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Lesson Info

Marketing Systems

Marketing is simply a circle k it's a circle that feeds on itself and when you first start marketing it seems like this huge enormous thing that you have to do you have to keep doing that keep doing keep doing it like the next client the next client, the next client and it's exhausting, right? But if you create a good marketing circle, it will feed itself. Eventually it will take a while to roll the darn thing down the hill so that it rolls by itself and you're gonna have to push it really hard at first. But once you get the snowball rolling, then marketing kind of starts toe happen on its own and clients begin to come in and I call it the client cycle why you need it? Well, clearly you have no steady stream of clients. You're not getting referrals, you're not getting the average sale you want. You can't consistently reach new clients. You feel scattered or you feel like you have to fight for clients constantly. Tony, if you feel like this buddha's raise your hand. Yeah, everybody. Oh,...

everybody feels like that. There are times still to this day when I feel like this too, okay? And there are times when you have to mark it harder than others and there are times when there is just a darn low in the business I mean this last september I think I shot two newborns last september it was just kind of way we turned down a few because we were preparing for creative live and I just didn't have time but we didn't shoot that many sessions last month and I was like, oh my gosh, normally I would in years past I would have freaked out but I always know it's a cyclical thing and next month we've already got people start to look for november and I'm like, oh my god like the rush came in again this is a normal part of business it happens to every single business under my sister has the exact same problem and every time there's a little she calls me you don't worry they'll come back it's not over yet, you know and it's hard sometimes, especially when your cash strapped to not panic. Okay? And this is why I always tried to encourage business owners too live well below their means for awhile until they can get a six month stash built up so that when those lulls in the client cycle come, he won't panic because that panic feeling sucks and then you just go out and do flash sales and many sessions and whatever you can to get money through the door and you're devaluing your brand when you do that all right? So this is the client cycle and it starts with marketing, which is what we're going to discuss today. New clients come in the door through marketing and promotion through your efforts for your partnership with the vendor and ad, you placed a display you have whatever. Okay, then they experience your brand not only through the marketing promotion, but also when they see and start to begin to go through the booking process. Correct. We talked about booking in the very, very first week of class. Once that happens, they start to experience the product line and the experience of having the session done itself right all the while. Customer service is the water that keeps the wheel moving. So if you have an incredible customers experience your clients, they're going to go through this cycle very happy and satisfied and excited, and they will start to become brand evangelists and that's. What I want you to have is a company where your clients are so loyal to your brand as loyal as the apple freaks are to mac products. Ok, when that be nice, they will wait in line for four hours to get a session from you would not be incredible. A girl can dream, right? But what happens is when you create this good customer service cycle and these people, because evangelists and they start referring and in my world women who are having babies no other women who are having babies women who are getting married no other women who are getting married right it's the cycle of life when I got married like half my other friends were getting married too right? So you want to target that ideal client in your marketing promotion run her through your customer service wheel your client's cycle in a way that is so strong and solid that she wants to refer you then this is what happens you don't have to do so much of this this starts it's like it's a little like you know how when I want water goes on a water wheel at first a lot of water to get the wheel to go around but then it gains momentum and starts to spin and it's only just a little bit of water to keep it spinning that's exactly what happens that's the analogy so eventually you don't have to push that snowball marketing snowball down the hill is hard you just have to kind of guide it and make sure that it's in the right direction okay and your clients will help you market and bring in new better yet new pre qualified people to your business okay, so I'm saying as long as you keep the components of the customer service cycle intact, the cycle will self self self fulfill you simply have to baby sit it what's important though, is that branding should be your first priority okay marketing unearths and activates buyers branding makes loyal customers advocates even evangelists of those who buy marketing just brings them to the surface if the brand and the customer services not intact you can kiss that goodbye it may not happen right away but trust me I have lost a lot of clients in the begin because I did not have reese everything in place when I started james eaton said the brand is what remains after the marketing has swept through the room it's what sticks in your mind associated with a product service or organization whether or not at that particular moment you decided to buy when you go into a store anthropology for example I love anthropology okay? You walk into an anthropology store with your eyes closed and you know you're in anthropology because of the smell they have that candle that is so them and every store permeates that scent. You open up your eyes and you see the products and the clothes and you get all excited and it's so