Are you a family photographer and do you spend a lot of time managing clients?

 

 

If you already work as a photographer doing photo shoots with children of all ages, family photo reports are usually some of the most beautiful sessions that a photographer can do throughout his professional career and if he has seen the protagonists grow up through different photo shoots, even better.

When it comes to organising these specific children’s photo shoots, photographers don’t usually have too many problems, what does happen quite often is that you lose a lot of time when it comes to managing the more administrative aspects, such as: informing the families about the different photo shoots, arranging a day with them for the photo shoot, or even delivering the photographs to them in the studio. Families, especially those with very young children, often have a very busy schedule and finding a time that suits you both to deal with these issues that have nothing to do with the photo shoot is sometimes complicated. That’s why in today’s article we’re going to give you 3 essential tools that will help you sell more family photo reports, saving you some of your valuable work time.

Get more out of your family photo shoots thanks to Arcadina’s business solutions.

Why don’t you manage to sell more family photos?

When it comes to family photo reports, you have to gain the trust of the children, look for a suitable location or setting, empathise with the families and be original when photographing each moment that the different members of the family will offer you. If you really like this discipline, with a good training and a bit of practice, you will have no problem in becoming an outstanding family photographer.

As we have already mentioned, the problems that family photographers often face are when they have to learn to manage their time with clients, find ways to offer a more professional service and try to find more time to devote to expanding their photographic services.

Next, we are going to give shape to several of the obstacles that a photographer who is dedicated to making family photo shoots encounters and that can cause you the most problems. But first we are going to share with you a very interesting article which, if you have not yet implemented your family sessions, will help you to shape them.

>> 8 tips for unique family photography

I spend a lot of time explaining to the families all the options they have to organise this photo shoot

If you have a photography website but you do not have it properly updated with all the information your clients need to know about each family photo reports in order to book one of them, you will be wasting this work tool and wasting valuable time that you could be investing in other more productive tasks and that you are spending on explaining to clients the different options available to them.

This is a problem that, although it has a very simple solution, many photographers are still committing to this day.

Another form of this mistake is to have all the information well explained in a hidden dossier on the website. In these cases the photographers wait for the client to contact them and ask for more information, at which point the photographer will send them all the information privately via a link. In this case, in addition to wasting time having to answer the client to send the information, there is the issue that many other families interested in this report, not seeing the desired information, will not even have contacted the photographer because they could not find what they were looking for.

It is a session that saves me the months of less work but I can’t dedicate time to attend to clients to request a reportage

This is one of the most common problems that a family photographer usually has to face. As a general rule, this type of professionals usually have other types of main reportage, such as weddings, communions or Christmas sessions, which solve a large part of the year. For the rest of the year, they usually offer children and family sessions from which they also make a good profit.

The problem is when, for example, in the middle of the communion campaign, parents call to ask to book a family photo shoot. What usually happens in these cases is that the photographer finds it difficult to combine strong campaigns of reports with the attention of clients and this is a problem if he wants to keep all the sessions active and, most importantly, to make a profit.

I find it difficult to fit families’ schedules into my own

This is a problem that is closely related to the previous one, especially when dealing with families with young children where schedules are often very inflexible. Usually, in order to schedule a photo session, the family has to consult the parents’ agendas on several occasions in order to fit their own and their children’s schedules into the photographer’s schedule.

This problem means that the photographer will have to attend to the same client on several occasions, either via WhatsApp, email or a phone call to arrange a single appointment. Undoubtedly, a great waste of time.

I spend too much time attending to the clients who come to my photo studio to select photographs

If the photographer has not implemented an online gallery service that is ready for clients to view their photos from home, after each photo shoot he or she will have to reserve another slot in his or her schedule for families to come and view the photos and in many cases to select the images.

As well as being detrimental to the photographers in terms of time management, it is also disadvantageous for the clients who will have to travel back to the studio to view the images, with the inconvenience of having to check their diaries again and find time for the new appointment.

Another option you have when it comes to delivering photos is to use a USB or CD type device. In this case the time you will spend with each client will be much less but you will also have interruptions while you do other work and the clients will have to contact you again to tell you which photos they have selected.

And if you decide to use an external website that allows you to send images, you will have solved part of the problem but you will still be left with the task of having to communicate with customers to see what photos they want and you will lose the opportunity to get them to buy extra photos.

I can’t get families to buy extra photos from me

When it comes to meeting families and showing photos, clients are often already predisposed not to spend more money on more products and getting them to buy extra photos is a real job. And in the case that you choose to show them the images through an online gallery, if the system does not favour the quick purchase of a greater number of photos, you will be left without that extra income that comes in handy at the end of the month.

If you are not a salesperson or your online sales system does not make this process easy for your customers, you will be missing out on the opportunity to make more profit on all the family photo reports you do.

