Award-winning photographer, G.E. Masana, emailed our support team several months ago sharing a story of how his sales had dramatically increased using album design. Here at Fundy, we love sharing tips that will help our customers grow their business, so we asked G.E. to write a guest post for us on how he attains such high sales through album design.
Are you already showing your wedding clients pre-designs of their wedding albums? Then there’s something you may not have realized.
We all know (and appreciate) how album design software speeds up the design process, cutting down work hours, making it easier to design beautiful wedding albums – but did you know you can also use design software and your album designs to radically ramp up album print sales to skyrocket your profits?
If you’re like most photographers doing album designs, you probably design a gorgeous wedding album and present it to the couple after their wedding, give them a price list for additional photos or spreads in the album, maybe help them make their selections…and let the chips fall where they may. I used to do that too. My average sales back then for purchases of additional photos in the wedding album were anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000.
Not bad, but here’s what happened.
I realized that more than simply showing photos in a nice design was needed, no matter how great the photography was or how wonderful everything looked. So one day I tried out a few changes. There were nuances I’ve learned that when done, usually resulted in wedding clients making larger purchases. So I worked several of these “mechanisms” into the way I presented the design.
The results were stellar.
My sales figures for additional prints in the wedding album immediately jumped up to $6,000 to $7,000. That was more than twice as much as I was getting before! And this resulted just from the adjustments I made. Nothing else had changed. It was still my same client base comprised of ordinary everyday couples.
Basically, what I had developed was a system. And this system was something I could do again and again and get results. Even better, it wasn’t a difficult sale at all. I had built the system around the album design presentation so it wasn’t even a matter of me doing any of the selling. I mostly sat there quiet. My system was doing all of the heavy lifting.
In fact it was even easier than getting the wedding booking in the first place, and often for more money than the original booking too. Obviously there’s several nuances to a system like that but let me show you one you can do right now.
Before I used album design software it used to take me parts of up to three days to finish designing an album with up to around 100 images in it. By the end of that time, I’d be way more than done with the album and anxious to move on. But using design software, I found myself designing over 200 images in an album in just a few hours the first time out. I joked that design software didn’t come with any brakes – you can just keep on going, designing away.
Now I had twice as many photos than usual to show and sell. I actually had designed more spreads than an album could possibly contain. And you know what? While it was delightful designing such a splendid looking monster album – I realized that because I had way many more photos to show my clients than I ever had before…over twice as many… that if I were to present this to my clients, the total price was going to be twice as much too.
In this case, the complete design would run a whopping $14,700. Made me gulp. I wondered if it even made sense to show that design to the couple. But I reasoned that if I didn’t show it and ask for that number, well, I’d never have a chance of ever getting it. I had to try. I really had nothing to lose in showing it so I went ahead and presented it to the couple. And what happened next absolutely astounded me.
They placed a $10,680 order. In the blink of an eye. That was another 50% more than my previous sales!
You just never know what people will buy until they buy it. I already had a terrific system for selling additional prints for the wedding album but combining that with showing even more images, made so simple and easy to do with design software…was like magic. But was this a one time fluke? Would it happen again?
Let me tell you about the next wedding.
With the next wedding I had over 300 images in the album design. And now I was going to show this next couple a design with an $18,620 price tag. That was the most expensive wedding album design I’d ever done up to that time. You can imagine how much I was sweating over that one. It’s not like my clients hang with Donald Trump, you know. You could buy a small car with that money. But again, I figured I shouldn’t prejudge. You just never know if they’ll say yes but one thing I did know for certain is: you never get what you don’t ask for.
So I thought let me simply show it to the couple and respect that they can make their own decision. Which is what I did. Not before taking a very, very deep breath though. I went through the presentation the same way as before, using the same system, letting it do the work for me. And this time, unbelievably, the sale shot up to $15,000. Again, in the blink of an eye…while I just sat there.
The lesson of my little story? Show lots of images in your designs. The more “inventory” you have for sale, the more people can buy.
Don’t hold back in your design, thinking they’ll never buy it. Don’t prejudge. Don’t scale down the number of images you show keeping to the original contracted for amount out of some sense of feeling it’s pushy or absurd to go beyond that. Don’t be afraid it’ll seem like too much.
Instead, be fearless. Show great work. Be proud that you have an overabundance of great images for your couples to select from. Give them the option to go beyond what they had contracted instead of depriving them of options. Respect that the couple can and will make their own decisions, and even if you think it’s a bit too much…the couple may not think so at all. And guess what? You’ll make greater sales of absolutely amazing looking wedding albums. And your clients will love you for it.
If you’d like more of a roadmap showing you how to get higher sales from your album designs, click here.
