Today's guest blog post is by Zach Prez. He says: “I'm a dad and social cyclist who loves to talk marketing over a cup of Lipton tea. I write about SEO, email marketing, social media, and web design for photographers over at http://photographywebmarketing.com”

Last week I was walking through the dreaded mall with my family. As I browsed the storefronts and window displays I realized marketing at play. I’m carrying what feels like 200 pounds of shopping bags, pushing a stroller and am in no mood to browse. I take about 5 seconds to glance at each store’s design and promotions and decide with my subliminal consciousness if I skip it or take a closer look. I peek through the window as I shove some more goldfish crackers into my toddlers’ mouths. Do I have time to go in? Anything in there I need to buy?

I often think about the amount of marketing that goes into those windows; hooks and promotions used to get me in the door. Then there’s the marketing inside the store to turn me from a person browsing to a new customer. Many things at play move me toward a purchase: clear navigation, lack of clutter, style, social proof, no wait time, product placement, and marketing messages. The same 7 concepts apply to your website and become critical in converting the window shoppers to paying customers. The first item, clear navigation, is discussed below and you can pick up details on the other 6 in my Photography Web Marketing Guide.

Create Clear Navigation

Start with navigation because edits are fast, easy, and you need to move your customers toward a decision as quickly as possible without losing their interest.

A homepage is the most visited and most important page of the site. Many new visitors (potential clients) begin here. In looking at your homepage, is it clear what you want them to do?

If I were to offer you a potential client right now and send them to your homepage, what do you want them to do? Think about exactly what you want them to read or click. My guess is you want them to contact you and book an appointment immediately more than you want them to read your blog or mobile website.

Plan out specific goals for the page and the importance of each goal on a scale of 1 to 5. For example:

• Contact me to schedule an appointment – 5
• View my photo gallery – 5
• Subscribe to something (Email, Facebook, Twitter, RSS) – 3
• View my photography blog – 1
• View informational text or other important pages (About me, Pricing, etc) – 1

In this case, your homepage should look like this

View My Photo Gallery	Contact Me to Schedule an Appointment
Subscribe for great information: Email | Facebook | Twitter | RSS
View my blog
Text about me Links to important pages

Notice how each section has clear text that tells the user what to do (View… Contact… Subscribe…) and the least important information is smallest and at the bottom of the page. The same can be said for top navigation on a site or blog.

As a new user to your website I want:

• examples of photos (Galleries)
• information about the photographer (About)
• pricing information (Pricing)
• contact information (Contact)

Those should be the first links in your navigation. Don’t confuse people with clever names like Investment. Does that mean pricing? As a user I’m not sure and might not click it. Remove any unnecessary links like Client Proofing since that has no relevance to new customers.

Effective navigation can be easily obtained by reducing the amount of choices given to a user. If you have kids you know what I mean. Offer them 10 different candy bars and you’ll be in a decision stalemate for eternity. Offer 1 or 2 and they’ll choose quickly. Focus your user’s attention on the most important actions by removing clutter.

Want to learn more from Zach Prez? Buy his new e-book, “Photography Web Marketing Guide” that takes on a whole lot of topics that will be of interest to working photographers who want to excel in their online marketing efforts.

If you liked the post, or have a perspective you think might help us understand this topic better, please post your comments below.

This is a guest post by Andrew “Fundy” Funderburg, the creator of the Fundy Album Builder and Fundy Album Proofer. Please check out the free trials available at http://www.fundysos.com. If you were looking to design albums yourselves, I highly recommend Fundy's products.

I've seen many forum posts on pricing prints for photographers and they usually all end badly. There are those that defend the high price points due to labor, business costs and what the market will bear. And those defending the low end price points, focus on auto-fulfillment, and what the market is willing to pay.

So who's right? Well the answer is simple, both price points are correct?

How can this be? Well, ‘correct' pricing is based only on two things.

1. What the market is willing to pay for something.
2. That a price is profitable according to retail pricing rules.

Let's take a closer look. It's pretty easy to find out if people are willing to pay a certain price for something. You simply throw it out there in the marketplace and if people pay money for it, then it is a viable price. You can move the price point up and down. When it goes down, more people buy it, when it goes up fewer people buy it. Pretty soon, you find the happy price point, quite a few buyers at a profitable price point.

What is profitable? Well, according to the Professional Photographers Association of America, you'll want to have at least a 35% cost of goods mark up to be profitable – that is, pay your bills, run a profit and grow your business. A 35% cost of goods, simply means that for every $1.00 you make, it costs you 0.35¢. If you sell ice cream on the street corner, and you buy it for 0.35¢ and sell it for $1.00, then you have a 35% cost of goods.

