PMA February 2010 : Page 47Viewpoint Photo restoration marketing With more than 100 years of history, photography is part of everybody’s life. There are literally thousands and thousands of old and modern pictures waiting to be restored. When it comes to photo restoration services, most retailers know there are two basic options: outsource this work, or do it in-house. Choosing to offer an in-house photo restoration and manipulation service requires finding and hiring the right talent, purchasing the appropriate hardware and software, managing the process, and maintaining strict quality standards. Outsourcing this work, however, requires virtually no investment or out- of-pocket costs, yet creates an easy and immediate high-profit revenue stream. When selecting a supplier, though, it’s important to consider quality, profitability, and turnaround time. The time saved on making the restoration can be used to focus on selling products and services, and taking care of customers. Tips and ideas Once a decision has been made on how to manage the incoming work is the time to start marketing the service. Here are a few tips on promoting a photo restoration service and watching business profitability grow. Market the service Show before and after samples on the store. Talk to customers about restoration advantages rather than just making a regular copy of the pictures. Promote this service with customers and the community by using flyers, postcards, and ads. In Onlinephotofix.com, we offer free released samples and predesigned ads for customers to use as marketing resources. We also offer predesigned photo books with before and after samples at a complementary cost. Ask clients what they need When customers bring in images to be digitally restored, retailers already know the images are important to the customers. The key is to ask follow-up questions to find out what they are really expecting from the pictures. Knowing what customers want to do with their images helps the retailer assist them in utilizing their images in ways that allow the customers to experience more joy. Offer complementary services and products Retailers can offer endless complementary services and products, combined with photo restoration services, which can both increase profits from sales and improve customer satisfaction. Photo restorations are ideal for up-selling additional prints and framing services to customers. When customers have multiple images restored, retailers can suggest creating a photo book of the images or a collage that can be printed as a poster. The options are endless when using restored or manipulated pictures as a start- up for other services or products retailers offer. Be aware of new market opportunities and promote them Retailers have to be attentive to market evolution and change. As a recent PMA study informed, this is a time of challenge for the photography industry. On one side, PMA expects printed pictures to have dropped about 50 percent since 2000; but on the other side, “the numbers of images captured with digital cameras and camera phones in the United States will continue to grow, reaching 27 billion in 2009,” according to the U.S. Photo Industry 2009 Review and Forecast. People are taking more images than ever before, and retailers should be able to offer new solutions that could help improve their digital images. Lack of light, light blur, bad cropping, unwanted people or objects, closed or red eyes are some problems people are dealing with every day. Photo retailers should offer photo retouching and manipulation services as a complement to their other services. If retailers pay attention to the opportunities, market the services and use photo restoration to promote and sell complementary services and products, they will find photo restoration can became a hit. n By Alejandro Cerutti The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of PMA magazine or PMA. PMA — February 2010 — www.pmai.org 47 Photo Restoration MarketingWith more than 100 years of history, photography is part of everybody’s life. There are literally thousands and thousands of old and modern pictures waiting to be restored. Publication List |
