Every photographer should offer at least a secret money-back guarantee. Here’s why
There was a Tik Tok circulating recently where a wedding photographer offered the big, blue sky to clients - bonuses/add-ons, no time limits, finishing to a choice of editing styles and the biggie: offering to pay for the honeymoon if clients weren’t 100% satisfied with their photos. Needless to say it sparked some strong opinions and discussion in photographer groups and forums - most of the discussion saying she’s a bit mad, that it’ll bite her and hurt the industry by setting unrealistic expectations not only on the money front but the editing front. I’ll save that one for another post (as well as the fact that she didn’t just stick with one tactic but loaded her offer with everything under the sun.) Here, I’m going to talk about the controversial money-back guarantee.
This kind of guarantee is largely credited to Josiah Wedgwood back in the 18th century - yes, of the Wedgwood China brand. He’s actually credited as the pioneer of several other marketing practices still in use today such as direct mail. This strategy cannot be dismissed as it has endured centuries, as has the Wedgwood brand. Some brand giants also use it today to some degree (Costco, Amazon, Zappos etc) and you as a consumer may have even been converted to a sale because of one. There is some magic in there even if it sounds outlandish to some of us. Let’s unpack it.
Money-back guarantee On the sales level
Money-back and other satisfaction guarantees act to remove barriers to a sale by removing a risk from the buyer. It builds trust and lowers the uncertainty threshold of whether you will be ultimately satisfied with the product. I haven’t studied the specifics but I imagine that it has a direct positive correlation with price - the higher the price the more assured the client is to make that large purchase confidently if the provider has offered a safety net.
In a world of sameness, a guarantee can stand out as a powerful brand differentiator if only because it demonstrates high confidence of the company in its products and/ or services. Most people are fearful of offering a money-back guarantee so if you go where others won’t dare, you could be nicely rewarded.
While it’s often related to consumer products, many services do offer some sort of guarantee. It could be money back or it could be other conciliatory gestures to assure satisfaction or conflict resolution. Examples:
Car rentals: Car upgrade, extra rental day, bring tank back empty
Flights: Class upgrade, extra carry-ons, flight vouchers
Hotels: Room upgrades, extra nights, vouchers for added stays, complimentary dining
From a sales perspective, if someone expresses dissatisfaction with the service, the cost of fulfilling the terms of the guarantee are considerably less than losing a client and all of their potential future investment. Because even those who have experienced some dissatisfaction with a service — if it’s corrected and done in a genuine way — will and do return. If it’s demonstrated that when something goes wrong the company does what it takes to make it right, the client can continue to rely on that kind of attention to their positive experience in the future. It’s much less common for someone to experience such a terrible issue that they would boycott a service altogether.
Money-back guarantee on a psychological level
Money-back guarantees work because they rely on the tendency of our human nature to not take action. Other examples where we are counted on to not take action:
Mail-in rebates
Disputing the bank’s initial decision to not refund fraud charges
Real estate and wealth seminars (they count on a cycle of purchasing seminars and programs, not taking any action, returning for more seminars and programs)
It’s concept known as slippage and it works on our overestimation of our future intentions of acting on something presented to us today. We are enticed by a great offer or blocked by a first response, but don’t anticipate our own behaviour of then putting off the often lengthy and difficult requirements to follow up. Marketers know this and rely on the fact that a large percentage of people simply will let it slide. Incidentally this psychological tendency is also in play when clients don’t pay their invoices on time. The session or wedding is said and done and now it just becomes a pain to revisit something that has passed and the photographer is left chasing a client for payment.
In the case of a money-back guarantee there are other factors at play:
Our natural inclination to avoid confrontation: Many (not all, there are always outliers), even if they are dissatisfied, won’t use the guarantee because they fear the confrontation of having to explain why they weren’t satisfied and fear some pushback.
Guarantees act as a powerful message to our brain of assurance. It taps into the psychology of experts, where we tend to place more confidence in those that we feel are authorities and who assure us of high quality of the product or service by removing the risk from us and taking it on themselves. It’s a similar psychology with premium or luxury pricing - we place a higher confidence in the item because we correlate the high price with high quality. A self-fulfilling prophecy - the offer of the guarantee guarantees that you wouldn’t call it in. Wild, right?
