In your professional experience, which of the five factors has impacted the demand for your business the most in the last 2 years?
Consumers / buyers want / DEMAND photographic services to be performed / provided / supplied by professional photographers of those services. What has had the most impact on consumers / buyers willingness / ability (good or bad) to purchase your photographic services in a profitable manner for you?
I think the market is flooded with new photographers and their market strategy is to charge less than the other guy. I get at least 2 calls a week from soccer moms who just purchased a DLSR kit and all of their friends tell them how wondeful they are as so they want to turn pro.
There is big money selling to these new photographers. They go to all of the same conventions, get the same kind of websites, buy the same gear, etc... The real money is in selling to the photogs.
teebat ... sounds like a model from the "Gold Rush" ... picks & shovels to the wannabe gold miners ... very few ever finding enough gold to pay the rent.
If you have a customer base and have been around for a while then not too much has changed. So for portrait work we have increased the number of clients the last 2 years. The greatest impact for us is weddings, not the number of weddings per year or the amount charged but the number couples shopping for price and not by value.
We see a lot more couples than previous years and they really are just looking for the cheapest price.
Three brides that didn't go with us for their weddings earlier this year have come to our studio for family photos. During the session they pick up the sample albums and then tell us how un happy they are with their wedding photos/albums and that they wished they spent a little extra and went with us. The thing is, we are not that expensive. 2 of the brides asked me to "fix" the photos on disk they got form the other photog they hired.
I think we need to do a better job of showing that value is more important than bottom line prices. But, like one bride said to me there are so many new wedding photographers when you do a google search that it is exhausting trying to weed through them all.
Many call and have only one questions, how much? Even though our prices are easy to find, they are looking for deals. If we can get them to come to the studio and speak to us and look at the photos and albums we have a 95% booking rate.
teebat ... sounds like you are saying that "buyer expectation" is having more impact than a reduced number of buyers ... which I am inclined to relate to OEM marketing:
1. OEM marketing selling the notion that "Buy the new 'picks & shovels' and you too can make professional looking pics (adding to the number of 'sellers" i.e. photographers)
2. Buyers of photographic services, being influenced (expectations) by the same OEM marketing that technology has somehow magically expedited / lessened the significance of the human interface / the need for knowledge & experience ... i.e. the camera can 'do it all'
I didn't vote because I didn't see a too many soccer mom category. I'm my area there are always half a dozen of them on craigs list advertising for $25 dollar weddings with complete coverage. All images on cd at the end of the wedding. Shooting with their brand new digital rebel with the pop up flash.
mfharper ... that one might go in the 'number of sellers' over in the supply side.
NOTE: While the 'soccer moms' / GWAC's may not be considered 'professional' ... they still are having some impact on where buyers are spending money, so they are an actual part of the number of sellers. They may fall into the lower end of the pricing spectrum of supply, but they are still part of it.
So are they simply selling at a dfferent price point ... or are they really offering a different product / service ... which would rather fall into the catergory "prices of related goods" ??
Realistically ... are they really selling the SAME product ... OR ... a RELATED product feigning as a substitute?
For the higher-end portrait market, the income worries of potential clients has caused some problems for a while. But good marketing can overcome that at this point, as the well-to-do mothers in that market begin to realize that they're not really going to be standing on the streetcorners with cups in their hands. She may have to forego that new $30,000 kitchen, but she still wants to buy something to beautify her house...and nice wall portraits are actually pretty inexpensive in comparison.
