How To Photography: Maximizing New Business with Referrals

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iStock 000001960968 ExtraSmall image As a professional photographer, the methods available to you to market, advertise and promote your services are somewhat limited, which is why it’s important to generate as many referrals as possible from your past and current clients. You unlikely have the marketing budget to use mass media, such as print and broadcast, and even if you had the funds, the return on your investment in these methods would be too low to justify the dollars invested.

It’s safe to say that most professionals rely on referrals to find the vast majority of their new clients; therefore, it’s critical to understand the referral process and what you must specifically offer to clients for them to become your “best” salespeople.

Many professional photographers (and many other small business owners that have a referral program) make two fundamental mistakes with referrals. First, they think that a free print from a client’s last shoot will be enough of an incentive to motivate them to refer a family member, friend, co-worker, etc. Second, they think clients will take the time and trouble to keep the referral card(s), remember they have them and distribute them to everyone they know.

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As simple as a referral program seems to be, those photographers who use them successfully put more thought into the details. Refine your referral program (or initiate one) with the following tips.

Instead of offering the typical 8 x 10 print from a client’s last job, reward him or her with a $50 credit towards prints of the shoot. A dollar value will make more of an impression than a print, which clients will never equate with a $50 value. Additionally, this incentive also motivates them to hire you again, since only then can they use the credit.

Add a gift certificate of $25, for example, that your referring client gives to the potential new client. Now, your referring client is conveying a gift to a prospect that he or she initially regards as coming from the referrer. This creates more interest in the prospect to listen to your referring client “promote” your services and the satisfying experience of working with you. Plus, the prospect now has a gift certificate that will save him or her money, which immediately provides you with an incentive over your competitors. Consumers may forget about a $.50 off coupon for a grocery store item, but they seldom forget they have a gift certificate with a value of $25.

Make sure the $50 credit for your existing client and the $25 gift certificate for a prospective client have a time limited printed on them. The amount of time you give them to redeem their incentives depends on your clientele and what kind of photography services you offer. For example, if you’re a wedding photographer, then you want the expiration date on the $25 gift certificate to be after the busiest time of the year, even if it is distributed as much as 9 months earlier. If you shoot high-school senior portraits, then the time limit should probably be the narrower period of time during which most seniors book their photography sessions.

Don’t distribute an “unlimited” number of referral cards. Identify and give them to those clients who are more likely to pass them to friends. Limiting the number of referrals during a given period of time increases the perception of greater value to your referring clients.

With the low cost of print-on-demand photo books from companies, such as Viovio (viovio.com), give your clients a beautiful, color portfolio of your images to share with referrals as well as the gift certificate and referral card. Your clients are always eager to show their photographs to others, but now they can actually give their friends a book of your work, which they are much more likely to remember they have and view again, compared to a simple referral card.

Always follow up a successful referral with a personalized note of thanks to your referring client and the prospective client he or she referred.

As with every type of marketing, advertising and promotional program, make sure you maintain complete records of who was given referral packages, the cost of creating the referral materials and the incentives and gift certificates, whether they generated referrals and the net dollar value of the new job(s) you can attribute to each referral. It’s critical to know the return on investment of your referral program, and be ready to make changes to boost the return.

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Photp copyright @ Pawel Kaminsk

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