A well known photographer once told me “The only reason people ask how much is that it is the only question they have.” In some respects this is true but the decision to publish prices and rates on your website can make a dramatic impact on your online marketing efforts.

It’s always been my belief that if you are going to publish your prices on your website then it should be because you are either incredibly cheap or incredibly expensive. In truth there is no real right or wrong way…… well actually that’s not strictly true. The wrong way would be not to experiment. For this reason this marketing campaign has four different options. (The next part of this article will be published next week). I’ll let you decide if you are going to try all or none of them but I would suggest that you do try out at least a couple of them.

1. Prices published in full
Arguably we live in a ‘compare the market’ world and I for one find it frustrating if I can’t immediately find the price of something on a website. The only problem with answering the only question that people might have is that they don’t have a reason to contact you other than to book a session or meeting with you.

This will result in a much higher enquiry to booking ratio and probably increase the quality of your clients as well. Whilst it does act as a filter for time wasters at the same time you might scare away others before you have had a chance to properly sell yourself.

You do also open yourself to being undercut by the competition but even if this does happen just ignore it. The worst thing you could do for your business is to get into a price war. There will always be someone doing better work than you for cheaper. Once you accept that you can move on and worry about more important things.

2. Ballpark Figures
“Our prices start from…..” does have an undertone of “We want you to spend much much more than that” so it’s worth considering the language you use. “Our clients average spend is…….” might be a better option but don’t make the mistake of having something too misleading:

“Our clients average spend is between £1000 and £2000″

What a ridiculous thing to say! Doesn’t that make your average spend £1500?

Even worse is making statements like “90% of our clients spend between £100 and £2000″

This is about as misleading as you can get. 89% of your clients could be spending £100, 1% could spend £2000 and 10% might not buy anything. Or the reverse could be true.

If you are going to hint towards a ballpark figure then make sure you have plenty of calls to action on your site and you are clear and not misleading.

This sort of thing might be what you should aim for -

“Our clients average spend is £1500, contact us for a full price list and to check our availability”

The 2nd part of this marketing campaign will be published next week

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I divide my time between being a photographer, retoucher, photography blogger and podcaster. Deep down I like to consider myself a portrait photographer and in my short 10 ten years in the business I’ve taken over 100,000 people’s studio portraits. When I’m not taking pictures I’m writing about it, most of my rambles can be found daily at http://photocreative365.com.

Phone: 07714327862
Website: http://photocreative365.com/
Twitter: @memorygate
Facebook: http://facebook.com/PhotoCreative365

Photo Credit: © 2010 Michael Shilling

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