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10 Online Marketing Essentials Part 1

We're going to talk about how to get your marketing house in order, how to get you set up for success, and then the 10 essential things to get you ready to succeed with marketing, besides just posting photos. We're actually gonna go through these step by step because that's what this first segment of today is all about. Now at the very end we've got these three things, SEO, becoming a resource, and capturing emails. Those are the more complicated things. A lot of these other things if you check out a regular marketing class or a social media class a lot of these things you'll see, identifying your brand, you know, figuring out your customer. But this is the stuff that's a little bit more in depth that you need a little bit more expertise on. So we're gonna run through these things and get you guys all set up and there's a lot of notes and calls to action. So I'll tell you, okay, when you go home write this down, or all of you at home, write this down and give yourself this assignment. ...

So, we're gonna start with number one. We're gonna get right into this. So Robert? Okay, so you know, when we talk about identifying your brand, your message, you know, photographers, creatives, a lot of people they kind of just assume, well, I shoot boudoir, I'm a wedding photographer, I'm a headshot photographer, and then that kind of is where it ends. But they don't really take the extra step to identify who their target audience is or their actual brand message and you know branding message is almost like a mission statement like a business would have. So what's your, what do you do the best? What do you, what makes you different than the next person down the road who's shooting headshots or shooting weddings? How can you identify what makes your brand better? And usually, you know, there's simple exercises for this. You'll find a lot of this stuff online, different variations of it. But, you know, just start thinking of some words that separate you out. Glamor, you know, fashion, you know, add that to headshot photographer, and then start to think about what you do differently. Maybe you cater to a very specific subset of headshot photography, like, I really like corporate headshots. So you know, that's kind of what I think I specialize in the most, instead of doing, I'll take any headshot, anywhere, you know. But you might actually like corporate headshots. You like the style and working with certain people and business professionals, you know. That's something to keep in mind when you're identifying your brand message. So, your step number one is to do this. You're gonna do exactly what I say here. You're gonna write down three words that are central to your brand. They're three words that describe what you do or how you want people to feel about you or something that makes you different. Then we'll see some examples of this. Now I'm gonna give you a real life example for what I did when I was building my business. So you're gonna write down these three words and then, what's your tagline? What's your sentence that you want if someone was describing you in a sentence, what would you like them to say about your business? Not just, you know, you're cool, but what, what makes you different. So you're gonna do that and so here's my example. I went to school at Syracuse University and when I was in Syracuse I was, I was building up my photography career and I was shooting weddings. Weddings were the way that I paid my way, you know, paid my bills in college, and so this is what I decided for my brand. So this is what your exercise should look like but with your own specialty. So mine was, I was in Syracuse, and my three words were I shoot weddings with a fashion feel in Syracuse. That was kind of my three core words, and so I put my tagline in a sentence. It was, I'm a Syracuse based wedding photographer specializing in fashion and styled imagery. Or another way that I say it, kind of my more my advertising phrase is, hire me if you wanna look and feel like a model on your wedding day. That's more of the style, and that comes down to your voice and I'll talk about that a little bit. But this is fundamentally what I'm saying and then you put your spin on it. But when you figure this out, this is what goes everywhere, and that's what leads us to your number two step is to get your brand in order. So. Yeah, and we had talked about when I met Lindsay that her brand wasn't necessarily unified, and the identity wasn't, because we had a couple different things we were working on, and we didn't really, you know, have the logo in every certain variation it should be-- He says we to be nice. It was all me. Yeah, so. (audience laughing) He's just being nice. I say we, but, yeah. So what I've, you know, just because we're creatives or photographers doesn't mean that we all have design sense, and I went to, my background is in web and graphic design. So, you know, it's a little easier when you're kind of trained on something like that to look at, you know, a website and say, okay, well, there's not enough white space. You've got four different fonts. You've got 10 different colors. There's no cohesive color scheme. It looks like it was built 10 years ago, you know. It's one of those things where once you start to look at even your competitors you can start to clean things up a little bit and the number one recurring thing is that you should really just make sure everything looks the same across your identity, and that sounds easier than it actually is because people don't do it, you know. You'll have a different looking images on your Facebook or your Instagram or your website and that's not unifying your brand. I go to their website, I go, well, I thought they were a boudoir photographer, but then