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Shoot and share might be your current business model, but have you ever considered what an in-person sales (IPS) photography business approach can do for your wedding photography business? If you are someone who takes the ‘artist first and businessperson second’ approach to wedding photography, you might hate the idea of selling. But sometimes, in-person sales could be the game changer you’ve been looking for to attract more clients, make more money, and keep your wedding photography business running smoothly. In-person sales may not be the easiest part of running a business, but to simplify the process, this blog doubles up as an in-person sales guide that will motivate you to diversify your business approach by considering the benefits of person to person sales.

Why Should You Consider An IPS Photography Business Approach

As a wedding photographer, you already have a lot on your plate. So adding another task on that TDL probably doesn’t sound like a great idea to you, but trust us, practicing in-person sales is going to change the way you do business. It might initially feel tough or you might not like the process, but as you keep making those sales, you are going to get good at it and most importantly, you might just start liking it and make it a part of your post-wedding workflow. If you are still on the fence about adopting an IPS photography approach in your business, here are some reasons why you should consider it: 

1. Increased Profits 

Your wedding photography business needs to be profitable in order to be sustainable and successful. While booking more weddings and perhaps even diversifying the type of shoots you offer could increase your profit margin, an IPS photography business approach could add to those profits. With the shoot and share business approach, the money stops coming in once the wedding is done. But with the in-person sales photography approach, there’s more money to be earned even when the wedding is over.

If increased profits is what attracts you to person to person sales but you cringe at the thought of being a ‘salesperson’, the key to earning those profits is to start plugging your products early on in your relationship with your couples. This way, when the time comes to finally make the sale, it won’t feel too salesy. Make in-person sales a part of your process, and instead of selling clients a product, sell them the experience of constantly being reminded of their special day by just walking into their family room. 

Related Read: How To Generate Passive Income As A Wedding Photographer

2. A Business USP

Do some research on what other wedding photographers in your area are offering. Do they go beyond the shoot and share method? What are the additional services they are offering couples? In case none of your competitors are currently offering in-person photography sales in the form of prints or wall art to their couples, you could add it to your list of services and also make it one of your primary USPs. Many couples would love to have a reminder of their wedding day as a wall art in their living rooms, and if nobody around is offering them that option, then adding it to your services will make those couples flock to you. Also, if photographers around you already have in-person photography sales in their business model, it’s time to get with the competition. 

Suggested Read: Staying Competitive In The Wedding Photography Market

3. Better Client Service

Another advantage of an IPS photography business approach is getting the opportunity to take your relationship with your couples beyond the wedding day. Not just that, you also get to go the extra mile for your clients when you offer them the option to buy prints from you. More often than not, couples get caught up with life after the wedding and forget or simply don’t get the time to get their wedding photos printed. But when you have person to person sales as a part of your photography services, you get to help your couples with the printing part of the process too, making their lives easier, and scoring some extra points (read: shining testimonials + referrals) from them. 

Related Read: How To Ensure Excellent Customer Service: A Wedding Photographer’s Guide

How To Do In-Person Sales Right

Many wedding photographers don’t learn how to do in-person sales photography right or stay away from in-person sales because the idea of selling is so daunting, which it can be for some photographers. After all, that’s not your primary skill. However, just like the art of turning a lead into a client, there are also some techniques that can help to increase your post-wedding sales; techniques that won’t make you feel like you are pushing your clients to buy something just to make more money. 

1. Present A Visual

As a buyer, do you prefer to buy something without knowing how it looks, or do you like the opportunity to see the product beforehand so you have a good idea of what you are purchasing? Most would agree with the latter, including your clients. If clients can see what a large print of their wedding photo will look like on the wall of their home, they are more likely to buy it. When clients see their images on a computer screen, the images are small. Not to forget, it can be difficult to visualize how a print would look hanging above the couch in the family room. Without having a visual of what a canvas will look like on their wall, even if they do place an order, they are likely to purchase a smaller size canvas, thinking that it will actually look larger than it is.

With the way technology has evolved over the years, providing the best visual possible is essential if you are adopting the IPS photography business approach. When you show your clients a visual of how their images would look as wall art in their own homes, they will be less inclined to only print smaller images. And if you are wondering how to possibly do that, don’t worry, we have answers for that too. 

