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Laws of Content Marketing

now we understand how important it is to be using our content authentically represent our brand to share etcetera but I want to teach you guys how to do content right before we start doing it just like blogging without a purpose just like social media without a purpose just like all the different things that we do without understand the why behind it and that without the building blocks ends up wasting our time if we don't spend the next segment going through and flushing out what content good content marketing looks like what it actually structurally is then I don't then I would be worried that you guys would just be blogging without the right strategy or facebooking or using instagram or using your email or your website without the right strategy so that's why we're going to go through and make sure to build that out through the five laws of content marking that's where we're going next five laws those five laws came out of the definition that we had I'll repost that definition but c...

ontent marketing needs to be done right it needs to represent your authentic brand and it needs to be done with the idea of loving your customer in mind and I know I keep saying that I'm going to keep saying it because if it's not it's done for some other reason it's not going to translate very well remember consumers can see through everything nowadays if you're not authentically putting your brand out there in a really fashion if it's not an authentic representation is just gonna be noise and it's going to be lost and it could actually hurt your brand you know content marketing done wrong could look either desperate it could look like you're almost spinning something it could look like you're actually trying teo coerce them into something that's bad for your brand and it might even be without you might not even be trying to do that but if you do it wrong that could be how it's represented that's not good so let me show you guys about the ways to create the content marketing from a standpoint that air fundamentally sound so before we dive in first off if you missed it earlier I'll keep kind of posting us throughout again this is she doesn't it a guide for content marketing and it's really going to help if you are interested in devlin that toe have a lot of other perspectives from other professional photographers and to get some of the things that we're talking about flushed out you go grab that that she'd done it dot com slash marketing and that's a free download available it's kind of a course supplement I know that oftentimes people miss it when we post it so all posted here in there here's what we're going to pull the five laws of content from we're going to pull it from this definition we had up earlier let me read it again and then we're gonna start flushing out the five laws of how to make your content content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content with the intent of attracting acquiring an engaging a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action and that is coming to us from content market institute dot com in my opinion it's the kind of most thorough most flushed out and most spot on definition I've ever seen of content marketing so let's go ahead and start breaking that down let's look at the first point that's made in there we saw in the definition that content marketing is a marketing and a business process marketing as I already talked about you guys is typically the last thing their body gets up out of bed to dio it's the thing we do at the very end of the week but we must do marketing all the time we must do mark in all the time and that's really the fundamental principle of marketing you never heard a b c r what is it always be selling they changed the s to see I don't I never got it I finally figured out oh abc always be selling I get it now always be market is what I like to say way tend to avoid marketing because it's confusing we tend to avoid marketing because it might not be the first thing that we have to do that day you know when we have a choice of what to do something that's due today so that's due tomorrow never really has a duty we tend to not do the things that don't have a due date marketing doesn't really have a due date so we tend to not get to it also it's hard because marketing has the benefit of later you sent an e mail you get the benefit now you edit those photos you get the benefit now you blogging at the benefit now you market when you gonna get the benefit you go network in an event what who knows that they're going to send your wedding you know you build out a guide it takes hours and hours and weeks and weeks about that guide you start saying it out you might not see the benefits from that for years market isn't a now thing and so it's hard for us to make it a now thing in our lives but you have to because we don't do these things to market your business as we've seen you're not gonna have the time to get to the end of the week you know the time to get to the end of the week it's a never ending spiral it's a slow spiral for your business and you must make sure to stay focused on it and that's why we have to develop a process for it so without a system and that's why we're going to build a system this was content marketing will fail without a system it's going to fall apart you might do you might be really good you might stay true to blogging three times a week for the next year you might produce guides you might continually email your past customers you might stay active on social media you might do all these things but it's some point without a system something's gonna happen some emergency is going to come up you're going to get busy you're gonna have more than one wedding in a weekend and then you're going to have extra work that week and then you're not going tobe log that week and because you didn't block that week yorkie bill have anything to post on social media that weeks you're not going to post on social media and then if