For those of you who have photographed High School Seniors, now is the time to follow up and invite the families back for family portraits.
This is not a new idea and chances are you’ve already offered this type of session to the mom as part of the benefits of having Senior portraits done thru you. But if you haven’t, now is the time to do that or remind them to take advantage of it.
Put a deadline to take advantage of this by the end of the year. The reason is that it allows you to book the session and get an order placed before the holidays in order to maximize sales. It also becomes easy gifts for families to give and, let’s face it, schedules get crazy after the holidays when the kids start visiting colleges, begin to prepare to graduate, participate in any curricular activities at school, and also work part-time.
Ideally, you want to book the family session right after the Senior sales session is over. You can say something like – Since we photographed Suzy’s senior portraits you also get a free family session. What we like to do is schedule a session time between now and the end of the year, even if it’s just tentative. We can always adjust later if need be but we do this before our better session dates fill up later this fall. Plus we find it’s so hard for families to get together after the first of the year due to college visits, school activities, preparing for graduation, and work schedules. And we always send out a reminder a couple of weeks ahead of time and confirm the date again a couple of days in advance to help remind you.
Not everyone will follow through with their session. But you can maximize the results by following these suggestions. Plus, you can still allow them to book their family session in the Spring. Just don’t tell them that initially otherwise they will procrastinate.
The Senior year is filled with lots of expenses and decisions. It’s an emotional time for the family as they prepare for a big change. Your photography will enable them to have a wonderful treasure to enjoy when their child is away at college because getting the family together again once the child is in college can be a challenge.
