Why you shouldn't worry about cut price photographers 📸
When I first started out as a photographer back in 2004 I was constantly worrying about the competition and the low prices they were charging, I think everyone does it, its only natural, but its not good for business and not good for your sanity.
HOWEVER...
Once I developed a niche photography brand combined with a unique offering, this allowed me to forget about the competition altogether and focus on serving my ideal clients.
We had clients travelling 100's of miles to our boudoir studio and our wedding photography took us nationally and overseas.
Why would clients choose a photographer 100 of miles away when they probably have dozens of cheaper photographers on their doorstep??
If people bought purely on price alone then premium brands like BWM, Ralph Lauren, Tiffanys, Jaguar and Hugo Boss simply wouldn’t exist.
Because our brand and our message became the perfect fit for the type of people we wanted to attract then the price of our services didn’t become an issue. Remember if you try to become the photographer for everyone you become special to no one, then all you can do is sell your services on price alone.
We left the freebie hunters and tyre kickers to the Jack of All Trades Photographers allowing us to charge a premium price for a premium service, while the awkward everything for nothing customers would go to our competitors.
You don't need to be an award-winning photographer to become the Go-To Photographer in your area, but you do need a brand that is perfectly aligned to your ideal clients and looks both professional and premium.
Brand isn’t just your logo, its everything your customers think, feel and believe about your photography business, if you want them to think you’re a premium high-end photographer then your brand must look expensive.
Our clients don’t look at our photographs the same as we do, they aren’t photographers so they can’t really appreciate the difference from one professional photographer to another, but what they can spot straight away is a premium service and a premium brand.
Make 2021 the year you get to grips with your brand.
Do you worry about the competition???
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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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