To get retail pricing of goods, simply take your costs and divide by the percentage (35%=0.35). So, if something costs you $10 to create for your client:

$10 ÷ 0.35 = $28.50

We'll use this simple formula to prove both arguments are correct. We did this recently in a speaking engagement we had at ProDPI headquarters. We were using our new pricing program, Prosper™ during the demonstration.

Here in our settings, we have our cost of goods set at 25%, a good COG for an established photographer. We've also estimated our hourly rate in our studio for the work we do.

Now, let's look at two scenarios. The first being a photographer who is selling art prints for a portrait sitting or of the bride and groom in a posed shot. This is a special order, the photographer is going to retouch the print, have it shipped to the studio and the bride or groom (probably the bride) are going to come in and pick it up.

As you can see we've calculated that we spend 15 min. finding, opening and retouching the image. We've set aside 10 minutes contact time with the client on the phone and 10 minutes time meeting the client in the studio to chat and $5 for shipping to our studio. Prosper™ has done the math for us, and calculated all of our costs and divided by 0.25. The total is $57. I'm going to just round that off to $60. So, you can see that with this business scenario, $60 for a 4×6 is the proper amount. And if the photographer educates the client about the quality of the print, it should sell.

As you can see, quite a bit has changed here. In this scenario, we've used numbers for an auto-fulfillment. This photographer shoots the wedding, does minimal batch retouching with an action and uploads the whole wedding for anyone to buy. After that, they are done. We've added the price of the print to the calculation and allotted 5 minutes for a quick call or email if the client asks about the delivery of the print. As you can see, Prosper™ has done the math for us and come out to $7 for a retail price on this print. I've rounded down to $6 for the purpose of this discussion.

So, as you can see, depending on how your run your business, $6 or $60 can be the right price for a 4×6 print. It all depends on how much work you are putting into the final product. The only mistake you can make is creating a fine art print and pricing it like an automated fulfillment print.

The simple matter of fact is, if you know your cost of goods then calculating your pricing is easy Junior High School math.

Prosper™ is a product of Fundy Software. You can find out more here about a free trial and the limited time pricing special happening right now.

Dustin Meyer is an internationally acclaimed wedding and portrait photographer with clients across the country. WPPI speaker, owner of MpactPhoto Blog, Collages.net CLASS leader, and contributor to the Pay It Forward Blog, Dustin is all about giving it back when it comes to marketing, social media, Lightroom, and sales techniques.

You’re nervous. As the barista brings you your latte, you glance at the clock in apprehension. The sound of your heartbeat fills your ears as you inspect your outfit yet again. Questions like “What if she doesn’t like me?” and “What if I sound like an idiot?” race through your mind as the door to the café opens and in walks the woman you came to meet.

Take a deep breath. You’re not on a date. You’re meeting with a potential bride. However, many times as we get prepared to meet with clients for the first time, it can feel just like your first date. Except, in the dating world, booking brides would be the same as competing on the Bachelorette. You’re not the only one hoping to shoot this wedding and therefore being yourself is more important than ever.

In most major cities, the wedding photography industry is pretty oversaturated. Everyone is grabbing a camera and calling themselves photographers. The frustration builds as the photo community begins to collapse on itself as we all try to compete with each other on pricing, style, and products.

In the beginning, our studio had booths at bridal shows and advertised in local wedding magazines. However, I couldn’t help but feel like a number as the overwhelming sea of brides passed our booth again and again. Identity can get lost as the crucible of marketing boils everything we have down to the numbers game. “How many images do you shoot per wedding” and “The guy three booths down can shoot my wedding for X dollars, how good can you do on that price” are questions that become so common it makes you want to just put down your camera and walk away.

But you’re not a number. You’re a photographer. Pricing and even photographic style don’t have a face attached to them. This is why it’s most important to get your personality out there.

Your personality is the one thing that other studios cannot copy. It’s who you are, along with the style and portfolio you’ve developed over the years. By letting go of the copycat game (mimicking another photographer’s Photoshop effects or stealing someone’s price sheet at a wedding expo) you free yourself to just be you. And that’s exactly what brides are looking for.

It’s easy to feel like the guy next to you must be doing it better than you, hence why so many people are doing the same thing. However, it’s far easier to just stand out by being yourself. By putting as much of your personality on your site, in your work, or in your presentation, you’ll find that the quality of your clients will increase dramatically.

