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Marketing Systems Q&A

a couple of folks were asking can you bring some of the systems and templates talked back to say the landscape photographer so I just want to address that and say it's exactly the same that is literally exactly the same I mean your answers are going to be different but then again your answers are going to be different for two different wedding photographers like people were pointing out that you know you're not gonna wear a cocktail dress if your aesthetic is that you shoot in warehouses that's what the specific answer is going to be different but the systems are going to be the same you're still looking for all those touchpoints you're looking for all the repeated writing that you d'oh you're looking for all those things and creating the templates yes and then the ten percent is you that is what you're responsible for so I can help you with that ninety percent but the ten percent is what you need to figure out that's your brand that's what you should actually suggest your couples wher...

e that's you know how exactly you want toe word certain things and how you want to infuse your brand in your voice into the system maybe the ninety percent is everyone is going to be creating prince and selling them to people the ten percent is how do you frame them how do you deliver them are you showing in galleries were solid you know so but it's the system the approach to it has exactly the same eso let's see what are your thoughts this is for j l j three seven two what are your thoughts on outsourcing the sails we so are galleria proofing gallery does sell prints for us which we think is great and we love that process because it does free ourselves up quite a bit we're not focusing on making the vast majority of our money on prince after a wedding we do sell prince we get we generate extra income through that because we do it through gallery but that's not where we're focusing our efforts it's not where we're planning on making a lot of profit where we make our profit and sales is in albums we sell a lot of alba lem's and that's something that I don't believe that I could outsource for our businesses because we're sitting down with our couples presenting albums showing to them having a conversation and that's where we make a lot of our money is in those album sales afterwards so I think there are past ways to generate passive income by outsourcing sales but there's probably areas were business that if you want to generate the most amount of money or the most profit you are going to have to be you know working that system yourself that's the brand inside what you're yes just like that sales would be a branded side at least for your business and yes definitely I was like from from the majority of photography well personal service businesses I mean that's indicative of questions he has business often times behind sales you're providing a service and you are providing many time's a luxury service so people do expect a personal experience that's why I say sales you are probably going to be personally invested in that portion of your business selling booking the wedding booking the portrait session for senior portrait photographers if you need to you know having a sale session afterwards to have them actually purchase really nice prince products that kind of thing you're probably gonna have to be invested in that what we've got here and I'll come to the audience here in a second do you recommend keeping the templates short and sweet and females in general I tend to type emails that I think are too long and too detailed and I think common thing that many of us including myself I go back and forth on this thinks I'm guilty of the same thing writing emails that are way too long and important formative but it depends on the communication that we have a lot of templates are short and sweet to the point and friendly and personal and then there's other ones that are very lengthy like when we send our tips email for engagement sessions that one's quite long but it's broken up and it's organized and it's formatted in a way that makes sense it's a balance but I do believe in my experience that the vast majority of our couples in the vast majority of our couples are millennials I do believe that they appreciate information they appreciate knowing the process they appreciate knowing it quickly easily and simply but I I would err on over communicating then under communicating on dh that's what I've done in my business and I feel like it works really well great degree percent actually I concur great we've got one here from herman chow and three other people want to know this with the ninety ten split how can we get the partner when we don't have the budget so yeah when you financially no it's right toe outsource that well when you know it's financially right to outsource that's completely up to you that's not something that I can answer for you but there is going to be a time when you won't be able to financially outsource an entire part of your business I will say that there is a point when you're going to have to take the jump and invest you know investment doesn't necessarily mean that you are you completely one hundred percent like ready for it you are making an investment to grow your business and so that's why you need to view it as an investment so as soon as you can free yourself up you're going to make more money in the long run because you've invested in a certain area however you don't want to put yourself in a poor position by doing something financially that you're not able to do financially but work towards that goal so that's I mean as a business owner you need to decide when it's right for your business and what one of these solutions is going to be the most profitable for you in the long run michael gerber talks about this a little bit is in the book the myth revisited which we've talked about a little bit earlier one of the first chapters yet is agree it is a great book one the first chapter one of the first few chapters is basically chaplain if you look at it we pull back and look at its about when is the right time to kind of outsource and he shares a story about how this person waited for him what was about to long and so what happened when you wait too long to outsource is that you you're usually buried and overwhelmed and inundated and so you don't have the time to train you don't have the time to set up and manage the expectations that you have that outsource partners so when they fail you feel even more worse off than you were before gerber also does talk about although not as much about the cost of outsourcing too early and if you're not ready for it yet you don't have able to use that time I mean you gotta ask the question offer yesterday about at an associate photographers and the first response was if you don't have a lot of leads it might not be the most you know you don't want to jump into that until you're ready for it there's a balance there has to be a balance you have to be at a point where you still you don't want to wait so long that you don't have the time to set them up and go through that process because it is going to become a big part of your business but you also don't want teo I think that it's it's one of those things it's not going to leap of faith to some degree there's always gonna be a little bit that investment process and you have to take a little bit of a risk knowing the time you came back will be spent towards growing the business to make up for it and I know that