beautiful and it leaves this incredible impression on you and whether or not I picked up a dress off the rack and took it to the counter or not I have an impression when I walk out the door of that business right I have in my mind how I feel about anthropology, correct and the things that contributed to that are the smell, the site, the products, the customer service how it felt to be in there who treated me right, who didn't, how easy it was to find things, how it looked all that stuff the market materials, the education, the ease of use, whether or not I could get in the door how crowded it wass the prices all of that influenced my perception of the business right it's the same thing with you marketing is what you do branding is who you are accent marketing is tactical branding is strategic, so if you think of in terms of military with the guys will love this leave more appropriate to them. Marketing is like, ok, the front lines over here we're going to put two people therefore people there and attack, okay that the actual process of doing that strategic is the overall plan. What that will accomplish makes sense so now let's market ok, you guys know this eighty percent of your business comes from twenty percent of your clients. One of the best ways to market to market to your current clients. My sister just did this and filled her entire calendar for the rest of the year she was struggling so hard the last few months she called me in june and she's actually I'm gonna close like what? Yeah, I'm in debt I have no money I my competition I'm having trouble and um you know I'm not sure what's going on she did she turned it around in three months how by targeting her current and past client list it's her tenth anniversary and business she did a tenth anniversary special which really wasn't a special at all. It was just a way to get people in the door she strategized she micro analyzed her competition to figure out what she was doing differently if she was a commodity, how to make herself unique and she literally put this promotion out the beginning of september and in two weeks was booked for the entire year for the rest of the year and most of it is from her past clients that's how powerful your list of past clients is, so just keep that in mind just a little side now alright vendor partnerships are probably the single most important thing I've done in my business as faras market and goes on a budget that means partnering with another local business in your market who shares your same target client with whom you khun you know, partner with the share a common market and goal so in other words, you both benefit that's the important part don't go into vendor partnerships thinking or on ly serving yourself, it must serve both parties a matter of fact I always try to approach it from the standpoint that I benefit then mohr than they do me and we're gonna talk about the buying triggers but the rule of reciprocity is a big one if I do something nice for you you're going to be compelled to do something nice for me so if I'm giving you mohr than you're giving me you're going to feel compelled to keep doing that to make up for the fact that you're not giving me that much does that make sense so tender partnerships are incredibly valuable I uh do several vendor partnerships in my town the hospital birthing classes every mom who goes through a class in a birthing class in central oregon gets a gift card from our studio and the jewels and midwives who do that absolutely love it because it allows them to provide a gift to every single mom who comes through there and you have to understand these moms a lot of them first timers most of them first timers are very scared and the imagery of beautiful babies and all that really helps calm them down and make them excited about the process and the details of those lives really loved that s o that's kind of why they've continued this partnership with me I also partner with a baby store in town in any woman who registers with this baby store gets a gift card to the studio okay, so it's almost like she gets another gift by registering at the baby store no clearly who you're targeting we discussed this yesterday when we did market research, but I'm just going to quickly review no your demographics and your psychographic ce of the target ideal client that you want so if you didn't watch yesterday's lesson, this is going to be a little bit challenging for you because you won't be able to focus your marketing messages easily when you don't understand your ideal target client vendor partnerships when it comes to newborns and we're going to address seniors and weddings and families as well here this is kind of a big section because I want to give you guys some ideas on where you can partner with vendors so for newborns o b g y n offices, lactation consultants, dualism, midwives, retail stores, birthing centers, birthing classes, maternity stores into your designers, diaper services, prenatal exercise providers, fertility clinics and pediatricians that's a lot of people to go partner with us plenty of opportunity around now we're going to discuss how you approach these people, okay? So so bear with me and just be patient as we go through this class but that's the biggest thing people people looked just like aldo that's all great good find julia but how do I get in? We're going to talk about that so just be patient weddings wedding people have any easy I think you mean they don't think so, but I think they've got a pretty easy venues. Flores caters musician and djs, invitation designers, wedding planners, dress stores, bridal magazines brought a website makeup artists we were just discussing this morning makeup artists are great, fantastic people destination weddings dot com I planned my entire wedding on a forum called destination wedding dot com explain my husband got married, we eloped to playa del carmen in mexico to get married and I was on there all the time and I was thinking, oh my gosh, I could totally run an ad in a contest for a free destination wedding kind of thing build my portfolio, get