you do that a couple weeks in a row now you have less content to sharing a guide you have less things the email about your solving less problems you're not getting in front of your customer you're not sharing your target message you're not sharing your brand authenticity and you're not marketing and it just starts with a little little problem little slip up not even your fault really must have a system so it must be a marketing and business process the process were there is just so key without a system it's not even your fault it's just going to fail at some point it's just gonna happen it's just natural not to beat yourself up over it it's just gonna happen it's like waiting for the ball to drop so we have to make this into a cyst and we don't make it in this system it's all just fun and games until something happens so the number one rule about content marketing is it has to be a system if it can't be systematized we can't do it we'll build a system don't worry I'll show you guys how to build a system for it but that's got to be in the back of your mind is your billing this out when you just goto facebook to share something but it's not part of a greater plan you're you're you're selling yourself short if you're blogging about that wedding but it's not it doesn't have underpinnings of your authentic brand message it's not specifically written to target to attract just who wants who you want to book your business then you're selling yourself short and building that process insurers that not only do you do it but insures that it stays accurate and that's the second important part of about a process is that it ensures that you're staying accurate if you don't stay accurate then you're not you're selling yourself short and you're not doing your business all that it could be done for it so think about it it's very you're probably already thinking your mind oh my goodness how am I going to come up with authentic brand message and then make sure that I'm sharing all the little facets of my message and doing it in the right amount of sharing and how am I going to actually solve problems and not solve all the same problems but solve new problems and you know that's why you have to build a process is so that you stay consistent to what you need to do that way you're not always just saying the word awesome every single time you're referring to a couple on the block because you have a system developed for how you're going to refer to it that's how you make sure you don't just all the same problem over and over again because you have built a system that solves a lot of problems that's how you make sure that every tuesday there's a block that your customer knows to go and look for because you've built out a system and so that system insures consistency and consistency creates dependability and it also make sure that you're not going to sell your business short okay let's go on the number two you're content must be relevant and it must be valuable again I'll say it I keep saying it over and over again don't just blogged of log don't just block to block your not doing your business of service it has to be relevant and it has to be valuable let me tell you how important it is google addressed a little bit earlier they're coming out with an update so google released a couple of updates for the last couple of years and they call him their panda and their penguin updates now again I don't know why google chose pandas and penguins apple follows the cat theme well until yosemite's update now actual apparently in national parks so maybe the next one will be yellowstone or sequoia or something but google is following the mammal theme so we have upend update with the penguin update this next one who knows what they're gonna call it these updates they were designed and targeted specifically at content they were designed to penalize anybody who was producing content that wasn't actually relevant and valuable google figured out a way to tell if it was relevant and valuable one of the biggest metrics they used is did anybody read it how long did they stay on it did they share it did they comment on it did they do things like that they also have a whole lot of other algorithms that you have two hundred fifty spammy links in it did you know those kind of things really rooted out a lot of the affiliate marketing that was kind of going on that was bad practice and that was their goal I'll tell you what guys if google things that's so important that you provide relevant and valuable content so much so that they're willing to absolutely gut their current model for ceo and build a new one I can tell you it's relevant and valuable for you to create relevant relevant valuable content so once you've defined your target market this gets a lot easier it really does because now you can see who you're talking to once you've defined that target market it's not as hard it sounds really hard to create relevant valuable content when you're talking to everybody when you're a photographer for anybody who is in the northwest that's a lot of stuff you gotta dress there's a lot of problems if you're a photographer for anybody northwest but as you define your target market you can love on them and solve their problems and it becomes very simple so how do you get started by providing them so if your ideal client tends to get married outdoors now you can provide more relevant content if your ideal client gets married outdoors in barnes now you can provide even more relevant content you can take outdoor barn weddings and blawg about outdoor warren weddings but really that's just the image is there just to get the conversation started now you have all the problems right in front of you that you can solve for people who are getting married outdoors in a barn what if it rains what if the barn falls over what if you know I mean think about how I had to decorate the barn because typically it's a blank canvas lighting for the barn oftentimes they have to bring in their own power do you know they're going to bring in their own