2. The 7 Essentials

Monthly Pop-ins are the opposite to everything you currently do as a portrait photographer - instead of a high value luxury service that is tailored to the client, Pop-ins are all about efficiency and offering a taste test of your talent, to leave them wanting more. 

To ensure that your clients continue to see the value in your high priced luxury service alongside your low cost/high volume monthly portraits, you need to implement these 7 essentials:
- Limited photo
- Flexible multi-booking timeslots
- Limited availablity
- Booked online: delivered online
- NO UPSELLS!
- Exceptional service
- Accessible price

Listen in to dive deep into what each of these essentials means and how to create a Monthly portrait scheme that fuels the rest of your business and helps to take you to the next level!

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Transcript

Anna Little (00:07):

Hi popstars. On this episode, I'm covering in depth the seven elements that are essential for creating a monthly Pop-in. These seven vital elements of Pop-ins that ensure your success and protect your existing business. Welcome to How to Pop, a business podcast for photographers who want their family portrait business to pop. I'm Anna Little, founder and creator of Pop-in Photos, and I want to help you go from hustling and struggling to busy and profitable with a cute little idea I call Pop-ins.
(01:01)
So never mind the classic podcast dive in. Today, let's Pop-in. If you are listening to this podcast, you're probably a photographer. You're probably someone who is looking for inspiration and advice on how to take your photography business to the next level. You most likely dreamed of making a living from taking photos of families and kids, but when the pedal hit the metal, you realized that running a business isn't all giggles and smiles. It can be really hard to keep a steady flow of customers coming through the doors. Actually, I think that this like cash flow and customer flow are the biggest problems that family portrait photographers face.Speaker 2 (01:43):

I need more customers.Anna Little (01:44):

With monthly Pop-in portraits, you can create a unique selling point that helps you stand out from the crowd, create a lead generator that provides a constant stream of new customers and automatically builds your mailing list and you can create an accessible product which opens up new sections of the market and increases your annual income. Furthermore, I have the tools that you need to make this efficient, cost-effective and simple to run with some heavy duty automation that takes zero setup using an application called popinphotos.com.
(02:18)
To ensure your monthly portraits are profitable, popular, and don't take over the rest of your business, there are seven essentials of a successful monthly portrait offer. These seven elements are vital and overlooking a single one could undermine your entire business. So what are they? Grab a pen and paper. You are going to want to remember this. Number one, a limited photo. For your monthly portraits to be successful, you want to make sure that you take the photos in exactly the same way every time. That way the only thing changing month by month is the baby in the photo.
(02:55)
The genius of this is that babies grow really quickly and it's the most bittersweet experience for a mother. Mums absolutely long to freeze time and capture photos that remind them of how far they've come. When the baby is photographed month by month and the rest of the photo remains exactly the same, it makes the change in the child's growth all the more obvious. Design a simple set that can be replicated again and again. This image will become a trademark look for your business, so make sure it reflects who you are but is also unique to the custom images you typically create.
(03:29)
And crucially, make sure your setup works for babies and children of all ages. You need to be able to photograph multiple children in the same setting without having to adjust your props or backdrop so that it is as efficient as possible to move from one customer to the next. Better yet, when your lighting and set is exactly the same for each photo, you can edit them all in a batch and save yourself many, many hours behind your computer screen. Limiting the photo that is available also ensures that those customers who want something a little different will need to upgrade to one of your full service custom session offers.
(04:07)
Limiting what is available at the accessible Pop-in price to one single type of photos retains the value in your photography, which is diverse and customized. As well as limiting the look and design of the photo, you also need to strictly limit who is in the photo. This is for individual portraits of babies and children only, no siblings, no moms, no family photos. By limiting the offer to individual photos only, you leave your clients wanting more and create an easy upsell. When the client asks, "Can I get a photo of my two children together?" Your answer is, "Sure.
(04:44)
That's not what we're doing today, but I'd be so happy to send you the details of my sibling portrait sessions." Now you have a new customer primed and ready to purchase your full price session. Number two, flexible time slots with multiple bookings. Your monthly portraits are based entirely on splitting the time and setup costs of a professional photo shoot across multiple customers. You'll create a monthly event that is on a specific day at a specific place with multiple one hour time slots. Your customers will book into these one hour time slots and you might take up to 25 bookings in that single hour.Speaker 2 (05:21):