If I deliver the pictures on USB or Disk the customers complain because sometimes they fail

If you are one of those who still deliver the photographs to your clients on a USB device or Disk, you will already know that sometimes these devices can fail and in those cases the clients usually get a bad impression of your work, even if they love the photographs.

To avoid this type of problem and to update the photographic business and adapt it to a more computerised and current type of public, other colleagues often use external platforms to send images but in many cases the clients do not know how to use them or the link expires and they have to send it to them again. Once again, the photographer will be spending more time than necessary in dealing with a client, without taking into account that these platforms will not allow them to select images, buy digital images, print copies, etc.

When I have finished the work and the time has passed, I am asked for copies for the family and I spend a lot of time looking for the originals

And to finish with this brief compilation of obstacles that a family photographer may encounter if he does not have the right tools implemented on his website, there is the case where the photographer has already finished the job and after a few months clients contact him again to ask for prints for the family.

In these cases again the photographer has to spend precious time searching for this client’s files, selecting them and sending them back to him.

3 Arcadina tools to help you solve all these problems in your family sessions

 

 

 All these obstacles that a photographer may encounter when promoting family photo reports can be summed up in 2 main ones. To get more income from each photo shoot and to save as much time as possible in dealing with a client in order to make it much more profitable.

At Arcadina we offer a series of business solutions that help photographers to create a professional photography business on the one hand and allow them to manage their time more effectively on the other.

On this occasion we would like to highlight our websites and the Booking services and the private galleries with multiple options.

But before we present them to you in more detail, we would like to share with you an article where we introduce you to several family photographers who are already taking full advantage of these and other Arcadina business solutions.

>> See the work of 12 family photographers who trust in Arcadina

Photography website to explain your services

 

Arcadina’s websites offer you a fully customisable space adapted to your needs as a photographer, so that in addition to showing your portfolio in a more professional way, you can also present yourself properly and, more importantly, explain what your photography services consist of.

Although so much information may seem unnecessary, the truth is that families need to know what the different photo sessions you offer are like, what packs you have available and a handful of other questions that, yes or yes, should be answered on your photography website if you don’t want to lose clients along the way or spend hours and hours a week answering the same questions.

 

 In the following article of our blog you will find several more reasons to decide to take the plunge and create a photography website with us.

>> Increase your visibility on the Internet: create a profitable photography website

And before we move on to the next tool, let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages that Arcadina’s websites offer you.

Save time in dealing with customers by offering all the information on your website

We have already mentioned this today but it is a good reason to encourage you to create a service page for your family photo reports. Simply by explaining a little about what this photo session consists of, showing the available packs and answering the most frequently asked questions, you will have a long way to go.

On our websites, you will be able to create all the service pages you need, and even create a main page and then include the information of the different photo reports inside it. And as all our websites are specially designed to showcase the work of photographers, between the different sections of your service pages you will be able to add small galleries, shortcut buttons and other design options that will finish giving the professional touch to your photo stories.

Attract more customers thanks to the service pages of your photography website

If, as well as adding information about your family photo reports, you upload detailed information about the rest of your photo shoots, you will ensure that many of the clients who come to you for this session will come back to you later for another type of photo shoot, for example, Christmas, communion, etc.

The more information you have on your website, the more likely it is that new clients will be interested in your services, and if you have a well organised website, you will only have to attend to them on the day of the photo shoot.

Get a better positioning of your website in the main Internet search engines

As well as saving you time dealing with clients and attracting other families who are currently looking for a photographer, having a photography website with up-to-date and well-organised information will improve your ranking on Google and other search engines considerably in relation to your competitors.

This is a very important issue to consider if you see that the vast majority of your customers enter through the Internet and you don’t want to spend so much money on paid advertisements.

Booking calendar for your customers to make their own reservations

 

 

With the Booking service that you can hire at Arcadina, a large part of the time you spend managing clients will be freed up and you will be able to use it to create new photo shoots, offer a greater number of reports per week or simply take a break.

In this booking calendar service, customers who enter your website will be able to perform a series of actions:

• Choose a photo shoot, for example a family photo shoot.
• See what this report consists of and select from the different packages you offer.
• Please ask for the price of the booking and the total cost of the session.
• Choose the day and time to carry out the reportage.
• Pay the reservation price you have stipulated.

And the best thing is that all these arrangements will be taken care of by the users themselves and we assure you that they will love the idea of being able to choose a date and time without having to contact you.

Now that you know what this booking calendar service is all about, let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages you can benefit from if you implement it on your website. But first we are going to share with you an article where we talk about the advantages of the booking calendar in more detail.

>> 8 advantages of Booking that will make this Arcadina service irresistible

Use an online booking system to dedicate your time to other photo shoots

We already told you about it a moment ago but it is very important to emphasise it again. When a photography business starts to roll, there comes a time when a single person can not devote himself to make the photo shoots, edit them, serve customers, be present in the networks, create advertising, maintain the website, etc. When you reach this point it is important to either seek help from another colleague or implement a series of tools that free you from performing certain tasks.

