Ideas to boost the sale of family photo shoots in the summer season

Family photo shoots can be offered to clients almost any time of the year, but in these summer months when the volume of work drops considerably, a very good idea can be to organise a series of fresher and more fun family photo shoots for your clients, or even, if you live in a coastal area, to offer this type of photo shoot to tourists who come to enjoy a few days of sun and beach near your photo studio.

In today’s article we are going to give you all the keys to boost, on the one hand, the sale of family photo shoots among families this summer and, on the other hand, we will give you several tips so that you can get even more benefits from each of the photo shoots you are hired for this summer. Don’t miss all the recommendations you’ll find in this post and how to carry them out.

Save these summer months thanks to family photo shoots.

How can you organise the workflow for family photo shoots?

Family photo shoots can be a great alternative for these months when the volume of work is quite lower and when, taking advantage of this slight break, you can take your workday with a little more tranquility. But to achieve this slower but continuous rhythm of work it is important that you either delegate part of your work to someone else, or that you implement a series of tools in your business that partially work for you.

And this is exactly what we are going to talk about today in this article, about the business solutions that you can implement in your photography business to continue booking photo shoots in the summer months when practically everyone is thinking about their holidays and, moreover, working less every day. To do so, we are going to give you a case study that we are sure you will be able to get some very interesting ideas for your own photography business.

First of all, think about planning a photo shoot that is a little different from the rest of the year, maybe a little more refreshing or where the locations are a little different. Let’s look at some ideas that you might find interesting, but first we’re going to share with you an outline of what would be the ideal workflow to get the most out of your summer family photo shoots.

Workflow in family photo shoots

• Families looking for a photographer for a family photo shoot will discover your website with all the information.

• Once they have seen that they are happy with your photo shoot, they will be able to book a photo session through your booking calendar where you will be offering them different packages.

• The day of the session will be the only time you will see each other in person and you will, as always, take many more photos than agreed.

• Once in the studio you can create a private image selection gallery with, for example, 60 photos for clients to select 20 photos that you will then retouch.

• In addition to being able to select the 20 photographs included in the contracted pack, clients will certainly be encouraged to select some more photos (for a fee) for you to retouch, for example, 40.

• When you have retouched the 40 selected photos you can create a private download gallery so that customers can download the photos in good quality and also, if you make that gallery multi-purpose, for example, for sale, customers will be able to order hard copies for the family and some printed images in a more special format.

For more information on this topic, we recommend you read the following article:

>> Want to sell more family photos? Discover 3 essential tools

Organise a family report that is different from the rest of the year

Let’s say you live on the coast, then it’s easy. You can find a beautiful beach and plan a photo shoot at sunset. Here you don’t need to get too complicated, the children playing with the waves and the sand and the beautiful light that emerges in the last hours of the day will do the rest. But to make these photo shoots even more attractive, the trick can be to transmit to your clients the beautiful memories they will have thanks to this type of photography and how much fun the children will have!

On the other hand, if you live in an inland area and travelling to a beach is not feasible, you can also organise a cooler family photo shoot. Here are some ideas that may work for you:

• Find a nearby river and organise a photo shoot on one of its banks. You can find an area where the water is calm and not too shallow so that the family can at least put their feet in the water.
• Organise a photo shoot in the swimming pool, it can be a really fun session. Take beach balls and a big pink flamingo-shaped mat and you’ll see how much fun the kids will have! And the parents too.
• If all these options are not feasible for you, you can always transform your photo studio into a beach paradise with sun loungers, refreshing cocktails and starfish. But here the coolness will be provided by the fans.

Here is an article with some ideas about the different family photo sessions you can organise throughout the year.

>> 8 tips for unique family photography

Photography website with information on family photo shoots

We have already mentioned it on more than one occasion but the truth is that if you want to free yourself from work and that families who are interested in this type of photo shoot can find all the information easily on your website, the ideal thing is to create a section on your website where you explain in detail what these summer photo shoots will consist of. What better way to do this than to create a specific services page for this type of session. This way, when the summer is over and you no longer want to offer a photo shoot of this style, you will only have to unpublish the page until the next summer season arrives.

You can also create a gallery of images specifically for this type of report, so that families can get a more visual idea of what their family photos can look like.

By having all the information on the web, customers will contact you much less to ask for more information and you will have more time to spend on other tasks.

Active booking calendar to make sure you don’t miss out on any undecided customers

Once the families have seen what these photo shoots consist of, if you want the whole booking process to be automatic, you can activate the Booking Calendar on your website. Here you will be able to create the campaign for family photo sessions and within this campaign offer, for example, 2 types of sessions:

• Basic pack: 1 hour photo session, delivery of 20 edited photographs in digital format.
• Premium pack: 1 hour photo session, delivery of 20 edited photographs in digital format and 5 printed paper copies.

