Lessons

Lesson Info

Guide Critique: Adventure Wedding

sirens is the adventurers activity guide for wedding guests in bend oregon love it let's see so why why this topic I mean you talked a little bit about it yesterday I believe it was on air it might have been when we're off air was on air you talked a little about kind of some of the things that challenge is that face your couples and what they're going through why did you pick this topic you know I started to think what do our couples want more than anything out of the way and it's usually the bride for saying I'm looking forward to most seen his expression when he when I walk down the aisle and the second thing is I want my guest have a great time so we live in a destination wedding area and our clients don't know the area that well there into the activities that were into so I wanted I wanted to provide something that was meaningful two professionals that don't have the time to put to do the research in our location so you really hit upon a lot of things about your target market sr y...

ou know it seemed very good so a couple of things I just want to point out that you touched on that our target market specific first off you acknowledge and you know that most that your target market albeit most of your couples that book you are coming in from out of town it's a destination wedding all other things about your target market are that they're guests are coming in from out of town so now they're going back home for their wedding necessarily like they're from bend oregon and they come back home for their wedding you know that's something that I know a photographer who has done a good job of polarizing and making a great brand statement lee anne marie she's based out of pittsburgh on dh she's a pittsburgh based wedding photographer and she realized that that the majority of her target market grew up in pittsburgh left to go to a big city like new york city or somewhere else and coming home for their wedding that's her mark that's who she focuses on she knows everything about that market because it's very very specific and focused and she books the majority of brides and grooms who grew up in pittsburgh have a nostalgic attraction to that city left for a bigger city a different opportunity and are coming home to get married here is a little bit different years is a destination location not only for your couples but for all the guests they're bringing out you also talked about the word professional they're professionals they don't what comes of being a professional you're busy you don't have time you don't have the ability to trust others maybe you have a little bit more money because of the fact that professional see you have the opportunity to trust others with your money and with your expertise so I love that you kind of I think out of all the guides your guide that you brought out is probably most focused on a specific target audience and so that's great and then obviously the one that we haven't talked about yet about your target audience is that they're very adventurous how do you what do the things you use just so we can all learn how did you determine how did you realize how did you figure out that your target market is very adventurous you know I I started to look back at not all my clients but the ones that I love the most and it's really it was clear what do they do they were into sports that I'm into they're into the outdoors there's a reason why they're getting married in the location that they're in it because they might have come there as a child and they've gone skiing there there's a connection and more importantly it's just in talking with them a tte the onset the first meeting with them and just creating a report and finding out what what they get excited about yeah yeah I think it's wonderful and I think that you know the wonderful power about a brand message and you can always be refining your brand message so now that you're here you can probably refined even more and by the way when you're done refined it you'll get to do that for a couple months he could probably refine it even more the more you get into it the more it uncovers but the wonderful thing about byron's byron's messages that if firing you know portrays this message everywhere you are if you stick this up on your web site that if you are an adventurous outdoor enthusiast who's getting his having a destination wedding in bend oregon that's what we specialize in professionally professional yeah press I mean exactly look at how look at how niche that is professionals who having a destination wedding that outdoor activist and enthusiast they're adventurers getting married I mean wow that is so focused that you're going to probably book the majority of people that fit in that category because they're going to look at your website they're gonna look at your brand overlook your message and say firing and wendy are exactly for me that's exactly what I am and that also clearly dictates for you the course you can go with all the problems you can solve another content you're creating now every wedding you shoot you know the stories you could talk about on the block now every single time you shoot a wedding you can see the different problems that have come up for them in the process since you're so focused on it and you get to actually solve those problems because you're so focused it's a lot easier to solve the problems the more broad you are the harder it is to see the problems as they come and they develop and so I think that out of all the guides your guide stood out to me is something that is so focused that made your problem solving so clear that's why your bullet points are probably more detailed in the majority of other bullet points we've seen and that's a byproduct of really having that target market focused so the five bullet points you chose to talk about a rent a mountain bike and you did go into specifics in each of these I kind of generalized them here for the sake of what we're talking about rent a mountain bike hiking