With the Booking service you will be able to put all the photographic reports you want for sale so that your clients can make the bookings and leave the payment made without you having to spend a minute of your time on it. Can you imagine the number of tasks you can put in place if you implement this service on your photography website?

Thanks to the Booking service, your clients will be able to pick the date and time they are most interested in without bothering you

This is another advantage that really favours your clients but in the long run will also benefit you. As we have already mentioned, and if you are a family photographer you will know this very well, balancing the schedules of 2 working parents with the children’s extracurricular activities and other family events is chaos. A chaos that will end up splashing you when the mum calls you to make an appointment for her session after going round and round in her diary and it turns out that you have that slot taken.

This is more common than you might think and sometimes it takes at least 3 phone calls to book an appointment for a photo shoot in order to find the ideal time for both of you. However, if you have implemented the Booking service, this problem will not happen again because the families will have access to your calendar of appointments at all times and will be able to choose the one they are most interested in comfortably from their homes and at any time of the day or night.

Private galleries with multiple options for more sales of extra images

 

 

Within our Business plans (client area and online shop) there is a business solution that is very interesting and that fits like a glove to make family photo reports even more profitable. This is the multiple galleries where customers will be able to: view, select, download and buy the images they like the most from their photo shoot.

This is a fantastic option so that you can once again save yourself a lot of work time and your clients will have the feeling that your service is much more professional and adapted to the new times.

 

Below we will detail some of the advantages of offering your clients a series of private galleries with multiple options. And in the next post of our blog, we will also talk more in depth about this topic.

>> Increase your sales through customer image delivery

Save time after the family photo reports by sending a multi-gallery to clients

This is one of the biggest advantages that private galleries offer you, especially if you create them with multiple options. Because once you send it to your clients, they will be the ones in charge of sending you the selection of photos, downloading the images themselves and buying extra images in digital format, paper copies if they want or even a pack with several products that you have made especially for them. All this without sending you a multitude of emails or having to meet them several times in your photo studio.

Throughout this process, you will receive an email with all the information that you can manage in the times you have set aside for this type of task.

Boost sales with private gallery options

Another of the advantages of multiple galleries is that as a client visualises the photographs of his photographic report, he will be able to buy copies or increase the number of images of his order in a very comfortable way.

In addition, some time ago Arcadina launched the option of creating a complete download gallery, so that the customer does not have to go photo by photo to buy the images but can select the entire gallery in a single click.

>> Arcadina Help: Sale of a complete gallery with digital download

Within the multiple galleries and in the rest of the galleries as well, you will be able to include pricing modalities that will favour a greater purchase of images, such as unit prices, quantity prices, linear prices or scaled prices.

And as we mentioned a moment ago, you will also have the possibility of creating a pack with several products to encourage customers to buy more products quickly and almost without thinking about it. If you find this last option interesting, in the following article we explain how to configure it.

>> Arcadina Help: Shop & Client Area – Formats – Packs

Private galleries are the best method of image submission

When it comes to looking much more professional and up-to-date in your work, it is not the same to offer the client a USB device that may fail or even be lost than to send them a link to your private gallery.

This method of submission is becoming more widespread among photographers and, in addition to being much more practical for both photographers and your clients, it increases the cache of your services by offering a private space with an integrated aesthetic on your website where clients will be able to view and interact with the images.

If you want to use a good working system, go for private galleries

Another advantage of multiple galleries and any other type of private gallery is the order and security when storing your work. With this method you can forget about uploading your images to a paid cloud account or to an external drive that can fail at any time.

Thanks to this type of gallery, if at any time an old customer contacts you again to ask you a question or request a photograph, you will be able to find it very quickly and resolve your customer’s doubts through the gallery page of your shop and the customer area of the panel. And if you leave the private gallery active even if you have already finished the work, it will be the client himself who can carry out these tasks without having to contact you.

Sell more family photo reports thanks to Arcadina’s business solutions

As you can see, one of the biggest obstacles for family photo reports is to make each session even more profitable and save management time with clients. At Arcadina, thanks to the web, Booking and Business plans, these problems will be solved in one fell swoop. If you still haven’t solved this type of problem, the best thing to do is to start today with Arcadina. You have 14 days to try our business solutions for free.

 

To end this article we are going to share with you the interview with the photographer Juan Carlos Albuera, from Albuera Morales Fotografía.

>> “My website is an online showcase where I can display my work in an elegant, simple and affordable way”, Juan Carlos Albuera

And finally, we would like to ask you a question about the family photo reports you do. If you also suffer from any of the problems we have presented today, tell us which one do you think is the most difficult to solve and why? We would love to read about your experiences in the comments.

Arcadina goes with you

Fulfil your dreams and develop your career with us. We offer you to try our web service free for 14 days. And with no commitment of permanence.

Arcadina is much more than a website, it is business solutions for photographers.

If you have any queries, our Customer Service Team is always ready to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We listen to you.