a vacation out of it and like, maybe I should do this, you know that I don't want a wedding it's not worth a free vacation, but I think there's a lot of places, this is just a tiny list of who you can partner with and then the other hand, you know, amy and I were discussing this morning she wants to be in sandpoint, idaho, the destination wedding photographer. So sandpoint, idaho is a gorgeous little tourist town it's on a lake right quarter lane if the court elaine isn't yeah, monterey and so people it's beautiful, so people from spokane from canada come to get married in sandpoint during the summer because it's so beautiful so she needs to branch out her marketing to spokane to tourism offices and things like that because that's where a bride is going to go to find information about sandpoint how cool is that so she needs to go into her sandpoint chamber of commerce the tourism place there's gotta be sand point tourism visit sandpoint kind of place yeah I mean those are amazing places where she can target brides and it's not something you would normally think of but that's going to be one of the first places a bride from out of town is going to look at because she doesn't know anything about the city so the tourism office and the visit sandpoint idaho office is going to be one of the best places for her toe look she'll find so much information about the town itself there okay so the sometimes there's unexpected places that you confined partnerships with family sessions ok a little harder families I found to be more challenging to find vendors because your target demographic has certain values and psychographic thatyou need to hone in on so it may be more unexpected places so if you want to target families you really need to make sure you have a full understanding of your ideal client and fully analyze her psych a graphics okay pediatricians, malls and shopping centers entertainment venues parenting magazines are awesome for this preschools, sports teams in school events p t a meetings stuff like that parent teacher associations, attorneys and financial planners. They're great for family sessions. Real estate agents, family's moving into new homes. They're fantastic. Kid's clothing stores, seniors air very similar, but a little more trendy. So for high school senior you, khun do trendy clothing stores, high school sports and events venues. Conf simon shops, kids love shopping, consignment shops, school clubs, the debate club. You know, the chess club it's all it's, all fodder, it's all fair game parent teachers associations, dance schools and pageants. Especially for senior girls. Ice skating rinks. Trust me, former ice dancer here, high school kids and ice. They're serious about their sports, and they got money, same with equestrian. In high school, I was the massage equestrian event competitors on the national scale and my parents dumped a boatload of money into that sport. And it was all because they were getting divorced. They felt guilty. So they just poured my hoard money and otherwise I would've never got I milked it for all it was work, tio. But yeah. So I mean equestrian, ice rink, this's stuff. That's great. I mean, look at these expensive sports. And these people this is a great place to find seniors fashion shows you khun plan fashion shows with certain other vendors teo and we'll talk about ideas and how howto partner but one of the cool things in my town is the high schools put on this charity fashion show every year and the high school seniors go around and sell like sell uh tickets to it and gift cards to the stores for the fashion comes from and like vendors can what has it worked me if I was a photographer I could basically go in and, um, purchase the cards at half price sponsor and then sell them for more to get it like I have I have to come back to that one but it was a really neat fashion show that certain vendors could come in and like really promote their businesses to help grow the money for the charity and these kids make like sixty, seventy thousand dollars for the charity which is a lot of money for a high school fundraiser and in the meantime it will get your photography known you're the official photographer for the fashion shoot I mean, this is like there's a whole world out there the senior high school industry that are assam, so explore those music stores coffee shops, really trendy hot coffee shops for the high school seniors hang out whose are all great ideas? Okay how to find them look at your local publications. Other advertising in tv news what we used to call this there's a word for it baiting I think we would listen to radio to try to bait advertisers on radio and move him to tv and vice versa so the radio stations would like watch tv and try to talk all those advertisers into going over to them. So look at other advertising find out where those vendors are what they're doing. I joined my local chamber of commerce when I first moved to bend it was the best decision I ever made. I met some amazing people who help launch my business wedding business network books women's business network groups b m I stuff like that I don't always like you need to be very careful about that because it tends to be not a targeted audience but at least you can meet people I look at those is ways to meet people who might be able to help me not sorry to find a business does that make sense? I mean, if you're a new born photographer just go visit your o b g y n for goodness sake, get your annual pap smear okay that's how I got my display in my o b g y n office it took a few times to go in and you know something you have to suffer through to get the the display but I mean seriously and just drive around and pound the pavement it really is about commission connections with people meeting them, treating them with respect and approaching the business owner in a certain way how julia how do I approach the business owner? Okay you're so cute smiling before she's like yourself feeling yeah sorry t m I you might want to edit that local business events and classes are great ways to find business owners