If you’re a photographer, you’ve likely experienced this scenario: You just sent the gallery to your client. You see they received it, maybe even see they downloaded a photo or two, but it’s been days (weeks?) and they haven’t purchased anything. Now what? Does that just mean clients aren’t buying or printing things for their home and you should give up on sales being a great revenue source for your business?
If generating more income from gallery sales is on your wishlist, then learning the psychology and best business practices for instilling a buying mentality throughout your entire workflow and client experience is the key to success!
Incorporating product offerings like prints, canvases, and photo albums, you not only create revenue for your business, but you facilitate the creation of a lasting memory on the walls of every single client you serve.
With the Holiday season upon us, our pals at CloudSpot are sharing practical ways to sell more print and photography products.
Promote your products, not just your work
Great social media marketing channels for photographers include Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Choosing one or two channels to invest your time can reap huge benefits. Where does your ideal client and existing clients spend their time? If you’re like many photographers, then great places to start are Instagram and Facebook.
A few examples of ways to begin highlighting what you offer to clients would be:
• Happy clients receiving their printed photos or where they are displaying them in their homes
• Canvas print samples
• Holiday card examples
• Creative gift ideas for parents/grandparents (albums, wall collages, etc.)
• Sales, discounts, or giveaways conducted on your social media account to help spread the word about what you are offering
As the holidays get closer, don’t be afraid to create helpful social media posts reminding families to get photos printed for holiday cards. If your clients didn’t purchase right after their session, there is still time to encourage them to have their photos printed and your post may just be the reminder they needed to hop on it!
Additional great ‘excuses’ for posting are the various holiday shipping/printing deadlines that our pro lab partners have every year. Posts saying things like “2 more days to order before Christmas” can make a huge difference. Remember that your clients (just like you) are getting bombarded by messages from every company out there during holiday times….post consistently and diligently to stay top of mind with your clients. One post won’t cut it!
Also, let’s be real. You’re busy during the holidays as well. So how can you increase your social media posts without taking huge chunks of time out of your already busy workflow?!
Through Plann’s brand new integration with CloudSpot, photographers can now craft, schedule, plan (pun intended), and fully automate their entire social media calendar!. Easily export your photos, hashtags, vendor lists, and more from CloudSpot directly into Plann. Say goodbye to the single image downloads, the Google notes to copy, and the dread of how much time your next post will take. Creating posts to go out during the entire holiday season can now be done all at once and within minutes!
The great news is that as a photographer you have the creativity and tools at your disposal to create incredible content. Let us guide you on how to schedule your CloudSpot content easily with Plann!
Remind and encourage clients with email marketing
Once you’ve scheduled social media posts, sending email campaigns is the way to more directly reach your existing list of past and current clients.
If you’ve used CloudSpot’s Email Capture feature in your galleries, then your email list for every gallery is ready and waiting for you! You can quickly export those emails of gallery visitors to use in another 3rd party email service (Mailchimp, Flodesk, etc.) or you can email them directly from your CloudSpot dashboard and include a convenient link for them to re-visit their gallery!
Possible campaign ideas for these outreach emails could be seasonal offers on your services, available Store products you’ve made available in their CloudSpot gallery Storefront (with example photos!), and any promotions you are running at the time. Discounts on orders larger than a certain $ amount, free shipping, and exclusive offers on specific products are all big levers you can pull to re-engage with everyone you have served.
Psst… you can use Plann’s custom calendar event to create a birds eye view of your entire marketing strategy, including email marketing.
It’s never a bad idea to follow up with your client personally as well. Mention the email you sent and see if there are any specific products that they think may be perfectly suited for the type of shoot they did with you!
Come with suggestions as well and if possible share screenshots of their photos on the product you think would be perfect. Remember, clients buy what you show them, so if they haven’t seen a mock up of what a canvas might look like over a couch or above the fireplace – this is your opportunity!
By spending some time building out your email marketing campaign workflow for any season, you can have a repeatable system and process in place to not only creatively increase your print sales for this season, but every season after!
No matter where you are in your photography business, you have a huge opportunity to take your level of service (and income from each shoot) to new heights! Place yourself in your clients’ shoes and reverse engineer the ways you can go above and beyond to engrain print/product sales into your client’s expectations. List out ways you can go the extra mile to help them have a frictionless buying journey from start to finish! Be confident in your work and the memories it holds.
As a company built by photographers for photographers, CloudSpot knows that your work deserves to be on client’s walls. Our goal with the Plann and CloudSpot integration is to give you every tool we can to make that easier than ever – you’ve got this!
Don’t have a CloudSpot account just yet? Sign up free today.