there's families over here, there's headshots over here, you know. And actually in our Facebook group we ask people to submit their websites and we ask them to submit their social media presence, and so this number one thing we saw up there, this is what we saw over and over again, is we would see somebody that like we said it would say, it would have families and portraits on their website but then there was a bunch of boudoir images on Facebook. And you couldn't really tell what they were all about. But something that is very, very important and that we see very often is the whole unifying the identity. Who are you and what are you all about? And have you guys heard about finding your niche, your niche market, right? And you can't do everything. I know that small town photographers, I was one, they do shoot a lot of things. I totally get it. I shot maternity and high school seniors and weddings but when I narrowed it down and what I did is I did fashion styled portraiture that's when my business was more successful, because when people visit your online presence or they visit your website, they visit your social media, or they hear about you, they never remember the everything photographer. But when someone's pregnant and they have a baby they'll go, oh, who is that, that, that newborn photographer that I saw, right? It's a specialty that they remember. So for me, it's not that I couldn't shoot multiple things. I did, but it was fashion styled. That's what you would remember me for. So when you want the fashion style you hire me for the fashion styled engagement, the fashion styled high school senior, the fashion styled wedding. So that's what I'm talking about for getting specific in unifying your identity. So maybe yours is you're capturing your family's special moments. It could be multiple things, but where it's more problematic is when you do sports, corporate, and boudoir. There's not, there's no, there's nothing that you can actually unify visually and emotionally across those things and I looked at one today that was corporate, and portrait, and product, and wedding. Yeah. So, you know what I mean? You really have to, 'cause no one is gonna remember, and guess what? That doesn't mean you can't shoot those other things if somebody asks you. It just really doesn't help you to market it. And just to add to that, you know, you don't have to necessarily select one thing and then go with it. You can separate these brands out. You could separate what you do into different micro sites or sections of your site. Just what we've seen a lot is going on somebody's homepage and then you have all those different things or it's a gallery. This is one of the biggest offenses. You see a gallery where there's, they're not broken down into sections, but it's all different styles of photography-- Yeah, so, babies next to boudoir looks really strange. Yeah. In a gallery. If you're a new photographer, this happens, because you're shooting everything. I mean, I did it myself. I'm shooting, you know, commercial looking work. You're shooting headshots, you're shooting beauty and glamor. So it's like, well, this is my portfolio. What do you want me to do? I put all this up here. But eventually as you shoot more, even if you do, you know, TFP shoots and mock shoots, then you start to kind of thin the herd a little bit and you put in the stuff that people will get to know you for, what you're actually start to get good at. So if someone comes to your site they should be able to say, all right, what's this person all about, and it doesn't mean they can't shoot multiple things, but is it, well they're all about color, or they're all about fun and laughing in all of these images. There's gotta be something what is this person all about, and it could be so drastically different things, but what's yours, and it does take a while to get there. So if you're not there yet, it's okay, but at least get it pared down from everything. Just a couple other tips. For fonts, there's some sites that recommend font pairings, aren't there? Yeah, there's a ton of this now, and it's easier than ever. If you're not a designer and you have no idea what fonts to use, Sans Serif, Serif, whatever, should I, how many should I use on a website? Two or three different versions, you know. There are plenty of sites out there. You can Google it, font pairings, and they'll kind of give you some really nice, clean looking fonts that you can use for your website, and Google offers a lot of these with their Google Fonts. And it doesn't just have to be what everyone else has because it's built into Photoshop. Yeah, so-- You know, it could be something different. And then the next one down there is figuring out your brand colors. Adobe Kuler, which is K-U-L-E-R, or color, it's said both ways, right, color? It allows you to build a palette for your brand, so different colors, and it's got a lot of them that are pre made. So you can be like, oh, you know what? That feels like me. So when you answer the first question, what's this person all about, how does that person feel in their color palette? And when you're looking at the fonts, well what fonts support that? If it's playful, playful colors. If it's playful, playful fonts, right? It all, it all kind of supports it, which is why you have to answer that question first, so. I'm just gonna say real quick a good exercise is to create a brand style sheet. You know, large businesses do this. They'll have, they'll basically just put their logo. They'll put their color scheme. They'll put their message on a piece of paper and that just kind of reinforces the consistency because that could be used in your website. That's used on your business cards. That's used on your letterhead. That's used on your packaging if you sell prints, you know. There's, and that's unifying your identity