Lessons

Lesson Info

Business and Marketing

I wanted to finish this day with a little bit of a practical, let's do this kind of thing, because I'm not a fluffy kind of girl, and I just don't wanna kind of do shoots and go right, throw that out into ether, and see what comes back. Let's throw it out into, let's make a list. So, I realized a long time ago that we're starting now as marketers to be show, don't tell. Show don't tell is the new phrase, you know, and I just, I've been saying it for a while in all my talks. We're creative. We are creatives. We should have creating marketing plans. I've also been pushing really, really hard for everybody to create .pdfs price lists. You are not to have a price list with words on it. How many people are sending an email price list with words and not a gallery or a .pdf of pictures? Hands up if you are. Hands up if you're not. Okay, words only, everybody words? We don't send it out. Okay, why? We send out our session fee, but then. We wait for them to come into the studio so we ha...

ve an opportunity to meet them, they can see our beautiful studio, and then we find that that works. Okay, are you losing many clients between the how much and the, you didn't tell me so I'm not coming in? We give them everything at the consultation. Yes, but I'm saying before the consultation, when people ring you and say how much? No, 'cause we tell them, like, the basics of it. We kinda give 'em like, what the. Okay, yeah. So, what about email inquiries? Have you got your email on your website? Mmhmm. Okay, and what do you do with the email inquiries when you can't speak to them? Either call them back, or. What if you can't? We wait until. We wait until we can talk to them. We've never done it where we just communicate through email. Okay, so when you say to them, call me, you don't ever lose anybody? You always get people to call you? It's been three months for us, so we haven't had enough yet to. Okay, okay, 'cause this is where most people are falling down. You get two choices. People call you and they say how much, okay? Wedding photographers, how much, and are you available on this date? And then you're competing on price. So, then you get the email inquiry, how much, and are you available on this date, and then you're competing on price via email. So there's no connection to you, no connection to Bonnie, no connection to Gabe, no friendship, no loyalty, absolutely no connection to Kira whatsoever. You're just an email on the end of the line that says, it's $75, and you're competing with Johnny Roberts down the road who's $25, and I'm gonna go there, thanks, because his images look just as good as yours on, you know, whatever, and he's cheaper. Okay, so, people tried for many years to teach photographers how to do the hook on the phone, and the hook on the phone was, hi, I'm calling to inquire about a shoot with you. Yes, who am I speaking with? You wanna get them talking, right? You're talking to Annie. Hi, Annie. How are you? Tell me, tell me, how did you hear about us? Actually, I've really just rung up to see how much it costs for a portrait shoot. Right, Annie, well we have different, lots of different types of portrait shoots, and we can talk all the way around that when we want, but generally, people are ringing up to ask, how much do you cost? Now, that was always a hard pitch on the phone, and over the last 20 years of being in the studio, that pitch has changed, because it used to only be telephone, and then it shifted to email, and then we started to get running emails of hi, just saw your website. How much? And then you're responding as a completely non-person entity with a price list, and it could be a short price list. My sitting fee starts at $75. My images start at 200, whatever. It could be a basic lead-in. But what I want you to do from this moment is use the words entice me. So, if you are marketing, I need to be enticed into coming to your study. Entice me. Now, how am I gonna feel enticed by your personality if I am looking at an email with just words on it? Even if you have a banner on the bottom or a good website and logo, you're still competing on price. So, one of the most interesting things about your submission video was that everybody wrote, you have to pick those two, because their video was so great. You have to, it's just a given, okay? It was an enticement for you to come here, because when we saw you and how fun you made it, and the effort that you made it, and the connection that I had to it straight away, I could not help but go, I have to pick these two, because of the, the single effort and connection that you put into your video for me, all right? That's the difference. So, what I started to do was I started to teach people that if you're competing on price, then you're not even visually competing as a creative photographer. Now, what I do now is I've created .pdf books, booklets, you know, .pdfs. I've done a portrait couture book. I've done a family portrait book. I've done a .pdf I'm in. You know, like, it's called a .pdf book. And so I've done a little visual display of what it is that I do, so that when my price list goes out, people are seeing it, not hearing about it. So, one of the biggest things that I sort of push is it's show, don't tell; it's connect, okay. Show people who you are, so that they can see you, and so that they can connect with you, and straight away, they're like, I like these people. I feel connected to them. A price list will not do that on email, not in any way, shape, or form. So you're gonna have to communicate with images, but guess what, you happen to be photographers. So here's the easy part. That should be the easier part for you, is telling the story of who you are. Now, last CreativeLive I showed you Simona's video, correct? Simona's video is her waking up in the morning with her husband, cat, two daughters on either side, crammed in