chamber dinner sir's chamber of commerce is always having some kind of event it's so many I can't even attend now anymore they have after our get togethers charity events just go shopping at the business for me when I found the baby store I just went shopping at the baby store several times got to know molly the owner and then one day finally when I felt like I had a reporter with her I kind of pitched my thing and she's like awesome let's do it sounds great that's a wonderful idea no one's ever suggested that before really yeah that'll work she got it now there will be businesses that don't get it because unlike you they're not being educated in the finer skills of marketing so they think just having a storefront on the sign out downtown is going to bring them people they don't realize that by partnering with you they could actually bring in a whole lot more people so some business owners will not get it just look at them as not your client okay not your vendor it's okay there will be some of those just like some people can't learn for me because the way I teach just doesn't mesh with them they are not my student just like some people who call in her on a walmart budget with caviar taste can't afford me they're not my client okay so keep that in mind it's very important though to ask yourself what does it mean to partner with the vendor ok it really comes down to giving more than you get I always think about what you can do for them you know what they could do for you and that's the exciting part the hard part is really going okay how can I help them grow their business what's valuable to them that I can provide consider what you're going to say to them build a report asked who what where when why questions resist the urge to talk about you make it all about them do not talk about your business until you have developed a relationship and a connection with them really asked and enquire how you can help them what they need find out what their problems are and produce a solution for it it's all about them not you if you make it about yourself you're not going to get the partnership it's a simple is that this is sales one on one right here then of course it's important to follow through what happens with me is I usually meet somebody in a chamber dinner or some event I figure out what they do for a living and I could probably help may grow my business that little bee in my bonnet starts to weaken okay and then I think about immediately I go into okay what's in it for them what's their story what do they need what's their problem how can I help them? How can I help them grow their business? What kind of services do they need? How can I help them make money? How could I bring more customers to their store etcetera, etcetera those kind of questions I'm asking but then follow through is so critical and this is where ninety nine percent of business owners dropped the ball. Okay, send an e mail thanking them it was so nice to meet them it's just about making good friendships, guys, this is nothing this is not rocket science right? A hand ring bless you write a hand written note to them, invite them to coffee or lunch call and say thank you it was so great meeting with the christmas party last night I had such a good time talking to you and hearing about your business I'd actually really like tio here mohr and hang out maybe chat about what you know we could do to work together because I think I have some ideas that might help get things rolling a bit better for you. Who doesn't want to hear that? Especially if they like at the meeting and there was a good report so many people dropped the ball here and go oh, and they they slack in the craft name that it never happens and you just lost out on the deal. Okay, once you get that second meeting, then it's time to kind of turn the tables a little bit. Once the relationship is established, maybe even on the first meeting, maybe on the second or third meeting you start approaching them as to what you know you are and how you can help them. And when I do it, I do it with my little vendor kit, which is this here I will bring a vendor kit to them, and inside here basically explains what we do, why we do it, who our target market is and how we can help them. It talks about displays and our other partners, so inside here it lists the hospital lists. Baby phase is it lists all these high end vendors in town who already partner with us that gives us credibility. It has pictures of our displays in the different hospitals and list the partners okay, so people see that other reputable businesses in town are already partnering with us and growing their business and they're successful so it just adds that stamp of credibility two thinks this kid basically outlines the benefits so it says the benefits for you and what's in it for us so I'm very honest so this is how I can help you and this is how you're going to help me I also have a gift kit that I give to my baby planners and this little one here says promote to our clients put a gift card or something from your business into our baby bag that we give all our baby plan clients so basically what I'm doing is I'm handing them my clients on a silver platter and saying you help me I will help you so this kind of kit it shows that you're professional that you know what the heck you're doing that you're a target that you've got a solid brand and they may not know this like consciously wow her brands really you know, sometimes people don't business owners are uneducated or they just you know, but they will realise you've got your act together okay? So I have usually an introduction letter information about what I provide to venner vendors, the benefits to the vendor and the benefits to me I don't want to just say, oh it's olive I mean they're always gonna ask what's the catch the catch is you're gonna help me too. This is a partnership. I show examples of other partnerships and contact info, of course, and I make it pretty. The message this sends to the other business is that we're professional. We do what works, we want you to be part of our marketing