Wait, what?Anna Little (05:21):

That's right, up to 25 babies in an hour, and I know that sounds really scary, but the fast pace and the efficiency of the system is what makes this so effective. Your monthly portrait sessions are group shoots. Your customers will be coming and going during their time slot, and each baby has just a few moments in front of the camera. Just long enough to capture a single adorable smiley photo and then it's onto the next person.Speaker 2 (05:46):

Next, please.Anna Little (05:47):

If the customer wants more photos or more time or custom ideas or a private shoot all to themselves, then it's easy to see the difference in value and therein the difference in the price between a monthly Pop-in portrait and the rest of what you offer. Number three, limited availability. This is crucial. The customer needs to come to a specific location for their speedy shoot and if they miss an event, again, another perfect opportunity to upgrade to full-price services. It's simply not viable to shoot just one or two monthly portraits at a time.
(06:20)
Just as an airline wouldn't put on new flight for just one traveler or a band wouldn't play a whole concert for a single ticket holder. You can be transparent about this with your customers. The full cost of your service is split between multiple bookings at your monthly Pop-in portrait events and help them to understand that your photography is valuable and that your super special offer is only available on your terms. Number four, booked online, delivered online. The fourth essential to running successful monthly Pop-in portraits is limiting the amount of time you spend on each booking.
(06:55)
That means you're going to need a lot of heavy duty automation to make it efficient. To make your session price as low as possible so it's as accessible as possible to as many mums as possible, then there's no time for manual booking, taking phone calls, sales sessions, and certainly not manually sending photos one by one or making prints. The great news is that there's a new online system that is specifically designed for this exact purpose. Popinphotos.com. Popinphotos.com allows photographers to create their events online and make them immediately available to book.
(07:32)
Modern mums are short on time and they're used to purchasing items for their baby online. They want to be able to sort out their portrait booking once the kids are in bed after a busy day. Your monthly Pop-in portraits are priced so that they can be purchased on impulse without having to place a call to the bank manager. Automating your booking process is extremely freeing for you, the photographer. No emailing back and forth to find a time and confirm bookings. Pop-in photos handles that all for you.
(08:01)
Imagine the feeling of waking up to 10 new bookings and you've been paid while you're peacefully asleep. Popinphotos.com handles everything, from password protected customer accounts, online payments, and even your paper trail. Your customers essentially enter their own details into your CRM, providing you with a ready-made email list, ideal for contacting everyone about your full price sessions. Popinphotos.com confirms and reminds your customers about their upcoming shoot and even magically reminds them to book again for next month.
(08:33)
On the day of your event, you can easily see who's booked and record when they've been photographed to create a list of bookings in order that they were shot, ready for streamlined uploading. With a click of a button, you can send all of your customers an email to let them know that their photo is ready to download. Fully watermarked and beautifully presented. Popinphotos.com also includes a huge array of features that you don't even know you need yet, like the ability for customers to request and pay for extra photos or leave you kind words. Text check-in to allow for remote queuing.
(09:07)
This is extremely handy during a pandemic. Analytics to track how your monthly portrait scheme is performing, coupons, gift vouchers, and much, much more. Popinphotos.com is the complete and essential business automation solution for a successful monthly Pop-in portrait. Honestly, it just doesn't work without popinphotos.com. Number five, nothing more to pay. Now, this is a bit of a challenge to most photographers. Everything we are taught is about luring customers in for sales sessions, upsells and add-ons, and it can be difficult to look away from an opportunity to create an upsell.
(09:46)
Monthly Pop-in portraits are different. For the most accessible price possible, you need to make your service as minimal as possible. There simply isn't the time to waste on back and forth of selling extra photos. Remember, the true upsell is to your full price photo shoot. At monthly Pop-in portraits, you'll create and choose just one great photo for each customer. You'll upload it to their online account within popinphotos.com and then walk away. That's it. One photo, one child, one month. It's a high resolution digital image so they can download it and print it.
(10:21)
Nothing more to choose from, no catch and nothing more to pay. You want as many mums as possible to come to your monthly portraits. Give them a photo that they can show their friends and leave them pleasantly surprised that there really was no catch. They don't even need to subscribe. They can come as often or as not often as they like. Wham-bam, thank you ma'am.Speaker 3 (10:44):

