Hey photographer friends! Welcome back to our Photography Blog, Mastering the Wedding Photography Biz with Hunter and Sarah! Today we’re sharing a few tips on how you can turn your surprise proposal or engagement session couples into raving fans who aren’t just open to hearing more about your wedding photography services, but are eager to hire you. So if you photograph lots of surprise proposals or standalone engagement sessions, but want more wedding clients, then today’s video is for you!

 

 

Step 1 for More Wedding Clients: Exceed Expectations During the Session

The first step to turning surprise proposal or engagement session couples into more wedding clients more frequently is taking a hard look at the experience you give your couples during your time together, and the images that you’re producing. This may sound obvious, but if your proposal or engagement couples aren’t having a good time with you, connecting personally with you, and absolutely loving the final images they get… nothing else is really going to matter when it comes to converting them into wedding couples more frequently.

 

 

Are they having a good time?

So first is making sure they have a good time with you. The way you guide them during their session is going to be a huge part of this. If they feel stiff and awkward and you’re fumbling to figure out the next pose or leaving them in total silence for minutes at a time, they’re probably not going to have a great time.

The good news — like we talked about in our post/video Fighting Imposter Syndrome as a New Photographer — is that comfortability with your clients, with setting your settings, and with posing truly does come the more you get out and shoot.

Are you connecting with your clients?

The next thing that will increase your chances of converting engaged couples into wedding clients is to really connect with your couple personally. This means asking them lots of questions, getting to know them and their story, and relating to them whenever possible as you capture their session.

And if you’re still relatively new to photographer and setting your settings or posing your couples is still taking up 100% of your brain-space during a session, that’s okay! Use moments between shots or as you walk from one part of the location to another to really connect with them. Or even just stand around and chat with them for a little while after the session itself.

As time goes on, posing and setting your settings will become second nature to you, and you’ll be able to think about the next question you’re going to ask, or respond thoughtfully to them, rather than thinking about where your aperture or ISO should be.

Are you delivering an exceptional product?

And finally, it’s delivering a high-quality product. We’re big fans of the old business adage, “Under-promise and over-deliver”. So if you sell a 60 minute session, give them 70 minutes. If you tell them they’ll get 75 edited images, give them 100. Recommend locations, help plan the proposal, show up 10 minutes early, and make outfit suggestions. Do whatever you can to exceed expectations! And most importantly, if they’re expecting good photos, give them fantastic ones!

If you can do these three things while you’re actually photographing a surprise proposal or engagement session, then you’re already setting yourself up for them to be thrilled about you as a photographer.

 

 

Step 2 for More Wedding Clients: Drop Hints Throughout the Process

However, being the best proposal or engagement photographer in the world won’t help you if your couple has no idea you even photograph weddings. So this next step to converting surprise proposal and engagement session couples into more wedding clients is to drop hints throughout the process.

 

When someone inquires on our website about a surprise proposal or standalone engagement session, we specifically mention in that email, “Even though we’re primarily wedding photographers, we do leave room in our calendar to photograph a handful of surprise proposals each season” or “a handful of engagement sessions with non-wedding clients each season.”

 

Right away, this establishes us as in-demand wedding photographers, but also lets them know that we’d still love to shoot their proposal or engagement session, whether we’re going to be their wedding photographer or not.

 

 

How and When to Bring it Up

Now sometimes they’ll let us know right away that the reason they want a standalone engagement session is because they’re getting married on the other side of the country or internationally, and didn’t want to have to pay their wedding photographer to travel. So obviously, we won’t be trying to sell those couples on wedding photography, and will just focus on giving them a great engagement session experience.

 

But other couples may be hiring us for their engagement session because they want to announce their engagement ASAP, but haven’t even started wedding planning. And of course, any surprise proposal we shoot will be with a couple who hasn’t started wedding planning. These couples are exactly who we want to book us for an engagement session!

 

And when we finally do meet these couples on the day of a standalone engagement session, one of the things we’ll chat with them about is wedding planning. Even just a simple, “So how’s wedding planning coming along?” can get that conversation started in a natural way, that will also tell us a lot. If we learn that they haven’t booked a photographer yet we make sure to tell a funny story or something related to their wedding planning experience that also just happens to showcase some of our experience as wedding photographers. And for proposal couples, we’ll make sure to slip our wedding experience into the conversation at some point before we tell them goodbye.

 

If we’ve taken the time to mention that we also photograph weddings in our email communication and then again in-person, there’s no way they don’t have in the back of their heads by the end of the session, “Huh, if these photos turn out well, maybe we could talk to Hunter and Sarah about also photographing our wedding day.”

 

 

Step 3 for More Wedding Clients: Take Initiative and Give a Call-To-Action

Finally, take the initiative and give a call-to-action. This is the most important part, and the one that photographers often forget about. Maybe they don’t issue a call-to-action it because they thought it was assumed, or maybe they don’t do it because they don’t want to be too “salesy”. But you are the only true advocate for your business, and so you need to be the one to advocate for more jobs!

 

So when we deliver a surprise proposal gallery, we say something like, “We know that this engagement is incredibly fresh, and you probably have barely thought about wedding planning. But when the time comes, we’d be honored if you reached back out to us!” And in the early days of our business, before we had to limit the number of weddings we could take each year, we would also offer some kind of incentive, like $1,000 off a wedding package if they met with us within 90 days of their proposal.

 

Likewise, when we deliver an engagement session gallery, if we sussed out during the session that they haven’t started wedding planning, we might send the same message. On the other hand, if they’ve booked a venue and have a date, but no wedding photographer, we’d phrase the message a bit differently, and ask if they’d like to meet that coming week to discuss wedding photography.

 

More Wedding Clients For Travel Weddings

Oftentimes, a couple who loved their engagement session with us and who has a wedding date but no photographer might not have even considered us, because they assumed we wouldn’t travel to their wedding, which is in another state or in another country.

 

So if we know that’s the case, we’ll have not only mentioned our experience photographing weddings in other states and internationally during the engagement session, but in that email, we’d explicitly make an offer like, “we’d be happy to include travel in our wedding quote” or something similar to get them into a meeting with us.

 

 

 

Want to Book More Wedding Clients or Portrait Sessions?

By the way, if you’ve been reading this post, and think that changing just these few things could help you book more wedding clients, then we have some great news! Earlier this week, we hosted an entire 2-hour workshop that was ALL about marketing tactics that can help you book more portrait and wedding photography jobs! And half of those methods — like this one — don’t require you to spend a single dollar.

 

So whether you want to pursue some “bootstrapping” marketing methods like social media, networking marketing, or native SEO — or you have a budget to spend on pay-per-lead like Thumbtack or affiliate sites like theKnot, but aren’t sure if they’re worth it, our workshop, “How to Get More Photography Clients: A Simple Guide to Free AND Paid Marketing and Advertising”  could be the key to booking more jobs and taking your business to the next level. And even though you missed the live event, the replay is still for sale on our website, and you can learn more by clicking the link above!