campaign. I could almost make some, like, raises their stuff like, wow, they want me, you know, it says we understand targeted marketing, and then it starts to outline how I can help them, okay? And there's lots of ways to help tons of ways to help you, khun do displays that their location of their products on kids or our families, or whatever free gift cards for their best clients that you can provide to the owner promotional opportunities at charity events that you're putting on so they can mark it to your clients many sessions of their location. My sister built her entire business on many sessions at baby stores. She was in a franchise of baby stores across southern california that unfortunately, out of business when the when the economy crashed in two thousand eight. But she did many sessions free many sessions at the baby store every six weeks, and there were, like four baby stores in the southern california area. And so the clients would sign up for the free session once they made a purchase at the baby store they would come back for their session ah, week later jenny would bring them back to the store for the ordering appointment and in a week later they would come back to the store again to pick up their portrait. The store got ten percent of sales and jenny managed to get there that client back into the store three more times and they always bought stuff and it was a service that the store was providing for its clients. Do you see how this symbiotic relationship is beginning to work? And she did that for, like, three years and made tons of money doing this many sessions grew her list exponentially and started marketing to it and that launched her business in southern california. Okay, what about commercial images? You know those of you who may be do family portrait or whatever like, for example, I work with a couple of dentists in town pediatric dentists and I provide headshots of all their employees commercial imagery of what they do all they're little kids in the office having a good time to use it on their website diatta what about graphic design for their business? If you know father shop and have graphic design skills, why can't you make up for sure or a return receipt go into a baby store, make a pretty return return policies card that has your imagery on the back your logo and return policies of babies r us is this goes into every bag that every customer buys social media cross promotion is great partnering a resource guide for the community the baby brief that's how I'm partnering in my community will explain about that a minute and vendor partnerships are one of the top ways to grow your clientele without spending about a lot of money displays are another one they will cost you more money, but they're incredibly perfect powerful depending on where you put up your displays but again this can be in multiple different locations depending on what your target clientele is and what nature in then use florist caters wedding planner offices, dress stores, doctor offices, mommy, coffee shops, mall displays which will cost the more because it's basically advertising but stores, hair salon, specialty boutiques oh bitchy way and offices in fertility clinics all these places are amazing for weddings family photography, seniors, babies my displays are what bring clients through my door, particularly my hospital display this took me three years to get okay it brings in about eighty percent of our clientele come from the hospital display I knew I needed a hospitalist play to be really good in my market and tone the niche and every single student of mine who has garnered a hospital has almost doubled their business, and doing so okay, really is powerful stuff for newborn baby photographers. It's also very hard to get. There is a ton of red tape it's often times who, you know, and some hospitals just downright won't let or authorize anybody else to be in there. So some play its very to market dependent it's, very hospital dependent. But if you can get in it's going to make your business if you're a new born photographer, okay, when I do, eh? When I did my hospital proposal, I started creating a project proposal that told the scope of what I was going to be doing. So it basically describes to them my objectives and goals what the schedule would be, how much the art was worth on really professional, like a like a request for proposal on r f I that a lot of people do, I automatically turned it into a formal proposal of what we would be doing with them and the schedule and the cost of materials, what their investment would be, which was nothing for this on dh then, of course, that eventually turned into the artist play agreement, which was the contract that gave us exclusivity to the hospitals, okay, so you want to outline if you're going to make a project proposal for something like a hospital or that matter for any display, but make it look professional, put in a project scope, how it will be installed, who will install it locations where you'll hang. Portrait's the schedule, the budget, whether or not you get exclusivity copyright information, all that needs to be in a project proposal. Okay, some birthing centers and hospitals will have a budget. Some won't donate. If you have too. It will make you that much money in return. I donated everything. Okay? I spent about ten thousand dollars doing my display with the first installation was sixty five forty inch campuses. Ok, I printed and wrapped them all myself because it was cheaper. The cost at ten thousand dollar cost was partially investing in a printer and the syrup software to run the printer and all that. But actual materials as this play was about five grand. Okay, now I have a printer. So any other display that I want to set up and that's it exactly what happened the minute we installed in st charles bend st. Charles redman wanted us and st charles matters wanted us, so now we're in three hospitals within a two hundred mile radius of my town. Okay, obviously those other hospitals are smaller and not is important but it was pr. It was get it in there because