Lowering your prices is JUST ONE LEVER you can pull in your business to potentially get more clients.
As I was discussing with one PTP reader tonight, there are a LOT of levers you can push and pull to get more people to say yes to your services.
If you feel your prices are dialed in and NOT the reason most potential clients are saying no to working with you, the next thing you want to look at is reach.
How are you getting your art, message, and offer in front of your target market (your potential ideal clients within the market you serve)? How often are they seeing or hearing this marketing? How does your marketing differentiate you from your competitors, and uniquely excite YOUR target market?
For example, as a high school senior photographer, I can have student model reps who get free shoots then promote my packages to their classmates, I can sponsor school events and get banners and shoutouts, I can attend career days and meet potential clients and hand out business cards, I can make sure I have promo materials (flyers, business cards, digital or other displays, etc.) in every business and location in town where juniors and seniors hang out or shop or eat, I can partner with other businesses that serve seniors (such as flower shops and tuxedo rentals around homecoming time here in Texas) to do co-op promotional campaigns and packages, I can buy an ad in the newspaper’s high school sports coverage to get in front of parents, I can run Google ads and Facebook+Instagram ads and TikTok ads and YouTube ads targeting high school juniors and seniors and their parents within a 60 mile radius, I can do sponsored free photo shoots as gifts for families who may not be able to afford senior photos, I can do themed event days for seniors like “Senior Beach Day Photo Shoot” and invite all seniors to come out for free snacks and games and photos on the beach at sunset, I can do the formal photos at the big prom dance, I can buy a contact list for parents of junior and senior kids and cold call family by family, etc. etc. etc.
I’m being exhaustive just to show, if you REALLY lock in on who your ideal clients are, what’s important to them, who the decision makers are, and make big lists of where and how you can get your business in front of them over and over and over again, you can come up with dozens, even hundreds of ways to reach, engage, impress, and ask for the business of your ideal clients in your market.
Once you’ve got your marketing engine running, you then get to have fun collecting data on what works and what doesn’t, how and why, then tweak those knobs and levers to increase conversion rates for every part of your campaign.
The goal is always to be ‘booked solid’ with a small waiting list. Once that waiting list gets a little too big, it’s time to raise prices. Repeat: good marketing, get booked solid, raise prices. Repeat. Repeat. Until you reach the “just right” ratio of number of shoots and profit per shoot for you, or as high as your market(s) will bear with you.
What’s the biggest challenge holding you back today? E-mail me and let me know. 🙂
James Michael
The Part Time Photographer
www.parttimephoto.com