December

A Crazy Month!!!

December is actually 2 or 3 months all rolled into one. The beginning of the month sees photo studios scrambling to wrap up holiday sessions and Santa/Grinch photos (in time to have them delivered back by Christmas.) Then, in the middle of the month, after it’s too late for the holiday shots, we see the flurry of parents responding to get pics and access from events before the end of the year as the galleries expire.

Of course, most studios close down around Christmas and most of them don’t open back up until the first week of January so the last week of December is a ghost town trying to find anyone to respond in the studios.

BUT!… You can use this sense of urgency in the first half of the month to motivate holdout parents into purchasing before shipping deadlines or even gallery closures. We regularly send out gallery closing notices at the end of November and first of December telling the parents that we’ve opened up all of the galleries for XX days but they will close and go away on December 31st. So, get them while you can! We always have several hundred dollars come through to wrap up the unresolved parents in the crowd. Make sure you’re mailing them straight home and not to you, to then repackage and mail or deliver them. Parents won’t balk at small shipping charges – I promise – after tens of thousands of packages shipped home. The normal lab fee of $5.25 (or close) won’t be an issue to most parents.

So, what’s Booking this month?

So the events that are booking this month are some of the best events you can have. It’s great if you can get in with the decision makers, but they are having a month just like I described to you in the first paragraph above. They’re cray busy the first 2 weeks, and then in limbo, and then just gone the last 10 days. So keep that in mind and don’t plan on trying to book new schools or dance schools on December 28th. Here’s the list of what’s booking in the month of December. Remember to check your Year-Round Marketing Calendar in the first section for more info.

  • Schools – Grades K-11 (November-May)
  • Youth Sports Leagues – SPRING (Baseball/Softball, Soccer, etc.) (October-January)
  • Childcare Centers & Preschool Promos – Spring (November-January)
  • DANCE SCHOOLS (November-February) *Get as many of these as you can!
  • HS Senior Portraits (think volume) (December – March)
  • Little Grad Programs (preschools or Kindergartens) (December-February)
  • Scouts – Pack & Individual (November-January)
  • First Communion Classes (December-January)
  • High School Proms (December-February)