Lessons

Lesson Info

Converting Viewers Into Customers

How do you bring people in who are just browsing around the Internet, found something, clicked through, maybe they're on social media, someone posted about their great shoot with you, they click through your site. How do you make that person become someone who wants to book with you? How do you quickly and easily get them to book with you? So, if you go to my website, as of today at least, you go in, you'll see right away, it's a little cut off here, but you'll see right away an image that I think expresses my style very well. I like to have a lot of energy, I like a lot of expression. I want it to be a little different than the normal family portrait. I want you to get that right away. I update that front image pretty regularly. I'm actually going to update it again after this week with a couple fun images that I want to cycle through, but right away I give you an impression of who I am, what I do, and the kind of work I like. And then very quickly, it's a slider, very quickly you'll ...

see a couple other things about my work. In fact, the next image after that is a writeup from Nikon describing my work cause I think it's credibility to the brand. And then more images that are, again, in that vein. But you also see, right up there on the top left, I want you to find me on social. I want to connect with you on social media, and if you are a potential client and you're seeing time and time again me post the images and you're resonating with that, you are far more likely to contact me than if you just went to my website once and then went away. If I buried those somewhere in here, you're not gonna go hunt for them. You just came to my website really quickly to see something. Have you ever looked at bounce rates on sites? A bounce being how quickly someone came to your site and left it. Don't spend a lot of time on bounce rates cause that's super depressing. It's like having a speed date where, like, I don't need the five minutes, I'm done. The bounce rates are depressing, but it is also valuable for you. If people are gonna jump in and out that quickly, how do I grab them when they're there? So, that's one of the things I want right away. And you need to have the decision made for yourself. At one point is it too cluttery to get them to see things right away? And at what point am I not showing enough? And so that's something I've spent a lot of time doing. A lot of time trying to figure out how to put things that I want you to get to right away, but not have so much there that you're like, "Oh my God, too much, bye." So, another thing is Purchase a Gift Certificate. I love selling gift certificates. I do, I love them because right away cash flow, right? What did we talk about cash flow? How much cash flow helps. Cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. I think that was the title of our segment because it is so significant for a small business to be in a healthy position from a cash flow perspective. You need to be able to access your money when you need it, and if you can get it in sooner and spend it later, you're in a much healthier position as a business to be able to operate and take risks and make changes. So from a cash flow perspective, when I sell a gift certificate, you may buy this gift certificate from me now to give to somebody at the holidays, and then they'll call and book it in August or something. And so meanwhile, I have this here but the shoot's not for nine months. I get to ride off that again and again and again based on the gift certificates. I'll honor those, my policy in general is I want people to have a great client experience. I want this to be a long term relationship, not transactional. So if someone calls me and says, "Ugh, my sister got me this three years ago. "I know it expired last year, but is there any...?" We will completely honor it, of course. At any time. I'm never gonna say, "No, it's expired, lost it, sucker." (laughing) Cause I want that customer. I want them to come in because this gives me an opportunity with this customer to show them what I can do, how I can work with them, have an opportunity to have them long term, and then tell seven of their friends. If you hear that again and again and again from me it's because of how significant it is to me, to work with somebody new and build that relationship. The other thing is Get our Newsletter. I want you to sign up for my email. I want to have that ability to reach you. I think the lie people sometimes tell to themselves is that once you come to my blog, you'll keep coming back again and again and again. People who are best friends don't see each other's Facebook posts. It's not that I'm not interested in you, it's just that I have a lot going on. So if I can send you a newsletter that right away is gonna be targeted, it's gonna tell you what the worth is of opening this message. I'm not gonna assume you're gonna keep coming back to my blog, but I may redirect you to it because I give you some information that's enticing enough that you click through. This is a very valuable resource to have, your own list. Next is Booking Your Session. I don't want you to dig around and figure out how to book with me. Right up there at the top, there's a button. Book a session. Now, when they book a session, it's not like it's magically, ding! Tuesday at 4:00. In fact, I do not want a calendar that