caterer you know I mean going on and on and on you can walk them through the entire process and all the problems that go into having an outdoor barn wedding but you can't do that if you don't know if that's your target market and it's a lot harder when you're talking to everything you know anybody who needs a photographer in the northwest you must focus on your unique message every single time and that's how you make it relevant invaluable maur valuable to fewer people is better than less value to more people so the more you could be valuable to a fewer number of people that's much better than trying to provide value to a large group of people because you're just providing less value so even though it sounds like you're cutting off a lot of the market when you have a relevant focused brand message that's authentic to who you are they're not because you don't need to book hundreds of brides every year you don't need to be attractive to hundreds and thousands of people every year the same is true for you senior porter photographers event photographer's corporate photographers videographers graphic designers all of you guys out there watching you don't have to we're in a personal service business you don't have to book thousands of people a year you're not slicing off ah great chunk of the market when you focus on who you authentically are and build a brand message out of that and just try to attract those twenty to thirty weddings a year those fifteen to twenty one year before you move on yeah I would love to address really quick just kind of a question that's coming up in the chat room what and it seems almost a little pedantic but what is the definition of valuable and relevant I mean is are you talking about valuable teo you or valuable to the customer what makes something valuable to your customers and relevant to them relative that's good question there's two ways to look at first let's look relevant relevant means it's timely relevant means that when it shows up when they see it it matters to them right then and there relevant has to do with what they're going through right at that moment and how what you're providing them intersects that so it's not relevant for you to post a block post that solves the problems of people who are ten years down the road after getting married it's not relevant to provide a block post but let's get you could get even more niche down it's not relevant to provide a block post to somebody who's getting married in a barn wedding but but if you provide that block post for them in october because many of them will have already planned out that wedding and have either got married that summer or that fall so if you have a season now the aspect you want to think about when you're providing that portion of planning the barn wedding what would be more valuable to them in october when most of either just gotten married or are getting married in that month relevancy has to do with the timing of when you deliver your content one of the most s o s you don't here's an example that we used we delivered greeting card templates for professional wedding the doctor's last year we did it for them and it was highly time to be in the I believe the third week of october now when you photographers don't typically put a huge emphasis on greeting cards that supporter photographer thing so porter photographers if I was gonna deliver free kind of greeting card temples to help out porter I would've done it a lot earlier they're thinking about green cars a lot earlier in the season whiting photographers I know because I was one it's an afterthought and so what we tried to do is say hey we know it's an afterthought it's the end of october let us help you out if you have any clients who want order greeting cards but we'll make it easy on you and so we delivered that to them at the time when they would need it the most that's relevant valuable valuable means that they are attracted to it and it adds value to their life so when I see that content in my intrigued because it's a problem that I have because that's something I need information on or is that just more noise was that just another buzzfeed article that I don't care about I love busted by the way but let's be honest not ten articles I'm like who would ever click on that but then there's somebody who clicks on all of them because they're so polarized but is it noise or is it highly valuable for them right that is going to add value their lives in a way that they can self actually taken lean into and say yes I'm clicking on that I'm attracted to that I'm excited about that it's adding value it's not just more noise that adds to all the noise I had to deal with all the e mails I have to filter through all the facebook post I have to scan through to see one that I want that's how you know that has value in the room here want to make sure you guys were where you can ask questions as well love to hear you guys so far all right that's fine we actually great so I have our target demographic pretty what I think is pretty well now it out so we actively market to mom's there twenty six to fifty three that living within thirty miles of where we are that make more than seventy five thousand dollars a year that are college graduates now what yes so you have segmented your market well that's a good sign now okay but you still haven't told me anything about them I still know who they are what they love what they do what makes him excited looks him out of bed in the morning and we say it's there kids okay but past that I had a blank wall what about their kids they love their children they love their children well you don't work segment three is all about building that message on dh so I'm gonna ask you some more questions then what kind of dive into more because you're right that's a segment and I think what's really important here to look at it that's a segment you know more about who you're talking to then so many other people but you still don't know what gets excited you still don't know how to provide them valuable content