Lessons

Lesson Info

Marketing Products

Policy changes, everything changes, so how we can produce changes as well? So the very first one is really your product, and this is a really important to understand, because what is it that you're giving your clients? It has to be something that they want and has me something that you're willing to sell, and it can be a service and it can't be a deliverable earlier, we talked about the inseparable services are inseparable products, and I use the bellhop is example, but it's same thing as a photographer, the moment to demand it while you're shooting them, you're offering your service for them, and they're receiving as a subject for the moment you guys walk away, he put your camera down to return it off. The service expires, so you can't truly skill that and when I see skill it's sort of like pretend pretend like this course. If you want to download it once or download a thousand times for play and a million times, it doesn't matter because it's scalable the script in the coding would a...

llow you to see it as many times as you want, whereas you guys have a limitation as a photographer has a small business, there are limitations to it and that's the scalability, the only thing that's sort of not a scalable with the products that you sell so what products are those? What is it that their wants and willing to spend money on and that you're willing to produce at the same time? This could be prince albums eso fourth but again as time changes social cultural expectations and norms and lifestyle change so you change accordingly as well. Next time you have to consider would be the price how much to charge? This is very important when it comes to marketing because we're charging too much no one's going to buy you charging too little people may also not by you because if you really think about earlier when we used indicative value would you pay ten cents or a quarter for a piece of sushi? Probably not sounds fishy, eh? So you just don't do that because it's so low but if you talk about other things, this is were indicative value and numbers and expectations come in but you have to do so within opportunity costs and or what they called the btp or willingness to spend our willingness to pay. I'm sorry, so on the top is your is their willingness to pay at the bottom is the opportunity cost when for those who are in the where opportunity causes everything that one person has to sacrifice in order to get whatever that one product or service is demanded so an opportunity cost for me being here on creative live is sleeping or eating are relaxing and not sweating like right now and being nervous being relaxed you know these are all my opportunity costs I'm giving up everything for this one choice that I make so when it comes to your clients they are making choices too what are their opportunity costs and what's their willing willing this to pay your goal, of course is to increase asshole as possible their goal is to decrease it as much as possible and I'll show you on economics charts later where you actually find the balance it's really interesting, but you have to understand where the pressure points are the threshold of pain and how much they're going to go before you know they leave and find someone else. The next p is promotion promotion changes all time because we can talk about ads back then if you talk about asking for talk for ten years ago, the only way to really promotes to advertise in the magazine but now you can have direct advertising or direct promotion when I say the rectum tom, you're going to bridle exel's you're going to pet expos, you're going to um high school is receiving your porches these air direct marketing paying for direct promotion w o m m is abbreviated for word of mouth marketing anytime someone says something that's where the mouth marketing social media and search engine optimization you can pay for the services facebook especially wants your money I mean twitter can do the same instagram eventually because it's owned by facebook and whatever mediums so promotion is one very big thing the next p would be place or distribution really there's a whole thing call the right time in right place type of model so if you think about the brick and mortar situation you wanted to be easily assessable but if you don't have a brick and mortar store and you have all my store you have to be easily accessible for them so have a website prominent certainly no social media presence and you want to be easily found on search engines again these air three inbound traffic sources but if you think about off again this strategically thinking it's about the place but tactically it's everything else we talked about social media and I'll search engine but also when you're doing consultations willingness to travel how far they're willing to travel how convenient for you for you for them to meet with you how do you communicate if you guys are living countries apart skype you know I chat whatever the case you have to understand all of them so when it comes teo as earlier invention and last segment is about market segmentation because once you understand how you can promote yourself you have to know where to promote yourself this is where you're going to divide the markets into how you're going to price and position yourself the very first one is really sells estimates so you have to determine what your market potential is this determines how you going to price and position yourself. So if there's a high self potential, you're obviously going to charge more because more demand but there's a high competitive environment the my charge less these air different things that affect how you going to position the next one will be cost estimates soul you can position yourself in terms of old because there is cheaper equipment, cheaper cost for wages such as interns or an associate shooters less taxes this also determines and how your price yourself and position because in new york the tax the sales tax rate is eight point seven five percent of course that can change but if you're in the netherlands, the tax silvery is twenty one percent. If I'm not mistaken, can you see how automatically you have determine you have to be flexible and agile to adapt to different situations so you don't want a price yourself out but you also want to under personal so far but when we're talking about market segmentation this is only the physical world you really also to consider the online world social media fragmentation is one very big issue right now I don't know about you guys but I have to maintain about four or five different social media you know channels at the same time and it's really difficult because I don't want to say the same thing for all the channels because then people want unfollowed because if I'm saying the same thing on twitter is same