232. Why You’re Not Booking Luxury Clients (Let’s Get Honest)

In this episode of the Wedding Atelier podcast, host Alora discusses the challenges of booking luxury clients as a wedding photographer. 

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Transcript

0:06

Hello and welcome back to the Wedding Atelier podcast. I know it's been a month. I normally don't take this long of a break from my podcast, but it has been so crazy busy over here, my kids were actually sick for a month. On and off. They took turns and school has been nuts. I feel like I'm winding down from all the things and pushing and going all year to where I was like, you know what? I can take a couple of days where I'm not talking into a mic. And normally I don't, but I did and I feel so much better. Hey, welcome back. How's it going? If you haven't heard or haven't seen my Instagram stories. I have shared almost daily that we are doing an never before seen Black Friday deal, and every single day it's gonna be a different deal and every single day the deal is going to be 50% off. A couple of the offers I might never sell as a standalone, and a few of them will be at a higher price. This will be the most affordable that these offers will ever be today. Okay. So definitely hop on the wait list for that, and I can't wait for you guys to grab everything. The week of Thanksgiving, it's my favorite time of year. I am honestly so thankful. I have been taking all of the time to be slow and steady. I have been journaling, and I've just really been gathering my thoughts and trying to figure out what I wanna do next year, who I want to be, what I want that to look like, how I wanna create more offers that help more people. November is what I like to call the January for entrepreneurs. When I finally slow down and I'm not coming up with the next idea, the next thing I wanna do, and I'm just sitting still in the stillness with a lo-fi playlist going and just staring out the window, as dramatic as that sounds, all of the ideas start flooding. And I have had pages and pages of ideas. My journal's almost completely filled, and December's not even here yet. This is why I love slow season. Fall is a hard tie for spring for me. I love spring because I was born in spring and I just love new beginnings. I love when the flowers come back to life, the sun comes back out. But I also do love the rest and coziness of fall. I have completely decorated. My house for Christmas, and my husband is definitely Mr. Scrooge, but I don't know. Every time he comes home, the house looks different and he's oh there's reefs hanging off the window. That's fine. Whatever. And we decided to go with a little bit more color this Christmas. I've always been a minimalist mom, very much like creams and greens and. Gold, but this time I'm leaning heavy into the red and the green, like traditional Christmas. It just feels nostalgic. It feels nineties. And so that's the kind of vibe that I'm on right now. I am definitely here for all the vibes. Yeah, as you can tell. Now that everything is winding down and we are in slow season, let's talk about. Why you're not booking luxury clients, and I'm gonna give you all of my thoughts and opinions. If you've been posting consistently, maybe your work feels pretty solid and maybe you've been writing on your vision board. I want luxury clients. I want high-end clients. I want people that are willing to pay my highest package and more but your inbox is still giving crickets. This episode is your wake up call In the best way. Here's the thing. Luxury clients don't book photographers. They book experiences. They want a professional. With taste. They're not comparing you to cheap photographers. They're comparing you to luxury planners, venues, florists, brand designers. If your brand energy doesn't match the vendors, they're already booking, they're absolutely not gonna inquire. So what's the big deal? They're not really choosing based on price. They're choosing based on identity alignment. Does your brand. Match their dream wedding. So reason number one, your artist's story isn't clear enough. Maybe your photos are good, but what are your visuals saying? What is your website saying? What are your Instagram captions saying? All of these things contribute to your overall brand image, which determines who you are, what your brand is, and who it's talking to. I hope your captions aren't super generic where you say, loved this photo shoot. So fun, love golden hour vibes. Or maybe your About Me page on your website says, nothing about your values, your purpose, or your artistic point of view. If you don't tell a story, then they can't connect to you emotionally. And here's the thing, high end buyers buy emotionally. If money is no object, then what is the differentiating factor between you and somebody else? It is you. You are the magic. You are the key to how your business is going to sell. Now, today, tomorrow 2026, during all the holidays that are coming, the engagements that are happening right now, they're looking for someone they can connect with. They're looking for someone That's gonna mesh with them, their families or whatever's important to them. What's important to you? Do you know? I just had a student and she wrote a substack about why she fell in love with photography. Because after doing all of this