and your brand message, not just online, but reinforcing it everywhere. Yeah, I took a graphic design class in college and that was kind of our end project, and when you're looking at it, you're like, yeah, this feels like a brand. It's very, it's very reaffirming. And you guys have to think of yourselves as brands, you know? You might be solopreneurs which is what you are if you're selling something, you're shooting something, you're solo entrepreneurs, but you're also brands, and that's how you have to start thinking of yourselves is, you know, I'm not so and so photographer, I'm, this is my brand, this is what I'm putting my life and effort into, you know. Okay, so, so far we've talked about figuring out what's your brand and your key message, you know. In three words or in a sentence what are you all about, and then kind of gathering, getting your marketing and brand house in order with your logo and your colors and your fonts. You gotta start there. But after that is the website, right? And here's the thing. You literally have three seconds for someone to be able to figure out what you're all about and if they wanna pay attention to you. Robert teases me because I think I have less than three when I'm cruising around stuff. It's like I'm just so busy I don't have time. If it doesn't pop up instantly and capture my attention I'm onto the next thing. Yeah. And we know this 'cause we're seeing so much constant visuals. One of the things that it needs to be instant is it needs to be easy to navigate. It needs to be easy to communicate with you. It needs to be easy to understand what you're all about, but thankfully, there's a lot of templates and a lot of platforms that exist out there that are very good, and they're also very good for some of the things that we'll talk about later like SEO and working in opt in pages. We'll talk about this. So, I do not think that for 99% of people anything where you need a custom designer is appropriate, especially if you're just starting out. Now, as you move along and if you have specialized interests that you need, sure. But you gotta figure out really, okay, what do you need out of your website? Is it just for portfolio? Do you have to actually deliver the files? Is that part of what your website needs to do for you? So when someone buys it, do they need to be able to get the digital files? Or do you need to have part of the website where they order and it does order fulfillment, it'll send them prints? Do you need to have that capability? Do you want the blog built in, or can you just connect them? When you answer these questions it helps you figure out which format is best for you. So Robert's gonna talk a little bit about the four, the four main ones that are pretty popular and pretty successful that are very customizable, but get the job done in showing your brand in a clean and easy to understand way, so. I'm sure everybody's heard of Wordpress and the reason why I put .com in there, because there's a difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org. One is the, you download it, you put it on your own host, and one is Wordpress host itself. The one that you download and have host and you pay for actual hosting per month, it affords you more flexibility in being able to do whatever you want, whereas the hosted one, you're very limited. So, we use Wordpress primarily for our presence but we also use Photoshelter, which is good because it's an easy to use portfolio system and then Lindsay can send proofs to clients or proofs to, you know, her team or something like that very easily. So there's a million of these different things to choose from. So it gets very, you know, daunting, but these are the ones that we recommend that we've kind of worked with and found to be useful. You know, SquareSpace is great. They really have some cool templates, and you can get set up real quick. It's a drag and drop system. Wordpress, there's a million templates out there. There's a million things. The ones that we kind of recommend to use, you might wanna use something like Divi. Divi is a drag and drop page builder. There's PhotoPro. They've got some really awesome themes for photographers. So, you know, these are, these are really just kind of go on your own and take a look and see what fits what you need. Like Lindsay said, if you have to be able to have a back end of the house and sell stuff you might wanna separate that out. So I'll tell you right now, no Flash. Yes, no Flash. No Flash. Well, nothing's really Flash anymore, anyway. If you still have-- The website I looked at today was Flash. No, but I'm just saying, if you go to maybe newer, newer sites, like if-- Well, these aren't going to be Flash. Newer themes, or something like that, or SquareSpace is gonna be very, very up to date on its trends. Sure. The developers for Wordpress are, but there are people who are still using older technology who might have a 10 year old site that hasn't been updated in years and you definitely wanna make sure you don't have any Flash and that it's mobile friendly, and we'll get into that a little more though. So real quick, I just wanna summarize a couple things about these as you're going forward, especially those of you that are trying to figure out the whole website thing. So wordpress.com, it's actually more of a, it's a content management system. It's more of a foundation, right? So picture it like this. When you have the foundations of a house, just the foundations, and just kind of have a little bit of the walls up, okay, that's the basis of it. But then when you pick your theme, 'cause you can pick and install a theme on this platform, that's like you start adding the walls and adding your wallpaper. What's it kind of looking like? How are you separating it out? How's somebody moving through the house? And then in the