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Lesson Info

Marketing Your Business

okay here I was back in my studio with nothing I had seventy five grand in the bank also I had three four thousand dollar wage bill going out every week all of a sudden it money wasn't gonna last long I felt like I did exhausted all of the marketing in my area because I'm sane team leaders to team businesses but there's one point four million people in the city that I come from so surely I had not exhausted that with four managers or five managers and five businesses so all of a sudden I was sitting at home one day and it was a really unique experience I was sitting I was standing with a white head of paper and a black sharpie and I kneel down on the floor and I just said I am a creative mind surely I contend my creative mind into a marketing mind and use that creativity to think of twenty ideas now if I made you stand over here and said you can walk across this floor twenty times and every time you do it you have to do it a different way you would find twenty ways to do it you would h...

ope you would jump you would skip you would slide you would crawl you would shimmy you would dance you would walk on your hands you roll on your head you'd roll on your back you would find twenty ways to get across this floor surely I confined twenty ways to market my business what is it that I need to do to market my business so I sat down and I wrote twenty ideas on how to market a business and I came up with this four times a year there is valentine's day mother's day father's day and christmas these are multi billion dollar hallmark holidays that occur every year at the same time you can prepare your business to market for these events prior eight weeks prior to them and market them right throughout your year I could do charity functions expos I could become a gift with purchase what has a gift with purchase you say stopped looking at other photographers to tell you how they marketing the business and start marketing your business like the commercial beauty industry it's marketing there's once a year elizabeth arden estee lauder mac all of the big makeup counters in the world do something called gift with purchase gift with purchase is when you walk into elizabeth adan and you spend ninety dollars on a gift bag and you get one hundred thirty seven dollars of value extra makeup for free what if I became a gift with purchase what if I went down to the local florist shop on mother's day and said I've got a hundred vouches for everybody who comes in and buys their mom a bouquet of flowers would you give them a three hundred dollar gift voucher from super rise to have a mother and daughter photo shoot sure it's not going to cost them anything what if it did cost them something what if that florist said to me I will give it away to the next hundred people that buy a bouquet if you pay me five hundred dollars what would that value be I'm getting ten shoots out of a tin shoots of an average celebrating hundred dollars only eighteen thousand dollars from it it's cost me five hundred dollars to do that if you want something pay for it if you want a mento pay for one don't don't email people and ask for free if you want advice pay for it if you want information pay for it because it will come back to you team fold but there's no such thing as a free lunch what if we go online gift matches what if we do online gifts luxury rifles private events gift beg champagne parties in the studio women love champagne patties it's like the tupperware party the boudoir party the jewelry party we love parties will have talking we love getting together with our girlfriends what about how can I use my social media staff and send its rewards programs current database what are you doing with your current database are you managing and working your current database to a community book to a faces contest do a referral system a billboard it turns out I have a studio with a wall the size of a billboard honoring the landlord I say can we put a billboard up there he says sure two weeks later we have a campus billboard on the side of our business that you can see from the road amazing cost us four hundred dollars database alliance business network multimedia product youtube so I put every one of these pieces of paper with a black sharpie and I wrote that title on every one of them I think invited ah whole lot of woman to my home and I gave them wine and cheese they were a focus group I told them to come in twos women are more honest when they come in twos they also at least shy because they had a girlfriend with them and they break the ice easily I asked for twenty women I wasn't interested in having men in my target audience because they are not my target market the men come with the girls anyway I didn't need to bring the boys in if you're going to do a target audience for wedding photography I suggest you invite couples it's very important if you're selling to couples marketing to couples that the couples that there in your target so that you can get them mens perspective what I wanted was a female perspective of how my audience was speaking how might macklin was speaking to my audience so what I've ended was got all of these women together and I lay all of these twenty ideas out on the floor and I said right I need some help I need you to expand on every single one of them I want you to help me expand on every one of them all of a sudden people were doing things like where I wrote uh community book multimedia product current data by staff incentives