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- [00:01]
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Four years ago, I ran my first ever holiday sale, which was eight years into my business, if I'm doing my math correctly. So for eight years, October would roll around and I would start thinking like, oh, a holiday sale. I could run a holiday sale. But, you know, it's a busy time of year. It's the busy season for most photographers. It's just kind of a busy time in most people's lives. I have school age kids, so we were doing fall sports and activities and things like that. The holidays are underway and you're kind of getting ready for. First there's Halloween, and then there's American Thanksgiving, and then there's, you know, Christmas and Hanukkah and all the different things. And I was busy. I was tired, right? So I told myself that the very last thing that my clients wanted or needed was to get, like, yet another sale announcement email in their inbox. And I told myself that running a sale devalued my brand and would teach my clients to, you know, wait for the holidays to purchase anything. I also told myself that running a sale would be a bunch of work and ultimately wouldn't really be worth my time or effort. But four years ago, things had changed for me. First of all, I was about two years into using the simple sales system in my business. So my busy season, although I was still doing a lot of photo shoots, was a lot less hectic. I had more white space in my calendar. I had more white space in my brain. I was also at that point, relatively new to single parenting and managing all of the finances myself. And so I was more motivated than I had been to try to potentially make some extra money around the holidays. Four years ago, I figured, what the heck, I'm going to put an offer out there and see how it goes. And you know what happened? I made over $12,000 in product sales and booked future work. 12,000 freaking dollars, y'all. I blew my own mind open. And of course, the first thing I did was, like, beat myself up for not running a holiday sale every other year for the eight years prior. Because, you know, a little quick math told me that even if I had only averaged half of what I made that first year that I ran a sale, you know, because in the beginning I was newer or whatever. Like, for whatever reason, if I only got half of that, if I made $6,000 a year, I would have close to 50,000 more dollars padding my bank account, which is pretty painful when you think about it, right? Like, that goes pretty far over eight years in a in a retirement account. But as you know, great as the money was, and it was 100% worth the effort that it took me to put that sale together, what happened was I realized there were a bunch of other benefits that came along with running that sale. So today I want to share five of them with you.
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Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Anna Mi Tonkin, and I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it, and I can show you how.
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In case it wasn't clear from my little opening story there, the first reason that you should run a holiday sale is to add revenue to your business. Full stop. I'm not going to apologize or pretend like money is not the number one reason, because it is. Making money is why we're in business, folks. Otherwise, we'd all be taking photos for the sheer love of the game. And a lot of people do. When you're in business, adding revenue to your business is adding fuel to the tank of a thriving business. It, you know, is not about greed. It's about a paying your bills, but also running a business where you get to serve clients at the level that you want to serve them and create the results for people that you want to create. So there's no shame in running a sale just for the pure income potential. But, you know, maybe you're sitting here listening, thinking, whatever, anime, those are your results. I would never make that much money or, you know, my clients don't spend that kind of money. And that may be true. When I ran that sale, I had several things going for me. I had been in business for eight years. I had an email list full of clients and potential clients who, you know, trusted me and valued my work. I had been selling products for that whole time as well. And even though my wholesale was not about products, I did sell products as part of that. As part of that offer. And so, you know, that was part of it. And then I was priced profitably. The way that my business was set up was already factoring into profitable margins, which makes running a sale easier. So all of those things certainly made it more likely that I was going to earn good money with my sale over the last two years. So that was four years ago. And then I have been running sales every year since. And then two years ago, I started offering to Teach other photographers how to run a profitable holiday sale. So I've been doing that now, this is my third year. So at this point I've coached hundreds of photographers in how to plan and run an effective holiday sale. And so I've gotten to see other people's results. And although the dollar figures that my students have earned have varied widely based on, you know, their specific level of experience and their price point in the market and where they live and all those kinds of things, what I have found is that