There are various in-person sales photography software and apps that allow you to show your clients exactly what a wall print or canvas would look like in their homes. This is a great tool that you can use from the very first meeting with potential clients to get them in the mindset of how great wall art would look in their home. We will emphasize this a little more in our next point.

Suggested Read: Fundy Designer: Increased Productivity & Profitability For Photographers Through Album Design & Sales

2. Set The Stage 

To excel at the IPS photography business approach, prep your clients to believe that they want and need wall art from the very first consultation. Since almost everything is digital today, explain the importance of having some of their favorite images in a physical form that not only they can enjoy, but that their friends and family can as well. Plus, make them see how the wall art instantly adds to the overall ambiance of their home.

Just like you show your clients sample albums or album designs, have wall art displayed in your studio or space that you meet. Some couples don’t even know about a canvas print till you mention or show it to them, so get into the habit of talking to them about it and making them aware of the benefits of purchasing one (or more). The added benefit of having a visual in your own space is that it shows you believe they are important to have, convincing your clients to see the same. 

Throughout your collaboration with each couple, continually drop the idea of certain images that would look great on a canvas. As you photograph them on their wedding day, bring up how fantastic a specific shot of them would look in their living room. This helps set the expectation that they need a wall print, and the more likely they are to purchase one during the sales session. Plus, it will make the in-person photography sales process easier for you.

3. Build The Excitement

As you continue to talk about wall prints and their importance through the initial meetings, the wedding day, and follow-up emails, one of the final steps is to actually show them what one of their wedding images would look like as a canvas in their home.

Once you are done finalizing the edits for their wedding photos, select a few favorites that would look stunning as large canvases. Then, invite your clients over for a small viewing party. This is a perfect time to use an in-person sales software to show your clients exactly what a 20×30 canvas of an image from their wedding day would look like hanging above their mantle. By prepping this ahead of time and having images preselected, you are making it easier for your clients to love the selections. This is especially true because they do not have to spend time filtering through the 600 images you delivered back to them. Plus, this helps you speed up the process because they are likely to already love your selection.

While a beautiful portrait of the couple makes for a great wall print, come up with alternative ideas too. If the bride was raving about how much she loved the detail photos you took at the wedding, why not create a piece of seven-eight small prints of the best details? Try to listen to the clients throughout your relationship to ensure that you select only the most appealing work to be displayed in their home.

With all of this in mind, it is important to remember that 10 years from now, technology will change. DVDs will break or get old and outdated, but your prints will still be hanging on your clients’ walls. Wall art is not only for your clients. It is also for their family and friends as well to remember the wedding day. To make your IPS photography techniques more enticing for your couples, complement your sales pitch with an emotional connection that your clients can relate to. 

Marketing Your IPS Photography Business

Marketing is an important part of running a wedding photography business. Similar to how marketing strategies help keep your business relevant, establishing strategies for marketing your in-person photography business approach will also ensure that potential clients and your clients are aware about this part of your business. From using social media to adding it on your website - there are various ways you could market in-person sales. 

Do you know one of the main reasons why your clients may not be purchasing wall art from you? They might simply not have a clue that you are selling it or not entirely understand what it is even if you’ve included it in your list of services. If the first time someone sees that you offer wall art is when they’re reviewing your photography pricing list, then it’s too late. 

Your clients need to know, up front, that people come to you for wall art, not just for digital files to upload on Instagram or Facebook. If you want to sell a significant amount of wall art and want to be known for it too, you need to start planting the seed for that sale before your clients ever step foot in front of a camera and before they contact you! Thankfully, it’s easier than you might think and the following tips by Chris Scott, founder of Swift Galleries, will help you set the stage for wall art sales to increase your profit.

Related Read: A Roadmap To Market Your Wedding Photography Business

1. Use Your Social Media

The best way for people to know that you offer wall art is by showing them. Use your in-person sales software to design a wall gallery for the last three sessions you photographed. Share them on your social media handles, and talk about how you’re now offering wall art galleries. Every time you create a new gallery, share it on your social media accounts so that potential customers can actually get a glimpse of what you do with wall art. Additionally, if possible, ask clients to share photos of the wall art hanging in their homes, which you can also share with future clients.

