How to Convert Portrait Leads to Clients – $500,00 a Year Studio Lesson

Last week I had a fascinating conversation with one of our photography clients who’s already crushing it—$150K last year, tracking towards $300K this year—and honestly, I see a clear path to $500K.

But here’s the catch…

More leads aren’t always the solution. (Yeah, I know, sounds backwards, right?)

Let me share 3 key insights we uncovered:

1. More Leads ≠ More Bookings

This photographer gets about 200 leads per month. But guess what?

Less than 25% of them actually schedule a consult.

And that’s pretty common. So, instead of chasing more leads, we realized the real gold is improving follow-ups. We implemented our “5 by 5 Rule”—calling leads within 5 minutes and consistently for 5 days—and it’s already showing promising results.

2. Less Automation, More Conversations

Most photographers rely way too much on calendar links in automated texts. It feels robotic. It’s easy to ignore. We switched gears—removing links and asking genuine, engaging questions instead.

The outcome?

More conversations, higher engagement, and more consults booked. Real talk wins every time. (even if it’s AI)

3. Your Real Money is in the Leads You’ve Already Got

We always obsess over new leads, right? But what about last month’s—or even last year’s—leads? With consistent retargeting and thoughtful email campaigns, bookings from past leads compound month after month.

Imagine having a ready-to-buy audience every Black Friday, Valentine’s Day, or Mother’s Day. That’s how you build a sustainable business.

Curious about the exact strategies that helped this photographer scale without burnout?

I’ve recorded a short video breaking down everything, including some tweaks you can apply immediately to your business.

Transcript:

