With many photographers in your area using similar equipment, offering similar services, and having similar websites, how do you set yourself apart? After visiting a few websites, potential customers may assume all photographers are the same.
What can you do to stand out? Create a flashier website? Offer deeper discounts? Invest in trendy backdrops or lighting accessories?
None of these are long term solutions.
Instead, focus on understanding your customer more deeply. What are they really looking for when they search for a photographer? What concerns or constraints do they have when hiring one? What do they expect when working with a photographer? And how do they want to use the photos you deliver? These considerations have nothing to do with shutter speeds, pixel counts, or focal lengths.
This isn’t about customer service but rather it’s about customer experience (link to PDF). The two are not the same.
In short, customer experience is the overall impression a customer takes away from their interaction with your business. For a photographer, this experience often begins the moment a potential client visits your website. Customer service, while an important part of the experience, refers specifically to what a business does for the customer.
By improving your customer experience and gaining a deeper understanding of your clients’ needs, you can become their photographer of choice, more so than any new gear or price discount could ever achieve.
