October 28, 2019
Many things can affect the results when you book and photograph an event. Over many years in this business it has become clear that one’s results are determined mostly by how well an event is executed. We operate our own retail photo business, Candid Color Photography, and we see all the time that our results largely depend on our execution.
We are constantly looking for ways to improve sales and profit for CCP and for our CCS Customers. We wanted to try to improve a few things photographically this fall before we photographed some football teams that we have photographed for years. We know that our results with ViewFirst photography are affected by the images we show our customers. The better the images, the better the sales – and vice versa.
Based on some very good results that Holly Freedman – last year’s CCS Customer of the Year – is getting with her great looking high school sports teams, we wanted to make changes in the lighting and poses on some of our football teams. We actually had Holly help us with the University of Oklahoma’s photo shoot to be sure we got her technique just right! We photographed some of the same poses and backgrounds that we did last year, while also having Holly shoot some poses in her more “dramatic” style with its very cool lighting. So, we provided OU’s players with more and better/different choices. We marketed pictures using our ViewFirst system and we had the images available for sale very quickly.
The best way to determine whether changes made are positive is to compare results from the same organization year to year. Comparing results from different groups can be problematic as some groups simply have better buying power than others. We chose OU and an OKC high school we have shot for years to test.
One might think that photographing a premier college program always results in great sales. That has never been the case as most of their high-profile players have many pictures taken of them and provided to them by media including their group picture. However, we knew that Holly’s pictures would be more dramatic and be different, so we hoped they would attract more buyers.
Pictures of Kyler Murry – poses and backgrounds we offered in fall of 2018 – all green screen.
Pictures of Jalen Hurts – poses, lighting, and backgrounds we offered this fall of 2019 – some green screen
Our results: Last year at OU we photographed 112 players and had $2,496 in sales of individual pictures, or $22.28 per person photographed. With the change in poses and lighting this year our sales to date are $5,207 for 112 players’ individual poses, or $46.48 per player photographed. We are amazed that we have had a 108% sales increase! Importantly, the “dramatic” shots alone totaled $3,296 or 63% of sales while only 37% were of the typical shots we’ve been taking. Clearly, Holly’s technique was better as customers bought more!
The changes we made in how we executed this event mattered big time. We’ve never had sales that high at OU before. My point is that how you execute each event will have a huge effect on your results.
As we saw OU’s sales soar, we also offered the “dramatic” looks at McGuiness High School, a good parochial school in our area. We “dramatized” the players’ images which were made available for ordering at the shoot.
Poses and backgrounds we offered in fall of 2018 – all green screen
Poses, lighting, and backgrounds we offered this fall of 2019 – mix of green screen and “dramatic lighting”
Our results: Last year sales were $2,135 for 81 players or $26.35 per player photographed. This fall our sales for 72 players to date are $3,468 or $48.16 per player photographed. Our overall sales are up 63% and sales per player are up 83%. Did the “market” get 83% better? No, our plan and execution were simply better.
Our good results occurred because the execution went well:
- We arranged for and collected good customer data at the two shoots
- We took “better” pictures that were also different from the past
- We had the good images we took available to order online quickly
- We had a good email/text campaign and offer
Join us at our winter workshops as Steve Foisy will demonstrate the exact shooting technique we used.
Sincerely,
Jack Counts
