what will set you way above your competitors.

Portrait photographers, give clients 4 or 5 FREE keyrings with their favorite images on and your website details and contact number on the reverse.  These keyrings will most likely be handed out to family members and grandparents so every time a friend admires the portraits and asks which photographer they used, your contact details are there on the back ready to be passed on.

Commercial photographers, don’t just supply your clients with images go one better and create a complimentary PDF guide on how best to use their images for social media and include this when you deliver the file.  Simply put together a fantastic branded Top 10 Tips Guide, you can use Google as a resource for the information to but your guide together and your clients will love you for going that extra mile.  It’s surprising how many companies just don’t know what, how and when best to post to their Facebook Pages.

When you deliver your products and services to your clients along with their FREE and UNEXPECTED gift, this is also a perfect time to include a recommend a friend voucher.  The voucher can take the form of a discount offer for their friend and a money off your next shoot for the client referring your services.

24 hours after you have delivered your goods send your client an email or social media message asking them to leave you a testimonial, direct them to your LinkedIn or Facebook Page to leave the glowing 5-star testimonial on your Reviews Section.  When you receive your testimonials be sure to share them on your wall with the clients’ full name for all to see.  Wedding and portrait photographers, you can use these testimonials to great effect throughout your website and brochures and be sure to include an image of the happy clients too along with their full names and their town or venue they were married at.

Start over delivering today and make it a huge part of your brand, if you want to become AWESOME you need to over deliver on every account.  When you over-deliver you’ll soon become in high demand and high demand means you’ll be charging high-end prices.

Hope you found this one useful, please feel free to comment below.  I’d love to hear your feedback and remember I’m always here to help.

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