The business side of photography
This is just another view-from-my-office photo.
Corporate customers don’t buy photography, they buy an end result. How much is that end result worth to the customer? Or to rephrase that, how much does your photography contribute toward achieving the customer’s goal?
Imagine if a restaurant charged for its meals based only on the time it takes to prepare the food. What if clothes were priced based only on the time it took to sew that piece of clothing? How about a grocery store that priced by the hour? For example, you get all the groceries you can grab for a rate of, say, $200/hour.
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Over the past month, I lost photo jobs to:
1) A photographer who quoted $1,200 for a two-day shoot, in two cities 100km apart, consisting of 22 business portraits, 11 environmental portraits and up to 66 finished images delivered.
2) Someone who quoted $1,500 to photograph a four-day business conference.
3) The “best professional headshot photographer in Toronto” who, according to the customer, quoted $3,000 for 120 business headshots. That’s $25 per headshot.
(When you have a quote turned down, try to ask the customer what the other photographer quoted. Sometimes the customer will refuse to divulge what they’re paying but tell them that you’d like to know where your price stands.)
Was I disappointed not to get these jobs? Yes.
Am I upset? No.
I am wondering how these photographers make any money.
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When hiring a business portrait photographer or other corporate photographer, you might be tempted to shop by price. You may think that the lowest price means the best value.
With some tangible products, the lowest price can be the best value. But this doesn’t apply with services like photography and especially not when quality matters.
What’s the difference between value and quality?
Value: Usefulness or importance.
Quality: How good or bad something is. A degree of excellence.
Ideally a photograph has both high value and high quality but that’s not always the case. For example, a poorly exposed, out-of-focus family photo can be very valuable to you.
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A photographer can’t discount their way to success. If it was possible, don’t you think every photographer would be doing it?
When you discount, you penalize customers who pay your normal price. For example, after buying a $400 winter coat, do you feel cheated the following week when the same coat is discounted 50%?
When you discount, it means you have no other value to offer the customer.
Discounting attracts price shoppers. Is that what you want? If you offer a discounted price of, say, $99 for a business headshot, then you’ll attract $99 customers. If they like your work, they’ll tell all their $99 friends and you’ll get more $99 customers.
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A photographer wrote to say:
“I don’t know why sending out job quotes still stresses me out too much after all these years. I tie too much emotion to my business at times.”
She went on to say that she wanted to learn to separate her business from her emotions because, she said, it’s not personal, it’s just business.
If you view your photography as art then perhaps you should also view your business as an art. And art tends to be emotional.
1) How much would you pay me to take a photo of you?
2) How much would I have to pay you to model for a photo?
Are your two answers the same? Shouldn’t they be the same since the outcome – a photo of you – is the same?
I bet your answer to the second question is much higher than the first.
The first question was about me, the second question was about you. Everyone values their own time more than someone else’s. This applies not only to individuals but also to businesses.
A photographer has to understand that many corporate clients tend to value their time more than their money. These clients know that any money spent on photography will be earned back but any time that might be wasted (on a photo project) is gone forever.
This means that marketing low price is the wrong approach for a corporate photographer. Instead the photographer should be showing that they value the client’s time as much as the client does. How will the photographer save the client time and effort?
For many corporate clients, it’s about the results. This means that a photographer gets paid for bringing value, not low price, to the client. It’s not usually about price unless the photographer makes it about price.
And when a photographer makes it about price, they shoot themselves in the wallet.