the family bed, you know, waking up, everyone's hassling mom. She's trying to wake up, and what I did was I created a .pdf around Simona's shoot. So, basically, when you send me a price list, send an inquiry, I will send you a .pdf that says, this is Simona. You know, you actually open the .pdf, and you read that little story in images. You don't read it in words. And then, at the end of that booklet, it gets 100 times better, 'cause you can click the link to her video and then watch her story, okay? So the connection is incredible. Now, if you don't have the opportunity to create video yet, we're gonna talk about a little bit of video tomorrow, 'cause I've just made a brand-new video. I released this video two weeks ago or actually three weeks ago, so this one's already been on my website. But I've created a new video, just for tomorrow, for seniors, because I wanted to tell a little senior story about the not still a girl, not yet a woman, okay? It's very fun, and I'm just aching to share it. So, what I've done is I've created a .pdf around Simona's shoot so that you can see Simona getting her hair and makeup done. You can see Simona being photographed by me. She's laughing, she's having a great time, just like the video. It's exactly the same. It's a mixture of behind-the-scenes shots and still captures from her video. Then, at the end, I show five of her beautiful images so that you get the picture. You know, you come and get your hair and makeup done. It's all right there for you. And then at the very end of the .pdf, I show my price list, okay? Now, I've actually changed the way I'm selling it this year, 'cause I used to sell an a la carte menu, so I used to say images start at $200, and packages start at 1200 and go up from there. That's how I used to sell. I've now gone to, straight to, I am a one-package deal, okay? So that's my choice. You can do it either way. Neither of them are better, because they both have a negative and a positive. The a la carte menu means that if they just want one print, they can just buy one print. The package means it drives away people that are afraid of committing to that bigger amount. So they both have a negative and a plus. It's what sits comfortably with you, 'cause as soon as you decide you can make money from this, you will make money from it, regardless, but you must price yourself according. Now, here's the rule, the golden rule. You must give more in physical value than the dollar value that you receive. You must give more in physical value than the dollar value you receive. That is your, to your standard. Do you understand that? If I feel like I am not giving more in physical value than the money I'm receiving, I do not value what I'm giving, and that is in every part of my giving energy, which means I feel like I am receiving more than I'm giving, which means I will cut off my receiving. Okay? I can go so far down that rabbit hole, it's not funny. Listen to what I'm saying. I used to think that what I would sell wasn't worth the money that I put on it, and I never made money. It wasn't until I started to value it that I started to see what it was worth. Now, I say that to people, and everyone goes like this. I know, I've gotta value myself and value my work. I know, I'm working on that. And I was like, no, no, no, no, you've missed the point. This is what was the aha moment for me. Give more than you receive in physical value than the dollar value. So I deem what I give physically as being more than what I'm getting back money-wise. So I deem what I give as being a higher value than what I get paid. Once I shifted that energy within myself, people just paid me, because I realized that the value suddenly increased when I increased what I was giving away. It's incredible. Give more, get more. The more you give, the more you get in life. You want love, give love. If you feel unloved, give love to someone else. The fastest way to get something is to give it, okay? If you want kindness, you want compassion, you want respect, give it to someone else. Give it away, but don't sit down ever and tell me you don't have something, 'cause if you don't have something, you're not giving it, and the more I give, the more I get. So I realized that the more value, the more value I put into my packages, the more people valued paying for them, because I valued that. I valued it by giving more in my mind's eye. So, in my, in my marketing, I now wanna create little stories, and I wanna create a beautiful, $3,300 package. So in order to justify getting paid $3,300, which, by the way, for two years, has been my average sale, average including no sales, low sales, high sales, my average is $3,300. So why wouldn't I just say, I'm $3,300? Why wouldn't I just say that? If you are a wedding photographer, you say my starting package is 2,500, or my starting package is 1500. You don't say, my starting package is $75, do you? 'Cause you know it's an event. You know people know that that's the ballpark you're gonna spend. So why would you tell people a portrait shoot with you starts at $65, when that's all they're gonna hear? Why don't you instead tell them what they're gonna get for two grand, and make sure you educate them on how incredible it's gonna be and what they're actually gonna receive for that dollar value. Because as soon as you can communicate that, you have a product that sells at that price regularly, 'cause that's what you sell. So, this is the, this is the sort of road block a lot of photographers are coming to. I don't value myself enough. I don't value my, and, you know, I think to myself, you don't value yourself, or you're not giving good enough service and products worth the money that you're expecting to get from it. Because maybe you should shift your perception there, and instead, look at it from your clients' perspective. You go on and on about not valuing yourself enough, but maybe you should