Let’s face it, most professional portrait photographers are fighting to book high school senior portrait clients. Revenue may be holding even with last year but sessions are still down from previous years. What is needed is a spark – a catalyst to set off a chain reaction of bookings. A catalyst can be any marketing tactic that will attract attention resulting in a call to action – in a studio’s case a desire to be photographed.
A simple very effective tactic is One gets Two and works well with high school senior portraits. The One gets Two tactic has many variations. Perhaps you can think of more. The basic tactic is to offer something of value that would encourage a senior to help book another, usually a classmate who is a close friend. Your “value offer” must be something that is desired and will induce motivation. One concept used by some photography studios is the Friendship Collage where about six images are arranged in an 8×10 digital photo prints collage, which is given free to both high school seniors after portrait packages are purchased. Friendship forever is the motivating factor whereby the collage print will be treasured for a lifetime. Marketing the Friendship Collage has many variations too. Seniors who have already been photographed can be contacted again and informed about the free offer. They will then start contacting their friends to get someone to book an appointment so that they can both get the Free Collage. You can photograph the Friendship poses during this new second session. For those studios that cannot bear to offer anything free they can offer the collage print at a discount. Advantages of the 8×10 photo prints size are that four to six images can be depicted for minimal cost and photo retouching will not be required because of the smaller head sizes. Image sizes could be a 4×5 mixed with several 2×3’s.
Another variation of the One gets Two tactic is the Two Photo Sessions for the Price of One. Here we are talking about session fees only. This works well with twins and friends. These would be photographed back to back with friendship poses sandwiched in the middle. For most senior girls this type of session can be very fun.
I do not recommend giving away professional photo printing products that represent your bread and butter sale. Ordinarily, an 8×10 collage print for a senior is not considered as bread and butter.
The One gets Two tactic is really a referral, word of mouth program in disguise. Each sitting told about the Friendship Collage now has the potential of doubling a studio’s sitting count.