Remember Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight?
How could you forget it?
Aside from being amazing and unbelievably terrifying, The Joker left us with several unforgettable movie quotes. In one scene, The Joker is proposing a deal with Gotham’s mob bosses. When asked what he proposes to do, he says, “It’s simple. We kill the Batman.”
While everyone laughs, one of the mob bosses asks, “If it’s so simple, why haven’t you done it already?”
His epic response? “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”
Even though it’s coming from a super villain, it sounds like great business advice, right?
As photographers, shouldn’t we charge a premium price for the premium services we provide our clients with?
Well… not necessarily.
Marketing Through Wedding Websites
Take the marketing tactic of creating a wedding website for your client. In this tactic, you create the website that your couple can share with their friends and family leading up to the big day.
When you create that kind of website, you’ll want to make sure you do the following:
- Tell the couple’s story
- Let guests save the date to their calendar and RSVP
- Show childhood images, engagement photos, and wedding photos
- Display the wedding video
- Give the lodging and venue information
- Link guests to the wedding registry
- Allow guests to order prints
- Link site visitors to your photography website and studio
But wait, you’re a photographer, not a website designer. With tools like StickyFolios, you can create beautiful, mobile-friendly wedding websites that do all of the above and more.
And your couples thought they were just hiring someone to shoot their wedding! Couples are consistently wowed by photographers who take the time to go the extra mile and provide this service.
In fact, it’s so valuable that you could charge your couples over $1,000 for this amazing feature. But just because you could charge for it doesn’t mean you should.
Monetizing an individual app or website is one thing, but it’s much more valuable for you to think about marketing first.
Instead of nickel-and-diming photography clients for advanced features like wedding websites, you can use these features to maximize the brand exposure of your business and book more photography clients.
Book More Photography Clients With Repeat Exposure
Back when you were in school, did you ever cram all night before a test? Chances are you didn’t retain that information for long. On the other hand, when you spread out your study sessions over a period of time, your chances of retaining what you study go up exponentially.
Scientists call this spaced practice, and it’s one of the most widely accepted principles of student success. It basically says that three one-hour sessions spread out over time give much better results than one three-hour session.
The same concept applies in marketing, only we call it multiple repeat impressions.
We’ve all heard various statistics about how many impressions (number of times someone sees your brand) it takes before people take action. Some say three, some say seven, some say twenty or more.
Regardless of the exact number, the point is that we know consumers and potential clients need to see our brand multiple times before they take action — seeing it once just doesn’t cut it.
When you provide a wedding website for your couples, you get exposure to potential clients long before the actual wedding.
Here’s how it works:
When a couple books you for their wedding photography, you can immediately set up the website that they’ll be directing their guests to. Before you take a single photo, you can already include their story, a “save the date”, childhood images, and of course, a link to your studio at the bottom of the page.
Once you’ve finished their engagement session, you add the engagement images, lodging and venue information, and links for their registry. Again, the couple directs their friends and family to the site for all the wedding information they’ll need.
Finally, after the wedding, you upload the wedding images, embed the wedding video, and provide a link to order prints.
As guests continue to visit the site to RSVP, book lodging, view details, or browse/order photos, they see your photography brand again and again, which increases your impressions and the likelihood they’ll remember you when they need a photographer.
Who’s Getting the Better Deal?
So back to our original question: shouldn’t we charge a premium price for the premium services we provide our clients with?
Of course we could charge to create a wedding website, but if charging extra keeps a couple from adding a website, is it really worth it? Is the missed exposure to multiple potential clients worth the $1,000 fee you’d charge?
Absolutely not! From what we know about word-of-mouth referrals, this is something you want every couple to have.
So even if you create the wedding site for “free” or offer it as a complimentary service in your top packages only, you still come out on top by increasing your exposure, which gives you the best chance to book more photography clients.
And you can always list the wedding website on your pricing list, so when you throw it in for free your clients will really get excited.
We are giving away a free example so you can see exactly how all of these elements come together in a wedding website that your couple will love.
