← Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Get Ahead of Slow Season with 5 Creative Ways to Keep the Cash Flowing
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Welcome to the Book More Clients Photography Podcast. You can stop spending hours on Google and YouTube because you just found your number one resource for growing a profitable and sustainable photography business. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mama to two and Oklahoma family photographer. I left the classroom in 2018 to pursue my photography career full time. Now I'm here to help you do the same. In this podcast we're covering the most asked about topics including pricing, marketing, client experience, and all things systems and workflows. You won't find any fluff or BS here. Just tried and true strategy. Are you ready? Grab your kids some snacks and charge those camera batteries. It's time to jump in. Raise your hand if winter or slow season has ever made you panic a little. My hand is high in the air and you might be thinking, Brooke, why are you talking about slow season when we are in busy season right now? And the reason why is because I want to help you prep now where you have plenty of time to think through these things and get around to them rather than having this error at the very beginning of your slow season because that's not going to help you. Here's good news. Slow season doesn't have to mean no income. And I've said this every year I have a slow season episode that comes out. I want to really challenge you to think about it this year, your slow season not being a slow season and actually it being profitable. This year feels a lot different for me approaching winter and a slow season for a couple of reasons. First, I no longer have a studio so I don't have any guaranteed ways to make income in the winter. We moved to a new town over the summer and I haven't found a studio yet. And to be completely honest, I'm really not sure if I want to invest in another studio just because I am working a daytime job and I'm also running my photography business. Both things will eventually hold their weight as being like a full time thing for me and so I just don't even know that I have the days or time to dedicate to another studio. Secondly, I'm also having a major surgery in November and so I won't be able to photograph sessions for about four to six weeks. I'm really hoping I'm recovered and able to pick up the camera again by six weeks, but I won't be able to lift one of my arms. And just so you know, I am having a fibroadenoma removed and so it's a little bit more of a serious surgery because of how big it is. And so, yeah, I just have to be extra, extra careful. I'm at high risk for a hematoma. And so I chose the winter and my slower season so that I would be able to have time to recover and that I wasn't stealing so much income away from my business. So with all that being said, slow season is on my mind, as I'm sure it is on yours. And the really cool thing is I am going to cover five ways that you can keep the cash flowing in your slow season. And I promise it has nothing to do with the studio or some of the more obvious ways I've talked about in the past. So I want you to lean in. I'm going to be able to put a lot of this into motion for my own business and myself. A couple of these I won't be able to, but yeah. So let's, let's get into it. Number one is Black Friday pre sale. So let's just talk about Black Friday because the truth is, I know you feel some type of way about Black Friday. You are either on the team where you hate it and you wish people would stop talking about Black Friday, or you've had a bad experience in the past, or you might be someone that's like, nope, I do this every year. I enjoy it. It makes me money. And so I'm going to keep doing it. Whichever side you are. I want you to just come into this with a neutral mindset and just try it. Because you don't know if you don't try it again or try it for the first time. This is not about discounting. Now. It certainly can be. So if you want. So what I did. Let me tell you what I did last year. I. For Black Friday, I had a set amount of sessions that I was discounting. I think I discounted it a hundred dollars from my normal price. And I only had five available. And so all five got scooped up. I made all of that money up front, but I had a deadline that they had to book their session by and I would not honor it for that price past that, that time frame. So they bought it Black Friday, and then they were able to use it between January and March 31. If for some reason they needed a reschedule and it was past March 31, then they had to sign a contract saying, I understand that it's going to go back up to my regular price. Okay, so that's an idea of something that you could do is if you are going to discount, make sure that you limit it because you don't want 50 people booking out your calendar and you are not ever getting full price for another session. But something else I want you to think about is you could add a perk for them booking during the Black Friday sale. So let's say that they're still going to book you at regular price. Maybe it's 50% up front and 50% when they use it in 2026. And not only are they going to get, you know, that package, but you're sweetening the deal. And they're also going to get fill in the blank. So it could be as extravagant as another mini session, or it could be buy one session, get one 50 off. I've seen that before, which is really cool. It could be, you know, if they book this session, they're going to get set amount of prints and products as well on top of that. Or maybe you only offer like 20 images and you are going to double it for the same price. I don't know. You have to decide what's best for you, but this is probably the best way for you to have a cash injection into your business now and carry you through some of your slower months and then you just perform the work later. Now, the mindset behind this, the strategy, the reason why I recommend this is if you are someone that you're really good at booking sessions from April until November, and then for you, you feel like December through March is a struggle, then you want to utilize this and you want to make it to where they have to. That session has to take place between those months that you normally struggle to book sessions. That's the whole strategy behind this, is it's not like. Like, you probably wouldn't have had that many sessions anyway. And so this is helping you fill your calendar, but it's also giving you the money right now. Okay, I feel like. I feel like we're good there. So Black Friday, I want you to participate. I want you to try this and use one of the methods that I talked about. The second thing, and this is going to be similar to what I just talked about, but it's also going to be a little bit. Okay, maybe you're like, nope, I'm out. I don't want to do Black Friday. I don't want to do anything in the month of November. Okay, that's fine. What if you utilize the month of December and you made it all about gift card promotions? Okay, so everyone's in buying mode. Everyone. You know, I get messages. I don't know if you get Messages. I get messages every December. Hey, I really want to buy my mom a photography session that she can use for next year. I get those messages all the time. And I. I'm like, okay, great. Here's what I can do. I know gift certificates get a bad rep. I've been there. Let me tell you. I have been there. But I think if you do it the right way. Or what if you're someone that doesn't offer gift certificates year