Lessons

Lesson Info

Effective Promotions

Okay let's look a defective promotions baby brief is something that we just did in november it's slowly growing it's still not quite there yet but um it's effective I was struggling and bend because I felt like there were no good informational resource is for pregnant mothers like when you got pregnant and bend you didn't really know what to do or where to go, what you needed or who to contact or there were no one stop shopping places for resource is for pregnant mothers so we built belinda and I built a website called the baby breathe dot com and it is basically a resource guide for new mothers and I did it and advertised every baby business in town on it for free that ad that you see here this this ad is a half page ad that goes in the nest the parenting magazine every quarter and that's how the knowledge for this site is growing and bend over time and my name our studio on our imagery is plastered all over it has businesses, resources classes, articles, recreation health, child care...

registry and local resource is for pregnancy and baby and bent it's a wordpress site took a while to put together but now that it's there we can start to two articles on it and now vendors air see that we have put them on there is free advertising the rule of reciprocity there going oh, how can we help you that's so cool we love that can we help make it happen? Can we grow it? How can we turn this into something big invent great we're going to make postcards we're going to put him in all the stores that are listed here and all of a sudden it's going to become this thing where that's where you look and bend if you're pregnant, why can't you guys do that? Why can't a few of you photographers in the same market pair up and make that happen so that you're the leading baby photographers in your town? There's no reason why you can't do that. Okay, so yeah it's basically a resource guide here's a little screen shot of it and of course, one of the lead articles is photography. What to look for in a pro? Oh yeah, right there at the top okay, facebook, twitter, instagram pictures accounts linked to me is it worth it? Advertising for the beginner? No trade for it don't spend your money on it if you're just beginning it's not worth it advertising just promote the brand and provides brand recognition to the community it does not bring clients in the door I don't think I've gotten one client from my ben nest add in the last six months I don't pay for it it's trade okay, so I don't mind that and I want that I'm at the point of my business where I just want that brand recognition I want people to see me in multiple touchpoints okay? More established it's good for you to advertise in a few key strategic places makes you know a parenting magazine is great. The local newspaper probably not going to do much for you. There's a magazine called the bump in a lot of cities in the us and it's a maternity and pregnancy and newborn magazine and my sister advertises in that does quite well with it. So she's not sandwich um, so like I said, it won't necessarily bring in clients, but it will get you known in your community. What about doctor's offices? Doctor's office displays pediatrician's offices air fantastic mom will visit this place four to five times during the first year of her baby's life. Adorable touching images can calm mom down if you saw the ad the first ad that I showed you of mom in the doctor's office with the images and grated they were of her but she looking and got really touched by the images that were on the wall of mothers with their kids okay, that tugs at those core values makes the staff at the doctor's office more enthusiastic, especially if you're in there communicating with them, loving on them, building a relationship with them it increases morale when I'd put my image is in the hospital display the biggest response I got from the staff at the hospital was how much it made them feel good about going to work which really surprised me. I was like, what oh it's just so nice to be in there now to walk by and see the little babies you know, sleeping peacefully with their little faces point of view and I didn't know that was kind of a residual effect I wasn't expecting but that's a good thing because that means you're making the staff feel good, which means they're in turn going to tell your praises to all the patients doc's who get it are looking for good display docks who don't move on there's a couple o b g y n offices in town that I'm trying to get into and they won't give me the time of day and I'm just like you know what? I'm going to waste my time on this too much because they clearly don't get it if they don't move on, give them your information checking with once and while they may be just too busy right now and if you're constantly checking in with them then when the time is right they're going to call you first and just make sure that you're the one that coffers there is some red tape with pediatrician's office is you have to find someone but getting exclusive long current long term contract this is incredibly important okay, you don't want another photographer getting in there if you can avoid it, make it easy for the doctor they don't have to do a darn thing you pay for it, you install it, you display it you write the contract, all they gotta do is sign on the dotted line and bam it's done beautiful that's the way it should work customer service the doctor is technically your customer insist that your marketing materials be displayed and the way I argue it is you know you're gonna have people asking you about these images and I really don't want to take time away from your staff busy working in your office so if my marketing materials have displayed the clients who are enquiring about it we'll have easy access to information without having to bug your stuff oh, okay that's kind of a shoe in to get your marking materials in, visit the display often and make friends with the staff and the nurses. All right, let's look a charitable events okay charitable events are a good thing because again they hit the core values that tug it mother's heart strings so much show them that you care about kids that you care about their kid's future and not just about making money so I always do an event called the mommy mingle we do it at a baby retail store in town and it's, a baby fare and pregnancy resource is fair, so vendors kind of sign up and come in there's a huge raffle. We get all these cool things from baby vendors donated like cribs and betting sets, and karen, you know, strollers and things like that, and the moms come because they want to win those prizes at the same time they're getting access and information toe all these resource is that cater to moms and babies in our town. So it's basically the baby brief in affair resident follow so you can go in their display, become a title sponsor, do the graphic design work for it, advertise it, cross promote on your facebook page all that good stuff helps people know about the