Full disclosure: We run a services business providing photo booths and professional photography for events. We built Honcho in response to the challenges that we faced and the opportunities that we saw, as we offered our event photography services to our clients.
In this article, I want to share the detailed process behind how we increased our annual sales from event photography by 52%, simply by upselling features that were made possible with Honcho.
It’s such a simple process that we believe that any event or wedding photographer can do it too, with just a bit of time and effort.
But before I get into that, let me give a quick background story about how Honcho came about. I promise it will make everything else make sense.
The Big Problem
When we first started offering event photography services in 2019, we faced The Big Problem that every business faces—how do we differentiate ourselves from the competition?
Differentiation is important because it makes you stand out from everyone else, and gives your potential clients a reason to work with you—instead of everyone else.
The problem was that we were trying to differentiate ourselves in the exact same way as everyone else.
We talked about the quality of our service—how experienced we were, how good our photos looked and even how reasonable our prices were.
Unfortunately, everyone in the industry was saying the same thing. Not surprisingly, we were finding it very difficult to get new clients.
Then, we had our first breakthrough.
The Breakthrough
The breakthrough was realizing that something mattered greatly to our clients, and that was engagement.
Let me explain what engagement means.
Most of our clients were event planners, and The Big Problem that they were trying to solve for themselves was how to make their events interesting and well, engaging.
We realized that event photography could help them solve that problem, if we could make the experience more social and instantly gratifying.
It makes perfect sense if you think about it—events are where people come together to socialize and have shared experiences. And event photography can add to that.
So, how do we make event photography more engaging?
Building Honcho
The answer was simple—by getting attendees involved.
We wanted to make it possible for attendees to get their photos immediately, right after the photographer clicks the shutter button.
We also wanted to make it really easy to start a live projection, in order to show the photos on a large screen. This would raise the excitement of the event, since attendees could now see themselves on the large screen.
Together, these features would bring buzz and excitement to any event.
So, that’s what we set out to build with Honcho.
It took us a year of development to build the first version, because we had to solve many other problems along the way.
But finally, Honcho was ready.
Raising Our Prices by at Least 70%
With Honcho ready for prime time, the first thing we did was to raise our prices by at least 70%.
As any business owner will know, raising prices is one of the most scary things to do. What if we lost all of our clients?
Here’s the trick—you don’t have to raise all of your prices.
What we did was to create new packages with higher prices, while keeping the price of our basic package the same.
And we could do that because Honcho made it possible for us to offer features that you could not find anywhere else.
Here are the two extra-value packages that we started offering.
As you can see, we placed a lot of emphasis on the new features—on-the-spot sharing and live projection—by including them in the headlines.
Just as importantly, we made sure to explain what those new features were and how they would benefit our clients, both on our website and in our brochure.
Increasing Our Sales by 52%
We blasted out the new packages to our client list and crossed our fingers.
Soon, we heard back from some of them—they seemed to like it!
Over time, more clients started asking us about the new packages, as they saw the updates on our website and brochure.
And then we started getting bookings for them.
When you introduce something new to your clients, you need to invest time in educating them on why it’s great and how it works.
The beauty is that once they get it, they will keep coming back for more.
In the first year that we introduced the new packages, we increased our sales from event photography by 52%.
Why did that happen?
Because we gave our clients a reason to work with us.
We had a clear and unique selling point that no one else was offering.
But here’s the interesting thing—we increased sales of our basic package by over 50% too.
This was the same basic package that we struggled to sell at the beginning.
Our extra-value packages were helping to pull in new clients, even those that just wanted the basic package in the end.
That’s the power of differentiation.
Conclusion
We believe that the best way to do business is by growing the pie for everyone.
Business doesn’t have to be a zero-sum, dog-eat-dog world.
Instead, you can introduce new value to the market that helps everyone raise their prices and get more clients.
We need to do this to stop the downward price spiral in photography.
That’s why we’re opening up Honcho to anyone who wants to grow their photography business.
With the steps I’ve listed above, you can bring new value to your clients, raise your prices and get more bookings.
What’s more, Honcho also helps you streamline your workflow and collaborate more easily with your team.
Sign up for a free Honcho account today and see how it can transform your photography business.
In addition, you can join our affiliate program and earn up to USD$88.50 for every new customer that you refer to us. That’s a generous commission!