actually value more what your client wants from you and what they're prepared to pay to get it, because if you make the focus about your client, it's not about your value and your, your insecurity. It's about, am I providing the product and service that is worth the money that I'm asking? And if I'm not, how do I up my product and service to make it worth it? So, I created a .pdf for the shoots that you saw this morning, the couture shoots. I created a .pdf that is beautiful, that gives a hint of a before shot, that shows a little bit of a pamper. Now, this behind-the-scenes video for this .pdf, and yes, I am creating a video for all of my .pdfs, was created by Logan McMillan, and he's a startup filmmaker. He's got his very first film on Netflix, and I asked Logan to come and just shoot me behind the scenes and put together a little behind-the-scenes two-minute video of the shoot. I then took screen captures of the footage that he got of us girls shooting, how I storyboard it, and I tell a little story about how I've made a dress, I've made this girl a dress, and now she's come in for her shoot. We've pampered her, and now we're giving her the couture experience. Now, this is before I give any information, okay, 'cause I don't need to give information yet. First, I've got to, what does a woman do? She doesn't walk into Christian Louboutin and say, before I look at any shoes, would you give me a price list? Does she? She might look at the shoes, and go, okay, I know they're gonna be expensive, but tell me how much? And then she's gonna find out how much, and then she's gonna weigh up whether she's gonna buy them or not, based on how much she's gonna value the purchase of those shoes. So, I'm gonna entice my client first by selling images on the experience, all right? Then I'm gonna hit with this. I put in the poem from my beautiful studio floor, because you know that's my philosophy, you know, the time will come when, with elation, you will great yourself arriving at your own door. I say it at every talk. It is so beautiful. It sums up everything that I believe in about being a glamour portrait photographer. And then on my process, on the left, I've written a photo shoot with Sue Bryce is $3,300. Now, you've already been enticed through all the images as to how it's gonna unfold, and then information that I'm giving on email, because I'm unable to talk to this client, is, includes a photo shoot, location, hair, and makeup. So, I will find a beautiful location for you of your choice. I will hire a hair and makeup artist if I'm unable to get Simona. I will give you a 20-image folio box from Finao USA or Seldex Australia, same thing. They work together. I will give you a 16x20 wall portrait, and I will give you an electronic CD of every image that you buy. So, in one sentence, I'm building value with a beautiful package that I believe is worth every penny of what I get paid for that. And then, I write bookings and inquiries, and I direct them to my phone number, except for I write my website, 'cause I would love to give you all my cell phone number, but I just can't, 'cause I would be getting calls all through the night. And that's my price list. So, my price list consisted of a whole walk-through of what I did that was beyond telling you how much I am, all right? Now, here's the, here's the go-to. Then, they get to the end of the price list, and they get to watch this, which now ties in beautifully, like Simona's video, it ties in beautifully to this. (steady marimba music) ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ ♪ Open your eyes ♪ Yes. So, nice connection. You know, you get the message, you get the story, you get to see behind the scenes, but it's not about me, right? I was just thinking, it's not about you, but it is about your experience. Yeah. So, is that a price list? No. No. But it's value. Yes. And so, I could, you know, I'm gonna teach you about video tomorrow, but the one thing I can say is if you don't have access to the financial that could create video, you don't have access to learn video the way I learned it, $25 a month on lynda.com, I learned how to edit on Final Cut Pro by paying $25 a month to lynda.com, Lynda with a y, I learned to edit in six hours in one month and canceled my $25 until I needed it again, 'cause you can just go and join up for a month whenever you need it. It has just about every software on the planet. And nobody taught me other than that. I can't edit like that, but I can edit well enough to tell a story, and if you cannot afford that yet, if you are at that stage where you aren't shooting on the digital SLRs that shoot, you know, 1080p high-d film with some of the best glass in the world, which most of you have, then the slideshow before that behind the scenes can still be taken by a friend of yours. We are, as photographers, friends with other photographers. Get, reciprocate with a friend in shooting a behind-the-scenes .pdf booklet of what you do so you can show, not tell, people what you do. And there's a communication in there that says, I'm Sue Bryce. I didn't talk on that, but you saw my face. You saw me. You identified with me. You saw Simona. You saw Helen enjoying herself. You saw us pamper her, and somehow, that story translates to, I wanna do this, right? Really, really important. So then, now I look at it in terms of, sorry, may I have Keynote back? Now I look at it in terms of marketing. So let's break it down to this. Yesterday, I showed you, yesterday I showed you how to flow pose, and then I started to talk you through all of the different genres in my glamour brand. Now, Simona's video is specifically to a mother and child demographic, that mommy market, right? And then this one, Helen is the same age as Simona with two children as well, but I didn't make it about her being a mom. I just made it about her being pampered, and so, how do I sort of, and then, differentiate who