thing on personal facebook same thing on my brand page facebook and on instagram and on linked in and on google plus I mean if they're all the same thing, you just follow all of them and just follow one am I correct? But if there is a different content for each one, even if it's the same photo different caption different call to action different something make it worthwhile for people to follow all of them the sill despite the fragmentation and it's becoming more and more difficult to mother and to handle because you also have to consider what content works better if you think about to enter its more text based even though they're trying to become more visual and even some audience followers are have different expectations. Maybe facebook likes more travel and means like jokes, while instagram likes more food because it is more of a food type of and platform. So you have to know what type of products from which type of um platform lawrence what are your big five? I feel like I'm talking about being on safari or something the big five what do you make? Five was far social media you said five right here on five platforms, I don't even know how many, how many? What are the five that you use the most? Um, I know we're going to get into this little bit later, but definitely instagram and twitter or my parents or my two favorites because I can law there things fairly quickly. Short snippets. Facebook has gone to a point where I have to money, the networks too large for me, a mother, everybody and I tried to I still like to know what's going on. So even though I'm not like mothering my competition or what, you know what things of that sort? I still like to know what's going on in the photo industry and that's how I sort of scan and see what's going on, but as we mentioned earlier, facebook has the power to control of exposure rates, so it's drop from one hundred to sixty to forty two four so if it's going to drop any lower or even at this point, it's makes it very difficult for me to commit any more energy on a platform that is going ever smaller in terms of exposure. So why put in the effort? But they have their they have a monopoly in terms of having everybody on the same platform. So you stories still have to do it for you on google plus carpentras I am on pinterest and I am google plus and I will talk about how to most effectively used pinterest later on there's a little trick to down but the very simple and google plus it's a hard one because it's still very narrow tio google employees googlers as well as a lot of photographers too, but remember, if you're trying to market to other types of producers or other photographers, then great you know you want to maintain a top of mine awareness for them, but if you're trying to find brides or seniors or things of that sort, it may not be the best platform, but again, everybody situations different, so you have too much you have tio choose which one is that one eulogy that most results can I ask one more question going to be a pain? Um I've heard rumors that you do not show up on google search unless you have a google plus account or the way to get high up on a google search, you must be putting your stuff up on google plus, do you know if there's any truth to that and there is a little bit I will talk about google authorship later tomorrow? It does help because it includes your circles and again, all of this always changes google changes that no one really knows the algorithm, but you sort of know general rules of it and then you just constant have to tweak and play along with it, and since they have a monopoly over search, they control a lot of it, so you have to play by their rules. So in a way yes, and at the same time no, we'll we'll be getting into that a little bit later, I will be okay, thank you. So the next part we have to stand the test of products you going to do when it comes to products. There are really four types, and this is when we're going to get really interesting into interesting topics regarding how you can craft the proper content to be found and to be shared, because ultimately you have a lot of questions on what do I write or what do I blogged about when I'm not active or when I'm too active or the way I write about the other thing, too is you also have to understand where you stand in terms of these four tears because different tiers have different requirements, so the very first thing is convenience products convenience products are not necessarily you guys right now because it again I mentioned earlier photography is a luxury convenience products requirement, minimal efforts so their products like candy, milk, chips, bread you know, I'm not not quite you but again I still put it out there because strategy course you know you gotta know everything next one is shopping products considerable effort so this includes warranties, clothing, cars, phones you know you have to determine that, but again, every target audience is different because I'll give an example in terms of specialty products this requires great effort to acquire so lots of research very expensive, very unique it could be a luxury car or lvmh purse or a panda right watch but thing is, is that an lvmh purse? Maybe a specialty products for a lot of people, but it could be just a shopping product for someone who is really rich it's just any other purse they've never even heard of anything lower than lvmh because they've never been exposed to it. So you have to know where you stand in terms of all of this and most of the time photographers are between shopping and specialty and when I say shopping it's more like run of the mill, you know, lots of cranking out photos which is fine it's still business on this like discrediting it because if you do lost in your portrait ce and not saying like this specialized one on one porches and tell what you know the mass production portrait that's still business follow and that's more of a shopping understanding these fears once no likes dislikes but this one the next one is the coolest one where it's gonna apply to you most and actually applies to everybody it's the unsolved products when you purchase these products without the intention of purchasing them in the first place. So my best example is when I go shopping when I go to macy's auras or nor strong and you may be able to attest to this as well how to be walked in with intention of just buying a blouse or a t shirt and you walk out and you're smiling already with shoes, sunglasses, a person, the watch or whatever else that may happen because you just you didn't intend to buy it but once you walked in you saw it too come that looks nice too he tried on he buy so unsolved products is a way to create is going to be the entrance way on how you can create wonderful content so I'll give you a few examples for dog photographers for your target