event and then when they come to the event one year I did little mini sessions. We set up a backdrop on white and did little mini sessions of babies and cute toddlers, and that got me tons of baby planners. They're like, this is so fun, and then all this information about the baby plan, they were crazy about it, okay? And actually a three, four thousand dollars off the event with product sales after the fact donate to good organizations that help kids in an I c u unit nicu unit of new natal intensive care child health programs, teen pregnancy organizations, a food bank found abuse prevention, domestic violence all those kind of things cater to moms and kids. Any organization that means something to you and or targets children helps children is an effective organization toe look at but make sure it means it's got to be part of your wine, your core values to if it's not authentic, don't bother it won't not authentic it won't contribute to her brand it all. As a matter of fact, it'll hurt it. Fashion shows event types you could do a fashion show to benefit kids information fares girls night out silent auctions at school's charity dinners every year there's a charity jim dinner for the hospital st charles this year it benefited the nick you so, of course, we donated like crazy. Bought a table, donated live auction stuff left and right. Did it get me a ton of clients? Heck, no, but it did put our name out there. Put me in good graces with the hospital and that's. Why they're going to be renewing my contract here. Ok, so it's all about connections, relationship building you pat my back off at yours, okay, what about social media connection? Okay I talked a little bit about being social the major platforms that you don't need to be all in all of them facebook is where the moms are we tell you facebook's probably critical so is pinterest pinterest is where mom zara's well what happens when you put those cute products on pinterest thank you excited okay it's a good thing um each platform has different kind of what am I looking for? The word I'm looking for it's each each pocket has a different pocket of segmentation in the market you know I'm saying like facebook is really popular it's very targeted and it's it's demographic google is good for your ceo but is extremely public so your post get seymour on google plus but there's not as many people on google plus but at the same time it improves your ceo to be on google plus because google it's owned by google so if you're on google you're going better search engine rankings okay pinterest is visual female obviously creative it's instant fun women go on pinterest because they enjoy it it gives them a sense of creative visual aesthetic satisfaction where is facebook they like to be on but it's really just a source of news and connection it's not really something that's fulfilling okay instagram of course is all about images twitter it's connection news current directed very, very fast twitter has to be posted on constantly because it's so quick moving most working professionals tend to be on twitter stay at home, mom, not so much, they're more on facebook, so keep that in mind youtube learning it's a huge search engine, mom's air conflict on there searching for stuff I mean youtube searching capability is becoming incredible it's almost on par with what google does. It is the second largest search engine and owned by google being is log. Excuse me, its personal storied, and it helps improve your ceo and allows you connect with your clients on a story level. But remember, content is king. If you don't have good content, forget about it and its content that constantly changes. Okay it's like you it's funny because business owners nowadays have to be a news service like the ap news service, constantly turning out stories all over the world that are interesting factual in appealing to different target markets, you have one target market that you need to appeal to on a constant basis with content that is engaging informational, useful, useful content, not just o the latest sale on promotion. That's not useful how teo fold a cloth diaper is useful information. Do you see the difference you want to provide articles and information that is useful and video, of course, is extremely hot? An emoto is a great place to start you can actually, molly was talking about how she edits videos on an emoto and uses them in marketing a promotion. Kelly brown did a gorgeous first year video of a little boy from new born through the first year and showed the final product at the very end of the video, and it was an incremental annual product. Okay, she also does great birth announcements on an emoto, so an emoto is a wonderful place to mix video and stills in one environment easily it's simple. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, but it's enough that it looks good and it looks professional and it's easy to do, which I think is more important than anything, okay, so heightened emotion and create viral content for your client by using video. I think that's extremely important, and some thing I'm about to branch out into on amore amore amped up level here in the next six months, so social media benefits you look engaged and you look busy even if you're pulling sessions to post images that are from a year ago, nobody knows that, right? You don't have to put a date on the image you can pull from a session you did a year ago and post that to facebook today, why not it's about getting engaged, content that people look at and want to interact with you look popular, you look connected, you can connect with your clients, it keeps the buzz going. You look like you care and most important, you don't look lazy and I'm guilty of this too, especially on my education block. I haven't updated in over a year, and I feel terrible about it. I really should just take it down, but it makes me look lazy when I don't have a block that's constantly updated and refreshed. You'll look lazy. You look like either so busy you don't care or it's not important to you or lazy. So if you're not going up to your block, don't even put one on take it off. Don't bother doing that, okay? I'd rather have you not have a block on it all, then one that's old I should really follow my own advice tools. Edgar edgar is a tool that allows you to schedule social media interaction from one platform very useful sprout social is the same way. These aren't necessarily super cheap services. You know you're going to pay fifty bucks a month to do it, but it keeps it all in one spot and allows you to manage our content easily it creates a system for content is what it does. Which to me sometimes is worth fifty bucks a month if I can have it all in one place I know when I'm posting how I posted analytics and engagement all in one spot I can create a content calendar and just schedule it to be sent off to its perspective respective social media platforms that's huge coast schedule is a wonderful place to learn and get content calendars you get free stuff there is well who'd suite