It’s a common perception in this industry that album sales are dead. That might be true for some photography businesses. But, as a studio that sells an album to almost every couple that comes through our doors, it’s not true for us.
Selling albums isn’t always easy, but we have found a way to set our studio up for success. It’s all in our pricing.
Your pricing will either make it easier or more difficult for clients to purchase your products and services. At our studio, we price so that it’s easy for our clients to purchase albums, that’s why we sell a lot of them. But, making it easy doesn’t mean just offering cheap albums. Our pricing guides clients to buy the products that we believe in most – our albums.
When you look at your pricing, what is it that you’re guiding your clients to buy? What are you making easiest for them to purchase?
What does it mean to guide your clients with pricing?
To understand this concept further, think about the last time you ate lunch at a restaurant. If you’re like me, you surveyed the menu and kept coming back to the lunch specials. What is it that makes the lunch special so hard to pass up?
Lunch specials are priced and designed to make them an easy purchase decision. Restaurants guide you to this decision in two main ways, by adding value (buy a sandwich and get a side salad) and by discounting the price.
What does that mean for selling albums?
Structuring our pricing to point towards album sales starts with understanding what products and services our clients want. Because we know what products will appeal to our clients, we’re able to add value and discounts specifically with this in mind.
For our studio, we know that our clients care about preserving their memories through albums and the disc of images. So, to help sell the album, we offer a disc of negatives with any album purchase. The increased value of providing the disc guides them to purchase the album.
You can add value in more ways than adding the disc of negatives, whether it be additional pages, cover options, parent albums, etc. Adding a disc of negatives might not work for your business, but don’t stop there. Start figuring out what is best for your business by asking yourself this: If selling albums is your focus what are you doing to guide clients to purchase?
Written by Jared Bauman
Jared Bauman has built a photography studio in Southern California that photographs over 200 events and sessions annually. In business for a decade, Jared’s clients fly him across the world to document their big events. He has structured his business in a way that affords him several months off each year. Known for his business background, Jared has released several educational DVDs and tours the country speaking to photographers about business and shooting.
Jared is a Co-Founder and President of ShootDotEdit, the professional wedding photographer’s choice for post production. The company has grown to service more than 3,000 photographers in over 35 countries.
In his free time, Jared loves to travel and backpack, photographing God’s creating with his panoramic camera.