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The Journey Of You: 60 Day Plan

All right, sixty days. What are what are we doing in the next sixty days? Right again? In the spirit of all this is in case you're missing it. In the spirit of all this, what we're looking to do is identify and break down that master to do list into manageable chunks. So the list I'm giving you please understand is not a do all end all for how it should be done. I'm just trying to give you my ideas. I'm trying to teach you how to go through this because I have to go through the same exercise a cz well, next sixty days, business incubator or new retail space. So if you were going to go after a new space, some of you that may not even be your plan, you might continue to operate out of your basement, just like I did for the first couple of years in my business. That's okay, no problem, but if you want to move out it's not gonna happen in the first thirty, you're not ready for it. That should be your sixty day plan. You're ninety day plan. And so in order to do that, you need to look for a...

business incubator we talked about that earlier in the program. Ah you know those business spaces that you can rent by the week the months the hours sometimes so that you're not meeting with clients at starbucks your meeting with them and you can do in person sales okay or look for a new retail space start doing the research shoots for portfolio if you know that you want to change your style of harvey many many of us want to reboot right? Maybe we're we're going after traditional clients right? You know what I'm talking about what's just the typical this kind of stuff that's fine but a lot of us want to get a little bit more fashion forward things like that and that's cool too but how do you get there? How do you get from the clients you have to the clients you want forget about what kind of photography it is how do you get from where the client you have right now to the clients you want in the future that bridging that gap is not always easy you're gonna have challenges with pricing right? Maybe your cheap today may be your shooting and burning heaven forbid but maybe you want to move into in person sales and you want to have a higher inclined that's great you're not going to flip a switch and this happens you have to have a plan you have to have to start shooting correctly you have to have the right sample products if you've been shooting and burning for one two, three, four years you don't have sample albums you don'thave sample work on your wall to show your clients get them to spend money so making that transition is going to seem like a daunting task back to the master to do list that master to do list has tohave what do I need to do to get from point a to point b we're going to start shooting for our portfolio but there's pride seniors family's baby shooting them is step one we have to edit them make sure we're reading them correctly so that they look the way we want our brand to look which is gonna happen in the first thirty days so let's make sure you're connecting all these dots I can't say I want to be this high end high fashion wedding studio boutique wedding studio I can't say I want to be a boutique wedding studio and then all my images are traditional wedding pictures brian groom at the altar those things don't make sense so the things you do in the first thirty days are going to definitely lend to the things that happen in the sixty day window right so again for example let's carry the wedding theme I want I can't be ah boutique experience wedding studio which allows me charge more money by the way have traditional posing and portraiture on my website and then have a traditional black album those things are traditional. You can't just be self declared, I'm a boutique studio, I'm going to raise my prices, but not have any of the infrastructure to support it. Everybody with me, all these things matter, we've got to get our website updated hasta happen in the next sixty days? That is something that has to happen. Stop procrastinating on your website, it's the one thing you can do and do easily um, we've got to make seo priority. This is the future guys mohr and mohr brides are finding I just did on go behind the shutter if you're watching and there's a new post on seo, okay, we did like six types of audio in twenty fifteen, and the reason I'm referring you to that is because more and more people are looking for local results think about it if you go and you're and you're looking for italian food, right? Let's say you go to google when you're looking for telling you, are you looking for italian food in california? Look for italian food for wherever you live, right? And so a restaurant let's say that is seo optimized for italian food? Ok, just follow along with my example is going to come back first or previously would come back first because they've done a better job of ceo bomb in new york I don't care about a california italian restaurant, I want a new york restaurant, what google's new algorithm and all the things google making putting a higher priority on local results, meaning you've got to now make some changes to your website. My website is guilty of this. I don't have my address on any of my pages. Well, this is going to start hurting me from a new perspective. So even from my ninety days, I have to revamp my website. This is something I'm paying massive attention, too, and so go look at that article if you didn't get to see it, this has to be a priority for us. Google is putting more and more emphasis on local search results coming back, they're going to the same thing for photography so it's not going to just be about st louis wedding photography it's going to make they're going to make sure that your address is somewhat relevant to that search. This is happening right now, there's no avoiding it. Um, marketing material, you've got to start designing marketing, terry, you can't