my staff for like what's that and I said well what if I give you fifty vouches each to give people give vouches and the person who gets the most amount of people in said that's the most meant that you gave away with a recommendation I'll give you five hundred dollars gift whoever wins this so I gave my staff incentive to actually sell us now why would your staff go out and sell you they don't have to they come they turn up they get paid they go home they don't care about your business nobody will work in your business as strongly as you will nobody will sell your business out of hours like you will very few staff members were actively work on marketing your business when they're out of work they don't really care they need to do a job why should they I was an employee I didn't care when I wasn't working I used to go around telling everyone my bus was an asshole there's no actively marking my business I was actively de marketing him and devaluing him because I didn't really care okay that all changes it's like when you're a teenager and you're horrible teenager and they wonder you have teenagers and you think if only I knew then what I know now my poor parents yeah so by the way I was a good teenager my sister was a nightmare so all of a sudden we expanded on all of these ideas now these air just avenues that you can make it your business their revenues on touch points to larger audiences there are so many opportunities everywhere and want you worked out ways to get around it it turns out one of my makeup out this mother owned three here salons so she had three entire databases to gift us to suddenly we started to look a charity functions we didn't oprah reveal it hot kids we went toe have kids and we asked for a ten second visual display and then everybody got a beautiful gold envelope with a beautiful gift voucher for this charity to come into the studio and do a beautiful makeover and photo shoot with a hundred dollars to spend on photographs the person then headed lucky spot on the cheer got the free shoot they gotta give felt too to come in and they got a thousand dollars with photographs so it was like the big oprah moment and look under your chair because somebody gets the whole thing four thousand dollars and next minute there was three hundred people at this beautiful charity auction that was a two hundred dollar dinner table and seat sorry dinner plate and they were hearing our name and getting a voucher for our business and somebody was winning it we started to be it lots of charity functions because we will also realized we were helping the charity okay anywhere there was an audience my business was there and I did not need a marketing degree to work this out although I will tell you a little story in the third year of marketing we tossed up over hiring on extra sort of accounts retouch overall general receptionist to keep up with our production because we knew that that would get us a bit of referral rate because we're turning over product beater than hiring a marketing manager that was solely goingto work on getting bums on seats we debated over this for a long time and then we had an idea I went to the local marketing the university school that does a three degree in marketing and I said this is my fabulous small business surely your third year marketing degree obviously need some experience I need some marketers what can you do for me so they'll made they made a paper based on small to medium business and the effects ofthe marketing different avenues with using these marketing students to write a paper on the effects and the profitability on bringing work into my business next thing we've got a live in marketing students working for free in our business for three months theorist always away when you put your panoramic mind onto see opportunity every one of those touchpoints on a marketing has fifty different ways to be heard and seen the story and send a message and send a connection with regards to your business and I always think it's all very well to have champagne patties and wine and cheese and talk about it but at some point the thinking has to stop in the action must start the biggest problem that we have as human beings is it's not the fear of putting ourselves out there because everybody sees it I'm constantly hearing photographers say I was too afraid to put myself out there well I see that I was crying about it before that I remember that fear is being paralyzing I remember it being crippling I remember wanting so much to put my business out there but having a fear of not being good enough or not being valued enough or not being able to go on approach businesses when I changed all of that when I shifted that value and myself just shifts naturally and people were just drawn back into what it wants that I offered and the enthusiasm and the joy with which I talk about what I do I created every idea on that list on a linear timeline said that it could be applied to my business every month throughout the year that is january to december valentine's day comes up first mother's day we're already marketing for in april by the time we get teo by the time we get to august we've already started our father's day promotion we want to start out chest missed I wrote choose missed the first time I put this up and everybody said they're meant cheers miss okay we want to make our christmas vouchers start going out in sick timber because I want to make christmas a time when family come together where it's the perfect opportunity to be photographed my linear timeline was based on el