Studio photographers - how do you convince customers to purchase prints over digital copies? What sort of promotions do you do at your studio?

This is going to be long.

I worked at three studios all with different strategies on this. I now do my own business from what I've learned in the past 10 years at these studios. There were some common elements among them, and I've also seen what kind of stuff works best.

When to do digital work only

First, when do I do digital copies - I offer digital copies for events. You charge a rate, and that includes images. If they order prints on top of that, or an album, and some do, great! Bonus money. Basically my hourly rate gets me to the event and out of bed, and anything beyond that I sell, free money, since I'm just a middleman between them and the lab with a 300% markup, minus the 2 minutes it takes to retouch an image.

Okay for studio work - and this is your question - you don't offer digital copies. If they bitch? Too bad. Or you charge some rate, that if they pay it, you don't care that you lost the print sales. That number is different for everyone. For me, it hovers around a grand, or more, depending on how much I think the client is capable of buying in print sales. Do not write a number down for a digital copy sale. Here's a good guideline. Want a single jpg? $75. Entire thing? $1500. Not a whole lot of people order more than $1500. But I've seen print sales reach way more, if they're good clients.

So that gets you to your next crossroad - you're not selling digital copies, how do you sell prints?

Sales theory in general

That shit is an art. Every studio I ever worked at has had dedicated sales staff. I don't - I am my sales staff. This is sexist but usually it's good looking girls. This is because the majority of the time your clients will be women. Family portrait? You're talking to mom. Senior? Mom. Wedding/Engagement? Wife. Models? Girls mostly. It's just how most of the portrait genres shake out. If you don't have a sales staff, you need to learn to talk to women. Dad, in general, does not give a shit. He wants to go home. Read books on sales. Don't talk first, just show a photo, pause, and move on. You'll know if they want to order it because they'll go "OH WE HAVE GOT TO GET ONE OF THOSE." Don't assume they're on a budget. If your 20x30 canvas is expensive, and it should be, don't preface it with "now this is a little much.." Just tell them, it's $650. If they can't afford it, offer a payment plan. Learn to read people. This is more about your personality than your photography skills. You can have A++ photos and F- sales, and I've seen the reverse be true, too, where the most successful studios around here has a great sales staff and the photos are junk. Still, you can't fault them for doing what works.

Now that we got the basic "how do I sales" out of the way, lets talk selling prints.

Print sales (specifically)

You can do this a few ways. What I like to do is present two options. A la carte or package.

Your a la carte stuff should be expensive. 8x10s start at $50. Small prints are $25. Canvases are $350 to start. etc. Thin wraps are your money makers. They're just like canvases! (You tell them) But what they don't know is they cost like $30 each and you're going to be selling them at a 600% markup.

But hey, look at our package deals. 5 thin wraps for only $500! Wow! What a bargain! That'd be like $1000 for a la carte! And so on.

I discourage you from selling frames. They're not in style, and they're expensive (to you) but no one wants to really pay for them. Also, picking frames is a pain in the ass.

Show them things. HAVE PRINTS THEY CAN SEE. You sell it? You should have a sample. This goes for albums, too. Have one or two albums. One cheap album, and one amazing album. Price accordingly.

You should have a sales booklet designed and printed. You can get one on a template online, or hire someone to make it for you. It should have pricelists, descriptions, studio policy on payment and returns, packages, marketing fluff, and contact info. Put your photos all over it. Print 50 of them to start, you're going to be giving these away.

Sales consultation

So you're going to have this room. You're going to have a big ass TV and a couch in it. And your prints are going to be all over the wall. You're going to have a laptop mirrored on the tv, and have lightroom, proselect, or something similar on the screen. First you're going to go through all the photos once just so they can see the session. Of course you've already color corrected and culled these. They don't have to be retouched unless it's a blatant flaw. So they're going to go through once, then again, flagging possible prints. Then they're going to want to cull again, so you're going to 5 star the "we're printing these for sure" prints.

So then you have your 5 star/flagged photos filtered, and you're going to pull out a notebook. Go through each photo at a time.

This one - what size/format? 8x10. Okay. Moving on. Canvas. 16x20. Moving on.

Talk up your album sale. This was a great session, it really needs a custom designed album. Use smartalbums and just turnaround that album in like an hour. Make an extra thousand bucks. No problem.

There, you just sold a bunch of prints and an album without selling a single digital copy.

Now that your print sales are done and delivered, surprise them with a digital download of the web copies of what they ordered.

/r/AskPhotography Thread