you provide them relevant content but you could provide the valuable content but it's like being the photographer for everybody the northwest it's not going to get them to go how are they how is she talking just to me you know I mean how is she literally talking just to me right now and so there's more you have to uncover but side just segment in your market and we'll do that what will kind of get in that great question number three attract a choir and engage so you're content must attract it must acquire and it must engage let's kind of go through each of those okay attract does your target market want to do anything with it so we talked about value the number one way you can see if you're content is providing value is if it attracts people it's the easiest way to see if it provides value doesn't attract people to it did they take action is it attracted them is it attractive to them I want to kind of give a kind of flush out something here about the attractive part you've got to stop if you're doing this I'm not saying you are but if you're doing this you've got to stop it because we think that as photographers that what is attractive tow us is attractive to them not always hears it he's a trend I see out of a lot of us we shoot weddings for living we should allot of them the weddings have a lot of the same things happen now do they so what do we do when we go to blawg when we create highlight images and we create slide shows we tend to feature all the images we shot that we've never shot before well that's all fine and dandy for you but that doesn't mean that the bride wants to see those brand new fun shots he shot a matter of fact you could make an argument that that flies in the face of your style which is why she booked you she booked you because demons is she saw you shoot before she's not necessarily paying you to be a fun free artist to create that don't get me wrong I don't think it's great a problem but I do see is that we tend to provide content that attracts us rather than again thinking about content that attracts our target market we tend to talk all about the brand new apple computer that's coming out because we get excited about it it's okay to talk about it but don't make the mistake of thinking necessarily that's what a tracks your target market your target market might not be not might not be as obsessed with the fact that you finally learned how to use two off camera lights and got this amazing sunset image to her it's a beautiful sunset and she's innit great posted on let's keep going again I'm making it very I'm boiling it very very very much down to brass tacks what I'm getting at is that oftentimes we post stuff that attracts us we content market stuff of tracks us rather than thinking what is attractive to my target market what are the things that get them excited it must acquire so it must be easy enough to obtain that they follow through what's the next step always be thinking about that is there a next step is their next step on your block if I already have the bomb your blood post is there a next step I could take great if I was on your web site and I was at any page on the website is their next step I can take if I was in when your guides if I opened one of your e mails if I was out a networking event with you anywhere that I am is their next step and is it easy to get to or is it like jumping through hoops to try to do it this can sometimes be technological based you know like no I have to invest in some technology here well maybe you should if you're blawg is still that just the word press out of the box no customization no style no theme you might be making it hard for them to take the next step just because it's hard to navigate this could even be a navigation thing if they get to the bottom of your blood post and they say I love that how do I take the next step is there a next step engaged so the third is to engage it's got to cut through all the noise and it's got engaged them in a time where there is so much noise and by noise I mean all the stuff we're bombarded with I wish I'd written it down I was listening to npr and they had a wonderful kind of case study in the amount of words we heard and saw in the nineteen fifties first the amount of words we heard and saw in the sixties and seventies eighties and eyes and now and now in the two thousand two thousand ten's and it was obscene it was like one hundred and fifty fold so what we got put in front of us even just two decades ago we get inundated so how is your content gonna rise above the noise and really let's be honest how is your content going to be what provides value because if it rises above the noise and click on it didn't provide value you're an even worse spot than you were if they didn't click on it because they just wasted some of their precious mental energy on something that didn't provide value them so it's got engaged them and that's where that trust comes into play when you engage them and they engaged with you when they click when they read when they open when they share whatever it is they recommend when they refer when they do whatever it is they do and it's met with a wonderful experience with engaging valuable relevant timely good content good experiences all those things then trust goes up trust goes up they're more likely to do it again it becomes a bit of a snowball effect so again attract acquire engaged is the third tenet the third of the third law of good content market it must do thes three things remember this is all pulled from that definition of content marketing out of content mark institute quick question on that we've got a conversation going on with photos by dip you'll who is wondering where I go to find out what attracts my target market and because I think this is such a huge issue that you're bringing up it makes me I see it constantly like I have a lot of photographers on my facebook feed and I constantly see them posting things and it's all stuff that would attract photographers not necessarily their clients and so I think it's such a huge