Offering two products better than one?

[silver516]

Need a little lesson on marketing here...

Let's say I'm selling a photo book to a target audience which includes images of this target audience. (i.e. a large wedding or event). More specifically, these books will be sold through Blurb with either one option (hardcover imagewrap only) or two (hardcover imagewrap and hardcover dustjacket). My main question is, would it be more beneficial to push one solid product (the imagewrap) or give the buyer options with both.

Furthermore, would offering both products allow me to push the original profit of the imagewrap? For example, instead of a $10 profit on one product, would offering both allow me to push that to $12 ... just a loose example

I didn't find the quality of the softcover to be substantial enough to consider for a formal event. The printing was great, but the cover warps and rises way too much. Has anyone found ways to maybe avoid this?

[tim]

Offer them the best one only. Usually bundling things together you give an discount.

$10 profit isn't worth doing anything for btw.

[silver516]

That would be easier to deal with as well. Does anyone else support that strategy?

[Karl Johnston]

I used to offer everything under the sun for anything, now I don't..a lot of fine art photographers don't. Options are great but often when you cannot explain or research which is better than the other and why people become lost in a sea of confusion. Think about something you don't know in and out of...like postal services in my case. Do I prefer USPS or UPS or XPRESSPOST or Air mail or fedex?

I have no idea and I don't care. I just want my stuff here, which will give me what I want? (USPS recently lost my @$%(! zeiss 21 2.8..actually..so definitely not them >:()

Identify what your target audience wants...or what would most likely appeal to them by secondary research (ie: review and poll other photographers in the genre of wedding photography to see what they do..such as Tim).

Offer options that have large differences in between them. Air mail will get you the product overnight, but USPS will take 2 weeks. UPS and fedex are basically the same, so why would anyone care? Of course they could go into detail about each company's ratings ...but the consumer doesn't care.

10$ is way too cheap, that's madness, add another 0 to that..preferably in the suffix. :)

I dunno about your budget but maybe you should consider graphistudio for an audience like wedding photographers. Wedding photographers are interesting people; they're going after the audience with the money (think about it, if you're dead broke you don't hire a photographer..). A luxury market, if you have the sense to turn your product into one through branding, expertise, patience and a long list of everything else essential. In a luxury market you need to push the best product, not the economy version.

In my case I stopped selling luster prints...not that luster are bad or anything but I see more advantages on the end of marketing and saving money ...I have made the move on to printing my Limited Editions exclusively on a lightjet printer and only in sizes 17x22" and above.

For my other fine art prints I am in a toss up between velvet and sugar cane..though I am leaning to sugar cane, because since it's an eco-friendly product (look into these..if you're looking from a marketing perspective they can be invaluable to push your product. Eco friendliness and green is everything..and it needs to be in my personal opinion. Encourage your audience to take the healthy step..and that consideration could put you above "the other guy we're looking at buying XYZ product from." In my case, again, I can save 1.5x the money and print the same amount with sugar cane as I can with luster. I can also roll sugar cane..but I can't luster (used to, but i was losing money in reprints).

[tim]

I think you need to tell us more about what you do, and what you're trying to achieve.