work, you realize who you really are and you realize who you really love to work with because yes, it's work. But it's good work and it's work you only have to do once if you do it. Honestly, that's the best part. If you do the work and you do it honestly, and you're heart led, when you do it, it's gonna be magnetic. You are gonna put out exactly what it is that you are passionate about, what you believe in. The work you create is gonna connect with people who think the exact same thing. When I first came upon this whole ideology, I thought to myself, There's no way that somebody's gonna connect with this style when these are the styles that are trending. These are the styles that everybody's talking about. These are the styles that I have to fit into. But then when I decided to just do my own thing, I had no idea I would be booked out with couples that fit my exact style. And personality and valued my work and was willing to pay anything for it. So if this is resonating with you and you're like, whoa, there are some missing links in my brand, then you're gonna be really excited about what's coming up in the Black Friday deals. Make sure you get on the wait list, because I will be dropping the catalog and you're gonna see exactly what is gonna be on sale next week. So you can decide, oh, I want this, I want that. Kind of like back in the day when you used to have the Sears catalog. For me now it's my Alta catalog, but yeah, you'll be able to uncover what it is that I'm talking about. you'll be able to snag the exact resource that's gonna help you with all of these problems, and you're welcome. Reason number two, your style isn't recognizable. You know how I talked about your brand not being clear? What if your style is a hodgepodge of a bunch of other people's styles? Or even worse, are you still just young, wild, and free, like 2020 just because everybody else was doing it? Maybe your portfolio has 15 vibes happening at once. maybe your editing is still based on trends, but not something you actually feel connected with, which is probably why it takes you so long to edit, because it just doesn't feel right. Clients want a photographer with a signature look, especially high-end clients, something they can spot instantly. Just taking the good photo is not enough anymore. High-end couples want something messy. And high-end couples are not one size fits all. I say this all of the time because people are like, oh, I don't wanna shoot film. I'm like, that's not necessarily high end. You can have a high-end portfolio with couples that are willing to pay 10 K plus without having to shoot film. I think film is a definitely a bonus, but you get to decide. It's just the way that you position your images, you position your business, you position your brand. Positioning is everything. But I also want you to have that signature look when somebody's scrolling on Instagram and they're like, oh, I know whose photo this is. That's insert your business name here. That's how you know that you are one of a kind. And you have built something and created something signature. And when you are consistent with your signature look and your passionate and your clear and everything is just all fits together, that's gonna build trust, and that trust is gonna get you more bookings. Reason number three, your pricing. Is not communicating value. Now, if you've been on this podcast for more than a day, you know I'm gonna talk about pricing and it's something I'm passionate about because I lived it. Okay? When you're not charging enough to keep the lights on in your business, that's a problem you're contributing to. The reason why tons and tons of business owners go out of business in the first three years. If you make it in the first year, you're already beating the statistics, but if you make it past three years, man, you are really pushing it and you're going for the long haul. I want people to be able to be in business for five to 10 years, at least a sustainable, beautiful business, an empire, if you will. But I don't want you pricing yourself based on fear or what you think you can do, or what you think you deserve to charge. Your business can't run on what you think you deserve to be charged. If I base my business on what I thought I deserved to be charged back in 2015, I would still be charging$50 for mini sessions help. Maybe your packages confuse people, and I say this all the time, if you are sending a package. And you're positioned to a high-end portfolio. You've been in business at least three to five years, and you're still sending$2,000 packages. They're gonna think you just started last year. I'm gonna be so honest. If you have been in business for three to five years, you should not be charging 2K, not even three K. Keeping your price the same is keeping you broke. Do you know with all of this inflation, you can't even afford to stay at the 2K price anymore? You can't because eggs are$10, especially if you want the cage free, the free range, the pasture raised. Okay, you gotta pay for that. Unless you have a friend who has chickens in their backyard, then I'm jealous and send me their number. But that's perceived value. There are two kinds of value. There is what it costs to actually run the business, right? And that's gonna be like your hourly rate, your base rate, your non-negotiable, your get outta bed rate, if you will. And then there's the perceived value of, okay, it costs certain amount of money to stay in business. But I'm gonna charge 1500 because it's like a couple hundred dollars more to pay all my bills.