my market is. So you could ask the question via email, or you can say, what sort of shoot would you like? Here are some beautiful .pdfs to the different types of shoots we do. So, let's say Simona rings up, and she gets a link to Helen's video and Simona's video, and she identifies with Simona's video. She still is gonna identify as a woman with Helen's video, because even though it's not the mommy and daughter, she will still identify with that. I, as a woman with no children, will identify more with Helen's video, 'cause there's no children in it, but I still looked at Simona's video and went, oh, my God, look how gorgeous her before and after is. Look at this woman, she's got two kids and like she, you know, and so, as a woman, you still identify with all of the stories, because women are easier to market to when you tell stories, because women love stories. We have 10,000 words a day. We gotta get them all out. We tell stories, okay? It's the only way we can get them out. If people can tell a story about your business, then they are more likely to talk about you, because they're telling an actual story about it. So, if you can create an experience that makes them tell a positive story, like this happened to me, then how could it not be an incredible experience for them to repeat their 10,000 words to their spouse, their girlfriends, their mom, their sisters, their workmates, and anybody else who wants to hear them talk, because that's what we do. We're networkers. So I started to think, let's be .pdf-specific. Let's create a Glam the Dress .pdf. So, maybe what you can do is create marketing that is marketing to your database of brides that says, bring your bridal dress back, and let us glam the dress for you. Maybe you create a bachelorette glamour .pdf that shows a behind the scenes of a girl and a guy booking their wedding with you, choosing a date, you know, a little, you can pull up, let's get creative. You're creative photographers. They hold up a sign that says we're getting married on the 16th of August, and then she suddenly comes into the studio, and she has a before shot with, this is my mom; this is my mother-in-law. These are my bridesmaids, and you can either do that verbally. You can do it with signs. You can put, you know, text on video. You can just put text on images. It's easy; you just go into Photoshop, and you hit text, T for text. Start writing, you can lay it on the image. You can design your own .pdfs for nothing. And then put bride, bridesmaids, and then show them getting made up, show them drinking wine, show them laughing at girls together. What do women see when they see that? All of your girlfriends drinking champagne together, having a good time; who doesn't want that? We love that. Show, don't tell. Then show them being photographed, boom, boom, boom, and then show them walking off into the night with their arms around each other. Maybe the bride's looking back. They're in high heels. They're going, bachelorette party, woohoo, and then that is your .pdf. And then you knock it down and you go, anybody who books a wedding with us gets a $300 bachelorette sitting, and all of your girlfriends are welcome. Okay? Maybe you create a girl's day out, exactly the same, but not the bachelorette. The girls are drinking champagne, having wine and cheese. This is the single ladies. Release it at Valentine's Day for the girls that don't have boyfriends. How about you do a mother and daughter girls day out? You do a .pdf of a girl showing a mom a booklet and going, we should do this, and her mom going like this. Then they go shopping. They've got all these shopping bags. They're taking a sneaky day off work. Then they're coming into the studio. They're getting the pamper session. Mom and daughter are having a glass of wine, having a good time, and then they finish with the beautifulest portrait of a mother and daughter, and your finish slogan could be, one day, I will give this to my child. Think about it. It's advertising at its highest level, and you have the ability. You have the Photoshop skill, the camera skill, and the creative skill to create the most amazing online visual creative marketing, and most of you aren't doing it. That connects to what you do. And yet, you will write paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs on your website that say, Sue Bryce just lives to capture the creative beauty of women, blah blah, blah, nobody's reading it, nobody reading it, nobody cares. I want to know what you're going to give to me. Stop telling me what you like. Stop telling me what you do. Start telling me what I'm gonna get from you, and tell me with images, okay? Tell me, so that I can go and create this for you, and then go and make it happen, because it's amazing how that translates to shoots. Now, glamour is back. Let's have a relaunch .pdf. Do you remember 80s glamour? Boom, show that 80s shot looking tragic. This was actually me. And then go, now, I look like this. Boom, and it's 20 years later. Glamour is back, and it is amazing, and what better way to launch a glamour brand in your town than by reeducating people that it is back. It's back. So, take the fun 80s shots. Make sure you have copyright permission to use anybody's images, instead of just downloading them from the internet. That was my disclaimer. And then, it's all about you. What about a .pdf that says look at you sitting here looking tragic on the couch, and you're going like this, and you're eating Cheetos, and, you know, it's like, come on, sister. Get up, get out of those track pants. Drop those Cheetos. Come to my studio right now. This is how it's gonna roll. She comes in. You do a fun, playful one. She's getting her hair pulled, lipstick put on, and then she sees herself revealed, and it's all about you. This is the pamper session. This is the mom session. You know, let's do another one. I wrote these in under a minute. Come on, I