Engage your followers by posting a few different options from each session and ask them to help you decide which one is best. This is a great way to show off that you’re offering wall art, while also getting your followers involved and interacting with your brand across social media channels! This helps improve your social media game while also creating the perfect environment for marketing your wall art.

Related Read: Social Media Marketing For Wedding Photographers: An Overview

2. Blog About It

Take the wall art you designed and include them in your website’s blog posts. This is a great time to add more content and talk about why you believe your selected photographs are the best representation of that session. Be genuine and share why you love the images and why they look so great as wall art. Talk about how much those homes will be brightened by having your images on their walls. It doesn’t matter if you use a stock room photo as an example. Talk about the photos and the layout and why they’re perfect together. Again, it’s about helping clients form an emotional connection with the wall art instead of just selling another product. 

Every session you photograph should have a wall gallery design to showcase on your blog, whether you sell one or not. This is less about what you’ve sold and more about what you believe about your images as wall art. If you show potential clients that you believe your photos are best presented on the wall, they’ll believe it, too.

Create a gallery on your website where you showcase your wall art. As potential clients visit your site for the first time, this will allow them to start thinking about the possibilities of wall art, even if they did not know about it before. As an IPS photography tip, incorporate the in-person sales photography pricing and wall art into your main price list to show that this is a must-have item for your clients.

Related Read: 201 Creative Blog Post Ideas For Wedding Photographers

3. Use Your Studio Space

As you cover your social media channels, blog, and website with displays of wall art, the final step is to show real, physical wall art products in your studio space. Have products for your clients to see, touch, and feel the build quality. You can plant the seed for wall art sales in how you talk to your clients about their sessions, as well. Here are just a few ideas:

• Don’t just ask, “What do you want to do with your photos?” Instead, ask “Where in your home would you like to display your photos?” This allows your clients to know that people come to you for wall art, and it is a must-have in their photography packages. This question also encourages them to think about where they would like the photos to go even if they haven’t made up their mind about buying wall art from you yet. 

• If your in-person sales software has this feature, then ask your clients up front for a photo of their walls to use for their mockups. Again, this sets the basic expectation that they will order wall art. They are more likely to fall in love with the wall art once they see it on their actual wall.
  
  
• Even while photographing your clients’ sessions, you can be planting the seeds for a wall art sale. As you’re shooting, organically mention the products they’ve shown interest in - “Oh, this shot is going to be perfect for that piece we talked about for over your couch!”

The whole point here is for your clients and potential clients to see wall art wherever they see your work. If you put this legwork up front, you will quickly teach potential clients that your studio is the studio to go to for wall art, and you’ll be surprised how quickly people will start to seek you out for it. As you begin to plan the strategies you are going to use for an IPS photography business approach, you can use a wall art design guide to best learn how to design wall galleries that sell.

How To Ensure Successful
Post-Wedding Print Sales 

As a professional wedding photographer, there are a variety of products and services you can offer to clients. From handcrafted albums to stunning 20×40 prints, establishing in-person sales photography pricing might be challenging, but convincing your clients to buy the products is a challenge in itself too. So here are three simple tips we have for increasing your post-event print sales!

1. Schedule Pre-Session Consultations 

If you add just one thing to your process, make it the pre-session consultation. The consultation is the best way to set expectations for selling wall art. Even if you just get 15 minutes at the beginning of your sessions to start a dialog about wall art, do it. By making a point to talk about wall art right away, clients will be more prepped and ready to purchase it during the sales session! Plus, if you start talking about it right off the bat, they are more inclined to think that wall art is a must-buy item. 

In your pre-session consults, here’s what you could discuss with your clients. This is just a tiny fraction of what you can accomplish in a planning meeting.

• Where in your client’s home they would like to display their artwork. Discuss their home decor, furniture, and interior design style so you can start narrowing down the products you’ll tell them about.