is another inexpensive social media management tool sarah recommends hoot suite dramatically sprout social is more of a advanced pro level type thing for really big social media folks who'd suite is probably a great place to start out if you want something that will manage your social media content okay so in review the last three days we have talked about the seven steps to baby plan success I've tried to give you a step by step approach to doing this in a way that makes it clean concise and doesn't overwhelm you I know I've overwhelmed you anyway but my hope is that by going step by step it'll make it a little bit easier and chung kable like you could break it off in little chunks and do it one by one get your internal systems in place do your structure your product line you're pricing your systems your policies and your collateral first then launch it and everybody is going to die so almost two d'oh I'm never going to get this done, schedule it on your calendar and know that the sooner you get it done, the sooner you can launch and the sooner you can make money sometimes belinda, I love her to death she's one of those people that needs a deadline like you have to give her a deadline and I have to give her a deadline if she gives herself a deadline, it doesn't get done that she knows that about herself and she giggles and laughs about it but it's true, she needs an external deadline if you need that, find someone to give it to you so that you can get this stuff done, but just note if you you're not going to make money on this until it's done so the sooner you get it done and the more you stick to your own deadline, the faster you're going to profit from it, the faster you'll be able to support your family, okay? So before we finish, I want to do a little top ten to inspire, which is kind of my little ending thing, which I love dio these air quotes by very successful people, and when I want you to remember when I show you these is that these guys were five wants to just like roz eaton said my son was a five year old wants to so were these guys they started off just like you and there is no reason that you can't be a successful as they are they didn't just get lucky and have the gods bestow success upon them they worked hard for it they strategically thought and they pursued in the face of adversity. Okay, first off I've learned that people will forget what you said people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel that's why maya angelou wonderful wonderful author who has since just passed away one of my favorite authors people will never forget how you made them feel and that rings true for your customers they will never forget how you made them feel, especially in the industry that we're in we are in such a emotional experience, service, rain and industry your priority should be to make your customers feel fantastic not only with the product you provide them, but with the service connection and relationship that you developed with them. Okay, I've missed more than nine thousand shots in my career I've almost lost three hundred games twenty six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed I have failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed and that's from michael jordan abraham lincoln ran for congress so many times and failed and failed and failed and failed and failed and he ended up being one of the most wonderful presidents this country has ever seen. Failure means growth failure means you're getting better because you're learning the whole reason. God put us on this planet is toe learn and love so by feeling you are learning to be better and you will learn that faster than fit with by failing than you ever will by succeeding. So embrace failure and look at it as a good thing. Is something that's going to make you better faster? The trick is shutting up the voice in your head to not beat you down when you do fail, but instead say yeah, but you know what? Look how much better I'm going to make this now because of you, because I failed, I'm going to make it even better. The most difficult thing is the decision to act the rest is merely tenacity. Amelia earhart said that the hardest thing to do basically is to start, then it's just about keep pushing it on and keep going. Life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it? There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. Go the extra mile and you will leave everybody else behind okay, good click that's been one of my mantra as focus and simplicity simple can be harder than complex you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple but it's worth it in the end because once you get there you can move mountains, steve jobs simply there is beauty and simplicity, but it is hard to make things simple it's hard to cut and edit, but if you do it, you will be so much more effective in your position in your career and in your business if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. Tony robbins it's true if it's not working, fix it in other words, if you're always doing the same thing, you're always having the same result that it's time to change things up remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent that's george telling you that you suck right there, I think it's very important to have a feedback loop where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing better. I think that's the single best piece of advice constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself elon musk and finally build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs do you want to be in corporate america the rest of your life or do you want to build your own dream? So think about that next time you want to quit and go work for somebody else if you do that, you're going to help them build their dream and you're going to abandon yours. Thanks you guys, did you want to show us hear your next line of had a I do not find me sorry there you go to confine me on facebook, instagram, twitter, pinterest on google plus e and I mean personally, I'm on instagram and pinterest the most so if you want to communicate with me directly that's the way to do it teo over you pack so much content into this course is really incredible and I just as well go out want tio thank you from everybody here it created live thank you guys for being here, but read off some of the comments quickly that are coming through. People really really appreciated that last segment and your pep talks as always, but also reflecting, brendan says no, I'm so sad it's over thank you so much for all the information as a new photographer, it is all a bit overwhelming, but I cannot wait to get started and put this all into practice a moment forever. Photography by c I'm going to hit the ground running becky s you are incredible eso incredible all three days, I've got about sixty five pages of notes like, oh, I can't wait to launch my baby plan and, uh, every course is jam packed with life. Changing information and inspiration. Are we need to do is implement all that you teach.