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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Michael has been working as a photographer for the last ten years. In that time he has shot over 100,000 peoples’ portraits and worked in four different continents. In 2001 Michael graduated with a degree in photography from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Ooooh you picked a hot topic. I’m looking forward to seeing the other part to it.
We’ve had our starting price & average price listed on our site for years in hopes of eliminating consultations and inquiries that aren’t a good match. And then we send our complete pricing upon inquiry. I would agree that when your prices are high, it’s best to just get that information out there, so as not to waste anyone’s time. If your prices are a few hundred more than what most brides expect, then it might be possible to convince them to find the extra $$ for your services. But when your prices are $5,000 more than what they budgeted, there’s no way they are going to be able to find that kind of extra money lying about, expect in very few circumstances.
I publish all of my prices fully; (though I do like the idea of logging in to get the price list). The comments I get back from people who book me or even those who don’t is that they much prefer to know up front what the cost is going to be. It helps them budget more and saves time in talking to photographers who are outside of their budget.
I personally HATE any website where their is no indication of price, or worse a ‘Price’ button that just takes you to a contact screen. Totally misleading!
Thanks again for another good article!
Andrew Miller
http://www.andrew-miller.co.uk