Lessons

Lesson Info

Marketing Plan: Yearly and Quarterly

you talk weekly we've talked monthly we talk quarterly yeah they're still yearly tasks but the good news is a lot of them have similarities to a lot of the other tasks that you're doing revisit your brand message maybe it's adjusted maybe it's adapted maybe it's changed maybe you know even mawr after a year of focusing on a target market you learned even more about them and in fact chances are pretty good you have because you've spent an entire year with this target market chances are you know even more about them as you look back now you can look back you know byron somehow he looked back at his favorite clients well now you have twenty maybe twenty wedding twenty one easy shot of your favorite clients well now you can start to find the favorites of those favorites you can refine that message and make it mohr and mohr detailed make it more and more specific continued to optimize continue to grow your marketing plan give your block a facelift I swear every year I look at our car blocki...

ng up that thing's out of date time from facing a lot of that is our knee jerk reaction is just wanting something new you've got to balance them and we talked earlier about how we tend to share all the images that are different from the wedding we shot whereas for their clients want the images that they saw on the site a year ago they saw on a blogger a year ago they they want that's what the book before they don't necessarily want the newest latest greatest thing they want consistency so you have to check yourself against updating something just because you're tired of it without dating thing because it actually needs to be freshened up but looking at things like that are a lot of times we don't update some of the stagnant things because it doesn't make the top of list because we don't allow ourselves that time to do it a lot of the times we know we need to update our block we know he'd update our website but we don't have the time budgeted and because you don't the time budgeted it always seems to be out of date and doing those things are very important for your business you know something I was reminded of recently I found out I think it was just yesterday about vulnerability in work press sites and one of the best ways to make sure your site isn't vulnerable is to make sure all of your all of your wordpress updates are being managed and I realized that we don't really have a great system for managing our updates we keep it updated but there's not a system behind it and it reminded me I jotted down a note got to make a system for that gotto make it a system for us to update our wordpress updates got us decide if that's weekly is that monthly is that quarterly or is that yearly who's going to do it and I don't want to do it if I am I got to get it on my calendar if it's not me I've got to get it on somebody else's calendar this stuff never ends you're always going to be adjusting update and modifying but it's far better than being on the opposite side of it determined your best performing block post I showed you guys one way to do that just last segment with the facebook in an analyst ation it's pretty easy to see though because you can also go back and look at your analytics but you want to be looking back and seeing what content of years performed the best what do your target market like chances are pretty high because this happens all the time to me I think something is going to be great and it's not or I think something is really not going to be as great but we need to do because it is requested because something and turn out to be the best thing ever it's not always like that I do get some things right but sometimes it's like boy that was a real shocker who would've seen that coming we had a lot of that you know and the important thing is to be able to see that the important thing is not to just push everything out there and go well I'm sure some of it worked looks like something worked I'm still in business you want to have a time set up to evaluate that's a good thing to do every year if you don't build it it won't happen freshen up your existing guides that that that how to grow your wedding photography business guide that I shared if you guys really that was released in may of last year one of the things we're doing in may of this year is we're going to release an updated version that guide not only is it going to be freshened up we're going to make sure that when we link out image requirements on facebook it's actually the updated one that we're going to make sure that everything we're saying in there is updated but also give us a reason to go until the world again about it hey we've updated this amazing guy that we know all of you like because some people downloaded it we've freshened it up make sure it's still accurate make sure all your pinterest links are still live doesn't sound like much fun I know probably should go through and click on all those make sure you still have those links live these are things you do every year research hash tags for instagram jason talked about it yesterday there's some hash tags I didn't know that worked there are I didn't know that I should be using eleven hashtags instead of three did you hear inside the mind of jason and how he gives himself the timeto actually have to research these things he's actively has a plan to look into and say I thought and he's willing to admit his failure to I thought the two hashtags were the best you know what research shows that eleven are better okay but I'm not going to just start doing eleven I'm going to start testing I'm gonna start seeing if eleven are better for my target market but I'm also not going to do is say two hash tag to the best and we're done keep it that way till the end of time so he has allowed himself time he's been sure that his business is set up to where he can continually research that that is what keeps him ahead of the curve and this is what will keep you guys ahead of the curve is giving yourself time to update some of these things okay before we get on to this I want to see if we have any any questions from in here and any questions from online let's see photography by the pool and one other to automate some of your marketing plan andi I would liketo add because we've got questions such from suzanne I love all the ideas which is hosting an event every month taking a client coffee what if you don't like to entertain people in general I found myself procrastinating and never doing so not necessarily for that when that's a harder one but for any of these can talk a little bit about the idea of outsourcing any of it and or automating yeah it's a great point I mean the bottom line is they're looking at from exactly