Photography Pricing Part 1

The first of 3 videos on photography pricing. This video covers pricing when compared to customer class. The goals of the classes is different, and the pricing must meet the goal of the customer class.

How you price your photography tells people which customer class you're targeting. Each customer class will have a different goal when making a purchase. For the lower class, the question is how much of a product am I getting? For the middle class, the question is how good is the product? For the upper class, the question is how exclusive is the product?

So let's take a minute and look at bargain pricing. Bargain pricing for the lower class looks like a pretty good deal because the key question for the lower class is how much of a product am I getting? And in bargain pricing, you're going to be getting a lot. So bargain pricing does work well for the lower class. For the middle class, the goal again is how good is the product? And in bargain pricing, it may be good but it's probably going to be a little bit below what the middle class is going to be looking for. So bargain pricing will probably make the middle class consumer a little bit concerned about the product quality. For the upper class and bargain pricing, remember that the goal of the upper class is to have exclusivity in a product, and in bargain pricing mode, you're not going to have exclusivity. So no, bargain pricing is not going to work for the upper class.

Let's take a look at value pricing. For the lower class, their goal again is how much of a product am I getting. And once we move to value pricing, that means that the focus has shifted more to quality and less about the quantity. So the lower class may or may not be satisfied with value pricing. The key there is going to be that they're going to look at it, and it's not going to have as much as the bargain pricing would have had. For the middle class, the goal is getting a quality product. How good is the product? So yes, the value pricing does work well for the middle end because the value pricing is going to provide quality that's going to be high in comparison to the price. In other words, it's got a high value. The upper class again the goal is how exclusive is the product? And maybe the product will be exclusive for the upper class. It's going to be definitely more exclusive than the bargain pricing. But value pricing really is probably not going to be exclusive enough for the upper class. So too many people can still afford the product.

Let's take a look at elite pricing. For the lower class again, the key question is how much of a product are they getting? And for the lower class, it's not going to be a good fit. Elite pricing means that there's a lot of cost and not a lot of product. So no, the quantity is not going to be good for the lower class purchaser. Let's take a look at the middle class. Again, the middle class's goal is how good is the product? And elite pricing is good product, but the problem that the middle class is going to be having at this point is that the value is going to be in their minds probably lower. In other words, the quality is high, but the price is too high. So as a comparison, the price is not going to be justified based on the quality. For the upper class, again the goal is how exclusive is the product? And this is really where the elite pricing has its fit. So the elite pricing means that only a select few will actually be able to afford the product. Which is exactly what the upper class is looking for - that exclusivity. They're going to be one of the only ones that actually is able to afford the product. So yes, it will provide that exclusivity they're looking for.

So there is a direct relationship between pricing and customer class. If you already know your pricing, then you know your customer class. So in other words, if you're doing bargain pricing, you know your customer class is the lower class. Or if you're doing elite pricing, you know that you're targeting the upper class. On the other hand, if you know the customer class that you're wanting to target, lower, middle, or upper, you will also know what pricing will work best for that customer class. So for the middle class, you know that the value pricing is going to be what you want to focus on.