Before booking any client for a shoot, it’s important that both parties are the right fit for each other. Chemistry is important when clients are looking for a prospective photographer. And vice versa.

Your corporate portfolio is important for your prospective client to understand the work you do. But in order to create really successful images, there are a few things you should know about your client before agreeing to a shoot.

These questions not only ensure your clients are well prepared prior to their session but can serve as an inspiration for you and your photography. This will bring your creativity to life and ensure the clients get what they really want.

1. What is your budget?

While a sensitive question for some, it is an important question nonetheless.

After some casual conversation with your prospective client, getting down to business means knowing what their expectations are. Having a clear understanding of their budget will ensure you deliver on those expectations. It also gives you a framework to what is needed come the day.

This insight allows you to inform your client of what you can reasonably deliver. Knowing the budget, even one that’s severely limiting, allows you to educate your client on what is possible and what isn’t.

In today’s age of digital photography and smartphone photography “professionals”, communicating rates and budget ensures everyone’s expectations are managed.

2. What do you hope to get out of the experience?

If your prospective client has seen your photos, then this will be an easy question to answer. Most prospective clients will respond with an image in your portfolio that has struck a chord with them. Clients who are familiar with your style of photography and are happy with it encourages good chemistry between both parties.

This question also helps you understand the endgame of your client. Answering this question will tell you a lot about the right services your client will require. It will also inform you about client expectations such as time frame, image format delivery, must-have photography moments, and poses.

3. Who will be attending the session?

Understanding the desired experience is one thing. But it’s a whole different ballgame when it comes down to session attendees. It could be a family of four,or maybe it’s an engagement shoot, or even an expecting couple.

There are challenges to every shoot and knowing ahead of time who will be attending is paramount to creating an experience that’s pleasant for everyone involved. This will determine the potential locations or backdrops to prepare for. This also allows you to decide on what time of day is best to shoot your clients.

4. What is so special about this time in your life?

Photography is more than just capturing subjects in specific poses set against specific backdrops. It serves as a witness to important events in our lives. From birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and everything in between, photographs are passports to the special moments in our lives.

Knowing why this certain window of time is special to your client allows you to go the extra mile when delivering a memorable experience. The images you shoot during this special time in their lives will serve as a wondrous reminder when they peruse through them months and years after the shoot. Knowing why this is a crucial time for them allows you to produce a better end product.

5. What do you like about my images?

As a photographer, part of your job is interpreting what your client really wants. Asking this question before shooting ensures you understand why they choose you as a photographer against someone else. You need to know exactly why they chose you.

Perhaps it’s the lighting you used or the color scheme you chose. It could even be the perspectives that your shots were taken in or the concept and feel of your photography style. Asking this question allows you to get in the mind of your client. This ensures the end product perfectly interprets what they want out of the experience.

This is why it’s important to have a portfolio your prospective clients can pour over. Your clients can point out certain aspects of your images that they want to recreate in their experience.

6. How did you hear about us?

This question is usually answered through the inquiry email you’re sent from a potential client. But if it isn’t, it’s important to ask this question. You need to know how your clients find you.

Your business will only continue to thrive if new clients can successfully find your work and engage with your business. Knowing whether or not your marketing efforts are going to waste is important in determining how to spend your marketing budget. This question can also reveal additional sales opportunities you may not have considered.

Don’t be afraid to ask this question. Beyond its marketing benefits, this question frames how your business is being perceived by potential clients.

7. Why did you choose us?

Last, but certainly not least, ask “Why me?” It may be an awkward question to ask, but no consultation meeting should finish without first asking this question. To protect yourself and your business, you need to know why your potential client wants to take you on as their photographer.

Remember, potential clients are not your clients yet. Knowing how you appeal to prospective clients can become a gateway to convincing them to trust their special occasion in your lens-toting hands. While price can be a factor in determining the right type of photographer, the best type of photography experiences is born out of relationships.

As a photographer, these questions are the necessary due diligence that are crucial to ensure you’re the right fit for creating the type of experience your prospective clients wants. You want your clients to walk away satisfied. The only way to perform such a service is to discuss these questions. So ask away!

