noellez:

One of my biggest issues is the constant spending I am doing, insurance, credit card processing, products, rent, assistants, etc.

I feel like if I don't book at a decent price I will never make any money.

Any other suggestions on how to market my portraits business to bring in some more $$ would be great

Hi Noelle:

I've been known to preface most of what I say with "here is an answer, not the answer"...so...

"an answer not the answer..."

It seems that you are in the growth phase (the 2nd of 4 phases of a business or product life cycle...start-up, growth, maturation, decline...). It's okay to have those extra expenses in support of your business growth. The key is to make sure the rate of expense increases does not out-pace the rate of revenue growth...at least not sustained over time. That said, I once read where it's wise to spend 2/3rds of your "profit management" time containing / reducing your expenses and the other 1/3 on revenue growth. I don't know that I totally agree with that ratio...but the rationale seemed sound -- cost cutting is a more guaranteed path to increased profits as revenue building activities are always going to have an unknown variable (that is...the dependance on sales!). Hope that makes sense.

As far as marketing your portrait business...it seems to me (again..."an answer not the answer" that the best approach to marketing service businesses is to make your customers part of your sales staff...that is...go for the rave. Do whatever you need to do to make sure your customers want to show your work to all of their friends / relatives / co-workers / people in line to get on a bus, etc. Slideshows and blogging are key elements of this strategy, as most photographers are well aware, but another part of the rave is to "always deliver more than you promise" to all of your clients. (That was the mantra at Enterprise Rent-A-Car as they went through phenomenal business growth in the 80's and 90's...funny side note...when I moved from marketing to information technology...the geeks in IT tended to follow that mantra by never promising anything!! I digress...)

Over-delivering to customers can be done in any number of ways...telling them the prints will be ready a week from Friday and you get them delivered by Monday morning. You can also print up small albums of your portrait work and GIVE them to your clients -- Willowbooks if you are with Pictage, Asukabooks, KISS books -- all of these are pretty affordable albums. The best clients to give these to are clients who have significant networks of friends, relatives, etc. Nurses are an excellent example -- they LOVE to take pictures to work and show them to their co-workers. Those who are really on top of things know to DELIVER their prints / albums (etc.) to their clients while they are AT work.

Hope this helps.

Smile:
Dan,

Thank you so much for your post. You have left me with a question about how I run my business. I feel like I'm in the middle, but not as you described it. I don't want to compete with Wal-mart and the like, but I certainly don't want to do high-end because I don't want to deal with ALL that goes with that. Is this an okay place to be or does it have to be "value vs. high-end"?

BTW, I'm not and will never be a wedding photographer. I mainly shoot maternity, and kids.

Thanks for your input.

Erin

Erin:

"an answer, not the answer"

It's okay to be in the middle...you just have to be aware that most of the growth in consumer spending is either at the Wal-Mart or Nieman Marcus ends of the retailing spectrum -- that doesn't mean the middle is going to disappear! However, you can still move toward either end of the spectrum without staking a claim to either extreme end. Should you "not want to deal with all that" -- you can boost your profits by carefully managing your profit margins...eliminate underperforming products in your sales offerings. Or, if you want to move more toward the high end...concentrate more on making your photography an EXPERIENCE that is nothing like anything your clients have seen before.

Hope this helps.

Dan

Thanks Dan, all very good points!

very cool to read Dan, I'm at the 1st to 2nd step you mentioned. I am trying to work out a package plan that will allow the base around my smaller town to hire me as I grow while having packages I can market and that will appeal to the higher end clientele about a half hour away in my home town! I am hoping to do some of both and then work on which end I want to focus on!

thanks for the excellent information!

Thanks Dan for your post, thank you for sharing.

Dan, it's great to see you here (as well as everybody else).

Everyone who knows me knows I never follow the rules.

What Dan posted though has a bunch of truth in it. Just keep in mind there is more than one way to skin a cat.