Creating the Perfect Newborn Photographer Welcome Guide:

Boost Client Trust and Efficiency…And Bring in more of those 5* reviews

As a newborn photographer, your welcome guide is a powerful tool to impress clients and streamline your workflow. It answers common questions, showcases your style, and sets clear expectations. Let’s explore how to create an effective newborn photographer welcome guide that will bring in those coveted 5-star reviews.

Why a Welcome Guide Matters

A well-crafted newborn photographer welcome guide addresses parents’ key concerns:

• Pricing details
• Session process
• Handling fussy babies
• Image delivery timeline
• Digital file inclusion

While answering these is easy, it can be time-consuming to do it over and over again. A welcome guide addresses all these common issues, speeds up the process, gives parents confidence in choosing you, and keeps them satisfied throughout the entire experience—not just before they pay their invoice.

“My welcome guide has massively helped streamline my consultations. I go over it with potential clients from start to finish ensuring I never miss a talking point and I send it home with them when we’re done so they can go back and look it all over again as we get closer to their session.”

Paige McLeod, Glean & Co Photography

Make Sure it Sounds Like YOU: Brand Voice Matters.

The goal here is to not just answer the questions, but do so in a way where parents can learn about you – who you are, why you do what you do, and how you work. You want to sound as ‘you’ as you can, so parents can get a sense of whether you’ll be a good fit. And when you find those good fit parents then you’re more likely to have enthusiastic clients who will be happy to give you 5* reviews.

3 Ways to Build Your Welcome Guide

1. Create Your Own Guide

If you’re on a tight budget and have some time, creating your own guide from scratch is a great option. You can use this blog post for ideas on what to include to cover all your bases. Or check out this article from Shootproof about what to include in your welcome guide.

2. Buy a Template/Copy Someone Else’s

If you find a photographer with a style similar to yours, you might consider buying their template or copying their approach. However, this can be tricky since you might not always find a perfect match and just because something works for one photographer doesn’t mean it will work for you. Remember never to plagiarize someone else’s guide, but you can certainly find some examples for inspiration. Most templates out there offer the graphic design for the layout but don’t include the actual copy telling the clients how it’s all going to go. Which is where we come in…

3. Use Our Brand Voice Specific Template

We’ve created a template based on Paige’s guide, available in 12 different brand voices for newborn photographers. This means you can find one that closely matches your style, with only minor tweaks needed to make it yours. And unlike those other templates out there, you get the layout design AND all the copy. So with just a few images popped in it’s a working guide in just a few minutes (no plagiarism required)

The Who/Why/What/Where/When Method

Follow the Who/Why/What/Where/When method to create a comprehensive newborn photographer welcome guide:

Paige follows the 5W method in her Welcome Guide – covering the main areas that parents have questions about so her guide is easy to read (while also beautiful and inspiring to look at!). We highly recommend following this process as you think about what to include in your guide.

By answering the main questions parents have in advance of signing a contract, you give them comfort about understanding your process and what to expect from not just the photo session, but the whole experience from booking to receiving their images.

By touching on each of these areas, you’ll build a balanced, rigorous Welcome Guide that gives parents confidence to turn into clients and sign that contract!

Part 1 – The Who and Why

Introduce yourself just as you would in person. Share a bit about your studio, your team if you have one, and your personal story. Paige, for instance, talks about her studio and her three boys, helping her connect with her audience.

The business – if you have a studio or a business that is more than just 1 person, then this is a great time to introduce your photography business in general. You can mention or include photos of any assistants or studio managers particularly if your clients meet or interact with them. This gives them confidence about the whole business and not just you personally.

You – if your business is just you, then you might skip the first section. But even if you include both, you still want to take some time to introduce yourself as the face of the business to help them know, like and trust you with their brand new baby.

Your Why – in this introduction you also want to let them know why newborn photography is important to you. This is often where the ‘good fit’ aspect of this process comes in – by learning about you and why you are passionate about newborn photography, parents can feel at ease that you share the same values.