The guarantee motivates the one who is offering it: Those who decide to offer guarantees are risking refunds and thus must be fully confident in their ability. While the psychology of slippage may work to their favour, it’s not foolproof — so their product or service must live up to that guarantee. That’s a powerful motivator to ensure you are holding yourself to the highest of your own standard, skill and expectation. Again, the guarantee is self-fulfilling. Your stakes are high so you perform to your best ability, the service is stellar and no one would ever need to call in the guarantee.
The amount of people you could convert to a sale using the power and psychology of a money-back or other satisfaction guarantee can far surpass the amount you’d have to return. If your sales go through the roof because people feel assured that there is no risk, is the cost of a few refunds perhaps worth it? A worthwhile cost of doing business? This is especially important to consider if you’ve ever given a discount.
A discount takes money directly out of your pocket before the service is rendered and if you’ve offered it, it IS guaranteed: the guaranteed loss of money. If you charged full price but offered a powerful money-back guarantee and a client is happy (which of course they are, you performed at your best, right) then you still have the full price in your pocket. The kicker? Discounts can attract poor fit clients who can be difficult, and those end up often being the ones refunded anyways. If they don’t complain you’re walking away with only the discounted funds at best, but possibly out of pocket completely if they request a refund (which they may because if you offered a discount you already may be feeling lacklustre to do the job for less and that may subconsciously affect your work negatively which triggers the request for refund).
MONEY back guarantees In the photography industry
Photographers have a very intimate service to offer and work very closely with clients. Ask yourself:
How important client satisfaction is to you and your brand?
Would you be able to accept having a client walk away not fully satisfied?
If someone expresses dissatisfaction would you work hard to resolve that in order to change that outcome - even if it meant refunding?
If so, then essentially you already have a guarantee - a secret guarantee. You may not have used it as a marketing tactic overtly in your communications but if you are willing to do what it takes for people to come away happy and in love with your images then it’s already there. So what’s the story with keeping it secret then?
We feel exposed and vulnerable. If you would fully intend to refund a client if not satisfied then the problem with offering a guarantee rests in the vulnerability of making that information public and placing pressure and scrutiny on your performance. If you declare it, it makes it real and it makes you accountable. It’s similar to the concept of a fitness buddy. Declaring your resolution to go to the gym to someone else helps motivate you to achieve. Keeping it secret doesn’t expose you in case you fail - none are the wiser except you. This is also the same principle that keeps us in low tier pricing. We are so afraid of being called out for the imposters we are that we keep prices low to compensate.
We fear it will be used by every abuser out there on a mission to milk every return policy and guarantee. That this guarantee will attract those who fully intend on calling it in, and they will come in droves and you will go broke. But because a powerful guarantee can increase sales significantly, the better revenue essentially can adequately cover any losses. And since these guarantees have been used for centuries and work on those natural tendencies that I spoke of above, we know that the balance is skewed towards your favour.
On that last point, we often punish what could be our best clients, because of the sins of what we consider the worst clients (or rather, the potential of the worst clients). Do we really want to lead our business in that way? We see this in other areas of life - holding back love for fear of being hurt, not participating for fear of being rejected. It protects us, but makes us miserable.
What’s the expression: “It’s better to have loved or lost, than never to have loved at all.” Shouldn’t we pull out all the stops for our best clients because in doing so, we create incredible ripples and success in our business, and risk the few duds along the way that we might have to pay off to go away? Is it worth it to give yourself at the highest level, and refund that one bad client we unfortunately allowed into our circle of trust, and kindly release them from our business, so that we can free ourselves to give even more time to our best clients? And just maybe, if we are giving our best without limit, do you think you’d even be attracting duds?
