School Picture Value Being Recognized

Not a lot of verbiage to go on with this blog post, but the header says it all. When was the last time you heard someone talk about school pictures as being "cool"? How can we learn from this person's observation? A professional portrait, with professional quality posing and lighting, on cd-rom for mom to do with as she pleases. I guess that is cool. Now, we just need to communicate this to our customer.

Here's the link.

A Mom Sees the Value of School Pics

Just in time!

Here's an example of a mom who recognized the value of the school pictures she received. She saw, and wrote about, how her kids were taken care of, assisted with grooming, and "look better in their photos than they did when they left the house."

Here's the link to her blog.

Now let's think about this... are we helping all of our customers look better than they did when they left the house?

Another Mom Clicks the Shutter on Her Own School Pictures

Here's another example of a mom who has decided that school pictures are not worth the money.

http://thecheeryos.blogspot.com/2010/09/homemade-school-pictures.html

How Do We Communicate the Value of School Pictures?

If you read this blog regularly, you know one of our areas of focus is how consumers view the value of school pictures. We constantly troll the internet for instances where school pictures or youth sports pictures are mentioned to see what is being said. A couple of things stand out over and over again.

1.) We (as photography companies) fail to communicate the value our service provides. We don't effectively help our customers understand the value of the school picture. The convenience of having a professional portrait made on-location during the school day, the time savings of not having to schedule an appointment at Wal-Mart or wherever to have a picture made, the contributions we make back to their school, the class pictures we provide as part of a package, the support we give to yearbook staffs, the online child safety programs, and on and on.

2.) As a result of the first point, Mom - our customer - does not see any reason to pay $40.00 for something she can get for less that half at Target. This is echoed over and over again in the blog and Facebook posts of moms who have either stopped purchasing school pictures altogether or feel outraged over the price : quality ratio we are providing.

These are not photography or technology problems. They're worse. They're customer perception problems. Our question to you is this:

What ways does your studio communicate the value of your pictures?