could, let's do some more. Portrait couture. Let's show people that you can get a girl like Alex, hold up her dress, show her stitching it, watch us make it on her, and then show Alex rocking those fashion poses in the black couture, rocking the fashion, and then showing the fashion images and saying, haven't you ever wondered if you could look like the girls in the magazines? Haven't you ever wanted to look and feel like a supermodel? What if we go with the pamper day, which is kind of like girl's day out and it's all about you, but the pamper day is not shot tongue in cheek; it's more spa day. It's more, the woman wakes up, she's getting pampered and looks beautiful. She's having gorgeous portraits. You could do a beautiful portrait .pdf. Let's just say your market is to open up, you're marketing to the women, but you wanna open up family portraits, so you do a beautiful .pdf progression of the woman getting her hair and makeup done with the husband and boys joining her at the end. So, it's all about her getting her hair and makeup done, maybe with a little daughter, and then the two of them have gorgeous girly portraits together, and then husband walks in, sees his wife, and then here's a beautiful family portrait at the end, and it's a mixture of glamour and family. Biggest sale you'll ever do in your studio. And then, you can market that mother and daughter, 'cause that mother and daughter is the first, first stage of marketing. You've seen the power of it. It's one of the most powerful shoots that I do. Now, let's say you create a .pdf price list for every one of these genres in some way that match you and your brand, and then you actively market that .pdf? Then, when you can afford to, 'cause you're getting so many shoots in, you go and make that video, and then you upgrade your .pdf, and every six months or so, you upgrade to a new .pdf that people just, and they go, I love your price list. You always send a video. You send this booklet. It's absolutely amazing and I love it, and it's so awesome. I wanna do, I want more of them. Can you send me your next one? You know, people love it. My clients email me and Facebook me, clients, not photographers. My clients Facebook and go, I love your new video. And I'm like, my clients do that, not other photographers, and I'm like, that's so cool. My clients are interested in the marketing that I'm creating for my business. So, a simple tip to just create a visual price list has now opened up two, four, six, eight, nine maybe marketing stories that you could create in your business with videos, with visuals. Then what you do is you put those visuals on YouTube when they're on video, because YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the planet, and people Google you and then YouTube you. So, if you're not on YouTube and your business is not on YouTube, you're not competing in the biggest, second biggest search engine in the world. And then you've created an enticing marketing, marketing display for nothing but your time, because I believe you could do every single thing on there, and even if you can't afford the video, your visual photographic story would put you leagues ahead of any price list in the world. Would you not agree with that? Okay, so, before I move on, I would like to say one thing. Can anybody tell me if I spelled bachelorette right? I can never spell it. We call it a hen's party. Oh. We like hens and stags, where you're bachelor and, oh, you're stags and? Bachelorette's way better than hens, hens party, in New Zealand and Australia. So when I said to Tiffany, you know, hen's party, she was like, what? (Sue laughs) And I was like, you know, a hen's party. And she's like, and I was like, okay. And she said, you mean bachelorette. And I was like, oh, bachelorette. So, obviously, those were just my ideas that I thought of last night and I was writing them down. I was like, ooh, what's a little bit of takeaway, go and make one this week inspiration I can give after the couture day, and I was thinking, oh, I could do the .pdf marketing, 'cause this has become really huge for me. Oh, I could show my new video by Logan McMillan. Oh, I could do this, because it's my website to increase my bandwidth, and also to attract people, 'cause it's on YouTube, and it's on Vimeo, and it's embedded into my website and my blog, and that just raises my search engine optimization, and it makes me easier to find. And so I started to write ideas. Can anybody else tell me what another good .pdf? There'd be a newborn .pdf, because who wouldn't wanna see a beautiful story of a woman like Victoria photographed pregnant go through a story of, if you're a birthing photographer and a newborn photographer, imagine seeing that story visually beautifully done on a .pdf. Your child is born. Bring them to New Image Photography. You know? What happens if you create a beautiful visual .pdf of, give us another one, that's 10 so far. Anybody got any? Throw me, throw me any genre. What about a 50th wedding anniversary? What about celebrate all the relationships in that family from the top, all the way down, and then you photograph, you go to a 50th wedding anniversary. You photograph the beautiful mom and dad that have been together all their life. You photograph all the little family members that are all there sharing their day with a beautiful, big group shot at the end. That's 12. What happens when you do a beautiful bridal .pdf? And you say, your day is so special, and we've created this magical .pdf to show you how my business will photograph your wedding. Let's do it, then. Give me another one. Seniors. Seniors, okay. Boy, have I got a seniors .pdf for you tomorrow. Let's make that number 14. Pets is one. Cats? Pets? Oh, pets, yes, oh my God. I love cats. I love cats. Weddings, portraits, and pets, right? Yes, wedding, portraits, pets, newborns. Every single genre has 10 stories. Every genre of