Here’s the truth – no matter how well you think your business is doing, you’ll never get to where you want to be without knowing, inside and out, how your business IS doing. I’ll admit, I was the blind leading the blind when I first started out in this business. I had 20ish weddings my first year. My packages were about $2,500…. I thought… That sure as hell wasn’t enough information to budget on. Definitely not enough to determine where I needed to be putting my energy! I’m coming at you today knowing exactly where my business is. WHAT it means if you are at your income goal but not at your package goal. What KPIs as a photographer that you should be tracking.

Why KPIs as a Photographer Matter

If you don’t track your KPIs, then you’re not going to know how your business is doing. The 101 of it is what are the 4 P’s of KPI: product, price, place, and promotion. These are the hundred foot expectations of your measurement tools. As a travel photographer, I am going to share what exactly you should be measuring as it relates to the wedding photography industry. 

I started by tracking my metrics on a spreadsheet. Reaaaallll simple, folks. You can start going week by week. At the end of the week, you’ll track when bookings and leads come in. You will analyze where they come from – referrals? Website? Instashits? Once they book, you’ll record how much their package cost, did you upsell? You’ll analyze trends, predict patterns, and pour into what is working. But none of that is possible without tracking KPIs as a photographer.

CEO Check Ins 

First, treat yourself as the CEO that you are. It doesn’t matter if you have 5 people on your team or your badass business is the one and only you. You need to prioritize checking in with yourself. Personally, I take a walk to the local coffee shop. I am brainstorming out in the fresh air. Thinking about where my business is going and what aspects are brining me joy. What the WINS of the week are and what the opportunities for next week are. It’s a quality and quantity business. Not Florence and the Machines over here.

Once I’m at my fave coffee shop, I order an Americano with a splash of vanilla. I sit my sexy ass down. Time to pull back the doors and bust open the books! (As my amigo Jon Taffer would say). At the KPI portion of my weekly CEO check in, I am looking at a few things. These are key performance indicators for photographers:

1. How many leads you got for the week 
2. How many wedding bookings you have for this year 
3. How many weddings you have for next year
4. Your conversion rate 
5. Website sessions 
6. Instagram engagement
7. Email clicks
8. Revenue

Psst – other portions of my CEO check in can be found at: 30 Habits to create a successful photography business

How to use these KPIs as a Photographer

I am assuming you were nodding along to the first three KPIs at least. Those you can implement immediately. The last few I am going to get into for you.

Conversation Rate

NERD ALERT! The conversion rate is correlated to the leads that come in every week. Then calculating what percentage of the leads are booking. The conversion rate is one of the most powerful metrics that you use in the business to know if you’re on track or not. To know if your inquiry process and inquiry calls and emails are working correctly. Once couples find you, how you’re sealing the deal.

Some questions to ask yourself:

• Is your inquiry script working?
• Are your emails moving couples forward in the funnel?
• Is the journey you’re setting up for them good enough that they convert from inquiry to client?
• Will they book a higher package?
• Will this couple rebook? (ClickUp talks about client satisfaction metrics).

These are all super important! The conversion rate is something you should constantly check in on. In addition to weekly tracking, you need a year to date metric of the conversion. The wedding industry is very cyclical so don’t get scared if all of a sudden you have a low conversion rate!

It might just be the time of year for low bookings and that’s just how our industry is. With the year-to-date conversion rate, you’ll have a much more holistic approach to your booking process. 

Website Sessions

Use Google Analytics. Go get super fucking up in the backend of your website. I don’t care how beautiful your website is – I am sure it’s absolutely amazing, Queen! BUT. If it is not getting traction it’s as useful as Harry Potter’s eyes. IE, you’re blind, babe. 

In Google Analytics, you’ll want to write down on your nifty spreadsheet how many people have viewed your website that week, what they have clicked on, how long they are staying on those pages, etc.

Why are we tracking leads on your website?

First, so you’ll know if there’s anything going wrong. Such as if your website is broken. Shit happens! If you’re not getting a lot of leads or going a couple weeks without a single lead, then something is fishy. Check your website and verify that all your pages are working. 

Also, back to the point above about the wedding industry cycle. During the top of the year, you should see an overwhelming number of leads. Since you are tracking year by year, you’ll know when you can expect a lot of leads and prepare.

