075: Lisa Devlin – Pricing Hot Tips & The 3 Magic Emails!

So I’ve actually never published my prices on my website at any point in that super long career. And I was thinking a lot about this topic because I listened to your podcast with Sam Docker, which is funny because I don’t listen to many podcasts, Sally, but I do love the Ninja ones. So I was listening to Sam Docker speaking about this and he’s quite passionate that photographers should have pricing on their website and he had a really good argument for it. And I kept thinking about it afterwards and I can totally see it from that side, but I was still reluctant to ever go down that path for several reasons.

Number one, I think times are so changeable, there are so many different elements to this. So I always want to be flexible with my pricing. I want to be reactive. So I don’t want to have it published and then somebody see it a few months later when it’s changed. I feel like it’s like when you book a flight.

When you go to book a flight, you don’t see what the price used to be or what the price might be, you don’t see what anybody sitting next to you paid. You just see what the available price is to you at that time and that’s how I’ve always felt about it. And I think that’s helping maintain this amount of longevity in the career, being quite reactive to the market.

Yeah. I mean, you’ve obviously got your agenda, you’ve got the ideal kind of weddings that you want to attract and that looks different for all of us. And then photographers fall into this predesigned thing that they think they should do, which is come up with three different packages. DWho came up with that in the first place? I imagine it’s choice overload. So somewhere along the line somebody decided this was a good idea and there was a Bronze, silver and gold idea. I tried that. I used to have that. I had the good, the rad and the downright awesome, but it was still bronze, silver, and gold. But Sam Docker made a good point, which was as the consumer, it’s obviously much nicer to see the price when you’re considering.

And I got to thinking the power of Studio Ninja, these tools that we have now as photographers, which we didn’t use to have, they’re very powerful. And I was like, “Okay, just because I’ve been using it one way doesn’t mean I have to keep using it that way. Or just because other people use it one way, doesn’t mean I have to.”

Could Studio Ninja be the key that unlocked a different way, a different version of presenting your prices, the middle point between not having your prices online at all and having your prices online for your potential customers to see when they’re shopping around?

Now I want to get data from those customers who are shopping around. I want to understand where they found me from. If I’m paying for advertising somewhere, I want to gauge if it’s working. I want to see if those weddings are aligned with what I’m trying to attract. I want to see the customer that potentially might be put off by the price. I think it’s incredibly valuable. So that is one of the other reasons why I’ve never put it out there.

So I thought, “Okay, we’ve got these contact forms, they give us some details.” We want data, that’s what we want. We want data from them whether they’re going to end up being our paying customer or not, I think it’s incredibly interesting and useful to get the data.

They want the price, they want it instantly. They don’t want us to come back within 24 hours. They’ve got other photographers to go look at, other suppliers to go look at, a limited amount of attention span to spend on shopping around for their wedding services.

So they wanted it instantly and if you work with customers who are maybe based in the US or Australia, they’re not even the same time zone as you. So when you’re responding to their email, it can be quite a long time. Or maybe they’re getting in touch on a Saturday when they’re off work while you’re at the wedding. So it can be a delay. And I always want to make my responses personal so I don’t want to just send an auto responder.

So I came up with this system which I call the three magic emails. And how it works is there’s the Studio Ninja form, which I’m sure most of your listeners have got on their websites. It’s nice and personal, it’s fun to fill out.

And once they’ve filled it out, instead of it sending them to a thank you page, a URL that you’ve created just to say, “Hey, thanks for filling out my form, I’ll be in touch soon,” which is what I had before, after listening to the thing with Sam Docker, I changed it to a completely new page that looks like the same page.

Customers love it because there’s not that delay. They’re getting the price instantly. If at that point I’m not within their price bracket, they’ve at least got that information and I’ve not taken up anymore of their time, but I have got their data.

So I can totally understand where most people are finding me, what kinds of weddings that they’re having. For me, if all the weddings were coming through and they said we’re getting married in golf clubs, I would be, “Okay, I seriously need to work on my marketing right now.”

If they’re coming from trusted sources or places that I’ve paid for or they really sound like the kind of weddings that I want to shoot, then great. Even if I am out of their price bracket, then potentially we started a connection because the other thing that I made this do was start building this relationship with them. And this is where the whole system of the three magic emails comes in.

So as well as the page being revealed to them, I use Studio Ninja’s auto responder to say, “You’ve got the price now. Here’s the link just in case you need it again,” because they need that permanently. They’re not going to maybe save your page. So it reminds them of the links, they can refer to the prices.

And it also just says, “I will actually send you a personal email within the next 24 hours.” So that’s given me some breathing space to send a nice personal email that responds to any of the personal stuff that they’ve given me in the inquiry form.

And then at that point, what I hope that we’ve got is a relationship and a bit more of a connection. I’ve set up a couple of in jokes that I hope that they get and that they respond to in the form and I react to those. So for me, because I work around London a lot of the time, my in joke is based around Uber, what’s your Uber rating?

Once I found out that I had an Uber rating, Sally, I’m so competitive, I wanted to improve it. I wanted to know what I was ever scored down from. Why am I not a perfect five? I’m been a perfect guest in a taxi. I don’t slam the doors. I don’t sit and chat on my phone. I don’t get in with a burger in my hand. Why have I ever been marked down?

The second one is the actual fuller response where I talk. So any information they give me about their wedding, I’m like, “This sounds great.” If I’ve been to the venue before, I will send them a previous gallery, make sure that they’ve seen something that’s relevant. If I haven’t been to the venue before I pick out a similar-ish kind of wedding, make sure that they’ve definitely seen a full gallery at that point. I again refer back to the pricing page so that they’ve got that again and that’s super, super clear.

And then it finishes up with sending them a link to do this, to chat on Zoom where I go into a full sales, scripted call. So everything I’m trying to funnel them into is that Zoom call. The third email in the sequence only comes into play if they haven’t booked that Zoom call with you and it’s a wedding that you really want to shoot.

So I’ve got some ideas that I break down in my workshop about ways to make that email stand out because what most photographers will do at that stage is just send an email saying, “Hey, just making sure that you got my brochure or my prices. If you’ve got any questions let me know. I’ve currently got your date free and I’d love to work with you.” It’s always the same. It’s the same.

Yes, which is fine and it’s nice and it’s polite, but it’s not doing anything. If we were all in a race of horses, this is how I like to picture it, what’s the thing that’s going to nudge your nose across the finish line? What is it when they’re in that period of maybe two weeks of considering photographers to book, what’s going to pull you to the front of the queue?

So that third email can be really vital in that process if they’re not horrified by your price, however you’ve structured it, they like your website, they like your images, but they feel like that about a few other people as well. What can you put in that email? And it’s about bringing it back around to whatever information that they’ve given you that you can expand upon in terms of connection with that potential.

So I would say just think of every single thing that you put out there that where you’re trying to attract your client, where you’re speaking about your work, where you’re marketing in any way, so your website, your social media, anywhere that you’re listing yourself, think about every single point of it is to make a connection to that perfect customer for you.

There is enough weddings to go around, that’s the good news. The wedding you want to shoot, somebody is sitting there right now planning it. So reverse engineer it, think how can I make a direct line between myself and them? What are the tools that are available to me? Because we’re so lucky with all of these amazing resources that we have right now. We don’t even have to edit our photos anymore the robots are doing it for us.

So think about all of these things that can help you and then how can you make it still feel like a personal and warm kind of experience, always looking at everything from your potential customer’s point of view and you won’t go wrong.