The Importance of TRUST in your photography business

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Oftentimes in our business we only tend to look at WHY things happen when things are not going right, or as we expected. 

For instance, if a recent inquiry books a different photographer, you may look at WHY they booked them instead of you. You might compare your pricing to the other photographer, maybe your style, etc. 

But it's not often that we look at our business when things are going RIGHT to try to diagnose why people are choosing us, in order to build on those assets in our business. 

When I worked for LAPD, one of the department's core values was "Quality Through Continuous Improvement"

That was something that always stuck out to me as a future entrepreneur. 

So this month I was looking at our business and noticed a ton of new bookings. Our lead sources are more diverse than ever, and sales are 30% higher per job than this time in 2019....

So I thought this would be a good time during our SWOT analysis to ask myself "WHY" are things great? What are the strengths of our business that are causing new clients to want to be a part of our brand?

After reviewing our internal customer satisfaction surveys (seriously, do this in your own business), I noticed that one thing that causes a lot of clients to book with us is that they had prior knowledge of our brand. 

When digging in a little bit deeper, the reason it has taken so long (10 years now) to find consistent success is because it has taken that long to build TRUST in our photography brand and business. 

Make no mistake, wedding photography requires an ABSOLUTE amount of trust in our ability to capture a client's big day. Even more so than anything else in my opinion, so it makes sense that in order to earn a booking, a client has to feel they can trust you. 

The truth is, without trust in your brand, nobody is going to book you, no matter how they find you.

So how can you establish trust in your brand?

Had I known this back in 2012 when we were just getting started, I would have spent A LOT more time working on the things that build trust in my brand. 

Here are some things I would have done:

• Worked harder to establish relationships with other vendors
• Worked harder to gather online reviews
• Focused more on design and professional appearance (no @gmail.com email addresses!)
• Co-written for more blogs (This will seriously help your SEO)
• Built a better referral system
• Blogged more (I still suck at this)
• Pinterest.....lots of Pinterest (this also helps your SEO)

You see, after all these years, I have discovered ONE thing.....

A BRAND IS NOTHING WITHOUT TRUST FROM IT'S CLIENTS

So if you want to succeed and find long-term success, focus on building your BRAND slowly and methodically, rather than the shiny new advertisement technique that some guru online is promising you. 

Great things take time

One last thing I want to leave you with. 

It's OK if it takes a LONG time to build your brand....success is not a race. It takes a long time to establish trust in your community. It takes a while to build your reputation among vendors.......but with the knowledge now of how important it is to your overall success what will your plan of action be going forward?

Lastly. if you want to help build trust in your brand using structured communication (similar to how I am reaching out to you now) then click here to watch our FREE training on how we use e-mail marketing to find new clients and build relationships with new ones. 

-Michael Anthony