you go in and click and book a date with. So, for some people with their business that works really well. I don't want it to be that automated that I don't have that first opportunity to have a conversation to give you some idea of what the experience will be to work with me cause that right away is starting the whole process to be as successful as possible. I'm gonna go ahead and give you the expectations for what's gonna occur here. And in that first conversation, I will very naturally transmit my enthusiasm. I will make sure you understand how excited I am to work with you. I am excited about the process. I can't wait to deliver the final images, and if you miss all that cause you go to a calendar and you're like, "Yeah, that doesn't work. "Those days don't work for me." And you just step back, how much have I lost in that regard? I mean, time and time again, it's not about the work you're doing, you have to get your head into the head... You have to wrap your mind around what your target market is doing, how they're thinking, and how their lives are going. I know my potential clients and my current clients are so busy. How do I make this very easy for them? By the way, those are call to action buttons. That's what it is. I am inviting you to take action on my website. I want you to buy a gift card or a gift certificate. I want you to log on to my newsletter and be a part of that communication, and I want you to book a session. So right away, these are the three main things I'm inviting you to do. I also, of course, I think it just scrolled off the page. I also have on the bottom there, my link to go right to my blog. I have a link to Beautiful Together, you know. I have a link to my upcoming speaking engagements and workshops, the things I want you to see right away. I don't see it on here, but again, if you go to my website, I invite you to go to tamaralackey.com and probably crash it. So that's the kind of things that I'm inviting people to do. Yes, you had a question? Where was the question, yes? How do you optimize your landing page for video and for those beautiful pictures? I mean, we're talking about snappiness, right? I buy a theme that is optimized... Alright. For photos and videos. If you ask me, go ahead, ask me how exactly that theme works to do that for me. How does that theme work for you? What do you think my answer's gonna be? I don't... I have no idea. (audience laughing) I have no idea whatsoever. There's so many things I don't know, but I know I don't know, and that's brilliant. What was yours? Do you have a certain program that you use to send out the newsletters and emails so that photographers get some, clients get some? Yep, that's a great question. Right now, we're using Mad Mimi. There's also, in the past, we've used Constant Contact, My Emma, I don't know if we'll stay with Mad Mimi forever, but for right now it allows us to format a newsletter that's customized to our brand. So, what I don't want to do is just fit in with an auto form that when it gets to them it looks like everybody else who just sent them an email. I want it to look like my website. It has the look and feel of my brand, so right away they recognize that's what it is. And with Mad Mimi, we were able to customize and set that up in the beginning, which I liked. And there, we actually have various audiences that we can select, and then all our promotional emails. So I can go back to an email I sent three months ago and update it and revise it and send it out again because it's a quarterly reminder of something, you know? So everything's in one place where I don't have to constantly develop new content. I can just modify and adjust for what I want this new thing to be, and the design is consistent, and we've got our audiences all buckled in there right away. So when people opt into my email right in the front, it threads right through Mad Mimi. I'm not physically putting in all those emails. Do you have any tricks for getting it into their personal email folder instead of spam, or even just promotional? Again, that's the part that I can't control, you know? Right here, I know that I was getting texts yesterday like, "I can't see the live feed." That wasn't Creative Live. That was, you know, all those things on the Internet that sometimes break down for people and there's only so much you can control. So, I don't know how to get some... Other than, you can communicate to everybody to say, "Can you please set up a filter "so that any time you get something "from Tamara Lackey Studio, it goes into your "primary box or your update box, your promo box? "Not your spam filter." And actually I don't want it to go to their promo cause a lot of people avoid the promo. But generally speaking, I can ask them to set up a filter. But how likely is it that my very, very busy clients are gonna say, "Got it, I'm gonna drop "everything and I'm gonna go here "and I'm gonna figure out how to do a filter." Like, it's very unlikely it's gonna happen, but what I can also do is, you can send out test emails to your clients outside of an email thing. If you want to do that, you can download a list of all the emails and then generically set up from your studio address, not from the contact form, and say, "Please note, going forward, you're to get these. "You know, just make sure that "they are clicked and in your inbox." The likeliness of them always doing that, I can't control.