Strategies to get more bookings for your newborn reports

When it comes to making the most of newborn photography, there can be a series of obstacles to overcome. Especially when starting out, newborn photographers focus more on technical issues, such as: knowing how to position the baby safely, learning the transitions from pose to pose, setting up original scenes, getting props, editing in a more artistic way, etc.

But when a newborn photography business becomes established over time, another series of concerns related to the management of the business itself begin to emerge, and these are the ones that will make it very profitable, if you know how to solve them. If you want to know what these problems are for a newborn photographer and, above all, how to solve them in order to sell more newborn reports, read this article to the end.

The biggest hurdles in selling newborns are not when it comes to doing the shoot, but in managing the business itself.

Main problems when selling newborn reports

When it comes to offering newborn reportages, a lot of preparation is required beforehand, especially to ensure that newborn babies are positioned safely, to make the most of each reportage by creating various scenarios and maintaining a suitable atmosphere in the studio for both the babies and their parents, as they will be spending many hours there.

To learn more about these issues we encourage you to visit the following article on our blog.

>> Tips for the cutest newborn photos

But once you have the right training, you gain experience little by little and you get your studio fully prepared and equipped to do this kind of children’s sessions, the volume of work will increase little by little as a photographer becomes more and more known.

It is at this point that a number of obstacles begin to arise that are beyond the control of the vast majority of photographers and are usually more related to the management of the business itself than to the actual shoot itself.

Managing the business is often the most tedious and complicated part of a newborn photographer’s day-to-day life.

Here we are going to present 3 of the main obstacles that a photographer who is dedicated to making newborn reports usually encounters and that have nothing to do with the planning and execution of a session of this style. But first we are going to share with you some of the websites of newborn photographers who trust Arcadina.

>> Do you like newborn photography? Meet 10 newborn photographers

1# I waste a lot of time in the booking process for newborn reports

As we have already mentioned, a newborn photographer has to have the studio ready for the arrival of the families. This implies:

• Have several scenarios prepared.
• All the props and other material to be used in the session are ready.
• The photographic studio is fully equipped to make the baby feel comfortable during the whole session.
• A space where dads can rest, have a drink and take care of their baby during breaks in the filming.
• Etc.

These are just a few of the jobs that the newborn photographer will have to do every day of a session, without taking into account the subsequent post-production process, preparation of other children’s and pregnancy photography sessions, administrative issues, search for materials for the sessions, etc.

All these jobs leave very little time for photographers to be attending to clients in the studio, answering phone calls or emails requesting to book a newborn photo shoot. Also, as these types of shoots are booked several months in advance, many of the calls are simply to ask for information.

If you want to have more free time to calmly prepare newborn sessions, edit the ones you have already done or simply rest, it is important that you start automating certain processes within the management of your business.

2# I do not keep proper track of payments

Another problem that is closely related to the lack of time, is the management of the payment of the reports. In most cases, photographers split the payment in 2 or 3 parts, this implies keeping track of them to make sure that all clients pay them.

In the case of newborn photographers, there is the added bonus that the booking is made when the mother is still pregnant, so it will be many weeks from the time the booking is made until the session is finally done.

If you do not have a well-structured process to account for payments from your customers, you run the risk that you may miss a payment or waste a lot of time looking for receipts of previous payments yourself.

3# I am booked many weeks in advance and my schedule is in chaos

Another consequence of booking a newborn session so far in advance is to keep an exhaustive control of your booking calendar, something that does not always happen. You have to be very careful and tidy to keep track of all the newborn shoots and not overlap sessions, at least 3 months in advance. And if you also do other types of shoots, for example: pregnancy, baby follow-up, children and family sessions, etc. every time a mum contacts you to book a newborn session, you will have to spend a lot of time looking for a slot in your agenda that fits exactly with this type of sessions, which are longer than the others.

To solve this problem you need to implement a system where all these processes are as automatic as possible to avoid errors and waste of time in your working hours.

At Arcadina we offer you all the tools to make your newborn reports profitable

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If you want to save time in managing your clients, keep better control of your photo shoots, payments made and those pending, at Arcadina, in addition to offering you a series of business solutions for photographers that will help you create your professional online business (with website, blog, private galleries, online shop, WhatsApp service, etc.), we will also help you with other management processes of your company that are also very important to make your newborn photo shoots profitable.

Thanks to the Booking service, you will be able to solve many of these problems that are more related to the management of the business than to the actual photo shoot itself. If you still don’t know about it, the following article will introduce you to it.

>> Would you like to have a booking calendar on your website? The Arcadina Booking plan is here!

