Are you wondering why your clients
always go for the same disk of JPEGs, or why they don’t seem to like your
prices? There might be a very simple solution to this.
Suppose you hopped on a plane for a spur of
the moment vacation. Landing in a new city, you look around and realise how
many decisions you have to make:
·
Where will you stay that night? Where will you
eat dinner? How will you get around? Oops, you didn’t pack everything where
will you buy toothpaste?
·
If you took the time to research and weigh every
available option to make ‘perfect’ decisions, you’d never get much farther than
your hotel. You’d have to use shortcuts to help make decisions quickly and
effectively, you see a sign for a hotel chain you’ve patronised before, so you
choose it again, a friend once mentioned that restaurant over there, so you try
it out. By necessity, you make choices swiftly and move on.
We use these kinds of shortcuts daily. Our
minds are biased to prioritise certain pieces of information above others, like
over-arching ‘rules of thumb’. Generally, this approach saves time and allows
us to make satisfactory decisions, particularly when we’re unfamiliar with the
choices.
Are
you wondering why your clients always go for the same disk of JPEGs, or why
they don’t seem to like your prices?
But there is one obvious problem with these
shortcuts, you might actually be missing options that would have been better.
Like walking right by a fantastic little local boutique hotel that you would
have enjoyed even more than the chain hotel.
Whether we like it or not, our photography
clients also use these kind of shortcuts when they make buying decisions. And
sometimes they’re not choosing the options they’d truly love the most. With
this in mind, we can make simple changes in the way we present information to
help them make better choices. Even small tweaks can mean the difference
between our clients getting the products they really want and need versus
settling for something else.
Let’s look at two such mental shortcuts and
consider how we might revise our offerings to help clients be happier with what
they choose:
Shortcut #1: compare everything against
the first number you see
People tend to grab onto the first piece of
information they encounter and weigh everything else against it. This is known
as anchoring.
For example, if you asked people to
estimate what 5x4x3x2x1 would equal, their estimate would probably be much
higher than if you asked them to estimate Ix2x3x4x5, Even though the real
answer would be the exact same for both, their estimate will be larger or
smaller based on that ‘anchor’ created by the first number they saw.
This ‘anchor your opinions to the first
number you see’ shortcut comes into play when clients look at pricing. This
affects both how they interpret your offerings, and how they feel about their
final choice.
compare
everything against the first number you see
Most photographers have a few ‘packages’
that clients can choose from. Generally speaking, the first price clients see
will influence their perception of what they see next. Listing your least
expensive package first may seem like a good way to ease ‘sticker shock,’ but
it might actually enhance ‘sticker shock’ because they will be comparing all
other packages to that first, lowest price. Particularly when there are
significant price changes between packages.
If you list your biggest package first and
then show progressively smaller packages, the client may end up buying a
slightly larger package than they otherwise would. This is simply because the
first number they saw anchored their expectations of price differently, and
they felt more okay with choosing a larger package.
This isn’t to suggest that we should manipulate
people into spending more money. Rather, we want people to get the package that
is truly right for them. Often, people choose a less expensive package simply
because of a gut reaction against jumping up in price, even though it would
have bought them what they truly wanted and needed. Stepping down in price
often feels better than stepping up.
Reversing the order of presentation can
dramatically change how they feel even when they’d buy the same thing anyway.
If they bought a middle package, having seen the least expensive package first
might make them feel they’re ‘spending more’, whereas listing the most
expensive first might make them feel like they’re ‘saving money’. People
generally prefer the latter, and it makes them feel more confident and satisfied
with their decisions.
Shortcut #2: when feeling overwhelmed,
cling to the familiar
Some photographers work to create a list of
beautiful products, including gorgeous albums and stunning canvas prints. Then
they scratch their heads when the client ignores all that and insists on buying
a simple disc of JPEGs.
There are legitimate reasons to want a disc
of images, of course, but sometimes this is just a shortcut decision. Even
though we are familiar with our own products, our clients often have no idea what
the difference between a ‘float wrap’ and a ‘canvas wrap’ would be. As they
scan our list of products, they may feel overwhelmed by all these foreign
choices.
when
feeling overwhelmed, cling to the familiar
Then their eyes land on something familiar:
a disc of images. Finally, something they understand. They deal with JPEGs
regularly. They know how they work, they know what to do with them and how to
display them. But a 20x30 canvas? That’s a little scarier. They don’t know if
it’ll really be the right size. They feel paralysed by choosing just one image
they don’t want to pick the wrong one. They don’t do this very often, after
all. Besides, what if their little Johnny climbs the sofa and scribbles on it
with a permanent marker? There goes their investment. They’d rather scurry back
to the safe and familiar JPEG,
One reason people use the shortcut of
familiarity is that they tend to care more about potential losses than
potential gains. Even if they agree that the 20x30 is a beautiful option, they
worry about what they might miss out on choosing the wrong image, or what might
happen to it Johnny and his permanent marker.
In short, the potential losses weigh more
powerfully on their decision than the potential gain of having a beautiful
display on their wall. They’re already familiar with the drawbacks to JPEGs,
and they know how to handle them. They don’t want fresh worries or
responsibilities that they might not know how to deal with.
One way to increase familiarity with other
products is to repeatedly expose your clients to them from the first moment
they land on your website through the final sales session. Photographers tend
to use most of their site showing off JPEGs of session images. Thus, it’s no
surprise when that’s what clients want to buy; that’s what they’re used to
seeing. But when we take the time to regularly blog about our other products
showing pictures of happy clients looking through albums, or sitting with a cup
of tea underneath a gorgeous wall gallery people start to imagine what it would
be like to have those products. We can give them samples to hold, they can more
easily envision what it would look like in their own homes. With repeated
exposure, they start to feel like it’s a safer, less unknown option.
Overall, our goal isn’t just to sell
clients products, but to make sure they’re thrilled with what they receive. We
can work with natural decision making strategies to make buying choices more
intuitive and less intimidating. Understanding the principles of anchoring and
familiarity will enable clients to not only make better choices, but feel
better while making them.
