4 Keys for Effective Communication With Photography Clients
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photo by Geber86 via iStock
Photography clients are hard to come by nowadays. This is one of the reasons why learning how to communicate with photography clients is so important. You would hate to lose out on photography clients just because you didn't do enough research beforehand.
Plus, there's so many communication tools for photographers available today that you would be remiss not to read up on them.
To make all of this easier for you we have broken our communication tips down to four, easy to handle ways to deal with your photography clients. Let's jump right in.
Make It Easier to Communicate
photo by Prostock-Studio via iStock
Our first tip may seem very simple, but if you've ever practiced working with photography clients both in the field and online constantly all day, it can be a lot harder than you would expect it to be.
A big part of this is the fact that we have so many social media channels to juggle now. If you aren't answering an email or responding to a text message, then you're spending hours every day on Facebook or Instagram.
In order to prevent this jumping around, Podium, which is a new communication tool for photographers, takes all of your messages across all of these different platforms and puts them onto a single, easy to use platform.
This prevents you from spending hours everyday trying to remember which messages you have responded to and which messages you still need to.
You can even send your invoices through Podium so you can get paid in a more timely manner.
Plus Podium is doing a free trial for photographers right now, so you can give it a shot without paying a dime!
There's nothing your photography clients will love more than knowing they are your first priority because of just how quickly you respond.
Be Realistic with your Expectations
photo by jacoblund via iStock
Managing the expectations of your photography clients is one of the most difficult communication tools to learn. Unfortunately it is also one of the most important.
If you are working with new photography clients and those clients do not like the photos you have presented to them, you will probably never hear from those clients again.
Typically, if you present photos to your client that they do not like, it is only because they were expecting to receive photos that looked differently.
photo by simonapilolla via iStock
So how do you manage your photography clients' expectations prior to the photoshoot? Ask questions.
One of my favorite questions to ask my photography clients is which photos on my website they like the most and which photos on my website they like the least. This lets me know what they are looking for in terms of composition without needing to explain a ton of complicated photography jargon to them.
You should also ask why they chose you as a photographer in the first place. This can give you some clues as to what they are looking for.
Learn More:
Explain Yourself
photo by dikushin via iStock
When learning how to improve communication with photography clients, the biggest thing most photographers miss is simply explaining what they're doing.
It can be incredibly intimidating to be photographed for the first time, and by simply explaining what you were looking at on your camera or what you are doing to your lighting or why you want the client to pose like that gives your client insight into your process.
By making them part of the process, they develop a sense of what to expect, and they also have something other than their nerves to think of.
Brag About Your Sessions
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
The last tip you need is to remember to brag about yourself and your clients. I take photos from almost every session and put them on my social media accounts. Alongside these photos I will write a few paragraphs about my clients. This can include information about the photoshoot itself, (i.e., what the client was looking for), but it can also include information about how I felt we got along during the shoot or funny stories about it.
photo by ljubaphoto via iStock
Some of my favorite photographers will simply talk about their relationship with their clients.
Bragging about your clients does a few things. First, seeing images of yourself online is bound to make anybody happy. No matter how self-conscious you are, it is a huge ego boost to see someone bragging about you online.
This means that your client is going to be more likely to come back to you if they should mean photos in the future.
But your client is also likely to share these posts themselves, which is basically free marketing. With every post, you are more likely to be seen by hundreds of new potential clients, and that kind of word of mouth marketing is very, very powerful!
