Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating a Marketing Calendar

Okay, so you want to create a working calendar we want to give you guys a structure to work with you have to understand your structure you also are were gonna teach out he's a color code system this is sort of the absolute way we run we're able to do all the things we do and we're going to develop a system that works now this is my actual marketing calendar and this is also hundreds of other photographers marketing calendars because this is our university calendar. So what you're looking at here every color code you see on there is an actual working campaign that you can click on and doubt not here but you can you can actually have access to and put it in your counter now what I want to teach you those of you who are not members of the university I'm gonna teach you how to do this because this is something that I did about eight or nine years ago when I realized marketing was pretty much running me I had to take control so anybody could do this. We honestly make it extremely easy for y...

ou but the idea is everything you see on this calendar that's blue means it's in the design phase that means this blue tow us means designed creating plan if it's an orange face that means it should be going to press you've had four weeks to do it if it's in the red phase and means male two clients so if you look at that calendar you could see exactly what we're up to every day of our lives as are hundreds of other photographers now I'm going to break it down to you how we actually map it out this is the important piece because when you're making your own calendar this is the part that is the most time consuming but if you'll dedicate yourself a week or two to get this all mapped out understand that once you do a year's worth a calendar uh it recycles the next year and you never have to do that again so becomes an incredible tool so we're going to back it up let's say you want to do that model search in february esso in february you're you're planning on sending this out and how you have to back it up four months we actually work in a four month cycle so everything we want to shoot we're going to back it up for months before so that means in november in blue on our calendar is going to say baby model search that means design plan create correct so we're gonna go pull out the old campaigns or we're going to vent the new ones want to spend time on it we have four weeks to get that done these deadlines are very important now move forward four weeks so now we're in december we're december tenth now in orange, it said baby model search that means I've had four weeks to work on it, and now it needs to go to press if it's a printed product, it needs to be, you know, send to the printer if it's an e blast it's good to go depending on the type of thing is it just means that it needs to be done by that date. The orange on our calendar is the most critical color. In fact, we have a rule in our studio if something comes up in its orange, nobody goes home till it's done because with four weeks we've given you know how everybody is. You wait until the last day. This is a good way to just tell yourself to get it done early instead of waiting until it's late. So in december, it's going to be an orange now let's go to january in january, I'm trying to think is that, uh, the color's off a little bit it's supposed to be in this one? She had that is red. Ok, good, it didn't look read from here, so I'm on a kind of weird angle, so now we're in january. And of course in january in red on the tenth it's his baby model search that means you've had four weeks to get it to the lab to get it back or to get it to the press get it back and now it's ready it's got addresses and labels and you've timed all that out and now it's good to go to the clients, which is exactly four weeks before we want to do the session does that make sense? So it's super simple if you take everything every campaign you do and put it on a four month cycle taking the date you want to shoot it and backing it up for months all of a sudden you've got a marketing marketing calendar an actual working calendar. Once you do this, you start to see consistencies that are very important so you can start to see where you have been slow and you could make changes. Now I also want to talk about a social media counter because that was a question that came up and I want to make sure that you understand how tio relate and you are gonna be dependent paper eventually you guys won't cause you're gonna get the pdf so don't but you guys out there are gonna probably want to write some of these down unless you're getting the program, if you're purchasing the program, you will in fact get the pdf of all these lads you don't have to write so much, but with the social media calendar first of all, in our studio, we plant it on the first day of the month. Our goal is to write the outline, we want to organize it and we want to actually schedule out a month in advance what we're going to be talking about on social media. Social media is kind of the big monster it's the thing that we all want to do and we think it so it's, just a paragraph on facebook, it's hard it's usually the day you have something great to say, your daughter's sick and you can't get there so that's a hard thing, so you're looking at the same calendar. But now what I want you to focus on are the little green box is because these air also, um this is also our social media outline on that calendar on the second day of the month, the first monday of the month, you could see it says social media outline because hundreds of students actually we write their social media outlined for them and they download it. We technically give you two weeks, so I want to make sure you understand this we try to get well. In our studio we try to get it done the first couple days of the month but we give you two weeks, so technically week number one starts the middle of the month and the reason that we do that is just to give people enough time to actually write it out if they're doing that now once it's written out the first post that you're going to make is week number one is the middle of month week number two is the end of the month and then the next month this week number three and number four so what I'm saying is you're pretty writing the information picking a targeted day that you're going to start posting and you've got four weeks worth so every wednesday you're going toe cut and paste that important post now the reason we do this wednesday is the most important day of the of the week to post on social media sites and we're gonna cover why that is later but that's our chosen day now does that mean you only post on wednesday? Absolutely not if you can post every single day do it but most of us can't so if you can on lee do it one day let's do it on the most important day now our planner looks like this this is an actual pdf that we have that we write it for people, but if you were to create one this is week number one week number two and we have two categories, so our goal is to at a minimum post two things per week what's really important on the social media planner are these things up here and