business practices

Experience or just service?

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With many other photographers in your area, all using the same equipment as you and perhaps offering the same photography as you, how do you set yourself apart? After a few clicks of their mouse, a potential customer may think that all photographers are the same.

What can you do about it? Get a fancier web site? Offer more price discounts? Buy some gimmicky photo background or trendy lighting accessory?

None of those are long term solutions.

Instead, you have to know the customer more. Know what they’re really looking for when they search for a photographer, know their concerns and business constraints when they hire a photographer, know what they want when they work with a photographer, know how they can best use the delivered pictures. None of these have anything to do with shutter speeds, pixel counts or focal lengths.

This isn’t about customer service but rather it’s customer experience (link to PDF) and the two are different.

The short explanation is that customer experience is what a customer takes away from a business transaction. For a photographer, that transaction usually starts when the customer first visits the photographer’s web site. Customer service, which can be part of the customer experience, is what a business does to or for the customer.

Improving your customer experience by more thoroughly understanding the customer’s business can make you the photographer of choice more than any new equipment you might buy or any price discount you might offer.

 

Giving away the store

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If you were at a pizza store and you bought one slice, would you expect to get the entire pizza? If you were at a bar and you paid for one glass of wine, would you then ask for the entire bottle? If you purchased one ticket to the cineplex, do you demand to stay and watch every movie that’s playing?

Strangely enough, when some customers hire a photographer, they expect (or demand) to get every picture that was shot.

Why might a customer ask for every picture?

• Sometime in the past, another photographer once gave the customer every picture and now the customer (incorrectly) thinks that this is the normal practice.

• The customer thinks the photographer didn’t choose the best images and they’re worried that they’re missing out on something (i.e. FOMO).

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Photo Psychology

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A McGill University psychiatry graduate student, Jay Olson, and his fellow researchers last month published a study titled Influencing Choice Without Awareness which examined the psychology of magic. Olson is also a professional magician. The research showed how various psychological factors are used to influence someone’s decision making especially when it comes to magic.

The use of persuasion extends far beyond magic. In fact, some photographers already know this and they use psychology to influence their customers.

1) Some wedding and portrait photographers know how to properly list their photo packages. Never start or end with the lowest priced package unless you’re trying to sell that low-priced package.
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Business policies for photographers

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It’s important for every professional photographer to have a written set of guidelines to help define how they run their business. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has a blog post with a suggested list of policies.

Policies should be guidelines for your business and not carved-in-stone rules. We’ve all run into companies that hide behind policies that don’t always reflect the situation at hand. Your policies should help customers into your photography business and not push them away.

A company’s policies should also be reasonable and legal.

Some policies may be legally required (e.g. privacy policy) and some may be strongly encouraged (e.g. PCI compliance if you accept credit cards; a refund policy).

Your business policies can be part of, or supplemental to, your Terms and Conditions. Either way, having a clear set of written policies is an absolute must for every photographer.

 

Privacy and Model Releases

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A ridiculously long, meandering post but first, the disclaimer:

I’m not a lawyer and one look at my bank account will confirm that. You’d be foolish to take my advice without further thought. Although laws are written in black and white, they are anything but. No matter what the situation, there will always be a lawyer who will argue the opposite. Remember that civil laws can vary from province to province.

The short version of this post: Do you need a model release? Yes, no, maybe.

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Privacy laws and model releases go hand in hand. The federal government and most provinces have privacy laws.
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Canadian photographers and spam

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In a few days, on July 1, 2014, Canada’s new anti-spam law comes into effect. It will probably affect many professional photographers.

Two things to remember: (i) the law is brand new and nothing has been tested in court, and (ii) I’m not a lawyer.

Basically, the law states that a business cannot send a commercial electronic message without having the recipient’s prior consent.

What’s a “commercial electronic message”?
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Use You Clues

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When a customer is searching for a photographer, they don’t just look for pretty pictures on a web site and the lowest price. Instead, they’re looking for clues that a particular photographer is worth hiring at whatever price they might charge. The customer is looking for value which is quite different from low price.

Every professional photographer pretty much uses the same camera equipment, same computer and same software. Most photographers can, more or less, shoot the same pictures although this can vary by a huge margin. So how do you increase your value to the customer?

You have to offer something that customers can’t get from any other photographer. And what can’t they get from any other photographer?
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