in rock climbing whitewater rafting cycle pub brewery tour and float down the deschutes river and how did you come up with these five you know what kind of what led to these five being come up with ya I wanted to take people from say what the maybe society's view of extreme would be on all the way to something that you know I guess that didn't want to ever come close to say rock climbing wood be able to do or want to do so flow through deschutes river get on the cycle pazin and enjoy some of the nineteen breweries and bend so um so you know you I wanted teo hit most of the guests I think it's great and to be clear it's really important to go back and look at exactly what the title on the topic of your guide was which is this was solving a problem that helps the couples in what they give to their wedding guests you know one of the biggest issues that you have brought up was hey I booked a destination wedding in bend oregon awesome and now oh my gosh I've got it I've got thirty or forty or fifty or hundred people coming and I don't know what to do with them for the entire weekend if they're out there what can I recommend so the thing that I don't know if you're playing to bring this up later but thing that I really love about this is the fact that this is a guide that your clients will send to thirty forty fifty one hundred people and then they all have that saved in their email and when they start thinking because they're likely you know your friends are likely to share a lot of your same interests so when they're thinking about their wedding or when their friends are looking for a way photographer they've got your information sitting there ready right and so this is not just like just for your client's this's for that hole crowd and they will naturally shake that's the thing when we talk about building true believers that they need a mess all they want to go out and scream about on a mountaintop they just need a message to share this is a message to share here is a guide for all of you that our photographer but together they they make it their life's obsession to be adventurous in bend oregon and oh my gosh look at this and they're going to now have a message to share from the mountaintop on your behalf see what happens when you have a targeted brand message everything gets easier everything gets easier so here's something that that you had put in their hiking or rock climbing it smith rock here's your chance to check off that bucket list idea of scaling a hundred foot rock face now if I don't like adventure that scares the living daylights out of me good this is for people who like adventure that's who you're targeting your reinforcing your target market with what you're saying in the guide that's what you want to be doing you want to be constantly reinforcing it if if my wife saw that she would say absolutely not that's great you go do that honey and I'd be like okay I'm in I'm going to bronson I'm gonna get my friends together we will make this a guy trip some of my my friends wives who are totally that will probably come to like I can already see it my head is going to play out yes only thirty minutes outside of bend is world famous smith rock state park where you can make that where you can make that dream a reality first time climbers will want to contact first accent climbing services for an experience of a lifetime great outbound link give him all the tools they need you know I'm just telling what to do you're actually tell him where to go and take care of it so I really great job and all that andi I thought that I thought that you just did a great job talk about an area that I thought you could improve on the guide I think that the guide could have mohr of a why behind it and this is really inside of your intro and your conclusion and when I say more of a why behind it you need to explain to them why you put this together one of the biggest things about solving a problem is that you have to identify the problem to begin with you have to bring make sure that they know that there's a problem there sometimes they don't know that that's actually a problem yet what if you email this or gave this twenty or couples who hadn't gotten that phase of the planning yet who had even thought about this yet now if you do a good job in the intro of saying hey here's a potential problem that we've seen a lot of you want to use that word problem by the way but here's here's something that we've seen a lot of our couples I really haven't issue with or have to struggle with or this is an area that comes up frequently what if you sent that to them but they hadn't identified that yet and you hadn't done a good job explained to them what the problem is sometimes I will get e mails from other companies that do content marketing on dh you know I obviously signed up for pretty much everything I can so I can just see how the people are doing it I probably get way more emails about content than the average person but sometimes I'll get an email it's about something I'm like I don't really you know here's a guy the best thing I don't have a problem for you know it's it's like you know ten reasons why you're you're you know you're facebook buttons don't work I'm like I don't I don't really use facebook buttons sleep and then like three months later all realized that we're starting to use facebook buttons you know this is an example and I'll think oh man there was that how did I go back and find that guy that got sent to me I don't really know or maybe I won't even have seen it I won't even jog my memory and so what you want to make sure you're doing is that in the intro and the conclusion you want to lean into that pain you know kind of clare did you want to really lean into that pain and acknowledge and bring about and bring up that there is pain here you're going to be experiencing you have to put together a whole lot of activities for these people because you're kind of expected to and it's going to take a lot of your time and effort in your professional you don't have