Your strip club (see this post, if you’re confused) is now flourishing! Those techniques you mastered after Marketing School have filled the club nightly, and Crystal’s g-string is stuffed full of singles at least four times a night. But…there’s a problem. You serve Chimay, your clients want Bud Light. The club offers lap dances starting at $95, and some clients want to pay $15.
You, my friend, need a bouncer.
In the online world, prices are often your bouncer.
Listing your session fee, base package price, and/or basic wedding collection price can be effective in wedding out your less-than-ideal clients. (Listing no price leaves too much room for assumptions about how ‘cheap’ or ‘expensive’ you are!)
Text can be your bouncer, too.
Using adjectives to describe your work as ‘classic’ will deter those who are looking for modern images. ‘Upscale’ or ‘elegant’ can trigger the dollar-signs that keep clients with a Craigslist budget from looking any further into your work. ‘Alternative,’ or ‘rock’n'roll’ text can attract the indy crowd, while clothing guidelines touting the wonders of smocking on children’s clothing will please the traditional consumer.
Let your images do some bouncing, too. Show only what you want to sell, one hundred percent of the time.
If you don’t want to sell a single image of a couple looking at the camera, don’t post one. If you’ll puke before shooting a couple on the beach at sunset, avoid showing those images to anyone. Ever. Teach your clients how to dress though the images you place in your portfolio, and help them choose locations and portrait scenarios the same way.
Oh, and take a tip from Crystal: call security when a client sets off alarm bells.
If an evil client happens to slip past the bouncers, deal with ‘em efficiently and break ties if at all possible. That pain-in-the-ass client only gets worse when you ignore him, give her bad customer service, or try to appease her with freebies. End the relationship as soon as humanly possible.
If you have any other tried-and-true bouncer methods, I’d love to hear ‘em!
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