Photographs are the most personal of gifts!

Talking about Christmas and the holidays in October seems a little weird, but the holiday season does seem to start earlier every year – and when it comes to marketing, it pays to be prepared. The festive season is a great time to promote yourself to existing customers. You've spent all year taking photographs, so why not maximise the profit on each shoot with online galleries, product sales and special offers?

We spoke to retiring Queensberry account manager Michelle about her tips for holiday promotions, and marketing pointers to generate more sales from your existing clients. 

"If photographers aren’t using Workspace for selling, they should be! More and more, people are comfortable buying online, so I encourage photographers to market to their clients and their friends that way. With families spread far and wide, it's a great way (and a good time!) to promote family portraits. Get a pricelist set up in Workspace and think about packages and deals, because they work."

A question Michelle is often asked, is "How can I get my clients to sign off on their album design so they can have their album for Christmas?"

"Face to face with the clients is definitely best, but Workspace Album Proofing allows you to essentially meet with clients online to edit and sign off their album. The new system has nice big layouts that people really like."

"Promoting family portraiture around the holidays makes sense because people are thinking about family … that’s what this time is really about."

"Proofing is great for up-selling. If you design in more page layouts and images than originally committed to before the wedding, people can see the opportunities if they upgrade to more pages. After all, they've now had the chance to fall in love with their own photographs, and maybe want more! Proofing is also a convenient way to monitor comments and feedback on an album design. Some offer a token gift, like a free small copy album or fine art print, or a percentage off a portrait shoot, to get them over the line by a certain date."

Michelle says the leadup to the holidays is "a good time to showcase wedding images and packages, and to look at refreshing your samples for the high season and wedding shows early in the year. Update your website with recent work, make sure to add your promos to your website, and use social media to promote them. Add a page with promotions to your website, or blog or social media, whatever you use to promote yourself."

Michelle makes the point that, with most of your shoots out of the way for the year, Christmas is a great time to market to those earlier clients – creating more sales and more profits from existing photography. "A lot of photographers offer portrait specials for gift giving. Promoting family portraiture around the holidays makes sense because people are thinking about family … that’s what this time is really about. You may not have many portrait shoots on, but it’s a good idea to offer discounts and incentives to existing clients  – like a free frame or canvas with a particular package. But whether you're talking small items for the bookshelf or office, or large ones for the wall, there's a lot you can choose choose from and they all add to your bottom line.

"Another idea is to offer your clients a discount code that other family members can use when ordering from a shoot — there are so many opportunities to market products creatively."

Victoria x

Photography in prints by Lauren Anne Photography.

Using our free album design service? We need your approval of our design by Friday 3rd November.

If you’re designing your own albums we'll need your orders by Friday 3rd November.

We then ask that you confirm your orders within a couple of days of receiving our order confirmation document.

Click here for more information.