there is consistency in their percentages. So with a little effort, most photographers are able to bring in the equivalent of 5 to 15% of their total annual revenue with a well run holiday sale. So you know, if you're making $50,000 a year, that would mean that a reasonable goal for a holiday sale would be somewhere in between like $2,500 and $7,500. If you are, you know, at the six figure mark, like right at a hundred K, that would mean five to $15,000. And that is a lot of money. But you know, if you are making less than that, it. Regardless, percentage wise, 5 to 15% is a generous bonus to give yourself at the holidays. If you were working in an office, you would be very lucky to get a bonus of that size. As a quick aside, if you are listening to this episode around the time that it drops in, you know, October, early November of 2022 and you are interested in a more personalized estimate of what you might make if you were to run a sale this year, I want you to go to thiscan't bethard.comholiday and take the quiz that I made for you. It's six questions, it takes like a minute. And I'm not asking you personal info like you're not entering your sales revenue or anything like that. But based on your answers, I'm going to give you an estimate on that spectrum of what your holiday sale revenue potential is. So you don't even have to enter your email address. This is again, it's like a one minute, six question quiz. So if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I'm curious as to what that might mean for me. Go to thiscampbethard.comholiday and take the quiz. Anyway, reason number one to run a sale is money, moolah, income, all those things, right? But what if you're brand new in business and you don't have any income yet, right? 5 to 15% of zero is still zero. So what's the point? Or maybe you're independently wealthy and you're running a photography business because business is your hobby and this is just for kicks. So money doesn't motivate you. Whatever. My opinion is that you should still consider running a sale. There are many other reasons and like I said, I'm going to talk about a few of them here today. So reason number two to run a holiday sale is that a holiday sale is something really juicy to talk about with your ideal clients and your existing clients. One of the things that I talk about with photographers all the time is that, you know, marketing is this long game and it's really a long conversation. Like we are often asking people to invest upwards of a thousand dollars, certainly several hundred dollars, and we are asking them to do that typically once every year, couple of years and in between. The job of marketing is to stay in touch with them right before they hire us for the first time and then after they hire us, when we're hoping that they're going to hire us again or tell their friends about us or something like that. We are trying to keep the conversation going whether we're using social media or a newsletter or any other kind of channel. And what is hard about that is that you always need something to talk about. So, you know, we do things like make funny reels or write newsletters that profile clients or whatever. A holiday sale is a great way to show up authentically in someone's inbox or in their social media feed and remind people about your business. This is a good time for people to be, you know, they're thinking about gifts, they're thinking about that sort of stuff. So when you show up in their inbox with a sale to talk about, you're not just reminding them that you're there, you're giving them an offer about something that they need right then. So that all by itself is a great, you know, it's a marketing opportunity, running a sale. Reason number three is that this conversation that you launch with your clients, when you're talking about a sale, it gives you the opportunity to gather really good intel on what is currently exciting or enticing for, for your clients. You can try out new ideas, right? You can put together an offer for a mini session or some sort of like gift certificate idea for either late in the year or in the new year that you can sell as a holiday gift. And depending on the response that you get, you will get some information about like, is that something that's exciting to people or is it not? And the beautiful thing is that, you know, you can put out a soft offer and if it's not landing, you can tweak it a little bit. You can pitch it to a few people first to see how it goes and then put it out to the, to the full audience. There's lots of great strategies for how you can do this. And depending on how much time you have in your calendar and how motivated you are to make the holiday sale work, there is lots that you can do to connect with and then to kind of hear back from your audience. So even if you went through the entire sale process and only got a couple of sales or didn't even get any sales at all, what you would learn through that process would, would be, you know, okay, well, this was not the direction that people are interested in me going. I'm not serving them something that they want. So you're not going to spend the entire next year trying to market an idea that like nobody's interested in. Right? That is good information. To have reason number four to run a holiday sale is maybe a little counterintuitive, but I am going to say that running a holiday sale actually helps you build trust and expertise with your audience. So puts