issue and I'm really glad that we're talking about it now photos by the peel is specifically looking for attracting their target market is business is their business a business like what did they say they said agency's creative departments professional buyers of photography etcetera so how do you what are some ideas of how to figure out what he's attracted to your client when it's not necessarily something is straightforward is like weddings yeah well it's all about so right now what I'm seeing that the trend is is segment teen versus understanding your actual target market and understanding more about them way have ah kaitlin kaitlin are marking coordinates she done it we talked about time about individualizing the experience and what that really refers to is going past segmentation and into actually understanding the nuances of why they do what they do so if they're trying to attract agencies and other businesses that's a segment that's great but what is it about them that they do what is it about them that what problems are do they have in their businesses if there you know let's just say that that I don't know but let's say he is trying to attract his target market is marketing agencies so his business provides services to market agency's what problems do those market agencies have where do they have trouble in booking customers where do they have trouble keeping customers happy where do they have trouble keeping customers for a long period of time where do they go to get their customers where is the most expensive places to go get their customers where the cheapest places to get their customers where new places they can find new customers not his business the business is he's trying to attract what's their biggest problems with retaining their employees what the biggest issues they have with making their employees happy what other companies like these target mark companies and what are they doing unveil what they're doing case studies on what other companies they're like their target market are doing to be successful getting into the nuances of why and what rather than just staying at the segmentation of it it also would help and we'll get into this in the third segment if he could instead of being so broad if you could focus in on you know maybe market agencies that excel at providing services to companies that air five ten employees in the creative space now I know even more about their problems and how to solve other prom and that's how you really develop content that strategically focused at attracting is when you know even more about it when you focus your mark it down I bet you there's a ton of marking agencies that are folk that have five to ten employees that are focused at the creative space that he could he could bring on and marketing agencies aren't going to be just high we do marketing they are sports marketing they are whatever they happen to be their very niche there figuring out what their niches is going to help you target them as your niche it's all about getting into your target market rather than just yourself on dh this is a good time to bring it up I'll just bring it up quickly we'll talk about it more later it's and this is a confusing this is a confusing one by the way we're gonna explore it I'm not going to necessarily tell you how it is but it's tough because often times there are similarities between our target market on us especially the personal service businesses often times our target market likes wine and we like wine oftentimes our target market dresses the same as we do takes the same vacations we do has a lot of things in common and yet oftentimes they don't and I want to make sure the highlight that it's okay if they don't and I also wanna highlight to be careful not to just try to go out and get more people just like you your target market and you have areas of intersection and have areas they don't intersect and that's ok for each of us they might have more areas of intersection or less areas of intersection but important to draw the line and the distinction there don't necessarily just try to go out and build a target market that's entirely you it might or might not be the right move for you we'll talk some more about that number four it must be well wow we just walked right into that one didn't clearly defined and understood target audience that's great I was looking at up there on the screen too and I was thinking about it I realized it wasn't up on the screen so let me flush this a little bit more just with some of things I want to hit on again the target audience is very important the harder you work to define that target audience now the better you're going to do with it so remember the more you start talking at a wide array of people the less impact you're gonna have the more you focus in on a specific target market the faster you can attract that specific audience stain broad and stained segmented isn't going to help you as much as fine a unique authentic message what are you into what are you passionate about what makes unique these are the things we're gonna touch on right after lunch that helps drive past the segmentation I could tell you the segment of photographers that by from shootout at it I know all about who they are but it doesn't tell me what makes them do what they do it doesn't tell them what gets him about a bed in the morning doesn't tell what tell me what excites them um it's about understanding your target market not just being able to define them understanding them yeah we've been around for seven years and I find that uh you know what I look back at all our clients they're all over the board you know in terms of its very hard to clearly define uh them entirely sometimes it's very hard to define them looking back but once you determine what your sometimes and this is this is a case of that it might be with you guys is they might all actually have some similarities that you just haven't learned how to see yet because you don't you're not looking for the right things or you don't you know it's impossible