As we all probably know, it was much better to be yourself back when you were dating. It’s the same when it comes to booking brides. The more you just act like you, the more compatible you are with your clients. So relax, have another sip of your latte, and be a pro at being you.

Got something on your mind after reading Dustin's blog post? Sound off below in the comments. We love to hear from you.

This is a guest blog by Anne Ruthmann. She is a Documentary Wedding & Lifestyle photographer in the Greater Boston area, where you can hang out with her every month at the local Pictage Users Group (PUG) group. She's won some fancy awards and been published in famous magazines but more importantly has been running a profitable business since she started in 2005. Before photography, she was successful in marketing & management for various corporations and non-profits, and learned how to make complicated things easy to understand by teaching music to elementary students. When she gets bored working on her own business, she consults for other small businesses, updates PhotoLovecat.com, and LowellHandmade.com. She hugs trees and sings in the car, but prefers to dine out because she's a terrible cook.

1. You Don't Know What Your Time Is Worth

You only seem to think that the time you spend shooting is worth any value. Nevermind that you spend 2-4x more time on post-production, backing up images, dealing with orders, setting up appointments, meeting with clients, putting out fires, etc. If you had an office assistant, I'm guessing they wouldn't do all of that for free- so why do you?

2. You Think Equipment Is Going To Make You A Better Photographer

I'm sorry dear gearhead, but if you can't make people fall in love with your work when you're using a point & shoot camera, what makes you think they're going to love your work any more after you've spent $20,000 on the most expensive gear you can find?

3. You Discount Your Services In order To Work With Clients Who Don't Appreciate You

Why, oh why, would you say yes to a client who already has decided you aren't worth what you're charging by asking you to work for less? Why are you going out of your way and cutting your own source of income in order to work with people who have already started your relationship on the basis that you will be bending over backwards and slitting your financial wrists for them?

4. You Think Your Technique Is Worth More Than The Moment

If you capture a beautifully lit image of someone in front of the perfect background and they have a lifeless face vs. a poorly exposed image in front of a distracting background but the subject has an engaging smile… duh… they will choose the one that makes THEM look good!

5. You Feed Your Ego More Than Your Bank Account

All of those advertising dollars you spent with that magazine or blog so your work could be featured resulted in how many solidly booked clients? If you didn't make 300% more than you spent on advertising, than it was a bad deal. Advertising should be an investment toward gaining future income, not an expense to stroke your ego and primp your peacock feathers.

6. You Don't Read PhotoLovecat.com

Because if you did, and you actually took our advice, you probably wouldn't suck so much at business.

This is a guest blog is by Robyn Mayne, based in Sydney, Australia. She is a children’s portrait photographer, workshop facilitator and customer experience fanatic! Robyn owns Today is Different and provides photography courses, workshops, retreats and networking events for photographers. Follow Robyn on Twitter.

Who are your customers?

One of the basic elements of any good marketing strategy is a narrowly defined target market – a niche. In fact, a great approach is to start by defining your ideal or perfect customer – Your “right” customer!

Many photographers try to be all things to all people and find it hard to really focus their activity on appealing to their right customers.

Often this happens because someone is on the phone asking for help in an area that’s not really your thing. What tends to kick in here is a fear of saying no to the “wrong” customers. “What if I don’t get any calls from my right customers?”  

While it may seem like growth to take on a new customer, if that customer isn’t a good fit, it can actually take your focus away from real growth and may even create dissatisfied customers that expected something other than what you were able to provide. Dissatisfied customers WILL tell their friends. Do you have a well-defined target market? Or, is it something like…”anyone that we think will pay us”.

So how do you identify your ideal target client?

a) Take a good hard look at your past clients. Look for types of clients that you would love to do more with?
b) Which are your most profitable clients? Are there types of work or types of clients that traditionally produce profitable or unprofitable sales?
c) Do they “want” what you do? If they do not want it for one reason or another, then you are sunk. If you have to convince them of a need, then they are not a good target market.
d) Do they value what you do? Price shoppers will always be prices shoppers. Look for those who appreciate the extra they get from you.

Create a picture of your ideal client

One useful trick is to discover what that ideal client looks like in the most specific way possible and then go about building your entire marketing strategy around attracting more of them. The idea here is that you create a picture of your ideal customer. Give her, or him, a name and a set of characteristics. Consider things like: age; sex; occupation; geography; family; income; beliefs; values; interests; challenges etc.

Now whenever you are reviewing your business, think of a new idea or try a different approach you can ask yourself “Would this appeal to Fiona/Fred?”

What do you think? Have you defined your target market? Do you operate within a niche? Tell us. Discuss. Share. This is the place to do it.