just throw crap together and hope it all looks good. We've got to do this. We've gotta have a plan. What marketing material do you need? Where you going? Are you working with vendors? You have vendor relationships that you're working with uh, what do you leaving off that? The point of self? What do yu putting their form? Does it represent your brand? You know, the brand that we have to identify in the first thirty days, that new logo all that stuff has to happen has to happen now. And if you don't know where to get marketing material from, I'll give you three places four over they photo, marathon press all three of them can handle whatever you're looking for from a marketing perspective flyers booklets. We just did a bridal show we had, like an eight page booklet that we handed handed out two brides. Why? Because I want to stand out from the crowd, say those three again? Yes, so three places to get some of this marking material from a photo four over the number four o v e r dot com and marathon press, three companies that I worked with constantly when I need marketing material, and like I said, we just did an eight booklet flyer or booklet eight page booklet sorry, uh, for bridal show this past weekend, and we did it because we wanted to stand out from the crowd. We didn't want to be in a bridal show where everybody's handing out either a piece of photocopy paper with their pricing on it. Or they're handing out a nine by six you know, two sided flier I wanted to hit him booklet to stand out from the crowd if you want to move up in business, you've got to do things that allow your business to stand out from the crowd. Why am I paying you more money than the other photographers? What makes you different and it's those little things that really make the difference, but in order to have that happen, you got to start designing it now you got to start thinking about this in the next sixty days. I can't wait a year for this, I can't wait, I'll get to it when I get to it, you have to get to it now. Bridal shows december is the number one month for all engagements year in year out december is the month where everybody gets engaged we've had more request in the last thirty days for weddings than any other month of the year because that's the nature of the beast this is when it happens are you ready for it? And the only way you're gonna be ready for it is toe? Have your sight done to be at thes bridal shows these are the things you have to do and let's forget brides maybe you're not a wedding photographer and you're watching today that's fine, you don't have to be seniors what are you doing to market to seniors families what are you doing to market to families head shots what do you do in the market the headshots these are the kind of things we got to start thinking about in the next sixty days yeah all right so we had five votes on this question from elizabeth hilton what are your top market top advice for making bridal shows successful and is there a segment on that remind us no I intentionally did not have a segment on bridal show because we did it in our wedding boot camp and to be fair to everybody the wedding boot camp I don't know if you remember this was almost a year and a half ago so lots of change in that last year and a half so let's let's attack this problem I think it's or this question I think it's a reasonable one we just did our bridal show in st louis there were thirty something for tara has just this past weekend okay fifteen hundred brides thirty something for tigers I love the odds by the way I can't photograph every bride right so I don't mind the other photographers in there it doesn't bother me there's some people get worked up out of so many photographers it doesn't matter there's fifteen hundred brides you'll book some they worry about you worry about your little space your little carpet area worry about that so for me I went to this bridal show and almost every photography booth look like mine because we taught an entire segment on how to do it right, and then we get we get people coming to our booth taking pictures of our booth, they're not bright. There are other photographers, right and that's cool that's a lot of that's, a lot of fun, but get out of my space! I'm trying to sell weddings, right? I'm an active wedding photographer, so I don't just teach. So at the end of the day, how dowe I now that I've created thirty competitors to a certain extent, how do I stand out from the crowd? Because I'm in the same boat you are now? Once I get to that bridal show, does everybody understand when I get to the bridal show? The prides don't give a shit about anything, man, they don't care about this, they don't know what creative live is, they don't they don't know that I teach retire free, and none of that impresses them by the way they care about wedding pictures that's what they're looking at, I have a service, they have the dollars can I get those dollars from them? When there's thirty other competitors sitting in the room, what am I doing to stand out from the crowd number one personality that's it consumer behavior by the way one on one if you have money to spend on things tell me you don't like spending with people you like come on man we all do this we decide to spend money with people we like and we make that decision in ten seconds you walk into a store your world will change if you start understanding consumer behavior you walk into a store it could be a cell phone store and you see two people there one smiling looks like he's having a good time and one is just angry looks like they hate life there who do you go to your natural you know but I don't know anybody who's like no, I think I'm gonna go to the angry person I'm going to save them I'm going to make them happy after dealing with me it doesn't happen that way so number one is personality you gotta be high energy you had to be fired up you've got to be excited about their wedding day so that bride