0:00 Alright, I had a conversation with one of our clients that did $150,000 in sales last year. This year they’re projected to do about $300,000 and I really think we can get to $500,000 and I’m going to show you how.
0:11 So, we had a conversation, I went through their CRM and they’re getting somewhere between $150,000 to like $250,000 leads per month, just depending on what month it is, what the budget is.
0:21 They’re getting them at a really good lead cost, anywhere from $10,000 to $15 a lead, but there’s some problems. Number one, let’s talk about the good.
0:30 The good is that they’re booked out until September. Right now it’s April, so over the next 4-5 months they have almost no availability.
0:36 you know, there’s some things we can do to fix that, right? Because this is a one person team, this is a person that’s shooting everything, booking everything on the phone, they’re following up, they’re doing all the editing, they’re doing all the ordering appointments, and they’re doing all the shooting
0:48 , right? So, it can be a lot of work, and it can be pretty hard to start scaling past, you know, some of these points if you don’t have help.
0:55 the other problem that they have is that, not all the leads book consults, and this is true across almost any industry, any niche.
1:02 you know, if you get 100 leads, you’re lucky to get 25, let’s just say, scheduled consults. Honestly, one of the biggest mistakes I ever made here at Photography For Profits is having photographers rely on the call scheduler, because what ends up happening is people basically just rely on only the call
1:18 schedules. So, what they do is, if those 200 leads come in, you know, if they’re not following up, if they’re not generating content, if they’re not, not sending emails out, then the only people that they’re really talking to are the people that book the consults.
1:33 So, you can imagine, if you have 200 leads, only less than 25% book consults, you know, 40-50 people book consults, then, technically, you only have, like, 50 consults, 50 leads per month, right?
1:45 Because we’re not actually getting on the phone, we’re not calling the other people, we’re just kind of disregarding them because we’re so busy, and we’re only focused on the people that book consults.
1:52 And then, even on top of that, if you if 50 people book consults, you know, 30 of them might show up, so, and then, you know, a smaller percentage of those are going to be qualified, so we really needed to work through that.
2:04 And then, the booking rate is pretty low, but it’s still really profitable. So, this photographer is booked out until September, they have very few openings, and we’re really looking at, okay, 300 is great, right?
2:17 Obviously, costs have gone up a little bit, maybe they want to hire a team member, and, like, is it worth doing all that, right?
2:24 If we have extra costs, you’re making an extra $150,000 a year, but you’re doing, like, 3 times more work. For some photographers, right, if the net that they get to keep is not significantly more, then it can be, you know, pretty disheartening, or really kind of crush morale, or, you know, just cause
2:39 burnout. A lot of photographers do get burnout. So, during our conversation last week, we went through, and, you know, initially, for almost every photographer, when they look at this, like, okay, how do I get to this?
2:49 We think we need more campaigns. We think we need to get this to 300 leads per month. Right? And, kind of steer them away from that.
2:57 Because, I know that all that’s going to happen is we’re probably going to get an even smaller percentage of people to book consoles.
3:03 And we’re going to get a smaller percentage smaller booking rate. Because if we were not 100% following up with all these people, then we’re just going to, it’s probably going to be even worse when we have 300 leads per month. Right? And we’re from 250 to 350. So, we went through their campaigns, and
3:16 we saw, okay, like, the lead performance, the Facebook ads, the retargeting, the conversions, are to be really happy with that.
3:29 Almost everything’s coming from meta platforms, we’re getting Google ads, and, obviously, organic, but most are coming from here, and then there’s retargeting as well.
3:38 Everything is sent into automations, so people are getting texted, people are, getting, you know, followed up with emails and stuff, but some of the improvements we can make, so, actually, let me come over here, so, here, I’m going I said.
3:50 I this to green because this went exceptionally well, let’s look at this, retargeting ads, I said, hey, you know, let’s, let’s improve them, right, let’s add more video, so, this is a really good improvement we can make here, I think that maybe we get more people to actually, number one, remember to
4:04 get on their phone consults if we rely more on video, and, number two, all the people that maybe didn’t finish that step, you know, they’ll go ahead and complete that step if we direct them to that page.
4:14 The other thing we said we would do is we have the five by five rule here at Photography to Profits, and that’s basically that you’re gonna call people within five minutes, you’re gonna call them five days as well, and that was not happening, that was absolutely not happening, so, you know, one thing
4:31 we’re gonna do, I, I told the photographer, I said, hey, maybe you try for one week, like, you’re gonna, yes, it’s gonna be a lot of work, but you’re gonna set some time and you’re gonna follow up with all the leads, and then we look at, okay, like, if for that week, right, without changing the ad budget
4:46 , without creating all these campaigns and doing all this extra work, if we can, you know, maybe get the consults up and maybe get, like, the booking to, like, 15%, right, then we’ll see, okay, now we can really just skyrocket past that.
4:58 and then the plan is, you know, once they start doing this, is let’s just hire an appointment setter. An appointment setter that can maybe turn into a booking specialist, right?
5:08 So I normally suggest this, like, if you’re gonna hire someone, you know, we have methods to hire, but one thing you can do to just make sure you’re choosing the right person is get them to maybe start with appointment setting, right?
5:18 The script is much shorter. their skills have to be, you know, lower level, and then they’ll get the skills to become, someone that can actually book for you.
5:25 so we said retargeting, okay? One other big thing that we decided to do is we’re saying, hey, let’s remove links.
5:31 Let’s remove links from a lot of the text messages, and one reason is a lot of the, let’s just say the standard.
5:38 And a lot of the carriers, and just regulations, links are not going through as much. So, I just don’t care.
5:44 Let’s maybe solicit responses, so maybe get, ask questions to get people to respond and get a conversation going, because that’s ultimately what we want, instead of just sending our calendar link over and over and over again, right?
5:54 And it kind of looks, not spammy, but it looks less personal, right? So people just may, might disregard it. So, it might be worth it.
6:00 Like, hey, having someone that you’re paying hourly, that, you know, either we’re using AI, or we’re using something to kind of continue that conversation through text message, to get them to just schedule, their consults there.
6:11 So, you know, what if we can get this book, you know, these books consults, much higher here? That’ll do really well.
6:18 and then for closing, hey, we said, we said, because we don’t have as much feedback, we said, hey, let’s go through and listen to a lot of the consults.
6:25 It’s not, it’s not just enough to, like, record them, you actually have to listen and improve them. and then another thing is maybe add, like, a final offer, right?
6:32 So, for people that are, like, really good leads, and, like, maybe they didn’t book on the phone, what we can do is we can maybe automate something, or drag, drag them into our CRM and say, hey, you know, we, you know, we’re hoping that you would book, but, you know, maybe life got in the way, like,
6:48 to extend this offer to you if you make the decision today. So, you can offer that to all the people that, like, don’t book on the phone, or don’t book, book within the one day, whatever your booking method is.
6:56 and then things that you can do on top of that, right? You can call people back once a month, maybe leave them a voicemail, text them, right?
7:03 So, if you have a phone consult and they still don’t, you really need to, you know, go through the script, improve your script, listen to the phone consults, and then continue with that email marketing, okay?
7:11 A lot of people, one of the biggest problems is that, you know, right now, I’m talking about, like, all brand new leads, right?
7:18 But what should happen? What should happen is, like, you know, if you’re getting 200 leads per month, then your email list is growing, right?
7:24 So, the next month, let’s just say we have all of the exact same numbers. Well, We shouldn’t just have, you know, 10 new bookings for this month from all the new leads.
7:32 Hopefully we have those 10 bookings, right? Plus or minus. But we should also have bookings from the past month, right?
7:37 Maybe we get an extra two to three bookings from last month, because now they’re on your email list. Maybe they saw your retarget and they saw some video.
7:42 They saw another angle, right? Another, solution, another problem that you solve that kind of removed that roadblock. And then they book.
7:49 Then the next month, you get, like, one more per- for a second. A person from the, you know, two months ago, and then three new people from the last month, and then you’re 10 people from this month, right?
7:57 And it starts to compound, compound, compound. And then what’s really great about that is then once Black Friday comes around, you know, when you’re offering something for Valentine’s Day, New Year’s, Mother’s Day, whatever, you have a big, warm pool to market to, right?
8:11 So should not just only be focused on the new leads. Really need to be focused on those past leads as well.
8:18 So, yeah. while there is always like the instinct of like, let’s just get more leads, let’s just get more leads.
8:23 Really what we’re going to see, and I’m confident of this because I’ve been doing this for, I don’t know, nine years, that if we make these improvements without changing much of the offers, because her offers are actually really good.
8:35 That’s why she’s getting that many leads. that we can greatly, get much closer to getting this. You know, and if she can do this as one person or one person with like a part-time, that’s amazing.
8:45 Most companies, most photography companies never even get to hear, let alone hear, and then hear with a little bit of help.
8:51 So, let me know where you are in this. you know, we do have availability. I sent out an email about May 1st. I got- I gotta check if there was somebody that was gonna book that, so I gotta see if that’s still available.
9:01 I’m gonna confirm with them. But if you’d like to be one of our clients and have these conversations with us and have these kind of numbers, and you already do in-person sales, you’re already comfortable booking on the phone, and you have a track record.
9:13 Maybe you’re in this range, right? Like, getting close to this. yeah, let’s see how we can help you do this.
9:17 So, that’s it for this one. visit us at photography-to-profit.com, and we can reach out to me on any- any socials, whatever.
9:24 If you got any questions, but see you in the next one.