Part 2 – The Where

Show potential clients where you take photos. Paige has a studio on her property, but before that, she used a room in her house. If you go to clients’ homes, explain how that works.

However you take photos, let potential clients see the space you choose to photograph in and why you love it. If you go to clients’ homes, you have a great chance here to explain how you do that and what you bring with you (or what you need from them when you turn up).

Hot Tip: If your clients ever mention how much they love your studio/space/that you take photos in their home, then you should include their testimonial here, together with an image from their session. This helps parents imagine how it will feel for them at the moment of their session.

Part 3 – The How

Outline your process so parents know what to expect. This can include phone calls, pre-session consultations, booking details, planning the session, the photo session itself, viewing images, and ordering.

Put yourself in the shoes of parents-to-be – it can be daunting commiting a lot of money to a photographer without really understanding what is going to happen. By laying out your process it lets them antipicate what’s going to happen and trust that you are in control and have everything covered.

And bonus – if you haven’t outlined your process (also called a workflow) before, then doing that for your Welcome Guide will have many other benefits. By understanding what is repeatable about what you do for your clients, you can build systems and automations that ensure these things happen correctly and at the right time, every time. If you want to know more about that, check out our blog about Automating Your Workflow.

Part 4 – The When

Arguably this is the part that most potential clients are really interested in. While the ‘How’ part explains your whole process with a quick section on the day of the session, a timeline helps parents understand how the day will unfold, which reduces anxiety.

You don’t need to list what will happen every 5 minutes, but Paige finds clients like a sense of how they are going to work around their newborn (and possibly other small siblings) and getting their photos taken.

You can use this to address if they should feed their baby before they come or at the session, how your client closet will work (if you have one) and help parents plan for when they will be done for the day. (Especially important for clients with toddler aged siblings who are still napping)

Step 5 – FAQs and Policies

Include common questions and your policies to avoid surprises. Paige has found that including an FAQ section reduces the number of questions she gets asked, making her workflow smoother and clients more at ease. She gets far less questions by email, text or phone, meaning her client communication takes up less time in her days. And that means she’s free either to work with other clients or take time off to hang with her family!

The best way to identify what questions to cover here is to start taking a note of the questions you frequently get asked either in person, on the phone, or in emails. If you’ve been asked anything more than once, it should be added to the FAQs.

No Surprises  – the rules and policies of your studio

In addition to the FAQs you will want to list your policies so everyone’s clear about what happens in certain situations. This is sort of like a reverse FAQs – questions you want clients to know the answers to before they book!

Here’s a couple of examples – which ones you want to include depends on the types of situations you’ve had where you wish it had been clear in advance! Paige recommends you add to this as and when new issues come to mind. Of course, each photographer and studio’s policies will differ drastically depending on what they wish to allow.

Example Policies:

• We do not offer reschedules due to children’s behavior
• Reschedules for weather are up to the photographer’s discretion
• A deposit is due to hold your spot on our calendar and is non-refundable
• All orders and payment for orders are due at the ordering appointment
• We do not provide online galleries for ordering

Where to House Your Welcome Guide

Consider these options for sharing your newborn photographer welcome guide:

• Create a dedicated page on your website
• Design a separate document using tools like Canva
• Incorporate it into your email and SMS workflow

The easiest option is to have a page on your website that includes all this information – you could even have it hidden on a password protected page.

Paige created a Welcome Guide as a separate Canva document – allowing her to share it both digitally and as a printed magazine that goes home with prospective clients.

Once you set up an email and SMS workflow to go to potential clients, you’ll want to reference your Welcome Guide several times, so having one central place, website page or separated document, that you can easily link to, will be key.

Final Thoughts

A well-crafted newborn photographer welcome guide demonstrates your professionalism, builds trust, and ensures a great client experience. By providing comprehensive information upfront, you’ll save time and increase the likelihood of receiving those valuable 5-star reviews. It shows prospective clients that you are serious about your business. It helps them trust you, showcases your work, and ensures they’ll have a great experience—not just great images. And by sending clients one comprehensive guide, you save time and can focus more on your passion for photography.