How should I share wedding photography pricing with potential clients?

Most discussions you find about wedding photography pricing in the industry talks about how to price your photo services, but few actually look at how you relay this pricing information to your prospective clients once you’ve got that initial inquiry in your inbox. 

While your actual prices need to make sense, how you share your pricing is just as important (if not more important) to helping you get a booking. 

In this post, we’re going to look at some different methods and give input on the pros and cons of each strategy to help you find the best fit for your wedding photography business. 

How to share pricing with your prospective wedding photography clients

There are 3 main methods we’ve seen (and used ourselves at different points in our wedding photography careers). Let’s talk about these now…

Share pricing on your website

The easiest way to go about sharing your pricing is to simply include all your price information on your website. 

Pros:

• This is easiest for you to keep track of
• This is also beneficial for customers wanting to know your pricing info
• Some people really appreciate transparency in pricing

Cons:

• You will rule out prospective clients before they even have a chance to connect with you more
• High priced photography packages do not perform as well in this model (most of the time)

We typically recommend sharing full pricing on your website if you are new or competing in a budget or low average price point in your market. Generally, photographers in this market are inexperienced, and the clients they attract are more budget conscious. (There is nothing wrong with either of these situations, too!). Many wedding photographers start by showcasing all of their pricing information, then gradually transition to sharing just starting price information. 

Share starting pricing on your website

Most people who buy services online at least like to have a ballpark idea of how much they could be spending. Whether you are a budget photographer or expensive, luxury photographer, sharing your starting pricing information is a great way to make sure the people who connect with you are at least in the range of your pricing. 

Pros:

• Educates your prospective customers on price without giving away all of the info
• Really budget sensitive shoppers will not contact you
• Offers some transparency to people that’s important to, without sacrificing sales

Cons:

• Can be off putting if someone just wants to see a full price sheet
• Can be misleading if you’re starting price and most desirable package price are significantly different (like starting at $3,000 but the package the average person would want to buy is $8,000). 
• Can be easy to miss starting pricing if your photography website is not well designed

We typically recommend for wedding photography businesses to showcase their starting pricing. You have the balance of being transparent, but not so much so that it’s detrimental to your sales and operations. 

Share pricing via email

Whether you choose to share your starting pricing online, or just withhold pricing altogether, an option that can work for you is to share pricing via email. 

Now, there are different strategies within this. Some people share it in an automated inquiry response email. Others share it in the first email they send to the prospect. Others still might withhold it until it’s specifically asked for. 

There are pros and cons to each of these approaches, but at its core – when you share pricing via email, you are sharing it after they’ve had a touch point with you (check out your website and inquire with you), but before they have a consult call. 

Pros:

• You are able to better control how and when a prospective customer sees your pricing information in full
• You can custom create the price sheet as a separate web page, CRM page, or PDF and integrate into your workflow
• Customers are more engaged with your brand by this point (they’ve likely seen your social media, reviewed your website and portfolio, seen your starting pricing if you offer that, etc. and are really interested in you)

Cons:

• Clients are still seeing your pricing before a consult call, which can cause a loss of sales
• You are unable to explain things in your pricing sheet that cause confusion, which can lead to loss of sales

We recommend this strategy for many wedding photographers. Some members of the Shoot + Thrive team use this method for their own wedding businesses to great success. 

A few important things to keep in mind when sharing pricing via email:

• Make sure your website has good branding and customer experience, so they know who you are before reaching out
• Make sure your wedding photography pricing is easy to understand
• Keep the door open to future emails and scheduling a consult call
• Always add more value (we recommend digital freebies to keep people interested in you)
• Follow up with prospects at least a few times after you send your pricing sheet

Share pricing during a free consultation

Deciding to withhold your pricing until a prospect meets with you might feel like a bold move, but it will make sure you are a part of every step of their buying journey. 

Generally, companies that do not display pricing are perceived as being higher in value. This is common in the world of wedding photography, too.

Pros:

• You control the narrative around price and value
• You get to showcase your pricing & packages, and help guide clients to selecting the right fit for them

Cons:

• Some clients may be turned off by not having any pricing information, and not reach out
• Some people will assume you are too expensive for their budget

This is a great strategy when it is implemented well. As a result, we consider this more of an advanced strategy for wedding photographers. 

A few key things to think about if you withhold your pricing until a consult:

• You need to make sure you’ve shown value to your prospective client as much as possible before meeting with them
• The nature of your meeting can influence buying decisions (phone call, video call, in person)
• You need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable as people digest your pricing for the first time in front of you

How to show your wedding photography pricing

Now that we’ve talked about how to share your pricing, we want to dive into how to show your wedding photography pricing. 

Public web page on your website

For wedding photographers who just want to showcase all of their pricing live and to the public, you can simply create a page on your website and call it “Pricing.” 

We’ve already covered the pros and cons of sharing pricing directly on your website, so we won’t repeat any of that here!

Private web page on your website

Another option that still takes advantage of your website is to create a page that is private. Sometimes referred to as an “orphaned page”, this is a way to create a pricing sheet that is easy to access and refer to if you have the link. 

With the appropriate set up, you can also make it so search engines don’t index this page – so it’s truly hidden except by people you want it seen by. 

We like this solution because it’s easy to keep the page on brand, well formatted, and easy to keep up to date as you change prices throughout the year. 

Pricing PDF guide

Another popular strategy in the wedding photography industry for sharing pricing is to create a PDF document. A lot of times, pricing information is wrapped up in a “client guide” where you give more info about yourself, the experience they’ll have working with you, and other educational info. 

Pros:

• Can be branded very well
• Can provide a lot of information to your prospect in a unique format
• Is easy to print (which some clients might like)
• Can be particularly nice during an in person meeting to showcase

Cons:

• PDF files have a tendency to cause emails to go to spam
• PDF files are often large, and may not always be small enough (without sacrificing quality) to send via email
• Maintaining PDFs can be a pain, especially if you change your pricing throughout the year
• Storing PDF files can also be difficult

While there are some arguments to be made for pricing PDF guides (and some photographers seriously swear by them!), we recommend using caution if you’re considering it. 

A few years ago, some members of Shoot + Thrive used PDF pricing and had a pretty good level of success with it – but also found them to be pretty cumbersome to maintain, and eventually dropped it. 

Create a brochure in your CRM

New to the idea of a CRM? Read our Favorite CRMs for Photographers

Most modern client relationship managers (CRMs) give you the ability to share your pricing in one format or another. A few CRMs used by wedding photographers that are popular and include this capability:

• Honeybook
• Tave
• Dusbado
• Sprout Studio

Pros:

• By using a CRM, you can help your brand stand out by offering an entirely unique experience for viewing pricing
• Some CRMs allow clients to select packages they prefer and generate proposals automatically

Cons:

• CRMs can sometimes to hard to use from a client perspective, so it’s important to troubleshoot and understand any limitations yours may have
• Emails from CRMs can sometimes get flagged as spam, causing pricing information to get lost (if this is an issue you have, we recommend reading this post we wrote to help fix the main cause of this problem)

Final Thoughts

How you choose to share your wedding photography pricing with potential clients is incredibly important. It might just be one of the most important touchpoints you’ll have with them, since they will ultimately make decisions whether to work with you (or not) after going through your packages. 

In this post, we highlighted different strategies for sharing and showing your pricing information. While most wedding photographers will choose to share pricing on their website (usually as a starting price), some may also opt to keep it to themselves until they meet with a client during a consultation.