photography that you do has a visual .pdf with a price list on it that needs to be told, and that needs to be connected with. Prom. Wow. Is that, is that our thinking for the day? Well, I'll take any questions. Everyone's a bit quiet. Okay, great, great. For each experience that you're offering, I know you're starting to build on that. Do you have a different price for each of those experiences? You don't have to share the price, but, it's the same price across the board; it's just marketing it to a different person? Mmhmm. I'm gonna say that there was this one part in that video when it began, and you were getting shots of her pre-shoot, and there was this look in her eyes like, that I see with many women pre, and that was they're a little bit afraid. Scared, yeah. A little bit uncertain, and that was pretty priceless, because that's true, and I think you, maybe you didn't get it, maybe whoever was filming, but they got that, and I feel like that's what people will feel like whenever they, they're on the phone. Hmm, so mention that communicating across the way. Something interesting happened. I met a photographer in Banff, in Canada, and he said to me, oh, hi, I'm a photographer from so-and-so, and it's lovely to meet you. And he said, you know, I don't usually blow smoke up people's, so I'm not really, you know, 'cause I've got a big ego, and so I'm not really into telling people that they're awesome. And I was like, oh, okay. I was like, surely there's a compliment coming here somewhere, so I'm just waiting or it. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay. And he said, but I actually started to watch your videos, and I realized that I liked you. And when he said that to me, I looked at him, and I thought, oh, my God, that is the most amazing compliment you could give me, not that you think my work is incredible, but I actually like her. And I thought, if people like you, they buy from you, because they're like, I like this chick, or I like this dude. So, it's not about me being on screen, even being like, you know, trying to be the hottest version of myself or whatever. It's just me doing what I do, but somehow, it translates. So, people like you. People know your story, hear your story, understand it. They get a visual, they get a reference. And one of the biggest steps that I used in my last CreativeLive, that I used at WPPI on my marketing talk was, after 72 hours, people remember 10% of your text information and 95% of your audiovisual information. So, people will remember what you showed them, not what you told them or said to them or wrote to them. And so, it's more important to me that your visuals are communicating in stories in order to be actively marketing to your clients. And I just think you have all the skills to be brilliant at it, brilliant at it. Now, I'm going to say this, and I don't, I know it's gonna be taken in the wrong way. When I teach new photographers that video is the next big thing, if people have a budget, they run out, they hire a videographer. They spend $2,000 to $5,000. They work out a video of bad quality with no connection, because their folio is not quite up there yet, or they have not quite felt comfortable in front of the camera themselves, or they haven't quite reached their folio yet, but they wanna get in on the go-get. That translates as well. You look like you don't know what you're doing, and if you can afford to pay a really good videographer, the videographer's work is better than the photography work, and it shows in the camera. Secondly, work with a videographer like I work with Haley Bartholomew and Logan and Abraham Joff. I love all three of these styles. I have to constantly be reminded to shoot horizontally, because you can't put vertical images in a cinematic production. It looks like a slideshow. So, unless you wanna do the slideshow feel, turn the camera that way. But, don't rush out and spend a lot of money on a video until you've worked through your folio first and gotten your shooting to a point where you can really communicate what it is that you're offering in a cool way. So lots of practice first. Build the folio, build the folio, and then go for it, okay? Build the folio, build the folio, and then go for it. I found this on my computer when I was looking for, when I was looking for images last night, and I dropped it into my slideshow, because I figured to myself, I love this so much that I have it on my computer, and I found it, and as I downloaded this video, I laughed, and I thought, I'm gonna put this up just as my finishing it for the day. If you're looking for a sign, this is it. There it is. So, that's your permission slide that'll be on your .pdf, and I want you to put it on your computer, and any time that you feel like you're looking for sign, remember, it's already there, and it's right there; just go for it. Any questions about the .pdf marketing, how you can make it work? Yes? P. Damask is saying, if you could clarify, why is she calling these video .pdfs, the videos .pdfs? So if you could clarify the .pdf and the video part, just again, how it all works? It's a .pdf with a video attached to it, but you can just do the .pdf with no video. I just mean video and .pdf, yeah. I'm just being a lazy Kiwi and shortening everything. Just, I think people weren't sure if it was .pdf, the video's separate. Yeah, there's no such thing as a video .pdf. A .pdf is a whole lot of images that you export out of Bridge or Lightroom as a .pdf, and that's something that you're, also, I'll tell you something else. I found a lot of people are doing Issuu, issuu.com. So Issuu is I-S-S-U-U, S-U. You can do a .pdf magazine for your website that actually flips like a magazine with the seam down the center and the shading, and it actually gives you the visual like you're reading a magazine. Now, remember, if you're creating a .pdf, a magazine, or anything online for your clients