$1,500. Weddings don't look like$5,000 weddings, I'll tell you that much. Perceived value. High-end couples, they want the reassurance that you've been in here longer than two to three years, okay? They wanna know, okay? when you spend a certain amount of money. You are going to expect a certain level of quality, and the same goes with your pricing, okay? You're not gonna go to a Chanel store. Looking for the price the same as a coach bag. Okay? Those are two different perceived value pricing tiers, with certain brands, what pricing to expect. And the same also goes for wedding photographers. and that's why you're listening to this episode, unless you are charging 10 K, but if you're not charging 10 k. You know in your head what a 10 K wedding photographer looks like, what their portfolio looks like, what their website looks like. If your pricing is not communicating the right value, the perceived value that you want, you're not attracting the right couples. You've been at the same price for years and years. It's time to buck up and fix it for 2026. Reason number four, your business is a mess. And this could be something that maybe couples don't necessarily know about you, but you know about you. Maybe your strategy's all over the place. Maybe you are making a lot of money one year, less money another year because you wanna lower your prices every time a couple doesn't book. Maybe you'd have no strategy whatsoever of how you're gonna make money for the next three to six months, 12 months, you don't have a plan. Maybe you mark it when you feel like it. And then you ghost for six months, and then you wonder why you have no inquiries, why your inbox is empty, why there's dust bunnies in your emails. But if you had a strategic marking plan, if you had a website with the right messaging that sells for you 24 7. Then you won't have to deal with this, but one thing I've learned is being a wedding photographer, is 10% photography and 90% business, and those that do really well at the business. Usually scale their businesses much faster. But if that 90% is not being taken care of, whether it's your brand, your visuals, your image, your messaging, your marketing, your planning, your strategies, your systems, your automations, your pricing your sales plans, when it's slow season, if you can't get all of that figured out, man, you are in trouble Of that statistic I mentioned of possibly failing in three years or less because it's not just photographing. You have to keep the business alive financially. And how does that run on a marketing and sales machine, and unfortunately it never ends. But the cool thing is we have lots of tools, systems, strategies, and planning to make sure that we are visible everywhere at once with less effort than ever before. Thanks to chatty GPT. So here's how I know you're operating like a photographer and not a CEO. You're making decisions based on emotion, not data. You're posting without strategy. You're pricing without margins just picking a number or saying, oh, that person charges this. I'll charge that. I'm a little bit better, or I'm a little bit worse. Maybe you're wearing every hat and you're burning out. And let me tell you, people can sense when you're a hot mess express, it'll come across in your messaging. It'll come across on the client call, It'll come across on your social platforms. being a hot mess is not a badge of honor, But being a confident CEO is, and that's where the premium bookings are. Okay. I know this was a lot, it was a little spicy, but if this episode speaks to you anywhere at all, just know you're not alone. Every photographer before they stepped into luxury has had these same shifts. My hand is raised. If this episode resonated with you, you are going to love the Black Friday deals that are coming out. In a few weeks. So excited. Every single day is gonna be a different deal, and every single deal will play upon each other. and if you purchase every single one of the five deals, reach out to me via email and I have some very juicy, expensive bonuses for you, so don't forget to do that and join the wait list because you're gonna get the catalog drop, which means I'm gonna tell you every single deal that's launching, so you can put it in your calendar and get your clocks ready for the big launch. And like I mentioned before, they will all be 50% off. Some of them will be sold outside of this deal. Some of them won't be sold at all. Like I'm just giving it to you because I want you to have clarity in your brand and your business, and I want you to win in 2026, at a fraction of the price. And trust me, if you wanna attract luxury clients in 2026, get on that wait list so you don't miss a single deal. Because I'm dropping something every day that's gonna fix every single roadblock that I had mentioned in this episode. From your artist story, to your photography style, to your pricing, all the way to your CEO system, scaling you to six figures and beyond. So if luxury couples are your goal for 2026, you do not wanna miss these deals that are coming in the next few weeks. I will see you in the next episode. Bye.