Plan Booking, the best ally to make your newborn sessions profitable

Arcadina’s Booking plan is designed to make your life easier, especially when it comes to managing the processes with your newborn photo shoot clients. Being able to offer them the possibility of immediately booking a newborn session directly from the web, keeping an order in your booking calendar, having a better control of the payments made by each client, etc. will make your visitors book many more sessions of this style when they enter your website.

In case you still don’t know it well, with the Booking service these are some of the actions that you will be able to carry out:

• You will be able to create a series of campaigns for each type of photo shoot, for example: newborn, pregnancy, infant, etc.
• Within each campaign, your clients will be able to access various types of sessions (or packs).
• You are going to offer the possibility for your clients to book a session directly from the website. Including the choice of day and time and the payment of the booking.
• You will have a space for each reservation where you can manage the rest of the payments.
• You will have access to a work calendar where all the photo sessions will appear automatically and you will also have the possibility to take all this information to your usual calendar.
• Etc.

These are just some of the advantages of this new Booking service that will help you delegate some of the work that has less to do with taking photos and more to do with successfully managing an online project. Let’s take a look at them in a little more detail.

Create your newborn campaign

When it comes to showing the different photo shoots you do, in Booking you will be able to create a campaign for each one of them. This way, when a client enters your Booking section, they will be able to see at a glance, all the photo shoots they can book through your website, such as: maternity session, newborn, baby follow up, smash cake, etc.

Includes different packs in the newborn campaign

Just as in your newborn dossier you have several packs available to your clients, you can structure your website in the same way. Within the newborn campaign, you can create as many types of session as you want to offer for this particular report. For this you can define, among other things.

• Title of service.
• Description.
• Representative photo.
• Dates and times available.
• Reservation fee.
• Price of the session.
• Discount.
• Etc.

This way when a family enters your Booking section and selects the newborn photo shoot option, they will be able to select the photo session that best suits their needs and leave the booking done.

Your clients can now book their newborn sessions online

We mentioned this almost at the beginning of this article. If you are a newborn photographer you will already know the amount of time you have to invest in scheduling each photo session and the time you spend on managing clients, especially those who have not yet decided to hire you. This is valuable time that you could be spending on any other worthwhile task.

Thanks to the Booking service, you will be able to have a space where future mums will find a brief description of your newborn photo session, the price of the photo shoot and the rest of the basic information they need to know to start booking.

Once they have made up their mind, they only have to choose the day and time they are most interested in and make the reservation. Your clients will be delighted and so will you when you see all the time you save.

Keep track of your photo shoot payments in detail

One of the features of Booking’s booking service is that for customers who make several payments, you will have a space in your panel where you can register each payment (date, amount and payment method) so that you know at all times the amount that each customer has left to pay.

In this way, in the same space (your panel) you will be able to control how many bookings you have, from which clients, the amount paid and all the other data you need to know about each of the newborn sessions that are booked online.

Keep your booking calendar up to date with Booking

Another headache for a newborn photographer is keeping up to date and correctly booked photo sessions. In the Booking tab of your dashboard, you will find a calendar where all the sessions that have been booked through the website will appear.

The great thing about this calendar is that you can add your own appointments, block dates and take all the information to the most commonly used calendars, such as: Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, etc.

Thanks to the Booking service, you will undoubtedly be able to spend much more time preparing your sessions, creating more scenarios or launching new services.

Get more bookings for your newborn reports thanks to Arcadina’s booking calendar

If you want to get your newborn photos off the ground, get more bookings and have more time for yourself, Arcadina’s Booking service will help you manage it. Because, as you have seen, many of the problems of a newborn photographer that are related to business management can be solved with the Booking Calendar service. It will help you to have more time, your clients will take the step of hiring much faster, you will be able to manage payments from the panel and you will have a detailed control of the sessions you have pending thanks to the calendar that you will be able to consult and modify from the panel.

In addition, if you make any changes to a session, your clients will receive an email or WhatsApp message (if you have this service contracted) notifying them of the change. Now you don’t need to have a Business plan to enjoy the Booking Calendar service.

Before we say goodbye we are going to introduce you to several photographers who are already using Booking in their photography business.

>> Success stories: 8 examples of customers using Arcadina’s Booking Plan

In today’s article we wanted to share with you an interview with Omar Huerta who talks about his website, a fundamental part of digital business.

>> “My website helps me to show a professional image”, Omar Huerta

And to finish this article about the best strategies to sell newborn photo shoots, let’s ask a question: How do you get expectant parents to book more newborn sessions for you? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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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.