This way, if you include a button on the services page that takes families to this booking page, once they are clear about what the family sessions are like, they will be able to make the booking with the type of report they like the most, day, time and payment for the booking already made.

This service will save you a lot of time in dealing with clients and will help you to increase the number of bookings made for this type of report thanks to the convenience of being able to book a day and time directly on your website.

Private image selection gallery

As we told you a moment ago, thanks to this system, you will only have contact with the clients (in the vast majority of cases) on the day of the photo shoot, as no prior meeting is necessary for this type of casual sessions.

Once the photo shoot is finished, you can upload the photos directly from your Lightroom program to your management panel. This is where you will be able to create a private selection gallery where your clients will be able to choose the photos previously agreed (in this case 20 images) and also give them the possibility to select some more photos that they will be able to pay for on the spot.

This is a very good strategy so that families, when the time comes to make the selection of images quietly at home and without any pressure, are encouraged to make a wider selection than originally agreed.

Multiple download and sales gallery

Once the clients have made their selection of images and you have retouched them, this is the second moment where you will be able to earn some extra income. How? Very simple, by creating a new gallery of images with the option to download and sell them. In this way, families will be able to download in digital format the images that they have previously selected for editing and, incidentally, they will also be able to buy them:

• Printed photographs.
• Images to be printed in more professional formats, such as: methacrylate, canvas, etc.
• Etc.

Also, if you leave that gallery active, you may get more orders for printed photos to share with the family when the summer comes around.

At Arcadina you will have all the tools you need to create your summer campaigns

 

This is just a business idea to boost and get even more benefits from your family photo sessions, but the truth is that you can organise them according to your own criteria. At Arcadina we offer you a multitude of tools that will help you to work less every day and offer a much more up-to-date and professional service to your clients.

Following today’s example, we are going to explain very briefly how you can quickly set up each of the business solutions we have just introduced you to, but first we are going to introduce you to some family photographers who already use many of them.

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

Photography website to advertise summer family photo shoots

In Arcadina you can create your website completely to your liking, customising everything from the design, to the type of galleries, number of pages, etc.

To create an image gallery, just follow the steps in the following help article:

>> Support article: Create a photo gallery

And to create a service page specifically for family photo shoots, just follow the simple instructions we give you in the following post:

>> Support article: How to create a Menu Page

Booking service for customers to manage their own bookings

In the Booking Calendar service, as we have already mentioned, you can create a specific campaign for this type of temporary reportage and then add the different types of sessions, which will be like the packs that you usually create for each reportage.

To set up a campaign is very simple and intuitive but in case you have any doubts, we are going to share with you our help post where we explain the whole procedure:

>> Support article: Booking. Campaigns

And once you have created the summer campaign for families, you only have to include the pack or packs you want to offer, i.e. the types of sessions in Booking. See how easy it is to add them:

>> Support article: Booking. Types of sessions

Private galleries with multiple options to earn extra income from each shoot

Once the photo shoot is over, you still have several opportunities to earn extra income, following this particular example you will have a couple of chances:

• In the selection gallery your customers will have the opportunity to select more images for a small fee. We will explain it to you below:

>> Help Article: Client Area – Create a selection gallery

• And when the final photos are delivered, if in addition to creating an image download gallery you activate the image sales option, customers will be able to order prints or even print photos in more professional formats directly from the Arcadina Labs laboratory:

>> Help article: Customer Area – Create a digital download gallery

>> Help article: Client area – Create a digital sales gallery

>> Help article: Client area – Create a multi-mode gallery

>> Help article: Enable/disable lab formats

This summer, put into practice all the tips to enhance your family photo sessions

As you can see, if you do it right even in the summer you can make a good income from family photo shoots. All you have to do is make everything clear on your website, allow your clients to make the bookings themselves from the website and create a private gallery system that allows you to continue to do business even after you have been paid for the photo shoot.

This case study has been focused on family photo shoots, but you can implement these ideas in almost any type of photo shoot.

And if what happens to you is that you don’t know if the business solutions that we offer at Arcadina fit your business model, now you have the opportunity to try them for 14 days for free.

 This time we would like to share with you the interview we did with Antonio Siles from Antonio Siles Fotógrafo, a fantastic family photographer in Almería and a great friend of Arcadina.

>> Meet Antonio Siles, children’s and family photographer

And to finish with one last question: What did you think of the planning of the family photo sessions we have presented in this post today? We would love to discuss your opinion in the comments.

 

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