The holiday season is anything but time off if you’re a photographer who knows how to sell photos.
It can be your most profitable time of the year if you leverage your talent, resources, and a bit of business savvy together.
A good holiday season means you can make enough to buy yourself a new bit of equipment and gift it to yourself.
In this post, we’ll look at how to sell photos over the holiday season and close your year out in style.
1. Start as Early as Possible
Remember when you were a kid and thought about Christmas in August? You need to enter this headspace again.
Start your planning months in advance. Everything needs to be ready going into the holiday season, not during the holiday season.
If you’re not 100% ready when the season of giving starts, you’re gift-wrapping your business for other photographers.
2. Optimize Your Website to Sell
Take away everything on your website that stands between your customers and a sale.
We recommend gutting your site of any other buttons or links aside from “Buy.” It’s a simple principle in web design and knowing how to sell photos.
Simply put, it means every page on your site should have one goal. There only needs to be one button for your customers to push.
If you add a “Join Our Mailing List” button, your “Buy” button is now getting half of the attention it deserves. If you add a special coupon button, it’s now getting one-third of the attention.
Get the idea?
Mailing lists are great (more on them later), but they should never be built at the expense of an actual sale. If your pages have too much going on, that’s exactly what will happen.
3. Reach Out to Former Clients
The cost of earning a new customer is five to ten times higher than retaining an existing one.
So tap into your fleet of satisfied buyers. Treat them to a discount or promotion of your choosing.
If these people aren’t quite ready to buy, you’re at least keeping your name in their minds. This way, they can recommend you to their family and friends.
4. Embrace Direct Marketing
Don’t be afraid to reach out to them on both new school and old school fronts. Use email and traditional mail. Yes, snail mail.
It’s not just for pizza coupons. Direct mail is far from being the campaign of Christmas Past. In fact, the ROI for direct mail campaigns is the highest it’s been in years.
Meanwhile, email marketing brings in an ROI of $44 for every $1 spent. So send an e-blast to your existing customers with a special promo code.
5. Use Specialized Landing Pages
Our final tip involves specialized landing pages for the holidays.
Don’t forget to send the traffic from both campaigns to dedicated landing pages with a simple URL (i.e. yourdomain/hohoho).
You should also include messaging that matches the postcard and email so you can measure the results.
6. Use Social Media
Pairing the power of effective social media marketing with any of these other tips and tricks is sure to increase your online photo sales.
Find out where your clients are, and go there. A good rule of thumb is to have at least Facebook and Instagram accounts that showcase the best your photography business has to offer.
Let Us Show You How to Sell Photos
After implementing these 6 tips, your online photo sales should be steady through the season.
Have fun with your selling strategies at this time of year and make the most out of every sale.
The first step in learning how to sell photos is making a beautiful website with a simple online store.
We can help you build both!
You can click here to sign up. Alternately, you can view our pricing.
MorePhotos offers online solutions that include professional websites and a powerful e-commerce shopping cart. With our friendly and knowledgeable staff, we can assist you in creating an online presence that will attract traffic to your photography website.