Who Is Nigel Merrick

Nigel Merrick of Prime Focus Lab is a business coach and mentor to many photographers. He is also a prolific author, penning some of the most useful business guides in the photography industry.

Check out his books:

Interviewing Nigel

I recently recommended some of the best books you should read in the coming new year.

In this short video interview, Nigel and I talk about his new book, From Zero To Booked.

In it, he helps you identify your ideal clients, create compelling marketing that makes an impact on them, and shows you how to turn them into paying customers. It's a terrific read and I encourage you to read it.

This book by Nigel Merrick is particularly applicable if you are a wedding or portrait photographer who is either getting started in the business or who has been at it for some time but has started to feel a little burned out. Nigel offers clear-cut solutions to market to the clients who are right for you and who will see you as a good fit for them as well.

Want to get a taste of Nigel Merrick's writing before you invest in his books? I highly recommend you read this article on his site: The Phone Call That Almost Killed My Photography Business.

Are you ready to go From Zero To Booked in your business? Comment below! Or, ask Nigel questions that I am sure he will be able to answer given his wide breadth of knowledge and experience working with photographers just like you.

Why Do You Need A Tribe?

Having followers on social media is one thing, having a loyal audience is quite an another. When you build a tribe of followers and they turn their loyalty into supporting your creative endeavors, both they and you win.

This is the central premise of Pete Mosley‘s forthcoming guide book about fostering a loyal audience for your creative business.

Who Is Pete Mosley?

Pete Mosley, is a writer, speaker, and coach based in the East Midlands, in the United Kingdom.

His first book – ‘Make Your Creativity Pay‘, was published in July 2011. The second – ‘The Art of Shouting Quietly – a guide to self-promotion for introverts and other quiet souls', was published April 2015 and is now available as a paperback, on Kindle and as an audiobook.

He is on a mission to help creative entrepreneurs find the point where the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell others come together. To that end, he is working on his third book that will delve into the idea of creating a loyal following for our work; a tribe that will support our creative endeavors.

Speaking With Pete Mosley

After reading The Art of Shouting Quietly, I had to interview Peter and after a few months of back-and-forth emails, he finally committed to a short interview. Give this a listen please:

Topics In The Interview

What's Next For You?

I highly recommend Pete Mosley's books: Make Your Creativity Pay and The Art of Shouting Quietly. I would suggest you read those first. Then, if the content there resonates with you, consider supporting Pete through this special Patreon page. I am eagerly waiting for the third book to drop because the topic is timely and the content is actionable. Pete promises to show you the many ways to grow a loyal audience for your business.

Marketog For Photographers

You may recall I wrote about Marketog back in January 2016.

So many of you jumped in enrolled when Jamie Swanson of The Modern Tog, opened up her marketing course for photographers. Since then, Jamie has developed an awesome community and helped hundreds (if not thousands) of photographers through her other courses, her Facebook forums, and her many ebooks she has shared for free.

On September 25th, Jamie is kicking of the very last time she will be teaching through Marketog. Retiring the course wasn't an easy decision, but Jamie is clear on making it available one last time before 2017 comes to a close. Her heart and her enthusiasm hasn't waned one bit. She is just as thrilled to see photographers learn, execute and see results as ever before.

Essentially, this is why Marketog is so popular among photographers – it's wholly results oriented. If you are struggling to find clients, she will teach you how. If you are wondering why people have stopped visiting your site, Marketog will help you with that too. The course is all about attracting more clients to your business. If you are looking to book clients and don't know how, this course is for you.

The Interview With Jamie

Sign Up For The Free Webinars

For this launch week only, Jamie is offering FREE webinars where she walks you through what she is offering through Marketog.

Simply sign up through Messenger (don't worry, she won't post anything on your Facebook wall or anything like that), and you will be offered a few dates. Sign up for the webinar time and date that works best for you.

Is Marketog For You?

It's not easy question to answer. While our goals might be similar, every one of us is on a different path, in our craft or commerce. I believe a strong business is a great way towards the freedom we seek; the opportunity to be artists and produce artwork that speaks to us and our clients. So, running an efficient and successful business is a critical component of who we are as photographers.

