As every year, after the summer we know that you are starting to prepare the Christmas reports. You have to put a lot of work into organising the studio and the advertising campaign with the families and this year you are confident that this effort will be rewarded. But you also know that there are years when difficulties with your Christmas campaign give you a lot of headaches.

If this 2023 you want to improve your figures with your Christmas sessions and finally end the year with a good profit, today we are going to discuss with you the main difficulties with your Christmas campaign and what is even better, we will give you a solution to all of them so that, once and for all, you can make these elaborate reports profitable.

This year save all the difficulties with your 2023 Christmas campaign thanks to this guide from Arcadina.

What are the main difficulties with your Christmas campaign?

The truth is that the difficulties with your Christmas campaign can be varied and can range from seeing what kind of decorations to make this year, how to approach this decoration task, preparing information for customers, contacting suppliers, organising all the documentation, creating an advertising campaign, etc.

There is a lot of work to be done in any kind of campaign, but if it is a Christmas campaign and therefore very short in time, all the efforts have to be rewarded at the end of these reports.

That’s why today we want to give visibility to some of the problems that often arise when organising a Christmas campaign and we will also help you to find a solution to them.

But before we talk about the biggest difficulties with your Christmas campaign, we would like to share with you a post with recommendations for planning the next Christmas sessions.

>> It’s time to plan your Christmas campaign 2023

1# I spend a lot of time informing families about my Christmas sessions

Yes, this is the daily bread and butter of photographers. The moment you launch a new campaign, families fill your email inbox, WhatsApp and phone with messages asking for information. And the worst thing is that the vast majority of mums and dads always ask the same questions.

When will it be possible to book a Christmas session, what is the decor like this year, when can the photos be taken, is it possible to include Christmas cards this year, is there the possibility of a costume change, how many children per session can attend, etc.

These are just a few questions but we are sure you will be asked many more every day. And the truth is that you already have enough to do with organising everything for the Christmas photographs, attending to your other clients, doing your photo shoots, retouching the images, being active on social media and a long etc.

It is important that you find ways to optimise your time and create a system where interested customers are well informed and you have more time to work.

2# I don’t have a booking system and I have to balance all the reports that come to me in a very short time

Something similar to the previous problem occurs when it comes to families booking the Christmas photo shoot. Once they have contacted you to ask you for information, they usually contact you again to set up a schedule and book the Christmas session.

The problem lies in the fact that parents work and children, in addition to going to school, often have homework, extracurricular activities and a more active social life than their parents. This lack of time is a problem when it comes to balancing schedules.

Try to find a system where families can check your availability without even having to contact you, so that you have even more time to devote to your work and a well-organised schedule.

3# The effort of creating sets and working many more hours during those weeks is not rewarded in the number of contracted sessions

Preparing any kind of temporary shoot carries a risk when it comes to making a profit, but with Christmas shoots this challenge is even more risky as the time and money you have to invest in preparing the Christmas decorations is usually much higher than with other photo shoots.

Our recommendation is that if you manage to solve the 2 previous difficulties with your Christmas campaign, you will be much closer to achieving, not only the profitability of these reports that only last 2 months, but you will also obtain sufficient benefits so that all the effort made will be more than rewarded.

4# This is a temporary session on which a large part of the year depends and I need it to be very well publicised

This is another problem closely related to the previous ones, as many family photographers are confident that this type of reportage, together with the communion campaigns, will generate a large part of their income to cover a large part of the year. For this reason, as well as ensuring that the Christmas sessions are profitable due to the effort involved in preparing them, it is also important that they are a success in order to guarantee a financial cushion for the following year.

Although it is a temporary reportage that, as we have already said, lasts only a few weeks, you have to take these Christmas sessions very seriously and use all the means at your disposal to achieve your economic objectives.

Find out how to overcome all the difficulties with your Christmas campaign with Arcadina

Although it may seem like a tedious job ahead of you to tackle the almost-closing Christmas sessions, if you learn how to use the necessary tools, you can achieve greater visibility for this campaign and, even more interestingly, delegate much of the administrative work with clients.

As a remedy to solve the main difficulties with your Christmas campaign in Arcadina we offer you not one but 2 business solutions that are specially designed to improve the lives of photographers. These are the website and the Booking service.

Let’s take a look at all the obstacles you can overcome with these 2 essential tools for professional photographers.

Photography website to explain and promote your services on the Internet

If you have a professional website with all the information well organised, you can’t imagine how many hours a month you can save yourself from answering the same questions to undecided customers. And it goes without saying that, if you learn how to create interesting content and take into account a few SEO rules to improve visibility and user experience, you will get your Christmas reports to reach even more interested people.

Clients nowadays are on the web and your website has to be one of the fundamental pillars of your photography business. Think that many people will get to know you through the web and will draw their own conclusions about your work without even having had a previous conversation with you, so it is important that you take care of it and have as much (useful) information as possible.

But within an Arcadina website you will have many options, such as creating: menu pages, landings page, galleries, sub-galleries, testimonials section, contact page, etc. Let’s take a look at a few options that will help you solve most of the difficulties with your Christmas campaign this 2023.

