Wedding photography is alive and well after the pandemic greatly affected the ability to gather in large groups a couple of years ago. With that growth is a potential new opportunity for you to consider.
The average wedding now costs almost $30,000! It’s expensive and in some cases causes couples to reevaluate the value of having a big traditional wedding. But regardless of the size of the wedding, the one thing they haven’t cut back on is hiring a photographer. 94% of to-be-weddings still have the photographer on top of their to-do list.
Because many couples have the desire to purchase a home, have a car, insurance, student loan payments, and more, they are looking at cutting back on other vendors and the overall size of weddings to minimize the amount of debt they will incur with a wedding on top of everything else.
Years ago I was at a PPA event and there was a speaker who offered a package he could promote for less than $1000. This was at a time when everyone was promoting just the opposite. Charge more, bigger coverages, higher quality products, add on’s, etc. In his case, it enabled him to say – we have packages that start at $995 and go up from there. It was a 2-hour coverage and only one location, typically the church.
In his case, he was still able to sell the bigger coverages, have the higher quality products, and all the add on’s but he needed something that got the conversation started with the bride and in his case, the ability to say he had an entry package for less than a thousand dollars got people in the door to discuss his services.
You would think that he would’ve killed his other, more expensive line of coverages but it didn’t. (It was another lesson in how logic can kill you in marketing) but he also had a safety net built in where this smaller coverage was not available during the peak months of the wedding season. Yet he could make an exception if their date wasn’t far off and he had a photographer who could cover it.
This smaller coverage allowed him to upsell to a bigger coverage as well. Many times people came in thinking that’s all the coverage they wanted but once they found out what else he could do for just a little more people would move up to a better coverage. And if they didn’t? That was OK too because the smaller coverage allowed him to do more than 1 wedding that day, depending on the time of each wedding.
He also found that he loved doing these weddings. It was quick (only 2 hours) and he didn’t have to go to the reception and spend hours there, often into the late hours. It was also a bare-bones coverage. No additional photographer. No double lighting. No carrying a studio background. It was to photograph the ceremony and do some wedding party and family group shots afterward.
So what coverage could you provide that would still make it worth your while? You set the conditions for the coverage and limit it to the off-season time of year. You can always make exceptions for these coverages if it would work before a later and larger wedding in the peak season. You set the rules!
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