value

Breakthrough Technology

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Here in the Toronto area, the Ford Motor Company is currently running a radio commercial promoting its new vehicles. During the radio spot, a man exclaims that the technology in his Ford is so advanced, “I feel like I’m driving a computer!”

Huh? Who wants to drive a computer? Who wants their car to feel like a computer?

Many car companies promote the high-tech gadgets in their cars because that’s the easy thing to do. But technology isn’t an end point. It’s a tool. It’s a description.

What does this have to do with photography?

Clients don’t care about the technology behind photography. They don’t care about megapixels or megabytes. They don’t care what’s “under the hood”.

All they care about is results: good pictures on time. No surprises, no excuses.

Clients want value not technology.

 

Make Sense

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A few things that don’t seem to make sense:

• If you order a $1.49 precooked and prepackaged hamburger at a fast-food joint, you have to pay before they give you the food.

But if you order an $85 steak dinner at a restaurant, you don’t have to pay until after the food has been cooked, served and eaten.

 

• Why do some amateur photographers spend many thousands of dollars buying top-of-the-line camera gear just to photograph things that a $400 camera could do equally as well?

 

• Why do some professional photographers like to brag how they used a cheap toy camera to shoot a multi-thousand-dollar assignment?

 

• Why would a company spend about $47,000 to buy five full-page B+W ads in a Toronto tabloid newspaper and then budget less than $500 for the photography for those ads?

Why not budget $25,000 for five half-page ads and then budget, say, $2,500 for the photography? Not only would this save the company thousands of dollars but the better quality photography will earn the company more attention.

 

Lower the bridge or raise the water?

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Having to lower your price is the penalty you pay for not having raised your value.

If a photographer can’t sell value then they may have no choice but to sell (low) price. Choosing to lower prices is a business strategy that will follow that business for a long time. For example, WalMart will always be associated with “cheap” and everyone knows cheap isn’t any good because good isn’t cheap.

Remember that value is in the eye of the client. Extra prints or fancy leather albums may have value to retail customers (e.g. weddings and family portraits) but they won’t have any value to commercial or corporate clients.

Part of the job for commercial photographers and corporate photographers is to understand what their business clients need, what has value to them.

Low prices might be okay if the photographer can compensate with a continuous high sales volume. But a high sales volume means a high work volume. To support a low-price business strategy, a photographer has no choice but to work more and more.

Makes no cents.

 

Different value

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Should you ask how your corporate or commercial photography business can win more clients, the usual answer is to be different than other photographers. Of course, this is easier said than done.

When most photographers use the same cameras, lenses, computers, software, lighting equipment, and template-based web site, and all are capable of producing the same quality images, how can you be different?

In the old film days, it was a bit easier. Back then, being different meant a photographer might have the skill to follow-focus on fast-moving objects, they knew how to use a lightmeter to accomplish great lighting techniques, they had the necessary darkroom experience to make custom prints, they used larger format cameras, or they had a unique style of photography.
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Secret values

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A business looking to hire a photographer doesn’t want value in photography but rather value from photography. No company buys photography for the sake of having some pictures. Photography is a tool that can be used by a company to create some sort of advantage over its competitors.

Business photography, corporate photography and commercial photography should be regarded as an investment in a company’s future. Such photography can build trust, enhance brand image and attract customer attention. If the photography helps a business achieve its goals, then cost is just a transactional detail.

It’s not what the photography costs a business, it’s what the photography earns for that business.

Customers don’t buy from strangers or from anyone they don’t trust. Quality, authentic photography can help build trust. The right photography can help make a business appear more friendly. Effective photography can add power and credibility to the business message.

Choosing the right photographer is never about lowest cost but about highest values: value from the photography and value of the photographer.

While most professional photographers already know this, the hard part is letting customers in on this secret.

 

Perception of value

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The repair guy comes to fix the washing machine. The machine is quickly fixed in 25 minutes and the charge is $175.

What?! $175 for only 25 minutes of work?! That’s an outrage!

The repair guy comes to fix the washing machine. The machine is eventually fixed after tinkering with it for 4 hours and the charge is $175.

What? $175 for 4 hours of work? That’s not too bad.

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A photographer charges $13,000 to do 24 portraits.

What?! $13,000 for just 24 pictures?! That’s an outrage!

A photographer charges $13,000 for five days of photography, transporting a full studio setup to the location five times, four days of retouching dozens of photos, assistant fees for five days, equipment expenses, other overhead expenses, full copyright transfer and 24 timeless portraits.

What? Only $540 per portrait? That’s not too bad.

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A customer’s willingness to pay is based upon their perception of value (aka “the customer is always right”).

For better or worse, this perception comes more from the customer’s recognition of the effort involved in producing a product or service rather than from the benefit to be gained. It’s difficult for many people to “see” something that’s intangible or, at least, something that’s not immediate.

Customers generally won’t pay for efforts they don’t recognize or understand. Of course, the hard part is getting the customer to recognize the effort involved. An educated customer is always the best customer.

 

The Paradox of Price

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Okay, a little Monday afternoon math and no calculators are required.

Consumers want the most value for their money. Value can be defined by the benefits provided by a product or service, divided by the cost of that product or service:

Value = Benefits / Cost

This over-simplified equation shows that for a given set of benefits, as the cost decreases, the value to the customer increases. It might seem that maximum value would be reached if the cost is zero. But if you remember your grade school math, you cannot divide by zero.

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