What Marketog promises to deliver, is to create a credible and repeatable system. As Jamie says in the video above, the course intensive. Plan on rolling your sleeves up and getting your hands dirty. For six weeks, you'll be challenged and your heart and mind will want to resist. But challenge yourself to go through the modules. I am sure that you will see a remarkable difference in how your business sees results.

Here are the six steps she covers in Marketog:

• How to get more of the right kinds of clients
• 6 game-changing strategies to turn inquiries into clients
• How to turn your website into an inquiry-generating machine
• How to get repeat clients and more word-of-mouth advertising
• How to get other business owners to send you their best clients
• Your marketing toolkit for effective marketing

The Bonus If You Sign Up Today

If you sign up for Marketog today before midnight CDT, you will receive a free copy of The Go-To Guide for Client Emails (100+ Email Templates for Photographers). This retails for $147.

The real bonus of course is seeing your photography business soar. Jump in, do the work, ask questions (Jamie will be involved in the forum, but this is the last time she is offering such close attention), see results

“I'm the king of U-turns,” photographer Andy Anderson told our class at the 2014 Texas Photo Roundup. Over the course of the next few days, we'd come to learn that he meant that quite literally: Andy was in constant pursuit of his next personal project. For him that could have meant a dune buggy in a desert, or oilmen at work.

The bigger picture though, to me at least, wasn't about the art of it. Yes Andy spoke at length about how it was important to craft your own vision and continually be honing a unique point of view, and both of those things are incredibly important, that wasn't the golden nugget. The most valuable take-away from the workshop, and from my experiences since then was that photographers who shoot the most personal work get the most commissioned work of the type they want to do.

Other Tiffinbox blog posts that address the idea of personal work are here and here.

This concept has been reinforced by Andy's rep, Heather Elder, who writes the incredibly insightful, Notes from a Rep's Journal blog. Heather has often written that among the photographers she represents, it's always those who shoot the most personal work who find themselves the busiest commercially.

Years ago – I think it was from Nick Onken's blog, but am not 100% sure – I read the best advice regarding the photography business I've ever heard.

“Everything you do needs to be in service of two ideas – take better photos, and show them to more people.”

As I've built my business, that idea has been at the center of everything I do, and if a particular task isn't in service of one of those ideas, maybe that's something I should consider outsourcing (like bookkeeping).

The most valuable take-away from the workshop, and from my experiences since then was that photographers who shoot the most personal work get the most commissioned work of the type they want to do.

It all ties together though. In 2015 I committed to sending monthly e-mails to 2,000+ creatives and current clients via Yodelist as part of my overall broader marketing plan. Yodelist, while far less expensive then their chief competitor Agency Access, isn't a small financial commitment. To see a return on that investment, I realized quickly I couldn't send e-mails saying, “Hey! Come look at the same work I showed you last month!”

The catch-22 though is that much of the work I shoot in a given month won't be available to be shown publicly for a few months following, because it's either part of a broader yet-unfinished campaign, or because a magazine hasn't yet been published. As a result, having new personal work, like my recent “Fuego Faces” series is a key component to my marketing plan as I can shoot something today and have it live on my blog or website tomorrow.

While the “Fuego Faces” project was all shot in a day, my series of photos of New England Craftsmen has been ongoing for 3+ years with no end in sight. I don't exaggerate to say that literally every new client I've worked with during the past few years has referenced the craftsmen series – it's led to thousands (tens of perhaps?) of dollars of new work. I've received creative briefs with individual images pulled from the craftsmen gallery, and lost track of the number of times clients have said, “Just shoot it like your craftsmen series.”

Personal Work by Doug Levy

I try to treat personal work no different than commissioned work, and often that means paying an assistant to come to personal work shoots. It totally depends how you work though. For me, paying to have an assistant is just part of my overall marketing budget. I wouldn't do a client job without a second set of hands, so why would I shoot personal work any differently? To me, spending a few hundred dollars on an assistant = better photos = more paying client work. Personal work is also an opportunity to try new techniques and work in new assistants (or stylists, or digital techs) on jobs that inherently have a lower stress point than those involving large client expenditures.

I frequently get asked by local photographers, “How do I get more commercial clients?” At its root, the first step could almost always be, “Shoot some killer personal work and show it to as many people as possible.”