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You’ve decided to be the average price and therefore an average photographer.

So you’re in Year One of your photography business and pricing scares the hell out of you. You’ve looked around at your friends and competitions and concluded that it’s best to blend in. You’ve decided it’s best to be average and only attract average clients with average projects. …

Welcome to Jordan’s Daily Email, a newsletter for photographers looking to improve their brand. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Or just read on…

1. Your time is better spent on things you actually understand
2. SEO is a tactic, not a marketing strategy

Know Your Limits and Contain Your Ego

Stop trying to learn the coding/hacker secrets of SEO.

You lack the web/computer data science knowledge to even begin to understand how Google’s algorithm works. You are lying to yourself, a photographer if you think you can outsmart some Yoast employee or SEO consultant.

Would you hire that SEO tech girl to cover a wedding for you? …

The In-House Fat Rolls

Over the last ten years, the creative world has gotten fatter and fatter.

After the 2008 recession, many creative folks who lost their job found the power of the internet, lean startup culture, and started off on their freelancing careers. The freelancers soon banded together to form digital agencies that served these larger companies.

These large companies (we’ll call them client companies) wanting to cut costs and control the creative process started to build in-house creative departments. This is the fat. The in-house creative department starts to require more and more overhead with diminishing returns on its value.

Cue in 2020’s economic recession. …

When is your work good enough?

1. You have dysmorphia when it comes to your work
2. You and your clients value your work on two separate scales

Self-Confidence in Pricing

Two photographers of the same caliper, produce the same shots. One believes; the other doesn’t. Who will make more money? And who will cry that no one takes them seriously?

When we believe we can create tangible results and undergo progress, we gain confidence in our abilities.

Pricing to many creatives is a self-confidence issue. If they only believed that they were good enough, then they would charge higher for their work.

Creatives have to convince themselves that they are worth it, before ever stepping foot into a client meeting. …

Download Template Here: https://www.jordanpanderson.com/blog/one-page-proposal

Based on Pricing Creativity — A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, this one-page proposal is perfect for any creative business looking to close more deals and save time from writing dead-end proposals. You’ll be able to give your clients multiple options that they can feel comfortable with. This proposal is framed to price your services where your clients get the most value and earn you the most profit.

What’s Included:

• One Page Proposal (.Docx File Format)
• Three Pricing Options
• High Anchor Price To Shift The Total Price In Your Favor
• Carefully Crafted Options For Your Clients
• Payment Term…

• Assuming implies that you are a bad listener
• Being condescending is a horrible 1st impression
• We gravitate towards the calm, cool, and collected

When you’re doing outreach to potential clients, I would not lead with “I’m sorry about your business. This must be the toughest of times for you.” The intentions I’m sure are good, but it immediately spawns a sour reaction from the client. You don’t know a thing about their business and you’re going to assume that you’re this savior.

But I’m only trying to help, Jordan…

Yeah, well it would help a lot more if you didn’t have your head up your ass. …

- To hide or shift the mindsets of their clients

- It’s used on something that cost a lot of money

- It moves photographers from Vendor to Expert status

Wedding photographers have collectively hypnotized wedding couples into believing that their photography services are extremely valuable.

Whether you like it or not, they are able to charge thousands of dollars for a service that clients are more than happy to pay for.

What’s the logic and what can we learn from their tactics?

1. Ease the Price-Shopper’s Mind

Wedding couples aren’t enterprises, so their budgets are going to be limited and their due diligence won’t be as thorough. Naturally, some couples are going to be price-shoppers — those that base the majority of their decisions on price. By shifting the language on a photographer’s website from “Packages” to “Investment” couples are able to imagine their money going towards something valuable. …

Original Post:
https://www.jordanpanderson.com/blog/production-companies-positioning

I swear I’m making up this next tagline:

“We are in an award-winning team of passionate, creative storytellers who are driven to uncover your powerful story.”

None of this tells the client what you can do for them.⠀
⠀
Production companies and many other creative businesses make a statement like this because they don’t really understand what it is they do for the client. Or better put — they don’t understand the results they create for their clients. Production companies (and many other creative businesses) believe that their clients value the fact that they won a nondescript award from a pay-to-play awards website back in 2015. And that they are passionate about plot and character arcs and mise en scène. …