Book $10K Wedding Collections
Have you ever wondered how to book $10k Wedding Collections? If you are anything like us, you probably started your business by shooting weddings for next to nothing. One of the biggest questions we get from others is, “How do you raise your prices?”. This is unfortunately not something that happens overnight. It’s a process! We began shooting weddings in 2013 for just $500…and now we are booking weddings that are upwards of $10,000. What?! Now that may not be the price that is right for you in your business, but it’s all about learning how to use pricing strategies to your advantage to get you to where you want to be.
Psychology Behind Pricing
There are two main schools of thought when it comes to pricing wedding packaging. The first is an a la carte structure, where you offer one base package with add-ons. The issue with this is that most people will stay near the base price and you could be making WAY more. Think about buying a car- it’s easier (and therefore more enticing) to buy the luxury package versus picking and choosing all the add-ons you want. This brings us to the way we structure our business: Comparative pricing.
By offering 3 or more packages to clients, you give yourself the ability to draw the consumer where you want them to go. If your middle package is the one you want to book most often, make it look the most appealing. Have the beginning package be very basic so that clients see the value in moving up to the next package. As an added bonus, create custom package names that represent your brand and emotionally connect with consumers.
An important thing to note when presenting your packages to clients is that you want to emotionally connect BEFORE they see the pricing. You want them to fall in love with the package and then see the price so they can see the value that they are getting for that price. This avoids a great amount of sticker shock because they are already aware of what they can get for that price.
Keep your packages simple! Confusion is one of the biggest reasons a consumer will move on to someone else. The same goes for having too many collections. The easier it is for people to see what they are getting, the more likely they are to book. How should your packages be structured? Showing the highest package first will inherently allow clients to see the value in the higher collections when comparing it to the lowest package.
Pull-through/Anchor Pricing
This involves having something standard next to something premier. For example, one package has one photographer and six hours of coverage, while the next has two photographers, all-day coverage, and an album. Be sure to have good gaps between package pricing. The difference from one package to the next shouldn’t be $50. You want to avoid a situation where people think you are “not expensive enough”.
When is a good time to raise your prices? This is going to depend on how you are booking and which package people are booking most often. For us, we decided to raise our prices little by little for every 3 weddings we booked until we got to a place that we felt represented our brand. Another great time to raise your pricing is when people are booking your top package more often than the others.
Reducing Pain Points
Give, give, give. Giving people extras can cost you next to nothing, but will go a long ways with potential clients. People will think you went above and beyond for them and will not only be more thrilled with you as their photographer of choice but will also be more likely to recommend you to their friends and family.
Sometimes you will run into a situation where consumers ask if they can take something out of a collection that they don’t feel they need in order to save some money. If you want to allow people to do this, and we think you should, be sure that it is made clear that the prices for each are already discounted for the package. For example, it will decrease the price by say, $300 instead of $500.
Little words go a long way when creating pricing and conveying packages to clients. Saying pricing starts at “just” $5000 or that there is a “small” travel fee psychologically makes people more likely to be comfortable with the pricing. Also, by eliminating the comma in your prices you will quickly make your pricing look higher end while making others feel like it’s less money.
Don’t send a PDF! Sending a PDF makes it harder for potential clients to find when they want to pull up your pricing. If you embed a PDF into your website or create a separate page for pricing (we use +sites on Showit) creates less friction. When they want to pull up your pricing, they can go straight to a website that is probably saved in their browser history rather than searching their email for an attachment.
Retainers. There are some mixed opinions when it comes to the required retainers to book a wedding date. Some may require 50% of the total package price while others require a set dollar amount. For us, we want to lower the barrier for people to book by requiring a small retainer like $500. This makes that initial number less painful and gets people to book more quickly.