I want to own it makes sense. Don't skip when I move. Move in there. The girl who was there before me had sixteen by twenties on the walls. It looked awful. They swam on the wall. I mean, it would be like putting a sixteen. Twenty on this wall. That's it? Yeah, awful. Why bother? Ok, make it count. Make it good. You want you want to walk in this counts for any display guys. This is not just big hospitals do it right? Because trust me, if you do it right and you baby, sit it and you get those people who work there to fall in love with you, it will work and it will bring in clients. Okay, then write a news release. The news release we wrote was right here. Local photographer donate sixty thousand dollars fine. Art displayed a support newborn babies and burning mothers at st charles. We got tons of coverage off that. Okay, support the cause about julia, about the studio. We got television news coverage, newspaper, news coverage and all of a sudden, it's just kind of put us on the map as the newborn photographers in town so any kind of major display like that? I did the same thing. Remember I told you the humane society story when I first moved to town? Same thing did a release all for all for dogs and cats, people love cats of kids, dogs and babies I mean it's it's like given right in the news we used to always say kids and pets like who doesn't love kids and pets? It was always the kicker at the end of the newscast, like the water skiing squirrel over the water skiing squirrel like that was the kicker on every single news cast. It became close shade because everybody loves animals same thing with kids, some kids doing something cute, you see it on youtube all the time with like little twins talking to one another in their little badly language and you've got like a million hits it's true people love babies and pets, so news stories have some lead there's there's something to be said there, but you have I've learned to write a news release so that it's about the community and what's in it for the community, not what's in it for your business don't write it as an ad for your business you see the headline local photographer donate sixty thousand dollars fine art display to support newborn babies and birthing mothers at st charles that's all about the community and the mommies it's not about me makes sense so how you structure a news release I could do a whole today class on pr and news releases from my journalism days so you can't get into it right now but you know learn to write good releases so you can get this free media coverage for yourself because this is free coverage and it goes all across your town area okay so hospital displays are a bugger they're not easy to get they have lots of red tape sometimes you just have to find someone within the network it's all who you know thing so meet as many people as you can if you do get one getting exclusive long term contract if you're going to donate sixty thousand dollars with art he wanted there a long time make it easy for them so they have to do no work that was part of the reason it took me so long because nobody wanted to own it nobody wanted to have to take care of me nobody wanted to bother with me I was kind of afterthought they were so busy I didn't care if there was art on the walls now they dio because it's in there now but the time nobody wanted teo to have to deal with me so make it easy for them try to insist that your marketing materials be display this was huge for us okay, some hospitals just flat out refused to advertise anyone and I've had a lot of students come to me and say, what do I do? And I'm like I'm not sure you can do anything because there are big marketing departments at these hospitals and sometimes they just have flat out policies that say we are not advertising anyone actually this nonprofit hospitals or catholic type hospitals they have they are considered of five o one c and they cannot endorse anybody okay, so be careful that implement a baby's first portrait program get those birthing classes to most hospitals have birthing classes and that's how we got our birthing classes okay? And then of course the most important thing visit that display often bring cookies to the nurses or the doctors or the staff or the employees if you're in a baby store, whatever those minimum wage employees don't give a hoot about you, but if you treat them well and bring them something adorable and get to know them and love them and cherish what they do for you, they're going to tell your praises to every single customer who comes in that store okay, so you need to baby sit the display often and this is the ball that I dropped several times with early displays that I had I put it to slay display ignored it and then wondered why no one was coming to me from the display it was because I didn't take care of it okay that's pretty much a simple as it is eighty percent of our clients come from the hospital display it is incredibly powerful in my market but also consider I'm in a smaller town there's only two hundred, two hundred fifty thousand people in the tri county area where I have hospital displays okay that's not that many a metropolitan area like seattle or los angeles or new york is gonna be a lot different story and you probably won't get quite as many from a single hospital display all right charitable events these are awesome we do want every year called the mommy mingle it's a lot of fun it takes place at the baby store that I partner with and we have all kinds of different mom vendors come in and display their stuff and there's a line of pregnant women one hundred deep outside the door waiting to get in every time it's awesome and the reason is because molly attracts these incredible vendors to joan eight stuff so there don't bob strollers, beautiful cribs and sets you know, bedroom sets all kinds of stuff for moms who are building nurseries the money goes to the family access network, which is a local charity in town and we d'oh head shot and facebook facelifts and stuff like that at this if there's door prizes a lot of fun okay, so charitable events