summer being over christmas in january not a cold summer and yours is being in july july is out down month that's our winter month so you have to base it on what your winter month is okay all of a sudden that top layer is called celebration marketing when we're doing celebration mak ling there's lots of different avenues we can take we can do window billboards cards gift vouchers gift with purchase can you be a gift with purchase can you bring a gift with purchase so we have a valentine's day and instead of going to the florist again and saying can you please give us away with everybody who buys a bouquet of flowers instead we say anybody who buys a valentine's shoot for the month of february gets this beautiful pink shimmies we go to the expo show and there we are in front of a big audience and it cost us ten thousand dollars to first display ourselves that girls day out girls day out is a trade show for girls and really it's marketed to the tween market the teen to sort of twenty market but ironically they get forty thousand women through there and the demographic is pretty much half months because mom's bringing those young girls are not just leaving them go there on their own that's their girls day out so what we did is we rocked into the show and we decided we weren't going to give away shoots we decided we were going to sell the shoot for seventy nine dollars so cheaper than normal normally one ninety seventy nine dollars at the time britney spears had just shaved her head and was going through a bit of a rough patch and she was all through the media and that month she was releasing a fragrance called britney spears curious we knew that all the young girls were going nuts over britney spears by the way britney spears at the time was the most googled thing on the planet for two years she holds that guinness book of records as being the single most googled thing on the planet so all of a sudden britney was bringing out curious I didn't care what it smelt like elizabeth arden produced it we approached elizabeth adan and we see could we buy two hundred bottles of curious wholesale now any large corporation like adam you think wouldn't look at us but of course they just want to sell units it didn't matter how they sell them they selling them wholesale so of course they said years and we bought two hundred units at thirty eight dollars fifty and they were retailing at seventy nine then we took two hundred bottles of britney spears curious and they gave us all these gorgeous britney posters and we took them to the show and we're on a photography stand with britney posters and the curious bottle just happens to be a gorgeous blue color that looks like a big sapphire diamond with a spray and little tessa ll that you cook and it's got hot pink ana is gorgeous and we hit a line of girls and what we did was we said a photo shoot and double makeover for seventy nine dollars and you get a bottle of curious for free we sold one hundred and seventy nine photo shoots seventy nine dollars which worked that out mess wise paid for l stand and al staff just in the profit of sitting fee alone it then made back the money that we had spent on the curious bottles at thirty eight dollars fifty so we're making you know that profit on every single sitting faith we had a one hundred percent tune up rate in terms of shoots because they had invested by actually paying for it and an average cell of eighteen hundred dollars we did that in the april of the first year of our business and it took us to august in terms of income okay so what I'm telling you is this at that show there were three other photographers that had bean at night show for five years I know this because one of the other ones was the old business that I'd worked for fifteen years did we beat them yes we crushed them another business that had bean very dominating in an old style of glamour moved out of the studio a month later and then we moved into the city so it stands to reason that they never changed and we snuck in and then exploded on the market a market that had died a long time before that they were only just sustaining and we squeezed them right out because our evolution of our product in our natural light in the way we looked wass superior to this now when I think back to that time um it was such an incredible time of growth but I was always trying to be smarter than everybody else I was always trying to be more clever what will distinguish a difference between you and tina other photographers it's got to be about the service you offer it's gotta be about the product to offer but surely if you think smart the macaroon that you offer has to be better that has to be more creative it has to be smarter don't you think samonas video speaking to the mother market is going to be any other photographer that's just advertising on price you know the story about the connection that we have in the story that we've created and the online community and story we've created around samona having that mom day out is gonna be fast superior to anything that anybody else is marketing on price because we want to start connecting and being better than others and standing out okay event marketing gift bags I want to be anywhere there's a gift bag a fundraiser a door prize a charity a sponsorship a champagne evening we had a champagne evening in our studio way bought twenty bottles of champagne we called thirty three women off our current database that it's been money with us and we said we have thousands of dollars with the giveaways or you have to do is to not drink