to peruse, do not make it wordy. I want you to make it image-y story, not wordy story, because people just will not stop and read all of your words, but they will look at all of your pictures. It is a known fact that people will not read all of your words, but they will look at your pictures, and if you are sending out an email to clients and you wanna grab their attention so you don't get the three-second scan and delete, you must put an image that will stop traffic at the top of their email, okay. It must be at the top. Another question from the internet. AKD is wondering if there is a reason not to put your .pdfs on the website. No reason at all. In fact, that's where mine are going next. I'm gonna create more of a little marketing page which has a tell me your story. So the more videos and .pdfs I create, I'm going to be, like, instead of about me, I'm going to write tell me your story or pick a story. So let's say, are you a mommy? Are you a portrait couture? Are you a girls' day out? And tell these stories. And I want you to tell me what you are. So, I've got nothing to hide in what I offer and what I offer in my price, so I should be able to create a marketing page that you can just click these stories and say, I wanna hear this story. I wanna know, you know, I wanna know who I am, and I wanna hear the story that relates to my demographic. Okay, another one from the internet. Syncula is wondering, it's kind of hard to build a portfolio when you don't have clients coming in. Do you recommend just shooting friends until you have someone? Free shoots. Free shoots? Yep, free shoots anywhere you can. Advertise for them if you have to, but it's better to get them through friends of friends, 'cause if you advertise not on your Facebook page, people just see free, that you give away free shoots. So just ask people. I ask people everywhere. I used to build a folio from anywhere. I'd meet people on the street. People say, what do you do? I say, I'm a photographer. I'd love to photograph you. Just give away free shoots. But maybe what you should is create a voucher so that you don't give away free shoots, but you just give away two to five images, so it has a value, this voucher has a value of $500, and you can get five images from it from your shoot, and I can folio build. Costs them nothing, but it gives the idea of value. And then when they tell people, their friends, look at my beautiful shots, they go, where did you get those from? I go, I actually got this $500 voucher. That tells me they're telling their friends that they paid for it. Well, they got a value of $500, instead of I got a free shoot. So, if you can create a folio build voucher while you're folio building that has that value on it, then you are selling yourself from get-go. Whether you value yourself or not, you will earn an income from photography if that is your goal, and you can start valuing it right from the beginning, and they will be passed on as $500 worth of photographs, because that's how the person will see it. People are just starting to ask more pricing questions as well as a number of questions that we went over extensively in your first course. Yes. But just since you had changed, you said you were changing or had changed your pricing, just to clarify for Rob Mirage, so, is it possible to spend more than $3300 with you? You said that was your average before. Are you turning away extra business now? Or just, again, how are you working this? Rob Mirage is the reason I'm giving away. That's what I thought. I hear that name. No, Rob, anybody can spend more with me. That's not a problem at all, because they can buy more images. But I've set my package up to be more defined over the last four years, so instead of being a la carte and watching the swing between a smaller sell and a larger sell, which used to upset me, I now only want to see a client that values the entire package right from the beginning. In order to make that successful, you need to educate them. Now, if my average was 3, before I put that as my package, then it stands to reason that I will only get 3,300, 'cause that's all I have been getting. So, until I'm ready to put that package up to, say, 4,800, I'll keep it at 3,300. Now, I have always said where I feel comfortable is at $3,300, which means I can offer a $3,300 service and feel in my heart, gut, and soul, that I am offering more in physical value than the dollar value that I'm receiving. Now, that sits with my value set. Now, for the people that wanna earn more than me, price it higher. For the people that, you know, are too scared to go high, price it lower. Your price list must be incongruent to what you believe you're worth and what I said to you about physical value, because you must totally believe that you are worth, and you must totally believe that your value is. And I am happy with a $3,300 average. What I had to stop doing was because I travel so much, people wanna book me on the fly. I don't wanna do a lower sale with somebody in another country when I'm booking a location, another makeup artist, because my outlay increases when I move away from Sydney, so I had to go to a one-package market, but that is just a game of argument that you can play for hours over which is better, because I could say, I could argue it out, you could argue it out. It's what sits well with you. And that brings up another question from Rebecca Roots Photography. Do you charge the same for your Australian shoots as on-location as well? So, for example, if you're traveling outside of Australia, do you charge a higher package price, leave it the same, charge extra fees? When I travel outside of Australia, I now charge 3,300 plus location, because the location, I don't have the studio, so now the location has to be what you want it to be. Now, some people will wanna do the hotel room. Some people want to do something grander, warehouses. Some people wanna