You can offer guarantees your way
I have the ugly cry promise (the ugly-cry is part of my brand). It’s softer than “30 day money-back guarantee” and it fulfils the spirit of a guarantee in a way that doesn’t focus on the money for my photography business. In my opinion we never want to bring attention to money over the emotional aspects of what we do for clients, but we want to impress upon our clients that their satisfaction is important to us and we will take care of them if they trust us. While a secret guarantee is good because it can guide you to a satisfactory conclusion in challenging circumstances, this is permission to explore how you might want to make it more public and seeing what effect it may have on your business.
How often do refunds truly happen?
Social media tends to point negative things out disproportionately because many go to these platforms when they experience an issue. It doesn’t mean everyone asks for refunds; you just see it more often.
If you come across a post where you’ve seen a client request a refund, you can ask yourself if a promise or a guarantee included in the business model from the outset could have changed the outcome.
If a client then requests a refund, the photographer’s fears get triggered and they then they are in a defensive position against the client. Being at odds with the client creates a conflict that then has to be overcome. If the photographer had offered their guarantee at the outset would their approach to the whole experience also ride out differently and end up in a different outcome? If the photographer ends up refunding under those angry circumstances - to end the confrontation, what would have been the difference of offering a money back guarantee at the start? Then even the refund itself takes a different flavour - photographer is prepared to do it so no fear-triggering, and the client accepts without any conflict because it was promised and given with no friction. In fact, could the client be even more satisfied with the resolution because you honoured your word? Could that even pave the way for a client returning and still referring you because even through there was a complaint they remembered how gracefully you handled it?
I know, here is where people will tell me that they deserve the money if they put in the work and the client’s complaints are around their own self-image and the work was in line with the portfolio. Yes, we do deserve to be paid. But at what cost? I’ve seen some client dramas roll out on FB groups endlessly - the poster gets advice, tries some appeasement tactic or hard line with a client, situation escalates and then they are in a battle royale, just to end it with a refund and everyone walking away sour. If you accept that this difficult client is an outlier to your business, then the refund is a gift to you - to free you of that anchor and swim back to the surface to where your ideal clients are. You can make far more money absolving yourself of that bad transaction and getting back to work.
In the end, you have to do what’s right for you. None of this resonates with you? That’s ok. You might be more comfortable with a secret guarantee and making a refund a last resort in client conflict resolution, although I encourage you to think about how even the psychology of this controversial strategy can help you think differently in your approach to business and client satisfaction.
How did Imagine dragons make it in here?
The Imagine Dragons song “Whatever it takes” popped into my head as I wrote this blog post:
Whatever it takes
'Cause I love the adrenaline in my veins
I do whatever it takes
'Cause I love how it feels when I break the chains
Whatever it takes
Yeah, take me to the top I'm ready for
Whatever it takes
'Cause I love the adrenaline in my veins
I do what it takes
I love these lyrics because they’re an anthem for the empowered, or to perhaps uplift the disempowered into empowerment. However we structure our business, the challenge is to do what it takes because it makes you feel incredible to work on your dreams, and when you are feeling that way, it explodes onto your clients. We should feel that our business decisions place us in control in being of tremendous service to others (i.e. a satisfaction guarantee of some sort, showing we stand by our work), rather than making us feel meek and in those chains, like offering discounts that erode not only our bottom line but our sense of accomplishment.
By the way, I offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on all of the ShineSparkL products 😉. I launched this site in 2018 and in all that time, I have refunded one guide. In the beginning, I personally emailed everyone who made a purchase and didn’t have a stated guarantee. If I hadn’t reached out, the person, true to the psychology principles I listed above, probably would have never requested the refund. But I emailed to thank her for the purchase and to ask if the product was of value, and she said that she could have found the info in free resources on the Internet. I decided to refund, as I really didn’t want her to feel she did not receive the value she had hoped for. And you know what, it was a blessing. Yes, I was out a few bucks (not too much because my sales model is to buy what you need, when you need it, in smaller increments), but because of that experience, I made sure my product descriptions were updated to let people know who my products would benefit the most. In her case, yes, much of the information may have available for free, but some appreciate the time to put things together in one easy place, and to add some helpful guidance on top that comes from personal experience.
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