comes into my booth I'm like tell me a little bit about your day I just flip the switch everybody else's like let me tell you about what we do we take pictures were great were awesome here's how much we are uh tell me a little bit about what your day what do you got going on well, we'll get married at the x y z reception all oh my god, I love that place actually we just did a wedding there a few months ago let me show you some pictures and then I pull him over to one of the albums if I have pictures obviously but what I'm the messaging I'm giving you is I'm taking an interest in their day personality that immediately now they go to that other boost with the person with the r b f they go to that other booth right? And they're not having that exchange right? And so even if their pictures were better than mine, I'm gonna end up getting booked because it's no longer about the imagery people are making decisions on other things that's number one number two how do you have success? What makes you different? Obviously I've said personality, but beyond personality what makes your studio different is that you're albums see for me number one differentiator is my albums so we have those albums sitting on a bar table just like this and when those brides are walking by there seeing something different, they're not seeing a ten by ten black leather album that everybody and their mother has they're seeing and eight by twenty an album that's this long right opens up calendar style unique leathers something that it's a show stopper what's going to make them stop and then the third thing I would say to be successful have a show special what is your ct? A called the action what is it called the action you're just handing out business cards and going hey, you know we get some chance book me love you I love weddings, right? No right here's what? We got it looking once you know you like our work we highly encourage you to toe lock us in for today show special say five hundred dollars off any package that's a call the action that's a motivator so if you've done everything right you got beautiful pictures in your booth that represent your style you've presented yourself correctly good personality, good energy you've showed excitement about their day you have that show stopper in your booth something that gets them to say I've never seen anything like that before you're gonna book more weddings at abroad asshole it doesn't matter if there's one hundred for tigers there you will book more weddings I promise long answer we had like our own little segment on broadway shows. Yeah all right, we good we going so I want to talk to you a little bit about your website and no matter where you are right now, I really want you to pay attention because I think I'm going to show you something that's going to kind of blow your mind what do you really know about your website? You know about google analytics, right? So, you know, you had some people come in, you know, you have a hundred people, two hundred, people coming in on tuesday, they looked at your side and they came in from, you know, russia in new york and wherever they came from, but typically that's about all we get out of google analytics, and so do you know where they're coming from? Do you know what they're clicking on? Most of the time we don't the information that comes to us from google analytics, if you have it on your site, is archaic it at best, it's really tough to make sense out of you see all these charts and things, but it's all this, like just convoluted information, you don't really understand it, so you don't really know what they're clicking on on on any giving user level like, do you really know where your users are going through your sight? Do you ever wish you could have them in a fish bowl and just watch what they're doing? Like watch how they're using your sight? This would be really interesting, bright, a focus group we've all heard of, like focus groups, right? I used to do this when I was in it, we'd have people in and we would watch how they would navigate around our website how they would use it because you know the way you think your website works. It's not necessarily how being user works, right? Turn your mom loose on your website and you'll understand what I'm talking about. You like, you know, we have people in our lives that are just technologically challenged. You like? No, not there. Not there. No, no. Right. So how do we how do we understand all this? So I want to tell you about this this company I just started using in the last thirty days. It's called heat matt magic, and so I'm gonna show you some screen shots from this, and I'm gonna show you some stuff I really want to hear from you. If this is mind blowing, kris for me, I was I was really blown away. So on your dashboard, basic stuff, right? You see total visitors to your side. How many pages? How many sessions? Right. So I just started using this in the last thirty days. So great. Thirty three thousand four thousand sessions on my south and kata dot com. Right. So my photography website, it's simple use it, plugs into your word, press obama, show you some other stuff, all you do is you take this little code here this code snippets so you don't have to be a programmer works in wordpress or any site that has the ability to just put in header information so it's just like insert installing google analytics super super simple to use copy paste I use a plug in onward press no program so I wanted I go I want to say that over and over again you don't have to be a programmer don't be overwhelmed by this there's a plug in called headers and floaters and who would copy this code and just put it in one place on your wordpress site and your entire sight will be tried and I'll come back to this because I know there's gonna be questions here's what's going to be on your main bat dashboard right looks very much like google by the way but this is where it looks like google this