time for that so we've gone ahead and giving you a head start on that yeah one of the things that I grasp was how much pain do I deliver to them because you know uh as a photographer say at a wedding the last thing you want to do is shake it up and stress out your clients and I grappled with how much how much do I do that what you're saying because I you know I don't want to say oh and on top of choosing your van you your dress your shoes and a million other details don't forget thiss too on top of all the others had another thing your to do list no I think you bring up a great point and it's a fine line you're right you don't when we talk about solving a pain point you don't want to make it you don't want to make the cut turn into a you know a bleeding wound you know it's a cut that's why you're just acknowledging it with a guide you're solving a problem they maybe didn't even know they had the underpinnings of solvent probably didn't they had is that if it was a big enough problem they'd know they have it you know so that's why I think that goes back to the fundamental ways that we build guides we don't build guides toe solve you know the triage that needs to happen we build guides to just solve the cuts the bumps the bruises that people it gives them an opportunity to really feel benefit you know it kind of goes back to I don't know what line in a movie it is but it's you know somebody somebody it was talking about the gift that they were just given by there by their husbands and they weren't exactly happy with the gift they got because it was something that they needed and it wasn't something that they wanted and none of us really like to get a gift for something that they need I hate getting socks and underwear for my for my birthday because I'm like I need that I don't want that again I want something that I want I want whatever it is you know maybe a new watch or you know whatever it is I want something and guides need to kind of not go too far down the need route we want to make sure that we're solving the things that helped them but not the triage things that are really you know way should solve the triage things that are a part of our business inherently with the service we provide that's a service oriented thing not a marketing oriented thing remember at the end of the day we're talking about marketing and that is why with several view I said let's not teacher down the road of create emmanuel versus creating a guide emmanuel is a service oriented thing that's something you do as part of the service they paid you for ah guide is meant to be all about loving your customer solving a pain point that they don't necessarily feel that you are obligated to solve it's about loving your customers about going above and beyond the call of duty and emmanuel what we've called emanuel that's far today is maura about taking care of the things that you have to as part of the service you're providing them a wedding day timeline would not be a good guide because that's something that is a photographer who shoots weddings you should be providing them a wedding day timeline of your services of some form or another so that's not a good example of a guide so going back to original point how much pain do I lean into it goes back to what you chose the topic and you just want to lean into it enough enough so that they understand what you're talking about it and it's not that big of a deal I'm gonna help you take care of it right now uh okay well that was really fun and I wanna make sure we leave some time for anybody who's online he's talking about some of the things that were going through here with creating guides sure andi actually I will just jump right in I'm actually literally right now engaged in a conversation with photos by deep you'll who would love to hear if you have any ideas for b to b guide's he says let me just pull this out he says my clients are all professional content buyers b that the art director the small business owner the ad execs so almost all the examples who talked about don't apply to my type of content he says he loves what he's learning in the theory is awesome but you love to hear some examples if we could tow work through that said my climb is a professional buyer that's what they do all the time says so they don't need a cz much hand holding is someone who does not use photos for a living like a bride or a senior so do you have any and he thought of how to apply this to be the big sort of yeah I definitely do I mean what I'll just go right to just really really quick for folks who might not be familiar with it be to be basically a business to business so your job is you sell to other businesses rather than directly to clients which is a b to a c b c were just it doesn't necessarily hit you is that different and when you go into it it's actually very different so I definitely can tackle that question all you choosed elina my expertise from shootout at it because she got it is a b to b business so the difference between what we've been talking about so far is you guys are all b to c you're a business that's the first word be to see which is client or consumer and you're selling not to a business but to a person and the way you talk to that person is very different than if you're selling to a business shoot dot at it is a b to b business we sell to other businesses like you we saw the photography business is wedding photography studios they're shooting five weddings or more a year that is who our target market is photography businesses who believe fast is best and you believe that the faster you return your images to your client the happier they are and the happier there they are the more money we'll make more profit they'll generate for the studio so it was interesting for me as I went from being a b to see business owner to be to be to be business owner so let's look at some of the things that she died it is done then we can kind of flesh it out a little bit for photography by the pew lt's example so she thought what we've tried to focus