Are you curious about the common struggles that family photographers face? In today’s episode, I’m sharing the three most common questions that I get asked as a photography coach. I’m diving into what to include in your client communication workflow, how to market an offer so that it will sell out, and how to price your services.
The Shoot It Straight Podcast is brought to you by Sabrina Gebhardt, photographer and educator. Join us each week as we discuss what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, Shoot It Straight Podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
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This episode is brought to you by The Pricing Playbook, a live event for family photographers who want to confidently price their services for profit. Over three days, I will teach how to get your prices just right and what is holding you back from charging higher rates. Join me in this workshop for free today!
Review the Show Notes:
What to include in your client communication workflow (3:03)
How to market and sell an offer (5:08)
How to price your services (10:21)
Episode Links:
Review the Transcript:
Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhardt. Here, I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing business, motherhood, and life. Myself, along with my guests will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there.
If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, The shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
Welcome back to the shoot it straight podcast. My friends way back in 2017, before I dove into this online education space back then, I used to do a lot of one on one coaching and mentoring. That’s where I learned how much I love pouring into women and coaching them through their goals. Don’t get me wrong.
I was still loving photography and I still do, but educating other photographers fills my cup in a completely different and unique way. So back then I was only doing this one on one coaching. Okay. I didn’t have any of this online stuff. I didn’t have a podcast. I didn’t have a mastermind, nothing like that.
It was literally just me and another woman working through her struggles, her goals, what was working, what wasn’t, and helping her transform her business. Okay, and here’s the thing, there were definitely a lot of similarities in the struggles that my students were facing. Regardless of who it was and what her business looked like, regardless of how long she had been in business or what her ideal client was, the similarities were striking.
I was literally getting asked the same questions over and over again. I was seeing photographers struggle with the same thing all over the country, regardless of their business. That was seven years ago. And honestly, not much has changed since then. I still see the same common struggles, plague photographers over and over, and I still hear the same frequent questions.
Also fun fact, these frequent questions are the baseline for my online course, the aligned photographer. I wanted to create an easily accessible and affordable way to coach women through these common struggles. And today I’m going to share the top three questions that I get asked about. So I’m going to get into these, uh, specifically in a minute, but really quickly, here are the top three things that I get asked, uh, most frequently in my DMS with my coaching clients, they are brought up the most.
Number one, what do I need to include in my client communication workflow? Number two, how do I market an offer to sell it out? And number three, how do I price my services? All right, that’s the top three most frequently asked questions and let’s get into them. So number one, what do I need to include in my client communication workflow?
I get asked about this one so often, everyone always wants to know if they have enough touch points with clients or if they should be doing anything else. And I do think there are a certain Things that you definitely need to include. But I also think that some of this is going to depend on some of the specifics of your business, like what genre you, you serve and whether your business includes additional services like wardrobe, styling, in person sales, pre session consultation, phone calls, that kind of thing.
Right. But a good rule of thumb that I tell my coaching students is that you should have enough communication and touch points with your client that they never need to ask you a question. You should be serving them so well and anticipating every need so well that they always know what comes next and what to expect.
So when you think about your current communication, what that looks like with your clients right now, a great place to start is with awareness of what questions are you getting asked currently. If you’re always getting asked about where to meet on session day or when the photos will be ready or how long their gallery will stay open, those are all signs that you’ve missed an opportunity to serve them and give them information.
So take that and look for places to answer those questions ahead of time. Maybe that means beefing up your client prep guide or creating one. Maybe it means sending it a few days earlier than you’re currently doing. Maybe you should be sending a post session thank you email reminding them of gallery delivery timeline and what those next steps are.
When you can get your business to a point that clients are showing up to sessions prepared and ready and they’re not having to ask you any questions, you know that your communication workflow is solid and on point. You have a green check, a gold star, and you don’t have to worry about it. Okay. So the next question that I hear a lot is how do I market and sell a particular offer?
