You settle and I settle we all settle
My market is saturated. There’s a ton of photographers in my area who are offering good work, maybe even better than mine, at a low price. How can I possibly compete?
First I’ll argue that your market research is flawed and one-dimensional. If you lurk regularly in FB mom or deal/ discount groups, or see ads in your feed from other local photographers, you are looking at a skewed picture. Why? Because most cheap and inexperienced photographers ONLY use social media/ Facebook for what they consider to be marketing, so you’re seeing a disproportionate amount of their stuff versus other professionals in your area; professionals who are killing it. That’s not market research; it’s simply seeing what’s being served up by FB, and that’s not necessarily any kind of right picture of what industry pricing standards are. But, in absence of knowing exactly how to compete in a different way and stand out, we settle on being part of that crowd, without even having a full or accurate picture.
Beyond that, it seems like many photographers just don’t want to make money! Either it’s a) you think you’re being greedy asking for compensation for doing something you love, b) you don’t feel worthy of being compensated, c) you want the world to be able to afford good photos as if it’s some sort of crisis (and just about the entire world doesn’t have access to a phone camera??!!) or d) you’re terrified of asking for money in exchange for part of your insides, and that can come with judgement. You tell people through settling for a low price that you’re already unworthy of fair compensation, before they ever get to. Because imagine the horror of trying to command a price and being laughed at or told you aren’t worth it, right?
So we settle. We see the cheapos and we settle for their prices. We settle for competing with them. We settle on being one of them.
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Then there are the inquiries who respond that we’re too expensive when shopping around for a photographer. This seems to reinforce to us that we should settle for a lower price rather than creating a fire under us that we shouldn’t settle and to place effort into finding a different client.
Many clients settle too. They may truly not be able to afford our prices and they settle for the cheaper competitor. We take this message and cue our own price drop and all of a sudden, everyone is settling. We keep eroding at a once lucrative industry until it’s full of people settling instead of thriving.
There is the photographer that people pin on their Pinterest board, and the photographer they actually book. Their aspirations don’t match their budget. Should the photographer that the client aspires to hire, drop their price? If they did I’d think they’d even fall a bit out of favour and be taken off the Pinterest board because a high price was part of the exclusive and aspirational quality. I’d rather remain the aspirational photographer than the one that a client would settle for. Because there are people out there who can afford the aspirational photographer. But you have to commit to finding them instead of being busy settling.
You have to make a decision of who you want to be and relentlessly pursue that. That means fighting for the alternative rather than settling for something you don’t truly want. You must shake the mindset that you don’t deserve success and fair compensation for your art. When we settle due to fear and doubt it doesn’t serve us in any shape or form, nor does it serve our clients. Because what is the definition of settle? Per dictionary.com, to “accept or agree to (someone or something that one considers to be unsatisfactory.” Is that the legacy you want to build?
If you’re looking to kickstart your marketing journey and finally ready to invest in yourself the way that you want your clients to invest with you, book your personal mentoring consultation with me today, available on my products page. A client recently remarked about their personal consult: “Thank you so much for today. It was awesome to share ideas and get some key advice from you. You laid everything out in an easy to understand way and for that I am very grateful! I am looking forward to putting your advice into action.”
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