Marketing

This will be an area I continue to work on going into 2023. This year to market ourselves we created and finished our KS Winters Photography brand T-shirts and sweatshirts. We printed banners to display at the Winters Jr. Warrior home football games. We sponsored the Winters High School athletic program. We created QR codes for our business cards and other printed marketing materials. We also implemented a new system called GotPhoto for our team and school portrait jobs. My favorite feature of GotPhoto is the built in marketing system that allows me to create customized emails and SMS to remind customers that their photos are available. As a parent myself, I know how busy life gets sometimes. It's definitely nice to have gentle reminders sometimes.

Developing and utilizing a workflow system

Despite what some may think, photographers do way more than show up to a photo session and hit a button. We are constantly responding to emails, messages, texts and phone calls from clients and potential clients. We frequently update our websites and post to various social media platforms and let's not forget about the dreading bookkeeping. There are also hours that we put into culling and editing each session. My point is, I knew I needed to implement a client management system to make the business tasks more manageable, so I turned to Honeybook. Honeybook has allowed to me customize contracts, create email templates, invoices and even helps me with tracking expenses. Honeybook also has an automated workflow system that I will be using going into 2023 to help with improving client experience. I also started to utilize Quickbooks to help specifically with my mileage tracking and let me tell you it is SO worth it!! I still have some trips to account for because I am behind on doing it but I am already at $2,500.00 in potential deductions and that is JUST for my business mileage.

Pricing

It took me a long time to do this. I was so scared that if I raised my prices I wouldn't be booked or that I would lose clients but the OPPOSITE happened. I actually gained more clients and had less push back when I started charging based on the quality of my work. Money is such an uncomfortable topic for me I hate asking for payment and the first time I sent my update 2022 pricing to a client I literally cringed and felt sick to my stomach because I thought they were going to reject me. When they booked me right away I knew that I did the right thing. My clients know my worth and now...so do I.