Engage 09 : Something Blue – a high impact luxury wedding summit

Em attended the last Engage and really enjoyed the atmosphere!

Engage 09

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Interview with Seth Godin

This interview is pretty good…especially towards the end when he talks about showing up. During the down turn in the economy people will be rewarded for showing up.  He also talks about why blogging is important.

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2009/01/14/seth-godin-thinks-youre-boring/

Hope you have a few moments to listen

“You’ve set out to be boring”

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Brand “U.0”

I found this on one of my favorite blogs, David Armano’s Logic+Emotion.

Had trouble embedding it, so you will be taken to David’s blog.

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PartnerCon

What a week!  I have just arrived home from my west coast swing and feel lucky to have been able to meet so many great people at the Partner Conference!  Thanks to everyone that came to our talk on branding, I truly hope that you were able to take something from it to use in your business.  I had some terrific immediate feedback and look forward to hearing from more of you.  Did anyone take a image of me on stage?  🙂

Thanks again for coming out to PartnerCon and specifically for spending some time with me and Em.

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Raising Your Prices

Every business wants to make more money and raising your prices is one way to do that. I have spoken with many photographers over the years and while there is not a single way that this should happen…there are a couple of good practices.

*Setting a goal for how many weddings you want to shoot will allow you to know when it is good to start to think about how to get to the next level.

*Be consistent with your pricing. Make sure you are not giving in on what you are charging, you are worth it and if you stick to your pricing that you feel you are worth…you will get the client’s that appreciate you. This is not for someone in their first two years of business, you need to book as many weddings as you can to build a referral base.

*Have 3 packages. The middle one should be your target package and the top one your goal. The top package should be priced well above the other two.

*Build value into your packages and products. Make sure you have albums in your packages that you can up sell, so provide 20 sided albums then sell them 20-40 more on the backend. This will allow you to pay for your album from the proceeds after the wedding..

So when is it a good time to raise your prices?

When you have booked 3/4 of the weddings that you want to shoot for the year. If you are wanting to shoot 20 weddings in 2008 and you have already booked 15…this is a great time to raise your prices. You will establish your new pricing and get referrals from the last 5 weddings you are booking at your new prices…this will help you book at that level in 2009!

How to raise your prices?

You can sometimes keep your prices the same and still make more money. Take the album out of your packages, that can create a $1200-1600 swing. Now you are not giving the album away in your packages, so you will be saving on the cost of the album and then making money on it after the wedding.

Pull the DVD of images out of your packages! You should not need to include the DVD of images in your offerings after the first two years in a market. You will be getting referrals and those are golden–no more giving away of your images. This is something you can now charge for after the wedding. A good time for this is on their first anniversary or when the their album is complete.

Make sure that your top package is priced well above the others. As you start booking it more than the middle package, make that price your middle package and raise the top packages price.

While these ideas might not be for everyone, they certainly should help in giving you ideas on how to get to the next level!

The next tip will be on Marketing– advertising vs viral.

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Promising Directory

Tonight I came across a new directory for wedding vendors and thought I would pass it on…

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