end, the furniture and the design and all the stuff you do, the content that you add, that's what really makes it your own. So that's actually what Wordpress is. Wordpress isn't a drag and drop template kind of thing. It's that foundation, and then you pick the different, the different structures that you want in it. So then, can you name the two that you said, PhotoPro? There are still, there are themes. As Wordpress has evolved there are templates and themes that you can do drag and drop. Divi is one of them, D-I-V-I-- But you have to install the theme. Yeah, so it's an actual theme, but it's really cool. It lets you kind of really visually build your website without having to mess with any code or do anything like that or kind of hack things together. So, I think PhotoPro is another one. They're a company that does really well with themes for photographers. And also I would suggest looking into it's called the Genesis theme and it's really rock solid in terms of security, SEO, mobile friendly. You don't have to worry about anything and with so many themes out there these are all made by regular people. There's no companies that regulate it. So you can get one that can do more harm than good or be more confusing for you to set up. So some of them though have been people have been doing it for years and there's a lot of accountability. So the ones that I mentioned, there's a big team behind, so you know you're getting something that's quality and not gonna break down or there's frequent updates, things like that, so. So, just to summarize the rest of this. So Wordpress, it can be anything that you can imagine. It depends on your theme. So Wordpress is a really generic theme, a generic word. You're actually, the themes are what change it. SquareSpace is very customizable. Format's just clean and really easy. It's just, it's a very nice way to display your images. I used Photoshelter because people buy digital files from me and I can upload them on the back end and then send people links. It's so easy. It takes me two seconds to do that. But these other ones that I have down on the bottom here, you know, for Zenfolio and Smugmug, if you are doing order fulfillment and need to do galleries, you know, those are companies that focus on that. Pixieset is all about the galleries and they're beautiful and they're, they're responsive. So it's beautiful and it's very good for you can brand it in your brand, and then also Photofolio is one that people use more in the commercial realm. So, this isn't the entire list but these are the ones you'll probably wanna take a look at and see what fits your needs the most. But for our number four section, so, you've kind of figured out what you're all about, you know, what's your key message, and then you started to grab your brand materials that support that key message and then you've decided to go ahead and you've gotten your website in order. This is when you can start to figure out what you wanna do for marketing. You gotta do that other stuff before you can get into the marketing. So, number four, this is I'm not saying it's complicated but you're gonna have to do some work on this one. This one is figuring out your ideal customer. Who is it that is actually hiring you, but more importantly, who do you wish was hiring you? Because you don't wanna market just to the people who are if that's not the people you want to be. I've told this story many times before. When I first had my portrait business I was photographing some of my friends younger siblings. So I had a lot of baby pictures and so my marketing, they were the people who were hiring me, so I was marketing to babies and I really dislike photographing babies. And so what happened is for years I was getting paid to photograph babies and not happy about it. But I was marketing to them. So it's your ideal customer. So tell them about some of the, why are you, why are you looking at these different elements? Why do you need to answer these kind of questions? So obviously demographics where you're, who you're marketing to, maybe age group, area, you know, what they, what they make, what the type of person is, you know, in terms of their interests and their lifestyle and this is, that's why Lindsay went to the next sheet here that shows your ideal customer profile. So, this is a common practice amongst businesses to build what's called a customer avatar. This is your ideal client profile, and by kind of identifying somebody that is a fictitious person you're able to identify who you actually wanna sell to, and it's a useful exercise. At first you're kind of thinking, well, what's the point of it? But we've gone through. We've done it ourselves, and it helps because it reinforces that these are the people that we wanna sell to. Well, it's, okay. So everyone online who's like, what the heck does that say? I can't see that. How about you out there? So we've got a link where you can download that exact slide, that exact thing, because you wanna fill it out yourself. I'm gonna show you where I actually have filled this out so you can see why it's useful, 'cause at first it's like, all right, wait, I'm filling out their age. Let me read you some of the information on here. Some of the things on here. So interests and lifestyle, where they shop, groups or clubs they belong to, hobbies, their style, their goals, over here in demographics, their age, their gender, their location, their marital status, their children, how much money they make, occupation, their education level. Those types of things on, on the basis you're, on the surface you're like, well, why do I need all that information? Super useful for several reasons. Robert, for example, later on, is gonna show you how to exactly target those people through Facebook advertising, exactly. So you're not just throwing money out there for