How much does it cost
to get a customer in your door?
by Randall Tomaras

Please not that this article was researched 3 years ago. We have updated it a little, but the costs mentioned in various forms of advertising have probably gone up.

Too much, I heard someone say. Marketing is expensive and it's probably the single most reason photographers fail. Having the latest in equipment or software, creating lighting and posing technique, or learning new computer software seems to be more of the passion then selling people on coming in. But if you don't get them coming in, you have no money to do your passion Let's look at your options to getting people in the door.

Word of Mouth:
Cheap!!! It's your reward for doing a good job. If the customer likes your quality and service they will tell 1 to 2 others. If they don't they will tell 50 others. So many of us hide behind this and we think customers are loyal. The real test is this: If you can double your number of customers every year without any advertising, you have good word of mouth and loyal customers. I was so confident of my photography compared to my competitors I tried that one year. HUGE mistake. Marketing and lousy photography will beat great photography and no marketing EVERY TIME. You have to advertise some how. Everyone told me it was word of mouth, but in reality it was my advertising that reminded them of me.

Return customers:
I was telling one group of photographers that your best customers are your past customers. High school seniors, get jobs, get married and have kids and the cycle starts again when the kids are seniors. If they bought from you once they will buy from you again, if you did a good job. One of the wedding photographers jumped up and said; "The second time they get married they don't order nearly as much." Then a high school senior photographer snapped; "At least your clients will get married again I can never get them to graduate from high school twice." Point well taken in some fields of specialized photography, but they may have brothers or sisters. Or if you do seniors, but you don't do weddings, strike up a deal with the wedding photographer for $100 referrals. Display his or her work, so people will ask. Get creative, work together if you are specialized.

Direct Mail:
Traditionally this is the best for photographers, especially if you can get a good mailing list that is targeted. The top photographers will tell you that you have to mail at least five times to be effective. So let's take a look at the costs:
Multiple mailing list and labels $1,000
1st Printed piece 3,000 copies full color $1,000
Next four printed pieces, some b&w, average $600 = $2,400
Postage for 5 bulk mailings of 3,000 @. .14 each = $2,100
Labor to put the mailing together including labels and presort $500
That's a total of $7,000 or $ .428 a piece.
Out of the 3,000 what percent will become customers. 5% would be very outstanding. With that many mailings 1.5 to 3 is good. So let's look at what this cost you even if you got 9%.
9% = 270 customers at a cost of $25.92 each
5% = 150 customers at a cost of $46.66 each
4% = 120 customers at a cost of $58.33 each
3% = ..90 customers at a cost of $77.77 each
2% = 60 customers at a cost of $116.66 each
1% = 30 customers at a cost of $233.33 each

Yellow pages:
First of all they charge you twice as much to have a business phone as a regular phone. Those of us who have teenage daughters know its crazy for a company to charge you twice as much for half as much use. Then they sell you monthly ad space that you are locked into for a year if you want to keep the phone number everyone knows. This ranges anywhere from $45 a month for bold face to $1,500 a month for a full page. That's $540 to $18,000 a year. Personally, I was on the border of two counties and also two different phone companies' territories, so if I really want to cover myself I had to advertise in four phone books. Every year I tracked where my clients came from. Not only did I know how much they spent, but I had a rating system as to how I liked them as a customer. Come on, we all have that occasional customer, where you say; "Why am I doing this?" If they depressed me, I'm not going to invite them back. Life is too short. Over 90% of my "pain in the butt" customers come from the yellow pages. I call them "terrorist shoppers" who make it a full time career to cause pain to merchants. They are also the first to stand me up. I think they set up an appointments with everyone they call and go to the cheapest price in the end and forget calling the others back. In the meantime, I have made myself unemployed for a hour and a half while they went to Sears and had their snapshot taken with big fuzzy bunnies in less than 3 minutes. And I was told it was supposed to be a classic portrait with style that they could use for job resumes. I could hire a telemarketer to call everyone just as they were putting food in their mouths and have 1000 times better luck than the yellow pages.

Radio and Television:
Both of these mediums sell ad space based on cost per 1,000 of listeners (radio) or viewers (TV). A market in Los Angeles is going to be much more expensive than Dry Gulch, OK. I have a friend who sells radio advertising and he has the rates for both radio and television. His advise was don't do radio and tv advertising for photography. In the very small town radio stations you might pay $1,500 a month to make a dent in the market. $3,000 for medium towns and $6,000 a month for top twenty markets. That rings the cash register at $18,000 to $72,000 a year. That's just to be a small player in the radio. Television is usually double to triple that ($36,000 to $216,000), but you won't find it in the smaller towns. In fact most smaller towns listen to radio stations from the bigger cities.