audience to be dog owners my correct very simple what do dog owners need or what are they lamenting what are their likes dislikes again I'm going back to the whole slides earlier but what is it that they want? They want their dogs to look cute for halloween so what are they going to search on google halloween dog costumes? So what do you optimize for you have a dog. Okay. Very cute so you probably will search for these products you or you might also look up organic dog food or whether to trim the fur coat during summer whether I ce really you know is bad or unhealthy for my dog you see all of these things these air questions you have memory talked about fears and problems that their face now once they have these promise to go do I know how I cut my dog's nails that's a really good question and it is the first time so what do you google it? And even though it's not a photography related topic or product they find your topic they see it they read it all. This is very interesting. They read they read they find the solution to the problem and at the same time they see a portfolio photo of you in a dog. Now at the moment they may not have had intention of purchasing photography but the moment they saw it you know what that's like so cute I want to have a full of my dog. You know I don't I mean, I like the selfies of my iphone but that's not going to be it's not excuse that I want professional for those taken and that's where unsolved products come in so I want you to think about for yourselves in terms of your target audiences and I'll throw awesome, you know, some ideas? Wedding photography. What are your clients looking for? Think about it. How to dress for engagement session, how to write your vowels the best honeymoon locations and I'm just pulling us all of my, you know, off the top of my head right now when it comes to portrait senior portrait target range sixteen to eighteen my correct fifteen to eighteen how they handle acne best ways to maximize s a t scores and you and if you think about I know it's not don't even sound like photography related, but I'm not even joking if you really want four people to build that trust because remember, you want to become rule number four, the authority once you become authority, they trust you and on top of it, if it's a lot commons likes and all feedback rule number five, high endorsements, you're almost building this entire platform it's a lot of aspect, it's not just blowing out your photos and sake. I'm good shooting and people were hired you it's about building this relationship it's a long term process, and just to give it them or examples newborns. So how the collar, your baby breast feeding versus formula, and if you move up to two to five years old, um how to apply so our best on screens for babies how to get into private school and then and I'm gonna talk about this later. I am I I say this a lot, but I'm jumping the gun today, two years, but you say everything you translate them into to a story, your personal story. So if I had a child, I mean, I'll talk about the entire experience of getting my dollar son into private school and at same time again always don't do not forget always doing the portfolio photo of you and your son or daughter this way you can build a connection, they realize how great the photography is and keep him in the back of the mind's. So the day that they decide to purchase photography services, you're hoping that they would choose you first. So that's unsolved products that's a longwinded answer or description, but I think really valuable, I mean, people are really responding well to that in the chat room is because it's, just not something that you think of, you know, all the different angles that you can approach this. So I think it's important, we think this is a really important subject that people just don't take advantage of that, I think a lot of people don't take advantage of it, and I have to have a slider and I don't know if I should wait for I should just start for it, but basically it says, who do you think she would hire? Someone who has answered our questions, created valuable content and became her friend are on my friend or a competitive er who shoots equally nice photos? Someone obviously it's going to someone we've built this report with, you know, because in the end and I'm not trying tio level everybody skills, but to an untrained eye, photography is photography and I'll get into how esoteric items are very difficult to determine value later on, but before that, I don't want to keep jumping around let's go along, a slight stages, a product lifecycle this is really important to understand they're virtually four stages very much like how the economy of the world works too and different countries, and this applies to every business, every product there is an introduction of the product. There is a growth stage there's maturity stage and ended the client and ultimately expiration. You cannot possibly run a business forever. All business are destined. Teo eventually expire even though even if their long term, like coca cola, they always so they always have to constantly renovate the products in order to change, which is why they came up, you know, with bad products do like vanilla coke and a coke zero and I mean, they're innovating, they're constantly trying new things because this is the natural order of things. So you have to think about where you fall in this whole life cycle of your product, including the only prints but you yourselves, because as you evolve in your business, you have to determine where your target audience becomes and how it will taper off eventually, because you can only appeal to so many people before they lose interest based on whatever aspect physical, mental you know, social all of that, so keep that in mind. And even if you think about creative life, for example, my money I can use killing someone he's created life because it's a it's a topic that everybody understands I mean it's a common thing, since we're all in the same platform, when you're talking about the product lifecycle of the photography channel, you can only go so far eventually, because there is a limitation to how many salads can shoot a photo. There are only so many ways you can learn how useful the shop or like room, but eventually it's going to taper off, which is why, you know whoever's management, chase or whoever is very smart to be able to constitute, innovate or disrupt which, you know the last section on day to already have the forecast to move into lateral markets such as health, starbucks moved into wine, beer, lobby launch. You know, acquisition, tazo tea. You have to be able to expand the business that way. And I know this is really like, farfetched for people were starting out, but it's, good to know which direction to take the first step of anti, just tickle blindly.