is where it ends because everything that happens after this is completely unique so I can see how many sessions where in the world they're coming from I can see the united states we had two thousand visitors and all the other countries that they've come from are lit up in green and I could see this great little traffic report of sessions and how much time they spend on the site awesome I could see all that stuff on google here's what I can't see on google I can now drill in my dashboard and see every single user session simple I can also see their path and if the screen's up online you're if you're looking at home, you're going to see you know south and kata dot com investment south and caught a dot com about us that's their path through my sight click by click their path through my sight that's kind of cool, but it gets better because now what I can see is not only their I p address and how long they were on my side and what their session date was and what their browser was all that stuff again basic stuff doesn't really help us here's where the fish bowl comes in, I'm gonna play a little video for you what on the left hand side of the screen you're seeing a play button I can actually play their entire session and see what they saw, so I'm gonna show you this in this video and I can hit the play button this scrolling that's happening right now is not meat. This is their user experience through my sight, so I saw them scroll down okay and it's playing on that timeline so we're seeing the amount of time they've spent on our site they're looking at this main image they clicked on portfolio or investment, so now I see them looking at the investment page scrolling up and down they looked in my price okay and I believe in this particular one I think they went to my portfolio next again this is their session that's been recorded I have this for every single user so now they went back to my main page and I'm seeing real time what they're doing I'm wondering as I'm looking at them what are they doing what are they looking at? What are they seeing where they spending their time okay what is this information worth to you to me this is showing me how how good I think my side is now they went to the about us paige strolling up and down looking at us I couldn't pay for a focus group to be able to do something like this this is incredible for me so how good I think my sight is is never as good as when I see my users using it in real time this feature is absolutely incredible and this was the end of the of their session they then left my sight so they didn't go to a contact us paige maybe they were looking for contact us but they never found it so now I can look at sessions like this and start making tweaks to my web page that I would have to either one never have a focus group come together because even if you try to bring all your friends together in one room they would never give you honest feedback but here you're kind of looking at them in a fish bowl right unadulterated watching them do what they do in your sight like I said this could be either creepy you can think of it that way or you know you understand the value of something like this on your site so I want to make sure everybody out because we had some challenges when we hit play it playing right that play that movement on the screen was not me here doing that that was actually my user session and so if we go back this here on the analytics page every single session on my site is recorded that way every single session so if there's any obviously if somebody just goes toe my main south and caught a dotcom page and leaves that's a different problem I need to solve why they leaving after the first page why are they not going to my portfolio? But for people who are digging into my sight and going to the about us page the investment page about his page those are the ones I want to look at what are they doing? Why are they doing it? Every one of those sessions is recorded I've never seen anything like that for me this is huge to start looking at my site let's keep going on so now there's what's called heat mats remember no program this is all built into my sight. I can look at any single page on my site and see both clicks, eye tracking and scrolling. So I'm gonna show you this. This is the main page of my website. This is now taken all those sessions and shown me clicks of where people are clicking on a heat map is mind blowing is in that so I can see ok, a lot of people clicking on video looking this, though this was interesting to me. You see this heat map right around engagements and weddings, and right around video, they're clicking on that. Do you know that's? Not a link on my website, but that's where they're clicking? I need to make that I need to fix that because the user believes that that's actually a link, so I even need to make it a link or make it not look like a link. These are the kind of things you wouldn't. You would pay a company thousands upon thousands of dollars to give you this feedback about your sight. Now, I've got thousands of user experiences in sessions showing me what they're clicking on, so it looks like video engagements and weddings, and then they're trying to click on this image, by the way, which is really interesting, but then the next hot spot is information how valuable is that it that that information have again is a business owner and running your own website. This to see this for me is huge, but should look at the next one, then we have what's called eye tracking now here's, how this is base it's in theory that your eye follows your mouth so it's following the path of your mouse on the site because it's assuming where everything about when you're using your computer, your eyes follow your mouth's, right? So look where they're look, where majority of that is up around that header with the main navigation kind of makes sense right there, going through that knave looking for things. My seniors