(Singing)Anna Little (10:48):

This is minimal effort from you with maximum value for the customer. They leave with a beautiful portrait that they can share with friends and family, a photo that will inspire others to come along next month and you'll give them a reason to talk about your business. This is a unique selling point. This is the thing we've been looking for. Where else can you get a photo for $10, $20, $30, whatever your price point is without getting tricked into spending more. This builds trust in your business.
(11:20)
Customers come away feeling great about their experience with you over and over again. And over time they tend to even fall in love with you a little bit. So who do you think they'll be turning to when the time comes to update those family portraits?Speaker 2 (11:33):

PS, it's you.Anna Little (11:35):

I know this is a bit of a mind shift. Using popinphotos.com, you can create extras like adding a close-up or a second pose, but these are pre-purchased. They're ordered before the shoot, and if they're not booked ahead, you don't waste your time creating those photos only to have them left unsold. And that's easy too because once you have your monthly Pop-in portraits set up and perfected, your clients know exactly what their photo will look like and what to expect when they order each shot on offer. Remember, with personalized products such as portraits, if your customer doesn't buy them, nobody else will.
(12:12)
Portraits have value to just one customer, so at rock bottom prices, it makes sense to show them exactly what's available and ask them ahead of time to buy the photos that they want. No upsells. Say it with me. No upsells. It's essential. Just trust me on this one. Number six, an accessible price. This is the one you've been waiting for. One of the hottest topics in photographers' forums, and the question without an easy answer, pricing. So hopefully you're familiar with your costs of doing business.
(12:46)
And if you've worked out how much it costs to keep your doors open, including your insurance, tax, marketing cost, administration time, and more, then you should have a figure in mind for the cost of a single portrait shoot. Whether that's $200 or $600 will be based on how you run your business. Whether you have a studio, how often you want to be shooting and so on. If you need help working out your basic session price, then check out our costs of doing business spreadsheet on our Facebook group How to Pop. Once you have your per session price worked out, divide that figure by the number of monthly portraits that you think you can reasonably get through in one hour.
(13:25)
Remember, it's just one quick photo of each baby taken in the same way every time. So for me, that's about 25 babies in an hour. You might want to start with 10 or maybe 15. So say your session price is 400, divide that number by 10 or maybe 15, and then you have your per ticket price for monthly portraits. For my business, this came to a nice tidy $20 per shoot. This is a very accessible price in my hometown for mums of almost any income level, even those on maternity leave.
(13:55)
By setting your prices as low as possible while still covering your costs, you're providing a product that competes with those photographers in your area who are continually undercutting you. But, and this is important, without discounting your full price service. Let me say that again. You're creating a product that competes with those El Cheapo photographers, luring customers away from their unprofitable options, but without discounting your full price service.Speaker 2 (14:23):

That's smart.Anna Little (14:24):

