Professional photography business tips and observations from Keith Cooper - pricing and clients

hi my name is keith cooper from norflight images and this is one of my short videos about various photography business tips bits of advice experience i've come across in running a business as a photographer i'm a commercial photographer i do architecture industrial all kinds of commercial work and it's a proper business it is not a paid hobby i do it full time and i've been doing it now for nearly 20 years and over the course of that i've come to learn a lot of aspects of which bids of business work now people say things are changing rapidly yes they are all kinds of things are changing in the world of business um but some aspects are pretty constant and they're the ones that rely on other people um you know the nature of people how they interact how they find your services things like that anyway just a few little bits here um how do you promote yourself well um today the uh you know people say oh we use social media um that's fine do you ever actually look at who reads who the audience for that is we still have a website i do these videos they're not really for promoting our business they're more about promoting the brand itself um i work with several large companies likes of epson and canon and quite a few others as looking at testing equipment and it's all part of the business of me being a professional photographer how you approach it depends on what you want to say for your business so know who reads your blog if you have one know why you're producing content on it if you use instagram look for returns on who's actually reading it have you ever got any work via instagram have you got work via linkedin for example always look at why you're doing it having a personal blog is fine and in some ways my testing and doing stuff is partly a hobby of mine it's partly certainly in the last 18 months because we've had a lot less work um it's been something that's kept me busy fact it was a suggestion of somebody from canon that i started making these videos last summer and uh i'd resisted making videos for ages i didn't see the point of it really um but they convinced me otherwise and people seem to like the videos so yes canon and karen my wife and other people who told me to do this you were right there's the other bit listen to other people don't assume all the while that you know what you're doing um comes to a whole lot of things about your marketing and essentially if you're running a full-time business it's all about marketing so always look for marketing opportunities when you're marketing things you may be tempted to go the route of local furniture shops and offer big discounts be very careful about offering discounts on your prices now we're quite happy to put a form of our price list our rates up on the website now they are not detailed enough so that you can get an accurate quote for a bit of work they are detailed enough for you to get an idea of what you might pay and there are there is enough ambiguity in them that ideally you will phone us or contact us some way to ask for clarification on it the other nice bit about having your prices up on the website is it gets rid of some of the time wasters um people who want me to do a day's work for a hundred quid it can go away that's not mentally what i'm telling them to do but that's what i'll say no thank you but they'll look at the prices on the website and they go whoa not paying that much that's good because if they're looking for cheap i don't want them as clients i'm looking to build up relationship with clients i'm looking for clients who'll come back and ask for repeat work or recommend us to other people and that's the key of it one thing i would say about offering discounts is when you don't offer the discount everybody sees it as a price rise nobody sees a lack of discount as anything other than paying more you may say ah but these are our normal prices no from a customer point of view you've just upped your prices now i think your prices is not bad sometimes it's a good idea you're not just just not charging enough um it's difficult certainly when you're starting out to have the confidence to ask the prices that you feel you deserve for the work you're doing be honest about it if it's something you can't do then say it don't do a bad job sometimes you will do a job a little bit speculatively now then maybe for the first time you'll not charge a full rate for it but be very careful about that because once again if that client then comes back to you what's more work they're going to go hang on why are we paying 20 more this time than we did last time so always be wary about how you pitch your pricing than that in fact karen looks after all of the business side of the business now the marketing and the sales side of things and i am specifically not allowed to give quotes over the phone and one of the reasons for that is that my pricing tends to vary depending on how much i want to do the job so if it's an architectural project for something i'm really interested in i'm more inclined not to go to the higher rates for specialized work now as i'm told the higher rates are there for a purpose um and you should be doing it so basically i will point to the rates on the website and say if you want a written quote and we always give a written quote for any work get back to us karen can look at that we have a process and that's important in business it makes things a lot easier when you have a process for doing things even if it is a simple set of post-it notes near your monitor that says when somebody phones up what you need to ask them because i am i am useless about somebody phones up if they're asking about something i'm interested in we can wander off and talk about all kinds of things and that when i really should be nailing down the business aspects of it that's why we separate that and i'm not allowed to give a quote you know because yeah if i absolutely needed to yes i can but doesn't fit the process that we've got so it would need to be something pretty special before i would actually go give a price to somebody over the phone always be wary about giving prices over the phone uh much better to do it in writing because then ambiguities and misunderstandings are less likely to creep into it when you do get asked to do some work never be afraid to ask for a brief for the work never be afraid to ask for some guidelines about what is wanted first it makes the client feel more valued you're crediting them with knowing what they want now yes quite often you'll get asked to do photos by people who haven't a clue what they want they really haven't the slightest idea what they want it's your job to help them decide what they want and it's your job to give it to them and to actually help them in that if you do a good job in that they will value not only the product the photos you've taken but also the help you're giving them in their business and as i said before it's about getting repeat work it's about getting recommendations and things like that this all ties together another thing somebody sent you a brief asking clarification on it shows you've read the brief um i'm fairly certain that there are quite a few times a brief turns up somebody looks at it goes yeah yeah yeah just one yeah that's it read that no spend some time reading it ask for a few questions it's a two-way process um i'm never afraid to admit when i go into a company particularly on the engineering side of things to ask him for more information about equipment these people are experts they are experts in what they do you are an expert in what you do the idea is to use your expertise to help show what they want to show or at least help them understand what it is they want to show so it's always a process like that and that's how it works works with any professional photography if you're a wedding photographer how you deal with people in the run-up to the wedding what you ask them about the event all the things like that they help establish a relationship now it's sometimes called being more professional but i don't really like the word professional for me a profession is architecture medicine the law some accountancy those are professions i'm a professional photographer in that i earn a living from it that to me is the definition of it others may disagree but that that's about it one final bit i'll remember when you go to companies when you go to sites when you when you work with people collect information on who it is you meet because different people in the company jobs change roles change different things if you're looking to establish a relationship with an organization you need to know people in that organization and there is nothing worse than having worked several years with a company doing photography for them and then the person that always used to give you the jobs up sticks goes or no longer has responsibility for photography they've been promoted out of this suddenly you've got someone new doing the job and i've come across people who are new at a job they've been told we use such and such yo give keith a shout to do the photography and their instant attitude is they've got to prove something by nailing you down on price or terms or something like that they've got to show that they're doing their job properly you can work around that sometimes but sometimes not people are just well people are just people you just have to accept that um sometimes but if you know lots of other people in the company then you can ask them or you could do a bit of name dropping you know when i was talking to such and such who just happens to be on the board now you know um never be afraid to use things like that it's all about marketing your business getting you you've seen and that's a tricky thing to do anyway i hope these videos are of some help and some interest i'll do a few more of them i've got lots more on the website and in on youtube already so if you find them interesting please do subscribe pass it on to other people and thank you very much

Channel: Keith Cooper

Views: 398

Keywords:

Id: EU5m7zAt2fs

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 10 2021