advertising and hoping you get, you will get those people. So you gotta answer those questions. But then over here when you figure out where they shop or clubs they belong to or you have magazines they read and blogs they read, you figure out how to get in front of them, or you figure out what communities to join to be involved with them. Remember, I said that's important to warm them up so they're familiar with you, they feel like you're one of them. When you answer those questions it starts getting your mind kind of rolling, kind of going, thinking, okay, all right, I have these several, 10, different ways I can actually reach the people, whereas before I thought it was just posting photos on Facebook. It changes the way you see it completely. Anything to add to that? Nope, that's pretty much it. Like I said, it's a useful exercise to do, and Lindsay kind of filled out a mock one. I don't know if you have that on the-- I do. Yeah, and the link again, it's lindsayadler.photo/avatar and it, you can download this little slide and fill it out yourself, so. And the fancy marketing thing is they call it a client, a customer avatar. That's why it's avatar, but it's your ideal customer profile. This is what this person looks like. So they actually, they actually recommend marketing wise that to be able to get inside of this person's head, what do they read, what are they interested in, who are they, you actually should paint them as a single person, just start off with it, and you can do multiple versions of this. But the reason you do that is 'cause then you know how you would talk to that person, right? You know if you met them and you were trying to sell to that person, your voice, or the tactics you would have to try to make them a customer, whereas it's just they're this age and they live in this place, there's no voice. But when it's a real person there's a voice behind it. Exactly. So it makes it easier for you to communicate. So here's an example that I did, and this is based on the Syracuse, New York fashion styled wedding photographer. So this is exactly what I was talking about before. Here's my made up person, and by the way, this person Amanda, actually this is my friend. This is a person, but I texted her this morning, I was like, can I use your photo, 'cause it's already in my presentation? But anyway, so demographics. So age, 31, female, living in, I picked Manlius because it's a more affluent neighborhood in Syracuse. You're thinking, okay, where do they live? Well, I want them to live in a place that has a little bit of money so that they can afford me, right? Okay, the next thing down, marital status, well, it'll be people that are engaged. Super useful for Facebook advertising, 'cause did you guys know when somebody changes their Facebook status from in a relationship to engaged you could be the first ad that pops up? They're super excited about wedding photography and they're gonna, you know? So you gotta think about those types of things. No children. Income, I mean, obviously, this depends, but knowing this number, you were saying that on Facebook you can actually target income brackets. Yeah, there's a lot of information you can get on Facebook now and they get that from their third party data mines that they use where it's all anonymous. So, you know, they'll get it from your credit report or from Amazon or you-- Scary, right? So there's so much information, because it used to be you kind of thought, well, I didn't fill out any of this stuff on my Facebook profile, so how did they get this information? But there's behaviors, there's demographics, there's down to the car that you drive, you know. It's a little, it is a little scary, but it's very useful for their marketers, so. (laughing) Yeah, and it's one of those things too is when you know kind of what income they make it helps you start thinking about maybe the places they shop, right? In what boutiques they might go to, or the magazines that they read. So when you fill out these basic, these basic elements of demographic, it starts you being able to answer some of the other parts. So also I had she's a real estate agent. She's not, but, just my ideal customer is. So she's a business professional woman, and undergraduate education. So I come over here and I start answering questions and I just put in one or two examples, but you could start filling out a heck of a lot more. For example, where they shop. So maybe one of the higher end boutiques in the area is Zentu Boutique. The reason you're gonna think about this later is if you know they make this much money and it's in Manlius and that's the boutique there maybe I can shoot some images and get on that boutique's Instagram page and they tag me, 'cause it's another way to get in front of them. Oh, on their Facebook page, or maybe I can do an in real life marketing and do some kind of promo wrapped up with that company. I consider them a branding partner, maybe you can think of it that way. Or you're coming down here and you know because of these things, you know what, she's a modern chic bride, 'cause she's a young business professional. She's not gonna do something that's super funky and outlandish. She's a business professional. But when I know the modern chic I know what kind of magazine she's reading. I know what kind of blogs she's looking at. I know what kind of Instagram feeds, I know what kind of things she's pinning. So this is why they say make it a real person, 'cause then you can kind of get inside their head. It's opening up these questions. And so then again, the goals, owning her own real estate firm, projecting a professional personal brand, which means her images are important to her. Even if they're her wedding images she's got a brand that she needs to hold up. This is kind of how you're thinking in there, 'cause then when I have a conversation with her in real life or in email I know I'm gonna talk about that personal brand and how people are gonna be seeing her. So you're getting inside, how you're talking to her, and then over here you're answering the kind of problems that you're solving. This is also, again, when you figure out the problems you're solving for that person, that helps you think, well, what kind of Facebook ad do I have? Or what type of email blast would I send to them? Or what type of wording do I have in the Instagram post, right? 