Marketing for Photographers: Three tips for photography pricing when you’re scared to death
Image by: @blankerwahnsinn
Pricing is one of the most problematic aspects of starting or running a photography business. While the psychology of money and pricing is a huge field, most just need a little nudge in the right direction. Money is a sensitive topic and most of us have a lot of scripts and fears and beliefs (usually misguided) attached to money. The key is to think like your client and not like you. It’s probably easy to make that distinction if you were serving millionaire row, but not so obvious when serving people who seem like you. Sometimes I advocate pretend play and other psychological tricks to help us get over some business humps. A good exercise may be that when you sit down to think about your pricing model and reveal strategies, pretend that you are serving only multi-millionaires. Knowing definitely that you and your client are not the same (unless you are a multi-millionaire in which case I don’t think you need this blog!!) can help you create enough separation between your own money blocks and how you price, and get you thinking more along business rather than personal lines.
In the meantime, here are three ways to approach pricing, when you may still harbour doubts, fears and lack of confidence. Baby steps!
Instead of a price increase, remove features
Say you’re priced at $150 and you give the entire gallery of 50 images and it strikes fear in your heart to go beyond that dollar amount right now. Instead, reduce to giving less images. This makes an adjustment where you can be more profitable because you leave some images out and can make an up-sell. In this example, you can try reducing the amount of images to 25. Then, create another price that you can live with and don’t worry too much about what it is, because before you were only making the 150. Just be sure that it makes sense. Try half the price, as you reduced the images by half, so $75 for this example. If clients don’t make the upgrade, you are still making the $150. If they do upgrade, you’re now making $225 on each gallery. This also helps you exercise your business muscles because you aren’t just giving everything; you are creating a sales situation like a pro! Just the mere act of doing this helps you feel more business-like and more in control. A toe-dip. When you feel comfortable here with accepting a bit more money, it can do wonders for your esteem and boost you to keep going and eventually charge more!
Create some add-ons
Another option is to add some features for an additional price. Would you like to supersize your fries? It doesn’t change anything about the base where you’re at now, but again it gets you into a sales mindset and into some business habits. It’s pretty standard for a company to ask if you want the extended warranty or if you want to bundle your order with other popular products, so most clients won’t find this any kind of surprise. It’s optional, so you aren’t forced into an uncomfortable selling situation when you’re not yet ready. If you have a CRM (client management system) then you can create an order form where you can add options. If you don’t use a CRM, use the system that works for you (Excel invoice, email exchange). My order form contains my three collections, and then has the following add-ons for sale:
Add a custom USB to be mailed to your door for added peace of mind
Keep my gallery up for three years (mine expire after one year for weddings and 6 months for family sessions)
Early bird store credit purchase (pre-purchase a $200 credit for $150)
Buy a future session for half the price. This is a great use of a discount because it boosts my sale today, and assures repeat business where a client will make a full package purchase. This is one of the benefits of a session/ collection model. My collections are already priced profitably so sacrificing half the price for a session is worth it to me for them to work with me again - a small cost of doing business to increase the lifetime value of a client. It also makes me very happy to have families return and watch them grow!
By offering add-ons, you are giving a client options that they may consider very valuable, but it’s completely optional and automated so you’re not part of their decision-making (which takes pressure off of you). If you see that your clients are making these extra purchases, then you can start feeling more confident that you are serving and not swindling and that can help overcome your pricing fears! This also gets you into a true service mentality and add dimension to your business. It can especially work well if you’re in a saturated market tier and need a way to stand out. Others in the same boat, fearful of increasing price, will just offer all-inclusive which is very generic and doesn’t offer clients choices for their investment dollars. You can rise above by offering valuable choices, with very little stress!
3. Create an alternate pricing sheet
Did you know that you can have more than one price list? I have three (one for brand new clients, one for returning clients with some loyalty program perks, and one for a la carte special requests). But you can have more than one even for new clients! Duplicate your current price list, and call it the dream client price list. Then, raise prices, let’s say by 10% to start. So if you’re offering an all inclusive session for $150, then this list will have it priced at $165. When you receive an inquiry, determine whether it is a dream client. How would you know? Well for starters, they don’t just say “what are your prices.” They may go into detail on the shoot they are looking for, their tone sounds positive, they may compliment your work or they may reference something from your bio, like they are coffee lovers too. When the client fits this profile and sounds like this in their inquiry, it’s a clue that they are investing in you as a person and photographer and not a price shopper. Offer them your dream price list. You literally have nothing to lose. If they come back and say it’s above their budget, you can tell them you can offer a 10% new client introductory special, so that you can have opportunity to work with them (this is a good position because it’s not a discount for nothing, you are giving it for a specific reason that has limitations). I recently listened to a podcast featuring a celebrity luxury wedding photographer, and he did this exact thing when he wanted to jump into the luxury space. For one wedding inquiry, he created a new price list and hiked the prices into his desired luxury price point. And they accepted, and that test price list instantly became his new price list.
If you gain a client at the 10% increased price, it should boost your confidence to make that dream price list your core list, and then do same. Create another new list with 10% above that, and run the same experiment, until you’re at the price that is your sweet spot (meaning it covers your costs/ expenses, gets you your desired salary, has a healthy profit margin to reinvest in your business).
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Complimentary copy of the Present Vision Board exercise
Pricing fear is felt physically through fear and anxiety elements like sweaty palms, rough breathing, rapid heartbeat. Make sure to journal your negative thoughts to literally get them out of your head, and perhaps some breathing and meditation, or even vigorous exercise can help you rid your body of that nervous energy.
I heard in a sports documentary recently that the game is won or lost in the athletes mind. This is true of pricing - it’s the biggest war that goes on inside! Try this mindset “reset” to help you reframe how you think of money.
A strong brand rooted in integrity and authenticity, that’s also visually strong and cohesive, commands more money because clients perceive these aspects as being more valuable. Invest your energy into your brand and you will be rewarded by an easier time with effortlessly commanding higher prices.
Tap into your intuition to help serve you positive messages (to help quiet the mindset tapes!). Relax, close your eyes and imagine yourself as a person who serves others and receives appropriate compensation for this. Allow this to permeate the deepest part of you and feel the feeling of this perfect state.
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