these are the things on the little categories these are the things that you should be posting in your social media and I'm going to go through every single one of them and this is why you probably need to write it down or you can get the video and you don't write anything go creative life all right, let's talk about this every single month you should include at least two business updates a business update would be something about your studio that you're selling or doing so in other words, you have a new session type you're doing fairies you doing angels, you have a model search that would be a business update, you should have two of those you also should have to personal reflections now personal reflections are about you, but this is not bragging or boasting this is hey, we're doing a charity or hey, I met this awesome creative live event and I've got a ton of information and I can't wait to share it with you this is telling your client that you're an active photographer and that you care about them and by educating yourself or doing things in your community europe you're an important person that you mean something to your community. The next one is two interesting facts now this has nothing to do with photography. This is your way to be a community expert. In fact, in our studio, we specialized in babies and children, so we post things like, by the way, the circus is coming to town, and we found this thirty dollar off certificate that you can use or you know what, there's a great farmer's market on saturday, I go around ten o'clock hope to see some of you there, so it doesn't always have to be about selling things on one of the best things is really creating that relationship with your clients when you're at the farmer's market and you run into somebody and they say thanks for telling me about this there's, a huge connection there, you become a real person outside of your studio, so interesting facts are about are you sure they're not about your studio there? Anything about your studio? They're just making you human now. Informational tidbits. Now, this is what we always call this in our studio, we call the spotlight. We tend to use this to spotlight our clients. Now we work with I know a lot of you know, I work with a lot of nonprofits, several that are very personal to me, and so we work with a lot of terminally ill children, and when we dio what the one thing I found working with terminally ill children is you certainly can't change what's happened to them, but you can give their parents of voice you can imagine if you were going to lose a child and you knew that there was nothing you could do. The thing you would want to do more than anything would be to stop it from happening to somebody else. And so by getting out there and sharing the message and that's, what these parents end up doing is trying to create funding and help provide information for these causes. So we reserve an area for our clients, we select certain clients we're working with, and we give them a chance to tell their child story as well as share the information about the cause and help produce funding for the cause. And this such a big deal because you could imagine, is a parent just tow have a voice to know that people are going to hear you means something so you can use it any way you want, but for us, it's, you know, we work with very special people, and it gives us the chance to do that the last one. Uh or the next one I should say is to session highlights now this one I have a huge soapbox you might want to roll it in case I'm about to give you a speech and I'm very serious about this one there I only had about five soap boxes in the next three days this is definitely one of them now this does not apply to wedding photographers so those of you who are wedding photographers don't panic don't start sending in text messages because we know that you've got to get your information out there I'm speaking specifically two portrait artist families babies, children never ever ever ever ever did I mention ever post something on the internet before you've sold it period ever never put your work out there before you've sold it because when you do you lose you lose the license to that to that image now I want to explain why and how we do it because you're saying to session highlights well how do you do that then the way we do it it's exact same thing and has the same effect but when a client doesn't session and they come in for a sales session at the end of their session we turn to them and we say by the way these are beautiful would you mind if we put a couple of them up on facebook because we love them? Do you know what mom heard I think your child's so cute she should model can I show you? Because that's what they hear right? So when they hear that, of course they're like absolutely please do and we say, you know what we know you've already signed armada release we have a specific model release that will give us it the permission to put this on social media and we make them sign a second model release because that is very important even though I'm already protected. I understand that when you throw something on the internet, you can never get it back and so there's a different type of protection there, so they sign a second release, their super excited. Now another thing that we do, we say by the way, if it's okay, we would love to post it on facebook and tag you so your if you don't mind, would you mind going on facebook real quick and becoming my personal friend? Now you all understand how facebook works, they have to be your personal friend in order for you to tag them in order for you to maximize how facebook works so you even though I have a studio sight, I have them become my personal friend because now I can take those images, I can load them up and I could tag them and guess what all their friends just got notification that their portrait just went up now I also I also put those images I linked them to my studio page so now I've got a connection there where people if they're friends end up there or if somebody goes there there's still tagged back to that work, so that is how you can utilize utilize facebook and make that happen yes, so I want to just ask if you could repeat that again and with because I think a lot of people don't know is that every about the tagging absolutely facebook on lee's only allows you to have five thousand best friends in the world it's the most pathetic thing I don't know why they didn't but if you can only have five thousand friends they give you access to those friends and that is your personal group so anything you tag meaning attach their name to they'll get notification and their friends will get notification this is how we create those little pods of people but unfortunately there's a limit to that so once like in my side I've hit my five and I actually no offense to the universe everyone's have to delete people I just close my eyes because I don't like killing people like that but I have to keep mine down below five thousand so I can have my client's on board now once your client is your personal friend you khun tagged them and their friends will get notification and it's basically hey suzie smith has a picture that went up