the right perspective which is there's a lot of these things that with everything that you're doing you want to try to find the path of least resistance I talked about this a lot in my last creative live that I did and we did an entire segment on building a manual for your studio that's kind of boring huh it's so vital and what made me realize I needed to do that is that I read the e myth revisited by michael gerber he talks about building a manual for every single thing you do it's a fantastic book a little cheesy wonderful read got to read it if your saint of a business you need to read that book and he talks about going out emmanuel writing down every steps I did I started with our block post every step that is involved in posting a blogged it was over one hundred steps over one hundred steps and so what I realized about the bat is every time every step I can eliminate everything I can optimize saves me time energy and possibility for failure and so I went through it I got it down to about forty five steps which still seems scene but hey it is what it is and through that process I was able to automate somethings through that process I was able to outsource some of those things and see that process there were still things that I had to do but I didn't have to do as much as I did before and through the entire process I eliminated the number of steps from one hundred something down the forty five and inside of that I didn't even have to be the one to do all forty five I was able tto have different things like you know uh you know the images prepped ahead of time selected during the coal by the photographer that was shooting the event rather than by the person who was stucked in a block post me that took that thing off of my plate I was able to use aps I was able to use a piece of software that ran a script that renamed all of the images so I would drag a bucket of images in and it would rename them all for me I found software that made the blogging process quicker that solved several of problems you know you might even want to look into actually outsourcing the process having somebody right the blood we talked about that yesterday and having actually a writer if it's something you struggle with and so in the process yes you want to write every step out you want to try to find every way you can automate every way that you khun outsourcer in source and every way that you can shorten the process while still accomplishing the task to the second point is funny we talk about this morning uh there's actually we were talking this morning as we were we're getting ready for the day there's kind of three types of personalities everything there's two there's introvert extrovert is actually two types of introverts there's a type of introvert that's very shy and isn't really excited about being in front a lot of people and there's a type of introvert that actually loves being around people they look like an extrovert but they they need a lot of time they don't get their energy from being around people and so while they could do it wonderfully they need to retreat and get their energy from being alone and then there's the classic extra vert which is me I'm like I don't like being around people I get my energy from being around people that's probably about the only you can stand up here for so long I loving around people but if you are an introvert figure out the things that you can do that maximize your strength I'll give you an example you're right I lean towards hosting events I love events I love parties I mean the idea of throwing a party is like awesome not only does it benefit my business but I get to go to a party sweet my wife on the other hand is not that way she's the person at a party who goes the party finds someone she really wants to talk to and spends three hours in the corner the room talking one on one and we'll leave a party will be driving home and like what you said when I was a party and she was like it was amazing I got to talk to so and so and I caught up with him I haven't had that deep of a conversation a long time and was like you had a deep conversation tonight what did you do it I'm like oh my gosh I saw every friend I went to college with it was amazing so we all have different ways we add value to want to know what sara impacted that one person far greater than anybody anyone personally impacted that night use your strength and bring it out in the way that you build your marketing plan out you can do that host you know that might not be your thing but you can take all that energy and be an amazing one on one person eighty says jared I'm having a hard time thinking of good topics for blog's et cetera at the moment do you ever ask your facebook fans what do they need help with or want to know more about to get ideas to write about that they're actually interested in I'm wondering if that's something that you that sort of research is something that you do on a regular basis is part of this plan at out so yes and know a lot of what we've been building two is the concept that the better you understand your target market the better you can lean in and understand their problems understand howto love on them understand the things that are going to make them happy understand the gifts you can give them that make them excited understand them and we talked about being empathetic and so there's a chance that there needs to be more work done on understanding that target market and it's easy to kind of get halfway there and go ok got it good check that off the list and move on when you can really actually spend a lot more time on identifying the target market a lot of those things flesh themselves out the better you know asking is always a good idea if done the right way you know I always like to say that you couldn't get any answer you want when you survey people it just all depends on how you ask the question he can guide them to whatever answer you want justin the way you asked the question so you gotta be very careful about how you ask questions when you're asking about things and be very careful not to let too many of your opinions get in the way of that you know if we want to write about certain things there's ways to write the questions that we even don't even realise we're doing and so asking people from a real genuine standpoint asking a proper way is a great way to hear about things you can do but often times we're talking about problems I don't even know they have yet it's a real power there don't get me wrong there's a lot of ways to market and to talk to your target market in ways that they know they need help a lot of them are ways they don't even know they need help people want to know the answer this how frequently should you post older work monthly