Since our clients have a lot of pride riding on our performance, we want to make sure everything we do confirms to our clients that they’ve made the right decision. No “buyer’s remorse” here! A few tips:

• Strong vendor referrals: If a bride’s makeup artist voices her love for working with Alyse, that kind of affirmation can go a long way. We try to refer vendors we like to work with and hope vendors who like to work with US do the same.

• Complimentary blog posts: With every wedding blog post, Alyse is sure to write some genuine, nice things about the couple while showcasing a very carefully selected group of images that will best represent our brand. This creates a strong first impression, and gives our clients’ friends a place to compliment their wedding photos – another confirmation to our brides that they made the right decision.

• Not being “that guy”: All the complaints we hear about photographers taking six months to deliver pictures, having bad attitudes, or showing up to weddings unprepared are opportunities for us to do the exact opposite. We turnaround pictures as quick as we can, stay professional, and have a timeline prepared before the wedding day. These things help show our brides that we’re worth it.

Do you have any tips to add?

Here are some of our thoughts on seasonality:

• Every geographic location is different: In Houston, spring and fall are VERY busy for us, with a few weddings that trail off over the hottest summer months. Our slowest months are December, January and February. (AFP shoots an average of five weddings during this winter season, when ordinarily we’d shoot about double that number.) This differs from NY immensely, as mild summers make for peak wedding season and winter offers close to no weddings at all.

• Holidays can be popular: Easter and Thanksgiving weekends, New Years, and even the all-too-coveted 11/11/11 are always popular. If we want to book more, then we plan to keep these weekends free of personal plans.

• Plan for slow times: This year Alyse took some time management classes, planned her blog redesign and started to implement ShootQ during our slow season.

• Build in breaks: During Houston’s longest busy season, Alyse could literally shoot weddings for 20 straight weekends.  Alyse instead schedules one weekend off each month so she can ensure a quality product for her clients. Plus? It’s just good for sanity.

What does your location’s wedding seasonality look like? How is it unique?

We try to attract “ideal customers” for two reasons. Firstly, people who fit our brand are more likely to be happy with our product and give our word-of-mouth advertising a big boost. Secondly, having an “ideal” gives us a very specific group to market to – making our business decisions much more focused.

So, who are Alyse French Photography’s ideal clients?

• Brands they like: Anthropology, West Elm, BHLDN, ShopRuche, Crate & Barrel, etc. (See our past giveaways for more examples!) We try to style our online presence to give off a similar vibe as these brands.

• Involvement level: They don’t leave wedding planning to their mothers. They want something that will really represent their own personality, and so they select vendors, details, etc. accordingly. A lot of our brides find us via the wedding planning resource, TheKnot.com.

• Prioritizes photography: The weddings we shoot may not cost $100K quite yet, but our brides probably spent more on photography than on their other vendors. Clients who prioritize photography are also more likely to heed our suggestions of having a first look and/or creating solid wedding day timeline to allow for optimal coverage.

• Wants to work with us: They see something in our brand that represents who they are or who they want to become (i.e., their “ideal” self). Brides who want to work with us make that clear, and book us quickly. We don’t have to chase them down.

• Active on social media: They frequently read blogs (including ours), they look at their friends’ recommendations on Facebook, and they are active on Pinterest.

• Love photography: They may not know every technical detail about photography, but they definitely enjoy looking at it.

• Millennials: Our ideal clients were born between 1978 and 2000. This does NOT mean we’ll shoot weddings of 12-year-olds… It means that brides born between these two years like to communicate via email, and are very involved in the planning process (more so than their parents). They are also more likely to have a first look and consider other non-conventional aspects of a wedding.

Have you defined your ideal client? What do they look like?

If you haven’t heard of the “ideal customer” concept before, here’s a brief explanation: Attracting clients that really fit a brand make for happier customers who give your word-of-mouth advertising a big boost.

Our ideal customers not only REALLY like us, but are DYING to book us. I think you could consider this a fairly universal description of an “ideal customer.” Yet it conflicts with the message out there which encourages an aggressive search for new clients by cold-contacting them, or following up with a phone call or email when a potential client has made absolutely NO indication that they’d like to actually book us..

That being said, here’s what our initial sales process usually looks like:

Potential client submits inquiry via the contact form found on our website. Alyse answers email with availability, prices,etc. If client is interested, a meeting is setup. During said meeting, Alyse asks how the couple met, what the wedding day will look like (etc.), and answers any questions they might have. It’s usually pretty easy to gauge the interest and enthusiasm of a bride/groom during a meeting. But Alyse asks them to take a few days to think it over, and then email her with a decision. A “yes” results in a contract. A “no” results in suggestions for other photographers they might be interested in. But, in the event that Alyse never hears back from the couple, we do nothing. Because it means they aren’t DYING to book us, and therefore, are not our ideal client anyway.

What does your sales process look like? How would you describe your ideal client?

