Jenika McDavitt studied psychology at Yale. In grad school, she began taking pictures of friends. It wasn’t long before her hobby turned into a passion and eventually, a thriving business.
Jenika credits her success in part to her background in psychology.
“The more I dug into business, the more I saw the connection with psychology.”
Today, in addition to being a full time photographer, Jenika is the author of the popular blog Psychology for Photographers and the ebook/workshop How To Build An Irresistible Website.
In this video interview, Jenika and StickyAlbums founder Nate Grahek discuss what motivates people to hire a professional photographer and also talk about the importance of a strong website.
Review
Why Clients Hire You
Understanding what motivates consumers to hire a professional photographer is key to the way you market your business and make sales. In this age of technology and social media, many consumers aren’t thinking about prints, they just want images to share.
“People are bad at guessing what will be important to them in the future….they want instant gratification. They’re also more motivated to solve problems than prevent problems.”
Part of our job is to help them understand the value that their images will have in the future but we also need to provide them with an immediate solution for their desire to share.
Your Website
A photographer’s website is a powerful sales tool but only if the person looking at it is convinced by it.
“A website is like an employee. If it’s not doing it’s job, you need to fire it.”
We spend a lot of time selecting images for our galleries and blogging session images but Jenika points out that,
“Images aren’t really what we want to sell. We want
to sell the images on canvas.”
To sell more than digital files, you have to introduce products long before the sales session. Very often, clients don’t have the vocabulary to tell us what they want. You have to draw it out.
“You have to understand who your clients are, what they’re worried about, what they’re trying to do and what problems they’re trying to solve. If you can do that, you’re going to have a much easier time selling and be much happier in your business.”