'Cause you're figuring out well what problems do they have that I'm helping them out with? So for her, maybe it's since this demographic and it's modern chic Genesee Grand Hotel is modern and chic and fits that demographic. So maybe I'll just market and put out a lot of images I've shot there, 'cause she'll go oh, that was one of the venues and this photographer knows how to make that venue look beautiful. It might be that type of problem. It doesn't need to be a grand problem. So you think of it that way. Yeah, as Lindsay say, you know, the power in this exercise is being able to drill down to how you talk to your ideal client, because your message is gonna be different if you're talking to a modern chic bride than it's gonna be if you're talking to someone who, you know, they're a corporate, they're an attorney or they're somebody who has a completely different voice and then when you're-- Or rock and roll brides. There's a whole venue, a whole section just marketed to them. It totally changes how you talk. And your messaging will change then. And you can have more than one ideal customer profile for sure, and create these different avatars. But your messaging should absolutely reflect the profile because then you start to think well I'm not gonna talk to Tom the same way I would talk to Amanda. And they're not gonna hang out here, they're gonna hang out over here. So if you're putting the same exact message on Facebook for your advertising, the same message in your email marketing or something like that, it's going, people are gonna see it. They're gonna see subject lines. They're gonna see it, and they're gonna be like, well, that doesn't really apply to me. That's not interesting to me. I'm not, I don't fit that customer profile. Yeah, so with this, fill this out, and if you do different types of photography you should fill out at least one for each different type of photography you do 'cause obviously your boudoir versus child photography is probably not the same. So we're gonna fill that out. I mean, it could be. Totally kidding. All right, so we've talked about this. So we've kind of figured out the brand and we've gathered all these things together. You've got the website going. You've figured out your ideal customer. So you got your message. But then you gotta find them. Because everybody just posts on Instagram and Facebook and then nobody comes. It's, then it's just silent. So this is what I was saying before about some of those, those key elements is that you go to them, you join their communities, engage. But you gotta figure out where those communities are to go and engage and then oh yeah you've already figured out how to talk to them, so then you can go and engage and talk in their communities. So, this next one, brainstorming places to reach. So, Robert, tell me a little bit about the types of things you're thinking about trying to find your target audience online. Yeah, so where do they hang out online, obviously. If you're a corporate headshot photographer you might be, your ideal customer might be on LinkedIn. Your ideal customer might be on Twitter. But if you're marketing to a millennial then they probably, not to say that they aren't on LinkedIn, but maybe they're not, you know, paying attention to LinkedIn. They're probably on Pinterest, they're probably on Instagram, and they're most definitely gonna be on Facebook. So, you're targeting kind of and doing the customer profile actually just kind of unveils that. So that you don't have to go, do I have to be on everything? And there's new social media channel every other week. There's Snapchat and there's this and there's that. So it is important to kind of attack things from multiple angles, but if something's not gonna be of any use, and you're kind of just spinning your wheels spending your precious time adding content to channels that don't convert and don't result in anything then you know it's not really gonna be worth it. Hobbies, you wanna take that? Well, so I recommend one of the things you do as well is if you have pre existing customers that you have good relationships with ask them questions. Ask them what they read, where the shop, but if you don't wanna get that specific just say oh hey, you know, what kind of social profiles do you, are you engaged in? Figure out what the right question is. But let me just kind of give you an example. So put this also on your to do list. So, first thing on your to do list is to get your brand message right, gather it, okay, make sure your website's in order, fill out that customer profile. Next one in line to add to your to do list is write down 10 places that you can find these people online. And so, I think, when I first heard this I was like 10? That seems like a lot. It's actually not when you think about, here's my example. So I'm using my example from being a wedding photographer in upstate New York. So my ideal client from that customer profile, well, this is kind of higher end florist. So they're probably maybe on her Facebook page or her Instagram. So I could get on those platforms. Maybe I'm on, I have an image that I shot with Ivie previously from another wedding and I just say, oh hey, you wanna post it, or do you, you know, let me share this with you, just tag me in it, you know? So at least it's