• Use this time to photograph their rooms to use in your in-person sales software. If you don’t meet in your client’s home for their planning meeting, request that they share these images of their home with you at the time of the meeting so you can refer to them while discussing products.

• Start suggesting locations, sizes, and layouts for wall art based on what you’ve learned about their home. Try to decide on some wall art galleries or pieces for various rooms.
  
  
• After you’ve discussed their various product options and where they would place them, always manage their expectations with your photography pricing guide. The last thing you want is for a client to learn a price in your sales meeting! Tell them up front and avoid a big headache down the road.

2. Promote Prints Throughout The Process

As a wedding photographer with an IPS photography business approach, you begin planting the seeds for wall art sale in your planning meeting. Once you successfully do that, you can bring up the topic organically in the future conversations with your clients. During the engagement session or the wedding, when you talk about how certain photographs you took will look perfect on their living room wall, you are building excitement for the products they’ve shown interest in. If your client loved the idea of a large portrait over the couch, be sure to tell them when you know you’ve gotten “the shot”! Get excited about the art you’re creating for your clients and they will be excited as well.

If you show your clients what size would look best over the couch during the pre-session planning meeting, refer back to those sizes while showing them “the shot” you got during the session. This will help position yourself in a really good place heading into your sales meeting.

At this point, your client has seen that a 30×45 looks great over the couch, and you showed them the photo that you think would look great in that spot. Now, between the session and the sales meeting, every time your client walks past the couch, they’re seeing that photo over the couch in their head. Your client will be selling that piece to themselves, just because you’ve planted those seeds! And that’s exactly how you make the selling job easier for yourself.

3. Don’t Overwhelm Your Client 

Want a surefire way to kill a sale? Overwhelm your client with too many options! When you narrow down options for your clients, you get to highlight your expertise as a photographer, your experience as a business owner, and the exceptional service you offer to your clients. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Show 20-30 final photos: Once you complete your wedding photo editing, narrow down the photos you want to show your clients to the best 20-30 shots. When you show your clients all 700 images from the wedding, you are giving your couple too many options. Even if they are able to narrow it down to their favorite images, the process is going to take longer. Take the time to go through all of the images and select the highlights from the day to share with your clients. The best way to do this is by looking at a photo from their session or wedding and asking yourself: Will my couple want this photo printed? Will they want to hang this in their family room?

• Don’t mention every product or option: Before the session, talk to your client about what they want to do with their photos. Remember that planning meeting we just talked about? Chances are, they haven’t even thought about this yet, and it gives you a great opportunity to mention the items that you think would work best for them. When you give your clients a limited number of options, you make it easier for them to pick the one(s) they really want. You are the person who knows what your couple is going to like, and trust us, when you make something easier for your couple, they love you even more.
  
  
• Before launching into all of your product offerings, talk to the client: What is their interior design style? What are the colors of their walls? Do they prefer classic, ornate furniture over modern, minimalist furniture? What’s their absolute favorite piece of art they already own? Invest in getting to know them and their style so you can provide the best products for them! Be the pro and talk about all the things they’ll love and leave out the things that aren’t relevant to them, their style, and their tastes.

Mastering the sales process takes time, but by implementing these ideas along with some additional wall art tips, you can start to see an increase in your print sales! Wall art is just one of the many products you can offer to clients to increase profit for your business.

Sell More Than Just A Product 

Whether you are an artist first and a business owner second, or vice versa, IPS photography sales can be challenging to master. However, with the right mindset and approach, it doesn’t have to feel like you are selling just another product to your clients. Plus, it’s never too late to get started. The key to successful IPS sales is the way you sell. If after photographing them, you simply tell your clients that they should buy something because you offer them or because other couples are buying it too, you might not get much of a response from them. However, if you include the art of selling in your workflow right from the first consultation with your clients (or even before that) and make them see how much value there is in buying wall art, they might just get onboard. 

To increase your chances of being successful at person to person sales, we’d suggest that you get to know your clients and their homes, observe what products they are attracted to and ensure you get their reaction while showing them some of their best images. The more you can learn about your clients, the easier IPS photography will seem to you. 

Further Read: Top 6 Ways To Boost Your Wedding Photography Sales