only or should you try to spread out a shoot over a few months to put stuff from years ago so long as it's still consistent with what you do or do you try and keep it very recent the the on ly reason that it matters between recent and non recent and we won't define recent for the sake of right now but recent matters because there's still the there's still a connection to the event and to what happened and so there's still an amount of buzz about it there's still a reason to talk about it and there's still a pull to it so if I post about a wedding that happened last weekend if I post about ah landscape shoot I did last week if I post about a senior porter session I did a month ago there's still a lot of ample opportunity and reason for those who see it toe lean in there to be connection to the people who are part of it and them to actually have a reason to talk more about it that's really the only reason if everything is consistent between the only difference excuse me if everything's consistent between a recent and a non recent it really comes down to if it's a consistent image of its consistent story it's a story that matches your brand if it's a story that actually pulls together exactly what you want it doesn't matter if it's older if it's new it can still be repurposed and re shared I'll talk about this a little bit later and then we can move on I talk about it later about how I think they even shared a little earlier about how sometimes I'll look over our blog's stats and the most popular blogger post were ones from six or eight or nine months ago over a year ago sometimes um as long as you're being consistent with what you're talking about it doesn't necessarily really matter if it's event or timing specific we're actually a great point all this is built to what I would recommend you start by doing split every marketing task every single task that you can think of split it into either related to a shoot or not related to a shoot every task we've just gone through and there's many more that your individual business will require toe market your business once you have all those tasks split them up are they related to a shoot is it part of a shoot is it part of the process I delivered to a customer or is it not is variable or is it fixed split it down the middle next you're going to want to start a bucket them and then start to assign due dates to each one they could be tended in the beginning here's an example we did with a blogger so our block has some things that are related to a shoot excuse me it has some things that are not related to a shoot the things that are related to shoot the post wedding block post sorry running out of real estate here post wedding block post that's really to do a shoot you can't post about a wedding a shot if you didn't shoot the wedding you can't post about the porter session you shot if he didn't shoot a portrait session that's pursuit post wedding stories you can tell stories that come out of those images if you didn't shoot those images they're related to a shoot that's part of your post sorry your chute related marketing non she related marketing you can interview a vendor whether you have shoots when you don't have shoots if you're just starting out you don't even have one shoot book you can go out and meet a vendor interview them and do a block post about them if it's the dead of winter and you don't have any shoes to publish you can do that you have non shoot related event split them up target market post floating down the deschutes river hiking in the pacific northwest all these things that we've been talking about these things you can't talk about any point in time you don't need to shoot to go talk about them so split up I split this one up and it helps sometimes to think about okay everything I'm going to my block every marketing task after my block go and then started splitting up okay re marketing task have to do for a guide okay go okay everything have to do and just kind of flesh every one of those things out then next we don't want to go ahead and sign deadlines I think at this point these deadlines could be a little bit rough because we know that we're going to put them all into an actual plan a calendar so we and we already talked about all this may be the post wedding block was has done two weeks after the event maybe we then post the stories four and six years after the event why do we do it for sixty years event well thing we talked about earlier so you forget the story lines behind them let's do it sooner rather than later maybe you need to do it three and five weeks out or three and four weeks out because you're extra forgetful if we're basing it on my memory probably to do it the next day and the day after you know I mean we've got to make sure we have a plan for these things and then the non she related things maybe we plan on the second fourth tuesday of every month if it's a monthly item we identify that it's too per month it's not too prick orders not to per week it's two per month when is gonna be done second fourth tuesday of every month target market post maybe that's done the third thursday of every month so now that we have this flesh down for every marketing task we have to do we flushed out of the tasks we started this today's segment this single hereby building out and looking at pursuit tasks weekly tasks monthly tasks chorley tasks yearly tattoo got a big long list of things now now we've split a mall into categories blawg website and we split them even further into buckets associate with a shoot not associate with a shoot for basically throwing cream is wonderful tagging and organizing system we have now been assigned the deadlines there associate with each of these tasks I know it sounds like a lot I know it kind of do it though once it's done it's done then we start to calendar everything now I've just given you if I were to try to show you a calendar where everything goes into one calendar could be massive right second tuesday there that uh and that's why it's good you're going to hit a critical mass if you try to actually write all this stuff out and why you need software and tools to help you but this is what we're just just the yearly side what we talked about would look like so in the yearly so actually this is this is a yearly calendar with the quarterly tasks that we had courtly task of updating the website then we do that every january every april every july in every october posting event maybe our events are hosted february may august and november and you kind of see when we create a visual where it all looks like it starts to make sense we could make a visual of the monthly make a visual of the weekly we could make a visual of the yearly of it we can start to make visuals of it