you in a position of expertise, especially if you are on the new side in your photography business. So it's important to note that when I'm talking about running a holiday sale, I am not talking about running like a spammy sale, that you're just like 40% off, blah, blah, blah. You know that that is not who we are. That's not who most of us are. It's not who we want to show up as. And I actually think that it's that sort of thing that turns people off from running sales altogether because they're like, well, I don't want to be like that used car salesman down the block. Fair enough. I don't want to be like that either. It would be super off brand if I were to show up in a spammy way to my clients. So I don't do that at all. And when I teach running holiday sales, I am not telling you to bombard people with things that they are not interested in. Right. I am talking about creating thoughtful, interesting, enticing offers that are appealing, whether you are discounting or creating new experiences or adding bonuses. There's many different ways to host a sale. Right? But the goal should be that it gives people something to think about, something to chew on. It helps you stand out from the crowd. Ideally, you know, it's the sort of thing where your clients see it and they're so excited about it, they start to mention it to their friends. You know, oh, my photographer is running this, really has this really great offer. And then, you know, you're not only bringing in your existing clients, but you're reaching a new audience. And that brings me to the final reason. Reason number five, that I think that you should run a holiday sale this year. We all know, I mean, we're photographers, we value photography, but we know that photographs are some of the most amazing personal gift opportunities out there, right? What we create for people is amazing in the moment. It is amazing five years from now. It's amazing 20 years from now. Like when you go to the trouble to give someone photographic gift, whether, you know, it's an album or a slideshow or, you know, there's all kinds of different things, right? That is something that will never get thrown away. It will never be. It will never be the garbage that a lot of us end up with at the mall, like trying to find a gift for dad or whatever. And you buy some sort of like disposable tchotchke just because you feel obligated. Obligated to give a gift. When you put together a photo based gift, you, like, win the holiday, right? And so why isn't that what everybody gives everybody all the time? Because to make it something really special actually requires a fair amount of thought. But we are in the business of doing that thinking, right? We are constantly looking at photo products, but we're also thinking about different kinds of sessions that we can host and host and experiences that we can create for people. So if you put that offer together around the holidays, you are serving your clients. I've talked on this podcast before about Donald Miller's book Building a Story Brand. And if you haven't somehow read that book or heard about it, you should. But in storybrand, the idea is that your client is the hero, right? You're not the hero of the story. You need to constantly be positioning your client as the hero. And what better way to make your client the hero, like the holiday hero by then? By creating something amazing for them to give to their loved ones. And the beautiful thing is, you know, that's what they want. Like, we all want amazing gifts. We all want to be the one who, like, the gift is opened on Christmas morning or on that eighth night of Hanukkah and like, their eyes light up and they tear up and, you know, it was the perfect thing. And we're usually willing to kind of spend big money for that, right? So when I talk about sales. Again, this does not need to be. In fact, it shouldn't be something that in any way negatively impacts your brand. It should elevate your brand. It should give you extra status as someone who provides that kind of amazing level of service. So reason number five really comes down to creating amazing customer service. Making making this holiday extra memorable for your clients and being tied to that. And that's really, really good business practices for you. You know, again, this year, if you have not run holiday sales in the past, I want you to really consider doing this. I want you to commit to showing up for your audience with a great holiday sale. I want you to commit to showing up for yourself and your business with a great holiday sale. Do it to genuinely serve your clients. Do it to build trust. Do it to learn more about what your ideal clients want and need from you. Do it for something to talk with and engage with your audience about. And you know, don't apologize. Do it for the money. And again, to find out how much money you could potentially reasonably expect to make, go take the quiz at thiscant be that hard.com holiday so do not be like anime the first 8 years of her business. I don't want you to miss out on this opportunity and I promise you won't regret taking the time. Have a great week, you guys.
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Well, that's it for this week's episode of this Can't Be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads@thiscantbethard.com learn. If you like the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review in itunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.