that she got it and then companies that we work with his well they've advised us on this and if you talk to them and sort of conversation say do you think that this is the right fit for my business do you think that I have enough volume or should I wait a little longer you know they'll help advise you to and say you know what I'm not sure that this is right for you quite yet or maybe there's a better solution that works for your scale a business or where you're going or what you want todo you are the reason why we say five weddings or more we actually don't think that we're a value to get five weddings you're less so talk with that talk with companies as well they're all very wonderful so they'll be able to advise you and help you with that too so I know you already answered the question on sales but I just want ask again kind of from a different perspective or situation so is that something that you feel you should never outsource for example like way we do a lot of engagements for people who didn't look the wedding with us a lot of you know what they do in the wedding out of state or boudoir and we have them come back in and purchase what they want to after the session and I'm really not good at self but I'm great at marketing and sales is my huge weakness and I just want to give everything and I have a hard time asking for money because I'm just a nice person and I feel like our business could make so much more money if that was something that I did outsource you're saying if you hired somebody into the sails for yeah and see that's I mean that's a judgement call for you I know that that's something that for us with our studios we do have a sales person but I do all the sales for the younger and myself I've learned how to do it and I've developed and I've grown in that and if you want to hire an outside sales person if that's going to be a big focus of your business if you're doing a lot of sails sessions post portrait sale sessions that sort of thing I know that there are some very successful portrait studios that do higher sales people to do that for them so if that's where you want to go you know that might be a goal of yours to say someday I want to have a sales person do this for me and so that's you're going to grow your business in a way that's gonna allow you to hire someone maybe on a commission basis maybe on a salary that's up to you but again that's something that you will have to think about on your own and I think that if it means that you're going to grow your business and make a lot more money if you have someone else doing the sales actually talented at it and specializes in that great I think it's a good decision for your business but then if you're good at it you can make a lot of money out of doing it yourself on and it represents your brand it is a part of your business that you should be invested in regardless in many ways yes you know because it's such a it's such a false so far on the brandon side of things a cz you talk about you know it's almost as big of a decision as bringing on an associate photographer you know photography is the way that we generate profit and since that's on the branded side of charts you put out bringing on associate I mean that's a big it's a what did you just do that lightly don't say I have a few extra weddings that people that have available units robbery thing let me just bring on associate that's a big model question you don't want to go into associate photography model without having it really be a part of your model otherwise it really could set yourself up for disaster yes so you would really have to model your business around that as a system itself in order to make that sustainable for you but we've got a couple of people who are asking andi I think I know exactly what jared would say to these people because it's something that we've addressed a couple of times but I'd like tio hit it anyway if somebody who says I don't have a specific target market right now and not everyone looks good in cocktail dresses what do you suggest to those clients have all different varieties than orange fields says in my business actually market two families and babies and weddings but my common denominators documentary photography so is that enough of a brand to mark it to different people and I want to approach those questions because I know you're going to say specialized like that's what you need to do to make it up but what I want to address them is for those people who are currently in that situation do you guys have a way two template eyes those when you are talking to a bunch of different people and it's hard to know it's hard to set up just one specific answer okay so we're talking about you haven't figured out your target audience yet or it's just a really broad audience because it's families and babies and boudoir I don't know rock bands whatever it's everything if you have if you have different types of products that you're delivering so let's say portrait's and weddings and rock bands let's do that then I would set up different templates for those you do need to work towards figuring out what your audience is for each one of those and they're going to be different and you need to build templates for each one of those we have different templates for each segment of our business and we have quite a few of them we have a bunch of them in the commercial realm weddings portrait's large studio weddings and portrait and then we have boutique wedding so we have built templates for each one of those different end user markets we know our ideal client for each one of those we've built the templates towards them so specialized yes as much as you can narrow it down figure out what it is you want to do what you know a handful of different channels you know you want to focus on and then build an ideal client for each one of those and build templates and work flowed for them I think the youngers are actually wonderful models of done right but the amount of work it takes when you don't especially one because you guys have really three or four specialty video you have three brands for that you have three businesses for that it's I mean it sounds like a ton of work yet people who are focusing on three or four different things in their business at one time are in essence sort of doing the same kind of thing and it's not a knock on that you have become very successful but it speaks even more the power of the system you build focusing on target market it's going to be different for each one and having a target market defined and then plugging in the sources whether it's specialist whether it's systems whether it's software to execute for each one of the steps long yeah we have at basically have four different audiences that we're marketing to a different price points in different products so so we've we've become very experienced and marketing to different audiences I know the younger is very well but I also know all of these other audiences extremely well and they're very different from the young grins and from these clients you know wedding couples for bombing photographers are completely opposite of the younger and they don't wear cocktail addresses to their engagement session in suits they d'oh but they have you know a rock and ferrari with like you know a really hot dress and they're they're looking for dramatic they're looking for edgy they're looking for fashion forward I want sophisticated and elegant and classy who wouldn't want that if you're a lawyer I know you are there it is it's a bunch of lawyers lawyers and doctors