Mike Mahoney wrote: Ian Ivey wrote:
I\'m saying they\'re not rabbits, they\'re actual clients you haven\'t yet sorted out how to reach. By calling them \"rabbits,\" you\'re implying they either don\'t exist or they\'re not reachable. That\'s precisely the error I\'m saying many stuck-at-the-low-end photographers make.
Mike Mahoney wrote:
Again the sense of entitlement .. saying that you haven\'t yet sorted out how to reach these clients implies that everything else in your business is all set except the branding & marketing part, which in the vast majority of cases is simply not true.
$5-10,000+ weddings certainly exist, but not for everyone .. a strong product and personality is needed to support higher prices and most wedding photographers simply don\'t have either.
Nobody is \"stuck-at-the-low-end\" as you say .. the market has determined what they are worth.
Mike, you continue to mischaracterize my argument, so I\'ll break it down for you. Entitlement is arrogant assumption of one\'s own value and expectation that payment should simply be handed over. Entrepreneurship, by contrast, is the earnest pursuit of the opportunity to create the most value possible in the market and capture as much of that value (in profit) as possible by honest means.
The OP, Jon, offers a high-quality product -- by my and others\' assessment, higher quality than average in the market by a notable margin, at least by photographic standards. A wedding photography product is considerably more than merely the photographs we produce, though: the service experience a client enjoys, the apparent exclusivity of the product, the comfort and assurance an experienced and skilled photographer and people-person brings to the table -- these are all components that create value for the client. I\'m not sure what Jon\'s complete product looks like, but it seems from reading his site and talking with him that he is attentive to these things.
So I\'m not arguing that everyone, everywhere, has everything but marketing sorted. I am instead observing that marketing is a glaring weakness in Jon\'s business, and that it is the first place I\'d spend some time and attention before capitulating on price as you argue he should.
Wedding clients are not homogeneous. Whether there are enough $4,000-$8,000 brides in Jon\'s area is unclear to anyone here, in part because Jon has yet done little to attract their attention to his services. He could simply give up on finding them without ever giving himself a fighting chance. Or, he could try to identify what they value, and decide how to communicate with them in a way that attracts their attention.
In my experience -- heck, just sitting here reading people talk about their businesses -- I\'d say hundreds upon hundreds of photographers are \"stuck at the low end of the market\" not because of any technical failure in their photography or ability to deliver higher-end service, but because they don\'t understand how to reach and talk to brides who aren\'t shopping for a commodity.
Aug 28, 2012 at 02:28 PM
Previous versions of Ian Ivey's message #10917342 « I'm too expensive »