to see that because there's a million options looking back you know it's like well I can't see are they all you know do they all come from the bend oregon area well no ok so maybe I do destination weddings no not necessarily okay do they all tend to be you know young well no I had some older couples do they all tend to be you know college graduates well no we had a lot of others you know a lot of creatives that didn't finish college detail and looking back it could be really hard to try to find the answer it's best to start now and to start from now and say let me build an authentic message let me build a message and then let me look back and see if it's actually trending at all that's what we did obama photographers and I found oh looking back now I do see the trends so one of the air I can't get too far ahead that's coming in second three but that is one of the things that we do those we look backwards expected tryto pull trends out you know it's one of the things that I went to college for stats basically I majored in something called econometrics which at ucsd which is an engineering school I was like of course we know exactly what that means but the bottom line is I went and spent four years doing I still in the things I did graduate thankfully but basically combat tricks is about statistics and one of the things they teach us there and I thought was very valuable because it's easy to do is that you can make the numbers show anything that you want it to you can make numbers show you anything you want to it doesn't mean it's right you can ask a question a certain way and get a numbered show and be like look eighty seven percent of my couples book from facebook and whatever the number is and the most important thing though is that that's not the case and the numbers can show you anything looking backwards and very rarely are there as many connections as people think there are in the data you know and we were trained at ucsd to make sure not to not to get too far into the data and let it tell us stuff that actually isn't true and so often as we're looking backwards we will find and this is to the opposite side of your point you were saying it's hard for me to find something oftentimes we'll look back and we will find things that actually don't correlate well say oh my gosh all my couples love wine well okay I mean you know sort of I mean if you ask the general personal street do they like wine they might say yes you know I mean what are the rial underpinnings of who they are and what they love we can find these things when we look back something that we could almost create them we can find this these relationships that actually aren't really the things and what I really don't want to do it and go on say we're the photographers for the y knows of the world when you aren't you know you aren't really that's not really your authentic message you know and so it helps teo teo look back with a real big grain of salt you know take everything you look at with a grain of salt couple questions from folks online that I'd love to hit first of all for different people want to know the answer this how can you define your target when as an artist you are still going through transitions and figuring out what direction you want to go that's a great question if you build a message based on you and your authentic brand it doesn't matter where you're going doesn't matter who you're trying to attract based on you and that's the secret there you can't be that way you're not you're not doing the message on a moving target it's not going to change on you down the road I mean sure we all changed but there's certain core innate things that make each of us pretty dog on unique if you build a brand on you and on you and your authentic message you're gonna be ableto have a target that you hit every time and the best part about it is it's you you don't have to try to be something you're not it's what makes you happy it's what brings you joy tree knows I talked to us a lot at my last creative live session will flush out the messaging side of it after lunch but I talked a ton about how to really dig deep and understand more about who you really are is an authentic brand uh has an inter personal service it's a tough it's tough no doubt about it because we're not trained to think this way we're trying to think like coca cola which is be everything to everybody every single person in the world who can drink a beverages coca cola's customer that's not us that's just not us we don't need and shouldn't try to build we also don't have a billion dollar marketing budget when you try to be all things to all people you darn well better have a big budget you don will have a better have a massive staff of people to do it yet we should always try to be everything to everybody and expected me to come in and they don't so remember let me just go through example are you a photographer okay good if you say I'm a photographer now anybody who needs to talk to the entire world as your customer try solving their problems it's gonna be hard to get them the lean in because you're just going to solving very big problems okay you're a wedding photographer okay great now everybody who needs who's getting married needs a photographer is your customer it was your target market still a lot of people okay you're a san diego wedding photographer ok we're starting to get a lot more narrow down we're still just talking about segment though you're a san diego wedding photographer now anybody in san diego who's getting married is your head needs a photographer is your target market now what about if you are a san diego beach wedding photographer okay now everybody in san diego who's getting married on the beach and needs a photographer is your target market what if you photograph tattooed brides and grooms on beaches in san diego now everybody who's getting married on a beach in san diego and has tattoos is your target market now all of a sudden talking to this group starts to take shape now the sudden we've got a lot of problems we