free champagne eat sushi and we'll draw out all of these prizes the dealers to get in the door you need to bring to a woman that have never been photographed before we invited city three woman and we got a hundred and eight girls hundred night girls turned up we went to elizabeth adam we ask them do you have a free gift voucher that we could give away they gave way eight hundred dollars with makeup we went down to the local biotoxin crystalline we asked do you have a free gift voucher we could give away so that people could have biotoxin rooster than they gave us an eight hundred dollar bo tox voucher in an eight hundred dollar recent and voucher we went down tio we gave away eight hundred on the photo shoot hello dolly gave away eight hundred dollars with a beautiful hello dolly gifts bags and laundry rain sits then we invited all of those businesses that have given way to come to the studio and be part of the evening to talk to all of these hundred women we booked photo shoot after photo shoot we did alive bo tox demonstration which was hilarious we had an amazing night and at the end we dratel the prizes and the best part is other businesses are so hungry to advertise their business is that once you started tow ask for stuff they were falling over themselves to be part of the evening because we was telling it is that we're having a champagne party at the studio and we got bo talks and ray still in an autumn and give vouches next minute we're buying wine at a local wholesaler we're buying the champagne for the evening and the woman behind the counter goes I want to come because we're just being enthusiastic and she goes I want to come out so we have to bring two girlfriends so she turns to two girls sitting at the wine shop and goes to girls want to go to this it's tonight and they're like yes so then she turned up at our champagne evening with a crystal bottle off my way because they told the bus these people came in a border the champagne we're going to the champagne party he said here put this on the gift table all of a sudden we had this energy and vibe around us of just creating this amazing evening that really cost us the price of two large sushi platters in twenty bottles of champagne which we bought wholesale for twelve dollars ninety nine and after the girls had lived we still head eight bottles left and you can create evenings like this you can but what you need to do is stop trying to yell out a message to strangers and start trying to bring friends into your studio start trying to create any situation where you could be a live audience to people talking about what you do showing people what you do and gifting people what you do and then showing them other gorgeous product now it is common knowledge that woman market on the periphery so you can invite women to a champagne party and then market to them about photography you can't do that to guys if guys are there to look at a car they don't want to talk about mortgages they here to look at cars men and more singular minded woman and definitely more peripheral in terms of the advertising in the vision we know this for a fact this is the science of marketing toa woman woman can run on a treadmill and watch tv and taken advertising on the tv mean just run on a treadmill we know that the boys are interested in doing two things at once but they are better at doing one thing than we are so that's how we're made social network viral marketing referrals a multimedia product I think we've pretty much covered that this morning when we talked about video connections look around you your staff your friends the people you walk into each day I got onto a flight from melbourne to sidney after epper awards I was hung over and I had won a really fabulous award I sat next to a girl she said hi I said hi I see that you're going home are you on your way back and she said being working in melbourne live in sydney I said I'm just moving to sydney I wonderful what do you do I'm in events coordinator fabulous I'm a photographer what do you do it like this of course because I've got them in my bag in a gold wallet because my business is gold to me I pull out my iphone and flight mode I show here my my whole dealio she goes holy cow you're good I say thank you she gets how much does it cost for something like that give me the real numbers I said three grand let's face it I'm three grand is what you're gonna want to spend the thing I I did not talk to here again in the flight other than a very polite something and they're not nice to meet you thanks come in town when I got high when I got out of the aircraft got my bag got on a taxi got home half now later open my laptop she had gotten home looked at my web site emailed me in book to shoot which she spent two thousand eight hundred dollars on had I not taken the opportunity to talk to the girl sitting next to me on the plane I would have missed that simple opportunity there is opportunity everywhere there was opportunity everywhere it's everywhere tim farriss your network is your net worth the people that have spent money with you and your business your biggest supporters they've spent money with you they will come back and they will spend more if you do not have a current database shame on you it means that you have absolutely no respect for your client list you have no respect for the people that have paid you you have not befriended them you have treated them like a fly by client in the night that you potentially will not see again if you do not keep hold of this client you have no reason to remark it