So whenever I do like a Q and a on Instagram, and also when I’m coaching my students in boxer, I get asked about this so many times. And it generally goes something like this, Sabrina, I’m launching motherhood sessions or wildflower sessions, and I don’t know how to best market them so that they sell out.
Here’s the thing. The two biggest tips I can give you here are number one, you need to intentionally start marketing them early, like way earlier than you think. And number two, you have to have images to market that particular offer. Okay. So I’m going to break that down. When I say that you need to start intentionally marketing them early.
Most photographers hear that and think that they can mention these things one or two times on social media and then drop a link the following week and it will sell out and my friend that will not cut it. That is not even remotely enough. You need to start planning a marketing campaign super early, and that marketing campaign needs to cover all of your bases, social media, email, and blogging, and you likely need to start marketing this offer four to six weeks in advance.
It sounds like a lot of marketing and it is. And the intentional part of that puzzle means that you cannot just do this on the fly. You need to be talking about the offer in as many ways as possible and priming them to buy way beforehand. This really means planning out your marketing calendar at least six months in advance so that you always know what’s coming and you can back into that timeline, that four to six weeks of marketing ahead of time, right?
Because when you are not planning that way, These events sneak up on you. You find yourself saying, Oh my gosh, my motherhood sessions need to happen in three weeks. I guess I should book a studio and start talking about them. But then you realize you don’t have images and then you realize you don’t know what to talk about.
And then you drag your feet on it because you’ve gotten distracted by other things. And that’s when the offers don’t sell out because you haven’t talked about it even remotely enough. Instagram and that was it. And that just will not cut it these days. We are being bombarded with so much marketing on social media and in our emails.
We’re constantly getting sold to and things get lost in the shuffle. Hey friend, I want to interrupt this episode really quick to ask you a question. Does pricing your offers make you a little bit crazy? Are you constantly getting sold? constantly wondering if the price is right. Do you know that you need to charge more, but you have no clue what that means or how to do it.
If any of these sounds like you, I want to invite you to join me for a three day live workshop event called the pricing playbook. This is a three day live event and it’s for family photographers who want to confidently price their services for profit. Over the course of three days, I’m going to teach you how to get your prices just right.
Yes, I’m going to give you the exact formula that you need. So you aren’t second guessing yourself. We will also cover pricing mindset and all the things holding you back from charging higher rates. And on day three, I will teach on what I call pricing problems. These are the things that cause a disconnect between the rates you want to charge and what your clients are willing to pay.
I hope you will join us. Live for this transformational three day workshop and have a chance to get your questions answered. Oh yeah. And this workshop is totally free. Join us now at Sabrina Gephardt. com backslash pricing dash playbook, or grab the link in the show notes. I hope to see you there. The other part of this, the other thing I said is number one, you need to intentionally start marketing these offers way earlier than you think.
And number two, you have to have images to market them with. Okay. So this is a bit easier. If you have done this offer in past years, you are simply going to pull together a folder of those images. reedit them because your style has changed a little bit, Re edit them. You’re just going to gather that stuff so that you have information and images at the ready that you can pull from to share on social media, in your newsletter, et cetera.
However, if this is a new offer to you. It’s time to do a model call. Yes. That means that you are going to be shooting a session for free. You have to have images to accurately market this offering. People simply will not buy if you don’t show them what they’re getting, period, end of story. And if you’re new to running a model call, or maybe you’ve tried to do one in the past, but you had a very lackluster experience.
I do have a free guide all about this that you can grab. It’s called portfolio on purpose. And I walk you through exactly how I run my model calls. It is a really, really great training. I’m going to have the link for you in the show notes. Okay. So that’s the first two questions I get asked most frequently.
The third question I get asked. And seriously, I get asked a version of this almost every day. This is the most common struggle that photographers think they have. They seem to think that if they could just figure out their pricing, all of their other issues would go away. That miraculously they would start booking more, working with ideal clients, have better work boundaries and all of that.