Newspaper and Magazine:
Again newspapers and magazines charge like most advertisers by a cost per thousand. If the circulation is 10 million the cost will be different than one thousand. A 3 inch ad in the Seattle Times runs around $500. And that's for one day. If you tried only 4 days a month, that would be $24,000 a year. Magazines for a specific market are actually a lot better buy. Photographers will actually look at ads for products in photography magazines. And they may even keep them around for a while and look at them more than once. So wedding photographers would have better returns with wedding magazines.

Displays:
We are starting to get affordable if it's free, but the returns are spotty and unpredictable. At best, you can call it recognition advertising. It lets the customer know you are around. Most of the time, there is no incentive for people to react to a display. Handouts have a way of disappearing unless you have the display manned in which case you'll pay monthly from $1,344 to $2,016 in labor ($16,128 to $24,192 a year) depending on how many hours the display is manned (8 to 12). If the display spot has very heavy traffic, you can almost guarantee that the owners will be wise to it. Our local mall charges $1,700 a month ($20,400 a year) for a 4x4 kiosk, but you might be able to get a restaurant wall for free.

Trade Shows:
Trade shows and conventions if they are targeted right aren't a bad method for photographers. A good display, the booth space, and the labor to run it will cost you around $2,000 to $5,000 for the a three day period. If you give away a dated coupon you might pull in 30 to 40 customers. That works out to $67 to $125 per customer.

Search engine traffic:
They say that 74 % of all web traffic comes from three search engines: Yahoo, MSN, and Google. The internet search engines used to be free. If you were a tech whiz you could with a lot of effort be on the first page of a search engine. In fact, a lot people who knew how to do this started companies and made millions by getting clients high in "placement" on the various search engines. So much so, that the search engines and directories decided to charge people for "placement," since they discovered ad banners weren't very effective. So if someone offers to put you high on the search engines for a reasonable amount of money - don't do it. Now days you bid on key words and phrases, if you are the highest bidder you are number one. You don't need a third party to charge you more to do this. In photography, key words like photographer or senior pictures or stock photography go for any where from .15 cents to one dollar for everybody who hits your site. That's just for looking. So if 10,000 people world wide hit your site that month from that search engine its going to cost you $1,500 to $10,000. Now since the people are looking to buy (other than other photographers snooping), you get a better return.

People are using the internet more and more as a resource to find products and stores. As a photographer you may know that there are nearly 55 million photographer pages for consumers to look at. Internet traffic is quality business because if they contact you they are serious buyers and already approve of your work. The whole key is getting your URL recognized either by advertising or through internet placement. Choosing the right key phrase is vital in internet placement. Note I said phrase, it is very well proven that 84-96% of the search engine users type in a phrase not a word. Photographers may type in the word photographer in a search engine. Knowing the right phrases is vital. That's why when we get everything up we will have over 10,000 pages all geared to a different phrase that stats show the customer uses. The Internet is the future.

So what's the alternative to high cost advertising?
Do you simply wait for people to come to you. No, you form associations with others to reduce your costs. Instead of your fellow photographer being your enemy, you work together on educating the public about good photography. Be smarter than the problem. Don't have advertising people divide and separate you for big bucks, when you can "group insure" and be much more cost effective. The biggest market today for photogaphers is the Internet. Key phrases and words used to find a photographer were typed into various search engines over half a billion times last year. That doubled from the previous year. Americans are going to the Internet in record numbers to check out the work of various photographers before they call for an appointment. If your name does not come up on the first 3 pages of a search engine, you better have a great advertising program for your URL. The easest way to get on the first page is to buy your way there. It would cost from 15 cents to one dollar for key words in photography. That means anytime someone finds you through that particular search engine on the internet, it costs you 15 cents to $1 per person. This would not be cost effective for the average photographer.

However, the average photographer can compete with the big boys and girls by being a member of Best USA Photographers. Everyone pays a little for their access to the big market. Best USA photographers works so well because most customers stick relatively local. Customers pick their state and style of photography they are looking for. The free e-information available helps the client understand the photography shoot. They appreciate the advice and tips. The e-book or pamphlet actually makes you friends before you meet.

All this can only be done by working together.

SO WHAT DOES A MEMBERSHIP COST
CLICK HERE

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Best USA

Photographers - As you can see web placement is a VERY COMPLEX subject that is always changing. It takes a lot of time and research to come up on top. If you have been invited to be a member of Best USA Photographers and have some questions let us know .

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