Our business model is a little different. Our final product is the disc of 600-700 images and that is where we make our money. Any other print sales are nice to have, but aren’t making or breaking us. This allows us to encourage our clients to share their pictures on the web. We rely on our clients to love our work and tell their friends and what better way than to show it off?

Beyond allowing our customers to share our work we are making efforts to help them share our work since we think that’s what people want to do these days. Soon our blog will have its very own pin-it button and of course our pictures are all over Facebook, most of which we have put there ourselves.  We think that copyrights are great for protecting us, but pictures our clients share are like free targeted ads.

Do you encourage your clients to share your pictures?

When a bride expects us to operate to our fullest potential with a timeline that’s impossible.. When we’re given 10 minutes to shoot 20 family formals. When a first look is absolutely off the table, but there will be NO natural light left after the ceremony… We can’t be afraid to say “no.”

Our ideal client PRIORITIZES photography. From the git-go, we try to educate our potential brides and grooms on how long things take (see our template timeline HERE), and how we go about the wedding day in general. Depending on the response, we’re able to tell very early on in the game when we’re just not a good fit. And then we say something like this…

“We feel that these time restrictions (etc.) will not allow us to deliver the product that you expect and deserve. We think it would be in both of our best interests if you go with another photographer, and we’d love to offer suggestions of those with similar styles if you’d like!”

It’s a respectful, honest, and helpful response. And it gets us closer to working with our ideal client.

Have you ever turned down a potential client? If so, why and how?

Here are some tips that we feel make our giveaways effective:

• Keep it branded: Our giveaway items aren’t simply meant to make a splash because they have some large monetary value. We want our giveaways to expand our brand-story through brand association, while adding to the fun and style that is Alyse’s blog.

• Encourage interaction: Readers enter our giveaways by posting a blog comment. This gives those who may otherwise be too shy an easy opportunity to comment, and thus become more involved with our brand.

• Don’t overdo it: We don’t hold a contest everyday or even every week. We want our contest blog posts to be sandwiched between several wedding and engagement posts. A sure fire way to bring in readers who only care about free stuff is to make our blog full of contests and little actual content.

• Easy entry: We don’t want to put up many barriers for people to enter. We require no complicated terms or rebates to mail in. Just a comment!

Do YOU host giveaways on your blog? How do you get the most out of them?

Because of this, we think having a great website is tantamount to success.

• The quality of your website tells me if I can trust you: Unprofessional details instantly create distrust and are something that the average consumer picks up on quickly. Even spending $15 on a t-shirt can be difficult for me if the website does not give me all of the signals I want. A few really obvious things would be a .info url or words that are purposely misspelled in order to find a business name that isn’t taken. I may want a T-shirt from KoolTshirtz.info but I would have a hard time feeling comfortable buying from them. It would be very difficult to compensate for a bad website no matter how great the photography is on it. (Here are a few other frustrating website details that I have written about in the past).

• Good presentation makes me want to buy from you: If I were looking to buy a quality vintage watch that matched my personal fashion style, how the watch looks would of course be important. But walking into a store that also matched my personal style, along with a salesperson who looked like they would wear the watch I’m looking for would quickly make me buy from them. It wouldn’t just be because they had the watch I was looking for, but because they made me feel confident that this watch would make me look more like the style I was trying to pull off. If I saw this same watch in Walmart I don’t think there is any chance that I would buy it. I may still notice the watch and think its great,….but how great the watch looked could not overcome the sneaking suspicion that buying this watch would make me look more like Walmart. For us our website is the store that people walk into. It is the most important tool that confirms to our client that we will be able to make them pull off the look that they are trying to achieve.

What else do you notice about the photography-buying habits of non-photographers?

• Going Pro 2012 on Photography Business Models: “It doesn’t matter what your business model is as a photographer. It matters what the customer’s buying model is.” (link)

• Think Splendid on Millenials: Less than 1% of millennials will call customer service if they have an issue. They’ll troubleshoot online first. (link)

• Apple CEO on iPad Knock Offs: “Price is rarely the most important thing,” he said. “A cheap product might sell some units … [Consumers] feel great when they pay from their wallet. And then they get it home and use it, and the joy is gone.” (link)

• Seth Godin on Trust: The question that needs to be asked by the marketer is, “are we doing this to create the appearance of trust, or is this actually something trustworthy, something we’re proud to do?” (link)

We are constantly looking for new articles that make us step up our game, got any to share?

Once upon a time, it was only Alyse who offered mentor sessions through AFP. But now? Due to a sudden and popular demand, we’re putting our heads together! Windsor Collective is now offering one-hour mentor sessions (whether over coffee in person, or via Skype) with the BOTH of us for $300 plus tax for 1 hour. The topics are endless! Marketing, shooting, post-processing, how on earth we managed to snag the cutest dog in the whole entire world… Really, anything.

Hit us up at dylan@windsorcollective.com for more information if you’re interested! Or send us a message through our contact form!