Lessons

Lesson Info

What You Will Learn

What you're gonna learn in this course let's do a brief outline before we get into the midi, the nitty gritty and meaty components of it how to kick start the client cycle, how to get it going marketing specifics on a budget how to create a brand that wows how to book the new client with ease okay, how to create experience that keeps your client's impressed and how customer service keeps that cycle strong. Why do you need it? Kind of seems obvious, but let's, you know, going to that you have no steady stream of clients, you're not getting referrals, you're not getting the average sale you want, you can't consistently reach new moms. You are uncomfortable on the phone, you feel scattered in your business and your brand feels unfocused. How many have any one of these components going on right now? I still do if it makes you feel better, and business is just a ever perpetuating cycle of trying to, you know, nurture these things, but let's, talk about what's first, okay don't even bother m...

arketing if your brand is not solid. I really believe in this case we're gonna discuss what a solid brand means first right off about because it is so critical you do all the marketing you want and get all these clients interested but if your brand ain't solid they're out of their skin or their cheap they don't spend money they don't look atyou and go oh this looks nice I'm going to pay a lot it's if you're scattered and you're unfocused in your brand they're just goingto kind of okay I like the work well higher it's a good price will go and then they're not going to make your average sale you want right brand has to be solid first things first so let's talk about the brand it should be your absolute priority in your business I protect my brand like it's my child don't mess with mama on my brand okay that's how important I feel branding is it is your a child in your business think about major brands coca cola imagine if the coat can was purple you think coke would allow that? No way okay companies have manuals this thick on their employees desks how to use the brand the logo on what can be done it cannot be done and that's just the visual components of the brand that has nothing to do with its personality or moral promise which we're all going to discuss here in a second brands consists of so many more things than just the visual components the visual components just a teeny teeny little part of what it means to have a brand and companies protect their brand like it's their child and it's very important to do so and a lot of companies quickly ruin their brand by a bad marketing campaign or advertising okay so I want you to think of your brand is the backbone of your business really it's personality and I truly mean that cause I'm goingto like in your brand to a human being because that's the easiest analogy I can come up with it will help you see it ah brand is the company's personality its visual style and its moral promise to its clients to its customers so we're gonna talk about each one of these individually first of all personality personality what is the personality where you guys think personality like when you talk about a friend what do you say their personalities what's your personality what makes them them yeah what makes them them what else do you any ideas what makes personality their behavior their their characteristics their attitude yeah all those things compromise someone's how they see life are they positive or negative people? If you kind of think about your own personality and your friends and your family's personalities I think that they could be business is and how would that look? Ok a personality is an emotional connection to a brand when you fall in love right when you meet your spouse or significant other he's all over their looks their personality the way they treat life, their moral values all that right it's the same with the company you want your clients to fall in love with your company so you need to your company needs to have the same components that you do as your personality now can they be different? Of course a major corporations brand personality may be different from its ceo's but as artists we have a little easy because our art and our hearts go into our work excuse me our heart you know what I met right? Your soul goes into your work really is what it comes down to no matter what so because are working our style is part of our visual brand the feelings that go into our work and the personality that goes into our work has a lot to do with our overall company brand follow so we almost have a little bit easy but then a little bit scary because you're like oh my god I'm basically pouring my heart and soul me into my brand and what if they don't like it? It's very self worth kind of challenging and challenges your your your own self worth which I think is one of the biggest hurdles that we have photographers have to get over and it's hard to stay true to that and own it when it's so hinged around our self worth okay so it's one of the things that we need to get over and work on when it comes to creating a brand if your brand were a person what would he or she be like what's important to him her I want you to answer these questions when it comes to developing your brand okay what does how does here she interact with the world around them and very important who is your brand speaking to who is your target market oftentimes when we take our own personalities and styles which naturally get infused into our work and hence into our brands we weigh target people who are like us just naturally so being authentic and who you are is a really valuable component of your brand and that will naturally start to attract the audience that's supposed to come to your brand but you also need to analyze it yourself and figure out who you want your target to be in a line the two would your typical customer want to be friends with your brand do your target clients want be friends with you with you know are you likeable enough to them it doesn't have to be to everyone it has to be to them the company they need toe like your company as artists of course we can use our own personality to convey to convey the persona of our brand examine who you are as a person do you want that personality to translate into your business? It doesn't have to you can be someone different in your business that you are as a person ah lot of photographers out there, whether your baby, you know, commercial, whatever you have a certain look of your work and a different part of you comes out in your work, so it doesn't the too don't know who you are as a person and what your work looks like, not your company, brad is like does not have to be the same, but sometimes it's easier to go that route, but then you have to ask yourself if my self worth is so tied into my work and my brand, if that's a scary ground to tread on and can I get over that? Okay, so a brand is also about visual style and moral promise. