4 Ways to Improve Client Relationships
- Improve Client Relationships - Be Easy to Find
- Improve Client Relationships - Follow Through
- Improve Client Relationships - Have Something to Show
- Improve Client Relationships - Give Good Value
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Photo by VioletaStoimenova via iStock
Continuing our professional photography business tips for beginners and advanced photographers, we will examine some ideas to help us improve client relationships.
When looking at how to improve client relationships in a photography business, we could think about our photography, our business manners, and how to offer what clients see as value for using us.
Photography business tips are an exciting subject since we are a business and need to follow good business practices in general. Still, we’re also artists, and our business success is tied up with the overall quality of our photography. So, we’ll talk about four things we can do business-wise and concerning our photography to improve client relationships.
Table of Contents:
Improve Client Relationships - Be Easy to Find
Photo by PonyWang via iStock
The first step in improving client relationships is all about initial contact. If someone doesn’t know you have a photography business, they won’t ask you to work for them or sell them anything. So it would help if you were easy to find.
This may mean something different to the various types of photographers out there. It could be a regularly updated website, social media interaction, emails you respond to, a phone number that gets answered once or twice, or any combination.
It’s just good business sense, and these photography business tips work. Long before the internet, cell phones, and social media, photography businesses were found in the Yellow Pages, by business cards, and through word of mouth. And they thrived.
Now, we can use updated versions of those same ideas seen by more people and can be updated virtually instantaneously by us whenever anything changes. A key for today’s business world is that we must interact. Answer that phone call or at least return the message, reply to emails, comment, and respond on social media!
You can also improve client relations using advertising campaigns. Many popular platforms allow small and medium businesses to actively target specific types of individuals interested in your photography. There are even text message-based campaign platforms. Try out a couple of or several ideas, then expand on the ones that bring you results.
Improve Client Relationships - Follow Through
Photo by MichaelSvoboda via iStock
Beyond initial contact, the next step for many photographers desiring to improve client relationships is to follow through. What do I mean by ‘follow through?’
In sports, follow-through is the continuing motion after we do something. A golfer’s or a tennis player’s swing continues well after the club or racquet impacts the ball. A basket player shooting from the top of the key or a football quarterback throws with an aim towards the target, and their body completes a motion.
The reason follow-through works in these physical activities is because going through an entire range of motion, before the thing, the thing, and after the thing, gives you more precise control. Additionally, it provides a basis for repeated success.
I see you nodding your head! This relates to photography business tips for how to improve client relationships in that we aren't only shooting a wedding, taking real estate images, or selling a fine art print. We have an entire range of movements involved, just as in our sports metaphors.
The client relationship begins with an initial contact. It doesn’t matter if it's initiated by them or us. However, initial contact is rarely the entire transaction except at an arts and crafts fair. We have to show samples, book a time, get deposits, provide instructions, and then take photos.
After capturing the images, we may show proofs, offer package deals, upload photos to a file server, deliver hardcopy prints, books, or other goods, and collect final payment. If there’s any break in the typical sequence of events for our specific type of photography business, then the transaction is most likely incomplete.
Going further, a good business person stays with the customer after delivery and payment. How? This is what many businesses will call the follow-through. After the sale, the event, the gig, when you’ve delivered the goods or done the work and gotten paid, you continue with the motion by sending a thank you text, email, or postcard, whatever your chosen method.
What this does is keeps you fresh in the mind of the client. It’s the last half of the golf swing. Afterward, you reset. This will improve client relationships and set up the next job, event, or transaction.
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Improve Client Relationships - Have Something to Show
Included in the first several steps of your client relationship, you usually need to show them something you do. A book of portraits, wedding photos, or real estate images will show current or soon-to-be clients what you can do for them.
I like to have several enlargements of various types in my office or studio that showcase my skills, and a photo book is a wonderful sales tool that can even be lent out to prospective customers. In these photo books, you can mix all of what you offer or have a separate photo book for each type of photography you do.
Photo Book Press, a premium photographic printer, is a great source for these books. Their lay-flat photo books are excellent for showing clients your work in your studio or office, and their softcover photo books are a great option if you like to pass out books for prospective clients to hold onto for a while.
Improve Client Relationships - Give Good Value
Those same books and wall art prints also make excellent items to add to any photography package deals you may be offering. Since Photo Book Press has reasonably priced prints, books, calendars, and other items, you can easily add them to the products you deliver.
They also have exceptionally high quality, excellent customer service, quick turnaround time, and services meant for professional photographers. Using a superior printing service is a vital part of how to improve client relationships.
Of course, you also want to provide the best photography to your customers. Sometimes it’s better to focus on only a few genres or styles of photography than try to be a jack-of-all-trades photographer. On our site, you can find more on that idea in other articles about photography business tips.
Implementing any or all 4 of these ideas are great ways to improve client relationships so that you can concentrate on what you love doing, providing wonderful photography to paying clients.