do, you know, the big places. I leave that up to you, but I tell you what, I give that options to my clients now, and most of them say to me, 99% of the time, I'm paying $3,300 to do this; I'm gonna pay $500 for an incredible location. If I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. So, I give them that option. What about your flight? Who pays for your flight? I only book traveling shoots when I'm traveling somewhere. Oh, okay. Yeah, because if I was flying somewhere to shoot, I would have to add flights and accommodations. Okay. Do you, now, do you still do like, a sales call at all? It's pretty much all email, right? When I'm traveling? Just when somebody calls to book you in general. Always call them. Always call. What I'm saying is that first connection, when it comes in via email, entice, and then talk. And then talk. Yeah. Okay. But a lot of people don't send you their phone number. They just want the price list. And so since they've seen the price list, you rarely get somebody that will call you and be like, well, I've looked at your price list. What if I just wanna get one digital file? You don't get that question anymore. No. Right, because. Yeah, 'cause I've educated the package as being location, hair and makeup, a whole box, a wall portrait, and at the end of the day, you don't just want one. Right. So if somebody said to me, I just want one, I'm not your photographer. Yeah, I'm like a, you know, yeah. It's almost like you're showing the work that's so good they can't deny, 'cause when you asked Gabe earlier about, you know, the inquiries, I get inquiries, oh, your images are great, and I send them the price list, and some people I hear back from, but others just fade into the dust. So if you're a retail store, how many people walk in, walk around, touch things, try them on, don't buy them? Okay? So why is it when somebody walks into our email, walks into our website, looks through our gallery, doesn't book us, does that upset us? Imagine if you cried every time somebody walked out of your retail store and never purchased anything? Sometimes, you walk into a store for three reasons. You're not looking for anything, but you just happen to be there, and you buy something. You walk in there, you want to buy something, you don't get any service, nothing fits you, you feel like, you know, I just can't be bothered shopping right now. You leave, you don't buy anything. Other times, you walk in, and you go, I'm just gonna have a look in here, I don't know, and you end up buying a lot. You know, for whatever reasons people buy, it's gotta sort of be a combination of all of the above, you know. The planets aligned, I had money, the top fit me perfectly, they had my right size, I got good service, I spent lots of money. But you know, you can't deny that you're marketing a service, a service that other people are marketing, and you're going up against other people, so I can only teach you to compete at the highest level in that market. And at the end of the day, some people will connect with you, some people won't, but you have more chance of connecting by showing them than anything else. Mmhmm. Yeah. So you're just gonna be a stronger competitor now that you're more visual. Bonnie. So how do you handle that price if it's a bachelorette party? You're charging a bride that? No, I don't do bachelorette parties, because I don't shoot weddings. I've just been working with all the wedding photographers that wanna incorporate glamour into their business. And what I've been doing with the wedding photographers who are incorporating glamour into their business is they are giving the bride the bachelorette party for free, and then they educate them as to what their portrait prices are. So, we say we lay it all out for you. You get the hair and makeup done for your bachelorette party. You bring the cheese, wine, and crackers. You lay it all out as a girls' day out. You don't pay for that, they do. And we just allow it all to happen, and this is how much we charge for the portrait, so you can each buy a gorgeous package when you see your images, when you love them. And you pre-educate them. But the girls could still come. I mean, 'cause I know if I was a bridesmaid and found out I now had to spend $3300, okay. No, you don't have to spend $3300. You have to go and eat cheese and crackers and drink champagne with your best friend and get a free makeover. You don't have to do anything. That's the whole point of selling. You're enticing it as an amazing day, not telling someone they have to spend three grand. You just happen to spend three grand because you walked into that store and saw something you thought was amazing. We need to switch the perception with which we sell something. I used to spend the first 10 years of my business not selling anything going, oh, I have to awkwardly say that this is gonna cost you $400 when you got a free shoot. There's no such thing as a free shoot. There's only an opportunity to be photographed by me and be blown away with the best photographs, the best day, and the best experience of your life. Sorry, you said makeover, free makeover. Who's paying for the hair and makeup? Is the bride paying for the hair and makeup? Well, I would assume you would. You're the one making the dosh, yeah. So, for the price of a hair and makeup artist, you have the potential to make nine grand in a day. I did, in my country garage, 25 minutes out of the city, with six 25-year-old girls that spent 1500 bucks each. Remember? 'Cause they had a great day. How are you presenting images to them, and what's your time frame? Has that changed at all? Yes, it has. In the studio, I view in-person on a plasma, yeah. And I always try and do it within the week. The faster you can flip that, the faster you can get people to buy, 'cause they're excited. They want to see their images. The faster you can print them, the higher your referral rate.