4 Mistakes Photographers Make When It Comes To Selling Albums

 
 
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Whether you’re new to offering albums or it’s always something you’ve included in your business - it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle when trying to communicate the value of your physical products to your clients. It can be frustrating and can often push you to a point where you want to give up entirely - so what do most photographers do? They simply move their albums to an A La Carte menu and hope that once in a while someone will order one as a nice little bonus.

If you’ve been disappointed in the results of your album sales you may be making one of these crucial mistakes. Now even if you’re making these mistakes - not all hope is lost. It can be as simple as making one little change in your business to start seeing results that make a real impact in your business.

 

 

IT CAN BE AS SIMPLE AS CORRECTING ONE SIMPLE MISTAKE TO START SEEING RESULTS.

 

 
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MISTAKE #1: YOU’RE NOT SHOWING OFF YOUR SAMPLES

This may sound a little blunt but if you don’t have a sample album, you’re not going to sell albums. The product we’re offering is tangible and that tangibility needs to be communicated in its truest form. The easiest way to showcase the value of an album is to let your clients see it and touch it for themselves. This tangible experience allows your clients to create their own emotional connection to the wedding album and begin to envision their own photos curated across each page. The way the photos look, the way the paper feels, it all matters when your client is trying to figure out the value of the product. So the easiest thing for you to do is create a beautiful sample album that showcases your work and the craftsmanship of the actual album and get that stunning sample album in their hands!

 

 

Even if you can’t meet your potential clients in person, this doesn’t mean that the sample album is useless. In this instance, you’ll need to get a little creative. Create photo or video content of your samples so that the physical attributes of the album can be seen and communicated as best as possible to your clients. 

 

 
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MISTAKE #2: YOU NEVER TALK ABOUT ALBUMS

You may have a sample album and you include albums in your packages, but if you never talk about albums then you aren’t communicating their value and importance which can ultimately change the perspective your own clients have for your products. Easy little things that you might overlook can make all the difference in creating effective communication with your clients. Include social media posts about albums to begin to build awareness and value of your products (it also helps remind your past clients who didn’t get an album that it isn’t too late!). Whether you’re creating Tiktok videos or Instagram posts - these are channels where you’re communicating your brand values and ideas to clients so make sure you include albums once in a while, the payoff will be worthwhile in the long run.

This mistake doesn’t only apply to social media however. In order to fully embrace albums as a part of your brand you need to include them in all aspects of your marketing, this includes any point of contact you have with clients and potential clients like meetings and email campaigns.

If you need help figuring out how to talk about albums and get that messaging clear across all your market, check out my free resource: 6 Things You Can Do Right Now To Start Selling Albums. When you complete the worksheet you’ll have developed a way of communicating the value of albums that’s true to your brand voice and you’ll have a step-by-step guide on how to promote your products. 

 

 
 
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MISTAKE #3: POSITIONING ALBUMS AS OPTIONAL

If you already offer albums but you’re presenting them to your clients as an “add-on” to your packages - you’re communicating to your clients that albums are optional and not something that’s intrinsically valuable to your brand. Now, that’s not really the message you want to send when you’re trying to attribute (emotional and monetary) value to your albums. The idea of something being optional says that this product is a luxurious add-on, not a valuable necessity. It’s this sort of thinking that will prevent your clients from fully emotionally investing themselves in the thought of having a beautiful keepsake.

I see this with a lot with photographers who either have sort of given up on albums or they aren’t really sure if their clients actually want albums. What they do is they put their albums in an A La Carte menu - as an option for clients to add on to their package - and then end up selling less than five albums a year.

The problem here is that you’ve (sort of) blatantly told your clients that getting an album isn’t actually an important part of the process and by making albums optional, you’ve decreased their value in the clients eyes and you’ll always be facing an uphill battle in trying to convince them otherwise. 

 

 

IF ALBUMS ARE OPTIONAL IN YOUR PACKAGES, YOU ARE DECREASING THEIR VALUE TO YOUR CLIENTS

 

 
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MISTAKE #4: GIVING TOO MANY OPTION

The last crucial mistake you might be making is that you’re giving your clients too many decisions to make. If your clients are presented with a lot of different options, it’s going to make it really hard for them to commit to anything at all. This is a common mistake that a lot of photographers make. With all the cover materials and paper types out there, it can be easy to pass along those decisions to our clients instead of just making them ourselves.

Presenting your clients with a small selection of curated options will removed the issue of having your clients face the paradox of choice, and will ultimate covert to more album sales.

If you want to learn more about how to curate choice for your clients by simplifying your offerings - check out this blog post. It provides three actionable steps you can implement to create a curation selection of offerings - so when you’re presenting them to your clients they won’t feel overwhelmed.

 

 

Whether you’re making one or all of these mistakes, if you invest a little bit of time in shifting your current practices - you’ll start to see a shift in your clients mentality as well. All these strategies are put in place to raise the value of your albums in the eyes of your clients. The value isn’t the cost, the value is an intangible worth and importance that your clients attribute to albums and that’s something that starts with YOU. 

So if you’ve been disappointed in your conversions on album sales take a look at your process. If it’s not one of these mistakes, then there may be a different break in the communication between you and your clients. Evaluate HOW you are showcasing and elevating the value of your albums and see where there could be improvement. Two things will happen when we’re able to communicate the value of albums to our clients more organically:

1. It will lead to more conversion of sales
2. You’ll feel more confident and natural selling albums

If you ever feel lost or need an evaluation of your album sales process, you can either reach out to me directly or check our our Facebook community that has a ton of other free resources and is a safe space to ask questions.


 

READY TO LEARN HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY SELL AND DESIGN ALBUMS?

 

I know that as a photographer you may not inherently have the skills to sell and design albums, that's why I created the Album Workshop.

It's a self-paced, online course that teaches you the skills you need to CONFIDENTLY sell albums to EVERY SINGLE CLIENT and DESIGN BEAUTIFUL LAYOUTS that your clients will be proud to pass down for GENERATIONS.

Albums can be the key to a sustainable business and to providing your clients with the ultimate experience. 

In the course I guide you through all the ins and outs of offering albums to help you avoid COSTLY MISTAKES and learn to sell albums in a GENUINE WAY that isn’t off-putting to your clients.

I’ll teach you my method that only adds ONE HOUR to your work week so that albums can be used to make more money, without needing more bookings. 

Invest in yourself and the growth of your business, there’s no better time then now.