sending people back. How about the next one down, there's a bridal rental business. Probably looking at their feeds, but probably more importantly is Central New York Bride has a wedding blog, 'cause that's kind of that regional wedding magazine. Chances are if it's a bride in that area they're reading it. Here's the thing. It's okay, well, how are you gonna get on that blog? There is advertising. That's one way to do it. But what we're going to talk about later is if you create something of value for that blog then they put it out there for you, like a guest blog post. But it's gotta be interesting to that target audience. So, I'm always thinking what can I offer these different people? What do I have that they would then broadcast me out to everybody in their channels? So what I'm actually thinking of is I'm thinking of where these people hang out online but also what companies have the same target audience as me? 'Cause they're already doing a lot of work probably, right? They're already, especially if they're bigger companies. A big wedding venue, they're trying to market to all of these same people and they've got money behind it. Can I do some unique marketing some way so that I get my images to them and they broadcast me out? And so that's what guest blog posting for example is. So I'm thinking about Central New York Bride, weddings blog, also their forums. Central New York Wed is their Instagram feed. Maybe on Pinterest, things that are tagged with weddings or certain wedding venues in Pinterest, or maybe it's going to be, this is another venue that's a bridal boutique. Maybe it's a high end cake company. These are all places that they have probably checked out, they've probably look, they've probably engaged. So I'm not saying 10 platforms, but 10 things that they're periodically looking at in this example as they're planning their wedding. So, this is the last part of that customer profile in the lower left, 'cause we figured out their demographic, what they're interested in, and so this, when you just wrote that list of 10, 10 places that they're online, you can start answering this. So what magazines do they read? And it could be online or physical, doesn't matter. So they're reading Central New York Bride. So I'm thinking, hmm, I don't know if we're ever gonna get to this, but maybe I can write a blog post about how a bride can look their best on their wedding day for good poses, for example. You don't wanna stand with the arms tight against the body 'cause you get the arm squish and then there's no space. So I could just do a couple, just remember, don't lock out your knees and lean back and do this, you know, just showing them a little bit more flattering poses, but if I write that and it goes on Central New York Brides blog they're already spending a ton of money to attract all those brides and then the brides look and they go oh, this person knows how to make me look good, oh, and they're a central New York wedding photographer, and they click over and they go to my site. This is the big picture that we're gonna keep revisiting, okay? So that's where I want your brain to be. So where are they online, magazines, blogs. Because I know the type of style, modern chic, I can figure out what bridal style blogs she's actually looking at because if it's the rock and roll bridge there's actually style blogs that are dedicated to that. So maybe I can do a test shoot and get it up there and then it catches their attention, right? So it's things like that. Websites, like the Genesse Grand Hotel, a lot of my target audience would be there 'cause it's a higher end. So can I find a way to collaborate with them? There's forums, social media, so they're looking at all those social media, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest that I was mentioning before, and also I think an interesting one is influencers. Based on their hobbies or maybe what they're trying to hire you for for photography there might be somebody that's particularly influential. So maybe it's an event planner, or what's their hobby? One of the people that we'll feature later does cosplay photography. So maybe there's someone that's particularly influential, particularly famous in that group that if you can find a way to work with them, and have them broadcast out to all their people it's helping you with your marketing. Another byproduct of performing this, a beneficial byproduct of performing this exercise is especially what are their hobbies, what they like, if you start to uncover certain things it can be used in marketing and advertising. For example they're, if they like a certain magazine then you can try and target that specifically on these paid marketing channels and you start to uncover all these different areas that once you had this small picture of, well, I know that my demographic are females, are between this age, and they live in this area, then you can go all these extra deep layers. Well, now I know where they, what they like, where they hang out, you know, what type of brands, because I made this avatar of what they make. So maybe they'll like a higher end brand like Hermes or something like that versus, you know something that's not really falling within your customer profile. So that's infinitely powerful when you're doing Facebook advertising for example because of all the different types of things you can choose with targeting. And a perfect example, I just mentioned, the person we'll review later specializes in cosplay photography. So if I know that specific, this is so much easier to fill out, which is why the more niche you are the easier it is to market and the more that you can focus all of your marketing efforts because I don't have to do 10 of these and I'm not trying to also be on this and it's a very specific person. So you can laser beam right to them.