Do you ever find yourself repeating to potential customers in your workflow? If so, here are the templates I created to anticipate client questions and save me valuable time in my product photography work.
I used to write the same emails over and over, answer the same questions on customer calls, and often spend a lot of time repeating myself. This is when I decided to create some beautifully designed templates that I could send to clients with the click of a button.
It should be noted that the templates that I discuss in this article are created for small and medium businesses. Obviously, you won’t need to tell a big business how to prepare for a photo session or how to use their images! The majority of my clients have never worked with a professional photographer or only worked with one or two photographers before me.
email template
It would be helpful to have some prewritten email template to cover up situations that happen to you in your business over and over again. Instead of writing every email from scratch, pre-write them and you can make a few small tweaks to customize them as needed. These may include your responses to:
- Work for exposure
- End a collaboration that no longer works for you
- Increase your price
- Booking in discovery call
- When someone asks for a discount or discount
Welcome guide
When a prospect gets in touch, the first thing I do is send them a welcome guide. This PDF provides some background on who I am, how I work, where my pricing starts, runs through FAQs, and offers some prompts that customers have They might want to look at it before they talk to me on the phone.
This document eliminates questions that don’t have the budget to work with me, answers questions they may not even know they’ve met, and makes a positive, professional first impression. Moreover, it prevents me from repeating myself, because I have mapped out the answers to the most frequently asked questions.
Document Overview
Once I’ve booked the client and we’ve discussed their requirements and come up with a comprehensive list of footage, I have an “overview” form that includes all the key shooting details including: including:
- Shooting date and time
- Main campaign objective
- Where the image will be used
- The aspect ratio(s) we will be capturing
- Summary of visual aesthetics
- A succinct mood board highlights the main inspiration for the shoot
This document is not a contract nor is it a mood board. It’s a super useful session summary to summarize the goals for the shoot and to make sure everyone is on the same page. Excessive communication is never a bad thing, in my experience.
How to prepare for the photo session
This brochure is really beneficial for smaller businesses who don’t know what to do or how to prepare for a photo session. In my experience, customers are most comfortable, confident and trust you when they are well informed. Often when communication is limited, they start to panic or micromanage, which only leads to frustration and a bad experience for both parties.
Many of the businesses I work for are so focused on their product or brand that they forget about others who don’t know the minutiae of their business like they do. In this document, I prompt clients to think about their brand guidelines and how that can affect a photo session and how they ask you to shoot products. It also outlines practical details like their multiple product requirements in case of stains, wrinkles, defects, etc.
How to use your pictures
Be careful with the type of customer you send this letter to. There’s nothing worse than teaching people to suck their eggs, but for smaller businesses, this document can be a really valuable insight.
After taking a photo and submitting it, I will send a “how to use your images” document. So I often see smaller businesses using images on their social media and websites and it stops there. If a client has invested their money in professional photography, I want them to understand how to get the most out of it so they can see the maximum return on investment. In this template, I include visual examples of how other customers have used their images beyond social media, such as when recommending a friend card, on the packaging itself, when the card Thanks are transferred to the order or in the investment floor, just a few .
Inference
Templates to cover frequently asked questions can be a great time saver in your business, as well as creating a smooth working relationship where your customers feel that You are professional and organized. I have received great feedback from clients about how helpful these materials have been to them. At the end of the day, customers will not only remember whether they were satisfied with those images, but also how it felt to work with you. If you can make the experience smooth and easy, they’ll be more likely to book you back and refer you to others.