can solve for them now all the sudden weaken talk directly to them now the sun we've got some things that are very interesting that we know exactly how to address beaches tattoos but more importantly deeper than that now you have a demographic you have a persona for who you're talking to that goes far beyond you know women twenty two to fifty five etcetera etcetera now you know the core of people and by the way we could get even more detailed but you know having tattoos that says a lot about who you are getting married the beach that says a lot about who you are having tattoos and getting married on the beach says even more about who you are etcetera said that's just one example but do you see how the power of understanding who you are trying to target and developing a unique brand persona for that market begins to make content marketing so much easier really quick actually judges one more I also want to find out if there were a lot of people who are asking you this will you be covering how to best market when your photography is aimed at more than one type of client for example if you do newborn photography and say boudoir and maybe there's something will address in the next segment when we're talking about websites but when you really clearly do have two entirely separate markets I would highly recommend when you have to separate markets unless their life cycles of each other you need to find a way to split them out or mark or talk about them completely differently and we ran into that problem obama for doctors that was a real real life problem because we obama tars it's about weddings and corporate head shots I have nothing to do with each other I guess once in a while they do and that was a problem that over the years as the market has complete change is just a real problem that you know that that takes a lot of addressing and if it's a life cycle so for example we shoot weddings and then we shoot babies because people who get married tender than going have babies that's a life cycle progression but if you're not a life cycle progression its increasingly harder to market to those to the separate completely separate segments and again with this newer style of marketing didn't used to always be that way now more and more it becomes increasingly difficult to be authentically marking yourself when you have two completely separate branches of your business so it almost is like you're just running two separate businesses at the same time that happened to be related basically exactly now their lifecycle event so we can talk about it so this is great I feel like every is asking a lot of great questions this is a lot of fun it and I love that the questions were leading to what we're going to talk about because if they were completely off base and I'd be really worried you know if I wasn't going to address any of this stuff I think oh boy we must have really missed the mark here the number five it must drive probable customer action to me this is a natural by product this is a spinoff of do what you love and you never work another day in your life if you are trying to market a business that you don't love if you're trying to market to a type of customer you don't understand that you don't authentically work with then it's going to seem like work and this is going to seem like a big deal it's going to be this is going to see might work for you if you are authentically in this to give if you are in this authentically to connect with people that you should be connecting with and if you want to add value to those lives then this will not seem like work because a profitable action will follow because of your heart it really well it's not just a rosy sweet message because when you start giving to people in a way that they actually get value from it think about it think about getting a gift from someone that doesn't add any value your life it's just a nice gift first off it's still nice to be thought of I always love when I get a gift even if it has no value it's very nice but what about that gift that just was perfect how incredibly valuable that make you feel if you're doing that for people this will follow profitable action will follow because people will not be able to stop themselves from talking about you sharing you sharing your message being attracted to you what your apart up they'll follow you long after they become a customer so the authenticity is so keen this if it's not authentic this will seem like work I absolutely I just I I work harder than I've ever worked before and I couldn't be happier about it right now because I get up out of bed every day to help photographers grow their businesses and I get to have a huge impact on a lot of photographers with what we're doing that she got at it not just with the color correction I could tell you stories I mean that's how we solved our problem and it changed our lives and then we get to go on and do that to all sorts of other photographers and solve the pain of post production for them but beyond that even with just what we're doing with our marketing and with our resource is we're not just trying to help photographers with their post production we're trying to help them with all areas of their business and when I do that profit surely will follow because I'm contributing to the industry in a valuable way might not follow right away it might not follow in exactly the manner that you want but if you're doing what you're love if you're doing what you love and you're authentically representing who you are it will come because there's nothing but good things that could come from that and that is the truth so you need to stay focused on that don't try to create a message just because it sounds really good don't try to create a message because I I think that would attract a lot of people don't try to create a message because that's where all the real big money makers are build a message build a message create a message that is focused on who you authentically r and you won't have to feel like you're working another day of your life