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about visual style. What does that mean? Sarah petty told me long time ago in one of her videos gush years ago, and it stuck with me. Since then, you cannot build a strong brand on a week identity if you don't know who you are, forget about it your visual style, your visual brand components are your photography style and your collateral identity collateral meeting your marketing pieces, etcetera, etcetera. Your photography style tends to be very deeply ingrained into who you are, there's a part of you that goes into your work, right when you say that so ask yourself what your style is what do you love to shoot? How do you love to shoot it and why do you love to shoot it? What? How and why these elements are the components of your visual photographic style not all of it but answer those questions really well and you're well on your way to developing a strong photographic style now how to do this ask yourself take up take images that you love really strong images that just sing make your heart sing that you've taken that you photographed and ask yourself three adjectives to describe them but hold on I want those adjectives to be three visual adjective and three emotional adjectives for example this is mine okay I am neutral designed and shallow depth of field that's me describing my work physically calm touching meaning touching the emotions an organic feeling organic could probably go physical as well but do you see how I have defined a photographic style by six adjectives it's not it's a serial it's not a solid like yes that's my style I know immediately what I see the words that that's the image no but if you see the image and put the award next what you're like ok I could feel that so helping you define your photographic style in these words will help you not only develop a brand but it will help you stay true to your photograph exile now everybody wants to experience I'm a huge advocate of picasso's quote you know good artists copy great artists steal you got a copy initially you got a copy because you gotta learn the techniques you gotta figure out how they did it then once you do that you learn the technique and then you start stealing stuff when I say steal what to steal mean steal means to take as your own that means stealing components oh I like what she did there I may use that technique in my own thing but I can make it better make it better that's stealing when you grow up on and think about the great artist the world all the impressionists no name and a grandma are they used to like get together and paint together and it's totally steal each other's ideas all the time you want to make that better that's how artists grow and let themselves up that's why companies like this credit bible we're all you know here a photo week getting together and learn and stuff we start stealing from one another it's a beautiful thing okay I think that's wonderful once you start stealing and making it your own then you start to feel your style you go yeah that's me and then you get a look at something that is just a matter of finding out what's worth stealing oh I know I don't really like that it's not me okay see a prop you see a look you see lying technique you see a color oh yeah I like that but it's not my game ok you just have to figure out what's worth stealing that's the whole point of art here's something a little controversial that I'm going to say if you don't know how to achieve the look and feeling you want in your work you may not be ready to build a brand yet if you don't know your style ifyou're not consistent in your work if you don't know where you're going you might want to be really cautious about building a brand because the worst thing you can do is build a bad brand and build a brand that doesn't resonate with your target audience that isn't true to your voice you'll end up changing it it too often stop bad to change your brand it's bad to change it often imagine if I got plastic surgeon on my face every year whoa I don't trust her and I mean I could change my clothes my hair color get my teeth whitened but we're going to plastic surgeon on my face every year you just being a friend would be like julia honey what's going on your clients are going to do the same thing if you try to train your brand too much I know photographers who change their logo every six months are you crazy no don't do that you guys are going to see that I'm about to launch a brand new brand in my entire studio I've been working on this for six months okay? We're going to give you some of the stuff right here incredible upstate but it's ten years since I've changed my brand and my photographic style has changed our luck has changed and the logo didn't quite feel right anymore could I have stuck with it? Yeah but there is as you get in this business more more and longer longer but you'll feel when it's time to change you look at your logo to be like me it's not me I got to change it but make sure you want to change it criss cross me and costs a lot of money change your print out everything and when you do change this kind of thing when you do graduate into changing to your brand rip the band aid off you know how many marking materials I have thrown in the recycling bin in the last week it makes you sick to your stomach yeah it's a lot of money but if I show any old logo here you know forward when we actually officially lost to brand this weekend of that really put a deadline on myself didn't wait go julia you know you you can't show it again it's got to be a full on rip the band aid off okay