Streamline Your Videography or Wedding Photography Business Workflow: Here’s How

Running a wedding photography business or a videography business often involves handling large volumes of work on multiple projects at the same time.

This specific can result in two problems – serious delays in end project delivery or subpar work.

Employing the right workflows and streamlining the most cumbersome task will result in much better results.

Being smart about your job will help you adhere to schedules while also giving your clients the outcome they’ve come to expect from you.

Are you looking for ideas that will help you start working smarter?

Let’s check a few workflow examples that can help you streamline and optimize just about every photo and video production process.

 

Automate Aspects of Customer Relationship Management

 

Onboarding new clients and communicating with them in the weeks before the wedding will take up a lot of your time.

Customer relationship management is an incredibly important aspect of running any business.

It will determine just how much you’re going to enjoy in the months to come. If you are overloaded with work, however, you could do a subpar job.

Some aspects of customer relationship management can be automated.

You can come up with automated emails that allow you to respond immediately to new client inquiries.

Use that opportunity to present yourself and your work better. This is also an opportunity to introduce your packages and aspects of the work you do that aren’t featured on your website.

Hiring a virtual assistant to handle some of the communication on behalf of your videography or wedding photography business can also free up a lot of time.

You’ll get involved as soon as you find out that a client is really interested in pursuing your services.

Customer relationship management also involves asking questions to familiarize yourself with the client’s needs, conducting meetings and working together on the deliverables after the wedding.

To streamline these processes, you can send potential clients a questionnaire to fill out in advance before your first meeting.

It will help them list all requirements and reduce the amount of time needed to talk about the specifics.

To reduce the stress of meeting clients on an ongoing basis, try video conferencing technology.

You’ll still be talking to each other but you’ll be eliminating the need to commute.

 

Look for Redundancies and Extra Steps in Your Wedding Photography Business Workflows

 

You are probably used to doing things a certain way, especially if you’ve been in the industry for some time already.

As humans, however, we’re prone to choosing the familiar even when it’s not optimal.

Chances are that your current workflow has some bottlenecks or redundancies that are cumbersome and unproductive.

Analyze your current process to identify and eliminate these hindrances.

For example, not planning the shoot can result in lots of unnecessary photos or footage.

While creating all that raw material isn’t a problem, it can really burden post-production.

Having to go through all of the footage and the picture, doing culling and editing is no good.

Instead, come up with a strategic list of shots or moments that you need to capture. Adhere to these guidelines doing the wedding day.

By optimizing this previous step, you will also be reducing the amount of time required for post-production.

Look for similar issues and mistakes in all other aspects of running your videography or wedding photography business. That includes bookkeeping, marketing and all other administrative tasks that tend to be so tremendously tedious.

 

Outsource Aspects of Your Job That Are Taking Up Too Much Time

 

You can’t be good at everything. That’s why the best way to run your business is to prioritize the stuff that you do best.

Outsourcing certain aspects of running your business makes sense both strategically and financially.

The cost of outsourcing is usually great, especially when you compare it to the amount of time you’ll need to dedicate to a task on your own.

Having a professional doing the work will let you prioritize the aspects of running business that you excel in.

Many wedding photographers and videographers choose to outsource processes like marketing, content creation, bookkeeping, and even post-production.

Take some time to analyze the workflows you struggle the most with.

Do some research to find out how much freelancers and companies specializing in the particular area charge. Having such information will allow you to make the best choice for your wedding photography business moving forward.

 

Let New Technology Help You

 

The way we do work is changing all the time. Technology is disrupting numerous traditional processes. Wedding photography and videography aren’t immune to its effects.

You can try innovative solutions in an attempt to streamline workflows and eliminate inefficiencies.

Artificial intelligence is stepping in as a powerful tool that can help you save a lot of time while still delivering outstanding results.

Innovative AI solutions have unleashed possibilities that were previously considered a part of science fiction.

You can have AI tools doing culling and post-production work on your behalf. Even your content creation and marketing efforts can be streamlined.

While AI tools aren’t that good at creative work yet, you can employ them for brainstorming and new concept exploration.

The key to making such technology work is not becoming too heavily dependent on it.

Know what hi-tech solutions can accomplish and where you’ll need to be actively involved.

A balanced approach towards workflow creation is the one that keeps you flexible and capable of optimal performance.

 

Do Some Capacity Planning for Your Videography or Wedding Photography Business

 

Capacity planning is a very important part of business that many photographers and videographers never engage in.

The term refers to taking on as much work as you have the capacity to complete at a given time.

As a business owner, you’ll be tempted to take on every single project that comes your way.

That approach will be extremely problematic in the long run. You’ll probably pull it off a few times.

As you become more fatigued and stressed out, however, you’ll probably start compromising quality for the sake of delivering on time.

Capacity planning gives you enough work to keep your business profitable while also ensuring your ability to deliver the best outcome.

If you aren’t capable of taking on as much work as you’d wish to, you can employ a few solutions.

Hiring a second team member allows you to grow without making your work subpar. The same applies to outsourcing.

An alternative approach to work volume control would be to increase your rates.

This strategic decision allows you to do less work, focus on quality, and maintain the profitability of your business.

A rate increase is best introduced when you have a well-established reputation and a high demand.

 

Choose Good Photographer and Videographer Workflow Apps

 

Better workflows can be achieved when you employ the right apps and tools for various aspects of project management.

Boomerang is a great example of a little tool you can use to enhance communication.

You can sit on the weekend and write all of the emails you need to send out to clients and partners.

Boomerang allows you to schedule the sending of these messages so you wouldn’t have to think about them anymore.

If you’d like to simplify file sharing with clients and partners, Dropbox and WeTransfer will be great.

Evernote is the perfect app to choose when trying to better organize and keep track of client information.

Those who are seeking project management apps that have extensive capabilities should try Asana. Slack is also wonderful for both project management and effortless communication with clients.

Many workflow tools are available for free or they give you a free trial period.

Use the opportunity to test-user friendliness and determine how well the respective solution integrates with your current workflows.

 

It’s Time to Start Working Smarter, Not Harder!

 

Every business benefits from a strategic approach towards project execution. Sporadic and inconsistent efforts are never a good thing – they will lead to too much chaos and stress in the long run.

So, take some time to analyze your current workflows and identify their weaknesses.

Unless you’ve been in business for a very long time and you’re a meticulous perfectionist, there’s something you can easily improve and streamline.

Give up the tasks and processes that burden you the most. Hiring someone or outsourcing will cost you money right now but you will quickly start observing an outstanding return on investment.