on is let's look at our target market which is photography business owners and try to understand the problems that they're facing so we know that color correction is a huge problem for them that's why we do what we do we solved the pain of post production for the professional wedding pro what other pain points do they have what other pain points surrounding postproduction or do they have in general what we know that photographers who are looking to have that postproduction pain solved they're looking to do it for a couple of reasons they're looking to do it because they spend so much time on post production that they can't do other things where the other things we asked we talked of people they can't grow their business they can't market their business they can't ceo their business they can't do other things like providing add value to their customers so that was where we started when we look at how do we provide content professional photographers what their pain points and the pain points of our target market surrounded around growing your business doing s yo for your business how to sell prince after the wedding how to become better at sales how to have a better online presence how to do better with your website how to how to share images had a network better these are all the topics that the people that used car services had struggles with and that's why we created guides and webinars to solve that problem and that's why we took that focus now he is serving a market that is a bunch of professionals so what I would look at is okay his response was budget issues production problems what type of images to use how many images they need product I said the first time small business owner is closer to a bride than the guy that works for fortune one hundred company and as a whole art department working for him or her right and so he's kind of working with both the brand new local startup and the decade old international brand first off segment goes to that's what first off segment if you know something that is different about the way that your target market acts segment we know that we can talk to a first the bride in her first year after getting married differently than we can somebody's been married for five years he knows he can talk differently he's just said it differently to the small business owner versus the large business hub spot does a great job talking about this on their blood when they talk about personas they their hub spot has three different target markets they target small business owners and I believe they set that it ten employees or less they have and they have a persona for that person everywhere they call him it's like nancy or something like that and they know all about that you know all the things that make nancy excited then they have the medium size business with things like eleven two fifty employees I'm really just I'm coming I think I'm kind of making it up but it's something like that and they have a different percentage for that that's that's bill and they actually have a whole layout of all the differences that bill has and then fifty employees arm or their large scale businesses they talk to them differently they create different content for them they create completely different personas for how they treat that now is small business owners were not hub spot we didn't just aipo for hundreds of millions of dollars we don't need to serve hundreds of businesses millions of businesses so we don't have to necessarily create different segments it's not a requirement for us to byron doesn't have different segments your target market is very focused but if you do know things about your market better different you want to start by segmenting and then to go further he answered a lot a lot of what he told you are the exact guide topics how to speed up the production line how to select the images you need to use what a fantastic resource to go in conjunction with the images that he provides thes people to potentially pick and so these are the areas that he can solve their problems as a b to b business that's great I hope that was helpful for uh great anything else from the chat rooms before we kind of move onto something else so we had I mean we could go on with this for as long as you want I think we've got people who are asking all sorts of different individual suggestions about maybe a guide for food photographers who shoot food at restaurants to somebody who wonders how to apply a guide to boudoir besides the usual lingerie guy yeah way going with this forever let's just go a few minutes okay we got a few more minutes I think look at the time we got a few minutes we can tackle I'd love to take that food one I've always thought about that when I go sit down in a restaurant I wonder how do you how do they pick the food that gets highlighted how do they pick the food that they they photograph in the food they don't photograph what goes into that I'd love to know that if I was a restaurant are their stats on that are there numbers on that what is the proper you know what what are some guidelines for me to select which food I should have on my menu in terms of images which food should how many images should I be using on my website of the food versus the decor how how to build up on effective restaurant website thes air all problems that a restaurant owner faces that relate to the service you provide but don't directly supersede the service you provide their problems and I would think about when I'm opening a restaurant and I need to have images taken those air the problems that start to go through my mind how many images do I need well it probably depends on how big my menu is how many you know should I have one photo for every ten items I list on my on my recipe not by my menu well how should I build up my website should be built on images or should be built more on the core shots of my restaurant thes air all different problems that I think that this person could solve is a food photographer for the restaurant owners that they might serve