You're creating a service that is value for money at a price that accurately reflects the two to three minutes you'll be spending on each booking. I know that's right. Two to three minutes. With automated bookings, super speedy shooting and batch editing with drag and drop uploading and one click sending, it is completely and utterly doable. So how much does three minutes of your time actually cost? The goal of monthly Pop-in portraits is high volume, so by reducing the price of a shoot way, way down, you're able to get as many bums on seats as possible.
(14:58)
I know you're shocked, and some of you probably want to lynch me right now for telling photographers to sell photos for $20. This isn't about devaluing the professional photography industry. It's about creating a minimal viable product. A taste tester that will help you reach new clients. Here's how it works. Generally speaking, photography is expensive because of all the costs of doing business and because full service photography is time-consuming. There are cameras to buy, skills to hone, time spent emailing and posting to social media and much, much more.
(15:32)
The customer isn't just paying for the time they spend in front of the camera, they're paying for everything else that goes on behind the scenes too. With Pop-ins, the same is true. You still need to cover your overheads and your time spent marketing or answering queries, but you have many, many customers to cover that cost across the day. And because of the no-frills approach, there are actually fewer direct costs like your time to cover. For example, you don't need to cover any time spent on sales sessions or pre-consults.
(16:01)
Your marketing outlay is relatively minimal and all of the time-consuming admin of booking is all sorted out by popinphotos.com. Now, it can take a while to build up, but just like any business, it's not realistic to expect that Pop-ins will be profitable within the first month or two or year or two even, but eventually you could be seeing hundreds if not thousands of Pop-in customers every month. I'm just having a quick look at my popinphotos.com dashboard right now. And for my Pop-in business here in Wellington, New Zealand, we have 922 monthly Pop-ins booked for this month, across my three venues.
(16:36)
So it's the huge volume of bookings with Pop-ins combined with their efficient output and system that makes the low price of Pop-ins financially sound and ultimately profitable. So you are profiting from your loss-leader tactic, that's a pretty smooth move, grasshopper. Number seven, provide exceptional service. If you want to show your customers a taste of how they will be treated by your business when they come in for a full price shoot, then you need to make sure they're being treated like royalty even when they're only paying pennies.
(17:11)
Turn those photos around as quickly as you can. Send them out the same day, if you're that good. Take the time to warmly welcome every customer. Remember their name next month, and remark on how much their baby's growing. Build relationships with your monthly Pop-in portrait clients that keep them coming back for more. And make the experience of coming to your events fun and child-friendly. Get the mums chatting together so they feel like they're part of something special.
(17:38)
Yes, it's only one cheap photo, but for a new mum, it's a daunting trip outside of the house and it's a lasting memory captured in pixels. And it's a moment to show off their precious child. And for you, it's a potential customer. A hundred potential customers all deserving of special attention, albeit only for a few minutes. It is essential to the success of your monthly Pop-in portraits that you treat every customer like they're a $1,000 customer waiting to happen and not just a $20 spoonful of cake. So there you have it. The seven essentials of a successful monthly Pop-in portrait scheme.
(18:13)
One photo per customer that's always the same, monthly events with a flexible group time slot, online automation with popinphotos.com, no upsells, accessible prices and exceptional service. Let me boil that down even further. It's strictly limited. Super fun photography events booked online for an amazing price with nothing more to pay. One child, one month, one photo. With these seven essential ingredients, you have the recipe to create a new monthly Pop-in portrait product in your photography business that mothers will flock to.
(18:50)
An offer that can generate thousands of extra dollars every month and hundreds of new potential customers, all without chewing up any of your spare time and without devaluing your existing business. Let's recap. The seven essentials, the same photo every time, individual portraits only, the baby growing is the only thing that changes, limited availability, monthly portraits are only available at monthly portrait events. Flexible time slots with multiple bookings so mums can come and go during the hour. Booked online and backed by heavy-duty administration automation with popinphotos.com. No upsells.
(19:30)
One more time, no upsells. Accessible price and exceptional service. If your Pop-in enterprise has all of these seven essential elements, then woo-hoo. You have the perfect recipe for success. For more details on the seven elements, check out popinphotos.com and have a look through our How to Pop resources and all the visual reminders. If you want more detail on number seven, that's providing exceptional service with many amazing tips on how to quickly capture gorgeous smiles from babies of all ages whilst connecting personally with each Pop-in customer then you need to check out our video series The Little Anyway.
(20:11)
This is a paid resource also available through popinphotos.com. It is super inspiring and features a few of my photographers from here in Wellington, as well as some great footage of a real live Pop-in as it happens. So now you know what a Pop-in needs to succeed. Let's get you up and running. In my next episode, we will be covering the five steps to getting started, what to consider when Designing Your Pop-in photo, determining your price, naming your Pop-ins, a quick start guide for getting your events up online at popinphotos.com. And finally, some great ideas for marketing your Pop-ins to spread the word about your exciting new venture.
(20:54)
Stay tuned, Popstars. The next episode is dropping soon. What do you think? If you want to get in on this, hit me up on social media. If you have questions, I'm always here to help. Check out our How to Pop Facebook group and join the conversation. If you have enjoyed this podcast, have a look at our website, popinphotos.com. We are very excited to open this amazing tool to new international brands very soon. Sign up to get notified when it's available near you. That's popinphotos.com.