See what this year’s decorations will look like with a Christmas-specific image gallery

You already know that Arcadina’s photography websites are designed to promote photography businesses and in addition to having all the galleries and sub-galleries of images you need to show how all your reports are, you will also be able to create an Instagram gallery where the latest images you upload to this social network will appear.

Thanks to this powerful tool, you will be able to show families what this new season’s sets look like or even take a look at previous years’ sessions. The important thing is that when they enter your website, visitors can see a sample of how you make these reports.

The good thing about creating a specific gallery just for Christmas is that if you see it convenient, when this campaign is over, you will be able to unpublish it to promote other photo shoots.

Solve all parents’ doubts about the Christmas reports on your website

Especially when working with children, as well as seeing a sample of what a photo shoot with you looks like in an image gallery, families often want answers and if you want to save yourself a lot of time answering the same questions over and over again, the ideal thing to do is to create a specific Christmas service page. This is where you can explain: how you work, what this year’s decoration consists of, what products you are going to give to the families, during which dates this session will be available, how they can make a reservation and, in short, solve the rest of the doubts that parents usually have.

As an Arcadina solution, you have menu pages that you can publish and unpublish whenever you want and that visitors will have access to when they enter your website.

Another solution you can use if you are not convinced about putting all the information on the web, is to create a landing page. This will be the same as a service page within your website with the difference that if you don’t want to, it won’t appear in the main menu of your website. This way, when a customer asks you for more information or even when you send an email to your subscriber list, you can attach the URL of your Christmas services page.

As soon as users enter your website, they need to know that your Christmas campaign has already started this year!

Another option that you will be able to find on your website is the possibility of adding a small advertisement or pop-up window that will appear in the first place as soon as you access your website.

This type of action is very useful for temporary campaigns such as the one we are talking about today because it will not be an ad that will run all year long and, in this way, users who already know you or even those who enter your website for the first time, will instantly find out that you have already started this last campaign of the year.

In these ads you will be able to include a Christmas photo and a small text and the best thing about it is that users will have to click on the x to close it in order for it to disappear. This way you can make sure that they know that you have already started your 2023 Christmas campaign!

In the following article in our help section we explain how you can configure this interesting option.

>> Arcadina Help: Add promotions to your website

A booking calendar integrated into your website so that anyone who wants to make a direct booking can do so

Another of the strong points that you have to implement if you want to save time and not miss any booking is to implement the Booking service that we offer you in Arcadina on your website.

As well as being a much more practical service for both you and your clients, we know that many families look at these types of reports when the children are already asleep and having the option to make the booking at that moment will help you to increase the number of bookings considerably.

Because the booking calendar service will not only allow you to let the client choose the day and time that most interests him/her, but also to leave the amount paid for the booking and you will be able to organise the times of each Christmas session completely to your liking. Let’s look at it in a little more detail.

Save time with your customers and offer the possibility to make online bookings

For both you and your clients, having an online booking calendar from which families can choose a session, day and time and book immediately, will be a great success.

On the one hand, you can’t even imagine how many hours you’ll save by balancing your agenda with your clients and dealing with these types of calls, and your clients will appreciate the convenience of booking from the comfort of their own homes at any time of day or night.

Another great advantage of Booking is that, as all bookings and payments will be recorded in the calendar of your panel (which you can then move to your regular calendar if you wish), you will have greater control of your business, saving hours of work. It will be as if you had hired an assistant in your studio but much cheaper.

Get more bookings from families with Booking service

As we mentioned before, and if you have children you will know this first hand, the vast majority of families who want to do something with their children, such as going to a Christmas photo shoot, take advantage of the calm of the night to look for information about it.

If you give all these families that meet you the possibility to leave the issue already settled and make the booking on the spot without having to wait until the next day to call you and book, more than one will take advantage of the facilities you give them to leave the session booked and paid before you take away the only date in the calendar on which they can make this reportage.

Beat the odds with your Christmas campaign and improve on last year’s figures

As you can see, there are several difficulties with your Christmas campaign that may arise, but if you know how to solve each one of them, the economic results of these temporary reports and your satisfaction for delegating part of the work will be more than satisfactory.

Below we are going to share with you an article from our blog with colleagues who have already launched their Christmas 2023 campaign.

>> 5 tips and 10 examples for creating the best Christmas photo shoots

And if you haven’t yet started advertising these special sessions and want to use all our business solutions, we encourage you to try our services – they’re free for 14 days!

On this occasion we are going to share with you the interview of the children’s photographer Omar Huerta who already has information on his website about his Christmas 2023 campaign.

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

And to say goodbye we would like to know what are the biggest difficulties with your Christmas campaign this year. We’d love to read your answers and help you in the comments.

Headache for your photography business? Take an Arcadina

Headache for your photography business? Take an Arcadina

Fulfil your dream of becoming a professional photographer with the help of our business solutions. Now you can create a website and business for free for 14 days with no commitment of permanence.

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