so all her friends were going to go oh wow susie let me check it out as soon as they do that they're on your personal page now keep in mind they are on your personal page if you have pictures of yourself naked on the beach they're on your personal pay no or half naked I should say I think get naked but if you have pictures of you know your kids in their recital and whatever it's okay but just know that they're attached to everything that you do and that's okay, I actually look at that as a personal reflection and I don't have a problem with that at all, so so it is very important that you do this now the reason I said do it after has the same effect as soon as I get it. If you were to go to my website and look at the post, you would think I just photographed that session today when in fact everything on my facebook site was probably shot two or three weeks ago when the clients have placed their order. What I've done is controlled the sale I've collected my money and now if they go take it that's ok, now I want to prove this to you because on the university on my side the sandy puts university I tought I teach this every time I get on stage well, there was a little debate that went on it wasn't an argument, but there was that one of our students that was really adamant that she believed in what you call the sneak peek that's that you shoot the session and put a couple up there to get everybody excited and there were a couple of us that were really adamant that it doesn't work in a couple of that said, I think it works so I said, all right, you guys, we're gonna put you to the test. There were five people involved, they were women, five women photographers and I said, here's, the deal, you guys way made this whole thing public. You have to go out, and I want you to do the most amazing session that you do this week pick the most amazing image, the one that you know is the wall portrait when you are going to sell to that client, and I want you to put it on every social media site that you have and make sure the parents know that their tagged them or call them and let them know you love it and that it's up there, okay, do that and I said, and then I want to know the results I want to know how many or what happens so it was so awesome because it took a while for everybody to get their sales down and finally the last person came in and I got the information and I finally could present it out of five people that posted there absolutely star image that was going to sell exactly zero sold that image not one of them sold the image that they thought was the most powerful image they created that tells you something huge there is a problem there when you put it on the internet you know what mom's gonna go oh my gosh that's cute she's gonna pull it off a screen cap it she's gonna do something and she's going to send it to grandma and go look how cute and grandma's gonna say send me more and that's how it's gonna go so understand you put it out there it's not yours anymore I know people still my work I know the minute I put something on facebook mom's pulling it off but you know what I know if she's paid her bill I feel a lot better about it than when she never come is back in order so again I don't mean to soapbox it too much but I'm very serious now weddings of course we're different because with the wedding you may need to get those images up and out right away and keep that and plus you've collected your money in advance so one more question or we could well, I think you know, we were having cem cem questions back and forth and in here people trying to understand so the difference between tagging people on your business page versus tagging them a few are friends so somebody who just wants to keep their friends cecil do you do you think that you lose people if you ask them to tag them selves on your business? Not at all and that would be the second option is they can go in and tag themselves, but you don't get that send out to everybody like you do it's not quite as powerful, but we do both we tell them we tell them be our friend and go tag yourself on our friend paige we want to maximize those tags but you can't tag individuals karan your from your from your fan I'm sorry cannot yes from your fan page you cannot tag currently facebook changes every three minutes but currently you cannot tag somebody that is your friend and have that send out like that hopefully that makes us I know it's very confusing and the biggest thing with face because there's so many great articles out there and I'm not trying to put you off but it's one that could stump us for a long time so go out there and research it, ask your friends and ask people who are using it successful look around yes you got to say for pages I've got my personal page and then I've gotta katie photo books page so are my katie photo books that's all the pictures from my sessions and then I add clients his friends on my personal pages, all my kids, me being silly with my friends. I'm a business facebook page, it's professional and, you know, just images that I want to be seen, and that is a great and then you can add frame with and then those clients of my personal friends are my personal friends for me, it's just I couldn't keep up with that having teo, I'm going to do it, and if you have time and, you know, it would be nice, but I'm gonna talk a little bit more about how social media is an extension of you and to me. It's okay, when my clients see my kids and you know, except for the one that's in college she's attached to everything, those toga parties throw everything yeah, sloan were quick question from a monique v, is there an image that you love? And if the client doesn't buy it, do you still post that up there? I'm saying not the on ly post things that were purchased from because obviously then you're really truly giving it away, so it's really let me rephrase that if it's for artistic reasons and I want to post it because I truly love the image but I might not tagged the client on it at that point I might just stick it out there for the rest of you to see and not have them know that they can go take it from me so that's ah that's your own personal discretion but typically no how's that thank you but we're gonna go into social media now and kind of following forward because we kind of have talked about how to use how to use that social media planner now this is cool. This is the question that was earlier influences how two people buy this uh these are all statistics which I'm fascinated with fifty nine percent of people ah group of people were surveyed fifty nine percent of them said that word of mouth was the most important purchase our way they purchased the interesting one is tv news was forty percent but internet searches was thirty nine I taught this exact same statistic eight years ago internet search it was at the very bottom of the ladder so it's fascinating to see how rapidly this has moved up to where you have just as much a chance of getting somebody on the internet as you do catching them on a tv commercial and we all know tv commercials they're not an option for us. So where the mouth will always be your number one priority. But internet is obviously very valuable. A cz well.