Why are we tracking leads on your blogs?

If you have a blog post that isn’t performing and you’re tracking the leads, you’ll have better information to work with. You can check on Google Analytics and see which blog posts are bringing in the most traffic. By tracking you’ll be able to nail down what blog topics work really well. Then you’ll have an idea of what you should be writing about.

Using Instagram for KPIs as a Photographer

For Instagram, I am looking at how many followers I have every week and what my engagement is. This is where you can really move the needle on your conversion rate. If someone is following you, ready to wedding plan, but has not booked you yet, you want to engage with them. Low energy engagement could be putting up a poll that they vote on or adding up a question box that they answer. Once they respond to you, it’s your turn to reach out!

Follow me @honeybeeweddingsmt

I did a poll on how people felt about Nobody Wants This (TV Series). You know who suddenly wanted to talk? A prospective couple that hadn’t booked yet! We traded a couple messages back and forth about the show. NOW this is some high energy we are exchanging! All couples who are interested initially, it’s my experience that I can usually convert them by keeping them warm by engaging in their DMs.

What to Watch out for on Instagram

Word to the wise! Even if you don’t think that person you are engaging with is a potential client, keeping anyone engaged who is putting themselves out there to you has the opportunity to lead to something else. Maybe they have a cousin / coworker / bestie who is getting married and now they are more likely to talk you up. Or, not great business advice just human advice, maybe it goes nowhere. But you brought each other a little joy in your day by sharing thoughts. That to me is also super fucking meaningful.

I will caution you about Instagram that the social site itself is more reactive than proactive. The algorithm is all over the place and not super stable. Use it for engagement, but you should be pouring more of your energy into the blogs and then taking snippets from the blog to use as your Instagram captains or stories.

Email Clicks

You should be sending out newsletters weekly. I don’t care if it’s a recap of a recent wedding you did or pro tips for couples with a wedding in 20XX year. Whatever the fuck. You should be emailing and engaging. Include a freebie once a month. The people that download your freebie, you’ll move them to a different email segment as they are warm leads. Click, click, kaboom!

How many people are opening your emails? Which email topic has the highest open rate? For me, I got the highest open rate with a newsletter about the Destination of the Year. So you know what I did? I made sure to blog, email, and Instagram about the destination of the year, every fucking year. And it performs well, every fucking year! Hellllo 2024- Elope in Costa Rica, Destination of the Year 2023 – Elope in the U.K.!, and 2022- Where to Elope in Mexico. Also, no need to reinvent the wheel. Once you have the blog, use it for the newsletter and social platforms. Done. See what works! Lean in!

Know Before You Outsource

I hear from people in the industry that they want to outsource their Instagram or email marketing KPIs. No harm there! However, before you hire someone else, you need to be tracking it yourself. How else can you confidently say that their stuff is working or not if you don’t know where you started?

Signs You’re Ready for an Associate Photographer

KPIs as a Photographer in Relation to Revenue

I always put revenue last on KPIs as a photographer because I want to slooooow down your brain. Once someone sees revenue, they get fixated on that number. See how everything else is working so you’ll already have an idea of what the revenue is before you even look at the number. This will help you think critically about your business.

Again, you can use a super simple spreadsheet to track your revenue.

Your sales should be in one column, the revenue for this year in another, and then the next column is the revenue for the following year.

This way, you’ll be able to really look at your KPI metrics and easily identify what you have booked for this year and next year. This will help you judge how aggressive your marketing needs to be.

What are KPI for setting goals?

Let’s say your goal this year is $200,000 and your current revenue stands at $156,000. You’ll have the ability to see the difference of your year goal versus what you’ve already booked.

If you’re only at 78% of your goal and it’s during the time you can expect a slow down, then you need to be able to push more revenue streams. You’ll need to market more heavily. By tracking what is a reasonable goal, you’ll be able evaluate what tactics you can take to achieve it.

Weekly CEO Check In

Now that you have an understanding of what the KPIs as a photographer are, you can get back to the work you do during your weekly CEO check in. Aside from sipping a delicious Americano. If you’re putting both your hands WAY WAY UP, I am SO excited for you! You are opening up an entirely new strategy to scale your photography business, and it only goes up from here. Now that you know you’re ready, leave your questions in the comments! I will answer every single one of them so you can reach your potential!

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