has got a lot of hits, and then they're scrolling down in this little area around the connect with sal and then around my kotex st louis wedding photography by salvator cicada that's, where their mouths is ending up most of the time really, really powerful information when you start putting it together in context, more eye tracking. So when you go to my portfolio, this is no ah ha moment for me, this is what I would expect if you go to my portfolio in south and kata dot com right here with this hot spot is is the navigation where I can click from image to image little thumbnails so they're looking at the thumbnails as they're popping up, which is what I would have expected so this just confirms that for me you guys with me is this making sense this one though probably I think beyond the playback of the the actual session the next most powerful feature we're all here with your web developer not you've all heard the term above the fold, right? And so when you're looking at your website, you really don't want to have a whole bunch of information below the screen, forcing people to scroll now right? This shows you a heat map based on scroll and I know it's gonna be hard for some of you see, so I kind of pulled out a chunk what you're seeing on the right hand side is just a grady int showing you what percentage of users are scrolling up and down your screen and so I'm gonna walk you guys through it, a hundred percent of the users are seeing here I make sense ninety percent of scrolling to hear seventy percent are scrolling to here, so seventy percent of users are seeing this and remember, this is taking into account ipad mobile devices things like that not make sense if you come to my side, my sight's not mobile friendly you're gonna have to scroll up and down left and right here's where it gets really interesting yeah only ten percent make it from here down to see the st louis wedding photography all my kotex only ten percent of all the users in my session for thousand sessions four thousand sessions only ten percent made it past there that is really fascinating think about this on your web site this is if you have content that's below this forty percent mark or this ten percent mark if you have content that's there no one seeing it why would you not want to know that information about your sight why would you not want to know that all this content that you think is amazing no one's actually seen here's the proof google does not show you this these are the kind of things you need to understand for your tool and if you remember back to that first slide no program this is just dumping a code snippet on your page wordpress any page you have can do this if you can put google analytics you can put this in this was eye opening to me for my sight and I'm in the process. I told you guys the next ninety days for me I'm already working on redoing south and kata dot com and then there's a heat map which shows you again this is nothing exciting it's your standard starts what's my number one page well you'd expect south and kata dot com then the net on the number two page it is my wedding portfolio that also makes sense, right? I'm a wedding photographer. That's what? I mostly advertised. So this just make might reinforce what you already know. And this is the kind of stuff you can get. I think from google this is nothing over the top. But those previous things I showed you priceless for your business? Absolutely priceless. So this is something I'm using in our business, something I think will absolutely change the way you put content on your website. Absolutely priceless questions about this. Yeah, people are some people are blown away by this, and I was just actually double checking on the link, which is why I have a confused face on my look at my face. Yeah, it might not be working, so we're goingto we're going to double check on that heat map. Magic dot com slash check on it. Make sure the less I can check on it over there. Listen, you checking awesome, uh, and in true creative life fashion, I could see that site being brought down in that five minutes. So, in true fashion, a couple quick questions does this show user activity on mobile devices to us, so if we go back, awesome question, if we go back to this session screen you can actually see the os browser so I can see that they're coming from and you might not be able to see it at home on this second session down they came in from an ipad and iphone so you can actually sort and see here's what the mobile experience looks like here's what they're doing on their mobile device because the behavior from a mobile device might be completely different than the behavior from somebody sitting on their laptop now when I look at google analytics sure google analytics tells me okay, twenty percent of your users are coming from mobile awesome give me something more what are they doing when they're what if you find out that when you look and replay that session you realize that a mobile user can't find your pricing and they just keep scrolling up and down left and right you can't get that data anywhere that's what I love about about this question and some folks are saying it does this just work on wordpress sites? No great question and it works on any side what I was showing you is just because I use a wordpress site how easy it is and it would be just this easy with any any site where you can just put your own header and almost any website you have you can add your header all you do just like adding google analytics is you take this script and push it right and push it right out onto the onto the header of the page. That's it so there's. No programming involved, beyond adding that once you do that, it starts tracking for you. And you have access to all this data, right? You'll want to wait a day or two to start letting the data come together. You don't want to make a decision on one hour of data. Once all that data comes together, you're there.