round, you only offer gift certificates during the month of December. It's much easier to track that way, and it makes it more like a luxurious item that people want because they know you don't offer them. So just giving you ideas here, but maybe you have one week, or you. Or maybe it's the whole month of December. I don't know where your main promotion is, your gift certificate. So you're really trying to get clients to buy this gift certificate now and use it later. And again, you're going to put an expiration. I would say, if you're going to do a gift certificate, to do somewhere between six to 12 months of an expiration or of a. Please use by 6 to 12 months. Because I know it can get a little muddy with the actual legal terms. So I typically say, you know, you have 12 months, 12 calendar months from the time you receive this to book your session with the gift certificate. Obviously, if someone came to me two years later, which usually they don't, but if they did, yes, I would honor it. Okay, so I'm not saying don't, but I'm saying really push the fact that you encourage it to be used 6 to 12 months from the time that it is purchased. Okay, so that is idea number two. Idea number three is to do print and product sales, like an actual big promotion for it. This is one of my favorite ways, because it literally is pure profit for you. You're not having to go. You're not having to schedule anybody for a session. You've already done all of that. So you're going to go back to all of your clients you had in 2025, and you are going to offer them a limited time, special or discount on your store, in your gallery, you can give a discount for a percentage off their entire order, like a higher one than what you did before. Maybe when they get their gallery year round, you always have 10%. Maybe you bump that to 20 to 30% for them, so it's 20 to 30% off. Or maybe you create an actual promotion that they cannot find anywhere else where you say if you spend X amount, you're going to get X amount free, just like the stores do. You can do this too. So if they spend $50 from your store, you're going to throw in, you know, a box of prints, like $25 worth of prints or something like that. You're going to obviously figure this out and you could have different, you know, spend 50, get this, spend a hundred, get this. Best deal would be spend 200 and get this. Okay, so figure out what that would be for you. This is very little work on your part. You could come up with a guide or a flyer in canva that, that talks about this and shows them the different tiers. And then you're going to create a little email series where you are going to have this promotion go out. It's low effort for you and it's high reward for you as well. So consider doing a print and product promotion. Okay, Number four is to market indoor lifestyle photography sessions. And yes, this can work for every single niche. I don't want to hear excuses, so here are some ideas. Like literally when I said that I saw five to six different niches. So let's, let's just go through it. If you're a brand photographer, you can find an indoor place like a coffee shop, a venue, a co working space and you can offer headshots or full branding sessions. Amazing. For family photographers, you can focus on in home lifestyle sessions. Newborn, same thing, go to their home, go to a studio. Number four if you have one. Obviously I'm not telling you that you have to go rent one. I'm saying if you own a studio, it's kind of a no brainer. If you don't focus on in home sessions or get creative really. Okay. For senior photographers there's some really cool places and I'm here to tell you that right now we are in such a time of out of the box once seniors want to have very personalized, unique sessions and so they're not going to frown upon your really good idea of taking them somewhere indoors and photographing them. Think of skating rinks, think of ice cream shops, think of inside their high school, get indoors and take their pictures. This is a perfect time to do this. So there's just some ideas for you. And of course weddings, if you're a couple's photographer, go indoor. You can utilize indoor photography with venues, styled shoots, teaching workshops. There's things that you guys can be doing and so you just have to get creative. And I know you're like ah, but I'm really Just I'm not confident in the photography that I can do indoors. Okay, well then go get a model call going for an indoor session, do it. And then now you can feel more confident because now you've got the experience under your belt. Okay, last and final one is to lean into your referrals or create a referral program. I'm not going to go into specifics here because this is something that I teach in the fully booked method and also in my one on one coaching. And so, you know, people pay to learn a lot from me and I give so much on this podcast. And so I'm not going to go through details here, but I am going to encourage you during your slower seasons, that's the time to lean into getting more referrals, get your name out there, figure out how to get people talking about you. And that in and of itself is going to be a marketing method. And you're going to see an increase in inquiries year round if you really lean into your referrals. So there you have it, five ways that you can keep money coming in during the slower months. And you don't have to just say, oh well, it's slow. Let me go get a part time job on top of what I'm already doing in my life because I don't know how to make slow season work. Well, now you do. And if you even just do two out of five of these, you are solid. Shout out to the person who does all five of these because you will really see how profitable your winter can be. Now if you listen to all five of these and you're like, oh my gosh, my head is spinning. I wish I had a plan. I wish I just like, I don't even know where to start. This is exactly what we could map out on a one on one strategy call. Now my coaching and strategy calls really are only going to be good through the end of this year. After that, I just don't know that I have time to really give to one on one calls anymore outside of my fully booked method just because of the commitment I have outside of photography now. So I'm gonna say if you're hearing this in real time, we're down to the last three months that I have available to do a strategy call. So, and, and I've also, I don't know if you've seen this, but I'll just tell you because you guys who listen to this podcast are truly vip, very dedicated, loyal people and I love you for it. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. But I want to tell you I actually scaled back the price for the rest of the year on strategy calls and they are $150. I know that's insane. That's almost like stealing. But I, I did it just because I, I really want to go out with a bang here with the one on one calls. And so this is, yeah, that's what I have to offer you. So if that's you, you want to come up with the slow season personalized strategy for your business, for your niche, go ahead, let's book a strategy call. Just email me brookejefferson.com I will get us a strategy call scheduled Mondays and Fridays would be daytime, but if you need an evening, I will definitely have more availability, especially getting closer to surgery time for an evening call. So you just let me know what you need. We will get that scheduled. And that is what I have for you today. I hope that your brain is spinning with ideas that you feel more confident about Slow season and I'll see you next week on the next episode.