to them and so hell dear you pipe up after three years expect an update of the details and then throw a deal at them over facebook or over email shame on you okay because if somebody has come to my studio being photographed by me you would know by now that you know enough about me to be friendly enough to me on the phone that you could call me and I could call you would you not say that it's true that I could bring you and say hi I'm up wanna it's so here house of kids also it's time we photographed you again what's mother going to say she's going to say one of two things no see I really can't afford it at the moment time's a taff and you know I just had the kid's photographed by somebody else or she's going to say yes and what happens if she says yes I get another client but more importantly I care enough to not only know here to know about her children and to ask her that I should be able to call somebody that spent money with may and say is it time we photograph johnny again the time if you are not connected to your database you're neat with if you're not connected to your network and a currently marketing to them you have missed a golden opportunity to create in your business the sort of referral and name that you build over time which is what a solid business is an old fashioned times when there was less of a market one business service to family for its entire span of its lifetime a photographer took the wedding shots the baby shot the christening shot one photographer was the family photographer he was a dear photographer why we're not doing that anymore and why are we constantly looking for a new client when you have the name and the phone number of somebody that not only loved your work but they paid you handsomely for it now if you're too scared to contact your current database it's because you did something wrong I suggest if somebody hangs up to you or tells you to bugger off then you might want to consider what it is that you did wrong that you now can't contact that client like I can't ring mother one hour and say I'm a planner it so here I am high so what have I done wrong and if I have done something wrong in the way that I've treated here in the way that I've produced her product turned around her product treated here as a service and she's not happy with me best I know what it is now so I can fix it and terms of any of my other clients and make it right for here wouldn't you agree that is what good services I met this girl here at a photo shoot her name is helen and she came in to a photo shoot and turns out helen there's makeup fattest helen and I hit it off straight away hi how you go and helen has three sisters she has esther if he and chrissy okay all of these four girls also have two brothers six children and a mom and dad have been married for forty five years they work and corporate sydney one of them owns a mini jim one of them owns a cafe and the other one is a makeup artist between them they have six children seven siblings a moment did and one wedding coming up I've made friends with one girl I photograph here and then I photograph his sister's I photograph his sisters and then the two brothers I photograph the appearance I photographed their anniversary I photograph all of the children and next thing I'm photographing their wedding because every woman is a multiple network off other women and when I see when I go into a wedding and this is something I could even talk about this for four hours and it's self if you are a wedding photographer and you want more portrait work and you want to stop shooting winnings and start shooting more portrait do not stop shooting the wedding stopped for one second walk into the wedding open your eyes because when I'm standing at a wedding I'm seeing one hundred sixty thousand dollars with the portrait will pass me in a three hundred dollar dress there are women everywhere with ings the bridesmaids the mother the mother of the grain the mother of the bride they're everywhere and they are there ready for you to mark it to them and connect with I could go on about that for an entire day it is not fear that is the problem it is the fear of taking action action is the single thing that counters stagnation if you're stagnating in any way shape or form you simply need to take action take one brave step for mankind to make your business successful as soon as you take a step forward the fear falls away and you are suddenly left with the feeling off power and you're moving in a ford motion at some point the thinking mussed up in the action master this is something that's written big on the wall in my studio very important we don't gossip we network twelve thousand words a day that's not gossiping that's networking we're brilliant networkers we will network you in the positive we will network you in the negative it depends how we feel about you but what you need to know is we are talking and we are talking about you the more stories woman khun tell the more words they can use the more words they can use the more successful they are spinning through the twelve thousand words a day and the more heavy we are about it so you've got to get these reason women to talk and talk talk ability storytelling in your business what story could you tell in your business do you get the idea that I could tell quite a few about mine do you get the idea that being shot and doing this whole thing is a bit of an experience and something you want to share with all the other women that you are in contact with every time you tell a story about may I get that client