Anyways, I’m not going to dive into the fact that none of that is true, but I will address the pricing part. How do I price my services? When photographers look at pricing their services, the most common thing they do is look around at what their competition is charging. They want to use this as a gauge or a barometer.
Another common thought that I hear regarding pricing is that they, they need to be able to justify their rates with huge print credits or giving their clients all of the digital files. And in both of those situations, they’re wrong. I’m not saying you can’t have large print credits or give away all the digital files, but you don’t have to use those things as a way to justify your rates.
I want you to hear me when I say this. Your prices are set by using a math formula, period. Plain and simple. Mic drop. That’s it. It is a math formula. It has nothing to do with your competition. Your business is different than theirs. And your rates should be too. And I want to give you a couple of really practical tips here that you can take away.
There are two main things that people forget to consider when they think about coming up with their rates based on this math formula. Generally, people understand that this formula means that their rates need to be based on their expenses. But what I see time and time again is two things being disregarded.
Those two things are number one, that your salary, that your paycheck, it needs to be included in these expenses. Okay. And number two, your salary, your paycheck should go up with time and experience. Okay. And that’s the part where like quality of your work comes into play. Okay. One piece of tough love is Yes, your work needs to justify this rate.
And by that, I mean, if your portfolio is inconsistent, if your images have a beginner look to them, if your editing is all over the place, you will not be successful charging high prices. This is just a truth. Okay. The same thing goes for your customer experience. If your clients don’t rave about working with you, then you’re, then those high prices that that math formula is telling you, you need those high prices won’t fly.
Okay. So yes, pricing should be based on a formula. And yes, that formula needs to include your salary, your paycheck, your paycheck, your salary should not be an afterthought. It should not be what is left over. Okay, if that is currently how you are pricing yourself, pricing your services, if that is currently how you are paying yourself by whatever is quote unquote left over after your expenses, it’s no wonder you’re frustrated.
It’s no wonder you’re burned out. Okay, your pricing is being set backwards. Your salary needs to be included up front, not as an afterthought. This math formula, it allows you to make some really great money. And as your experience and your expenses go up, which over time, your expenses should go up because you should be building a support team as your experience and your expenses go up over time, you will jump into that premium pricing market.
But if your work is lacking or your customer service is lacking, you will get pushed back on those rates. People will see that it is not in alignment. Okay. So that means that yes, you need to set your prices based on your experience. And yes, it’s based on a formula of your expenses. And yes, you need to be taking a paycheck, but you need to take a really hard look at your work and your customer service experience.
What is lacking? Why are people not happy and pushing back with your, with your high prices? Okay, this is where you might really need to work with another photographer to fine tune your posing or your use of light. You might need to work with somebody to get your editing to be really cohesive. You might need to work with a coach to fine tune your customer experience.
So just a few thoughts. I don’t want to stress you out, but I also don’t want you to just assume that you can come up with this, your rates based on this formula of your expenses and your paycheck, and that people will just automatically pay them. There does have to be some alignment between high prices, And what the customer will walk away with in terms of experience and final product.
Okay, so today I dove into the three most frequently asked questions I’ve heard in the past seven years of teaching photographers. I’m sure you know that I get asked a zillion other questions too. So I do want to say if you found this helpful. And you want to dive deeper into these topics or learn about the other six most frequent struggles that I see.
You really might be interested in my course, the aligned photographer. The course is literally an answer to the top nine questions and issues I see from family photographers. I take each issue I’ve created a mod, a module addressing how to solve this problem. And it’s a really great way to get your questions answered and have a coaching experience without a huge price tag.
In fact, the price to grabbing this course is lower than a one on one coaching call with me. So if you want to learn more, I will have it linked in the show notes for you. And that is it for today. My friends, we’ll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at Sabrina Gebhardt.
com backslash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhardt photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review until next time, my friends shoot it straight.