like this can be great opportunities for you to build your list if you make people at your booth sign up for something or be part of a raffle prize for a session or whatever you've just built your email list okay of people you could market too fashion shows for seniors information fares girls night out kind of event silent auctions, charity dinners many session marathons and one of these mommy mingles I did a mini session marathon where I had people come in they could do free many sessions and then a week later, just like my sister did they came back to the baby store and ordered their prints and products okay, all that kind of stuff works well so the mommy mango was this is aria and remember the little girl with a chair I showed you the other day with crappy clients these air not crappy clients and this is the same image that was painted for my image I mean, we may have seen it and I don't think I showed in this course but same image so that's little aria when she was a newborn and remember you saw her with the stool in the ground like that? Yeah, so these air this she's been part of my just love this family so much it's funny how you use the families you love for your portfolio but the duke, of course donate the proceeds from these charity events to any organization that you love, so and I would suggest doing an organization that means something to you and targets your ideal client that's killing two birds with one stone, right? So child abuse prevention, food banks, teen pregnancy organizations, anything like that, that means something to you and targets your audience and makes you look good in your community, all right? Social media and online communities, the major platforms air of course are this and if you buy the course, you get an entire interview with my social media experts there a daily, which is a wonderful addition to what I'm about to tell you. Um the major platforms, of course, are these, and I want to kind of talk to a little bit about what each one of these is kind of known for. So facebook is very popular you khun target your audience right? Google is all about s e o u gotta be on google plus to get good asio rankings and it's extremely public, so everybody sees every post its not like facebook where they limit your your post so that's why a lot of people love google plus pinterest, of course, is female it's visual it's creative it's intimate it's fun women are on they're just passing the time away is to graham, of course, it's all about images and photography, so people who care about photography are going to be on instagram. Twitter connection news current direct, very fast one hundred twenty four it's unless you two learning it's a huge search engine, youtube is second to google in search. People search youtube for things, so if they're searching portrait studios on youtube in bend, oregon, I want to make sure there's something on there that highlights me. We're just now getting into video, but it's going to be a very video? They're saying it's like the next big marketing thing, your blob it's personal it's, storied, and it helps contribute tio and of course, there's periscope, which were just now approaching it's very raw it's behind the scenes which people love it's easy, immediate and intimate. If you don't want to miss the life like it's, one of those scarcity things, when you see someone that you follow, you see that they're alive and you get a notification, you better get on there or you're going to miss it. So it's that immediate ation of being able to market clients now just really cool, okay? I think that's what I love so much about periscope is that people can turn off the notifications, otherwise they're not engaged with periscope right so you have to have the notifications on which pretty much means that I've got my phone I can pretty much target anybody I want at any time I want who follows me on periscope that's powerful stuff right there okay, so these are the major platforms I suggest kind of deciding which ones you want to go with and sara talks about this heavily in her interview and you need to do what you can handle it's a lot I mean, I've hired somebody to do this because it's so much and granted I do my own personal stuff but she liked handles are jule images facebook page and our google plus page the major business stuff sarah handles the key thing here is content content on social media is king and that means content that is valuable and constantly changing. We ask photographers are really lucky because we have imagery not like some business a massage therapist business who has to try to make interesting content out of words do you know what I'm saying? We have it easy now we don't want to always just do images because that gets boring after a while you want to do educational and valuable content if you do social media correctly and create a system for which I'm about to teach you you will look engaged you'll look busy popular you can connect with your clients, you keep the buzz in their minds you look like you care about your business and you don't look lazy if you're doing it every day I can't tell you the number of times clients have come to me and said, wow, you are ever they're like no, I'm not I'm in the hospital splay ah couple baby stores and overdue y in the parenting magazine in social media that's really about it she's like that a lot but they're built over time you know it's like not nice come baby sitting now I'm not I'm not like actively pursuing these things anymore but it's because of social media that these people are like you're everywhere you know but it does take seven times and seven locations for people to really recognise your brand they have to see you seven times in order for them to recognize who you are. So that means that theo beattie went offices, the hospital parenting magazine, the baby brief and the social media that's only what five that's not quite enough hashtag nbd no big deal oh that's what that stands for god I'm so not e o k I know bts me and that's about it I had to look b t essa my bad I'm teaching about social media and I don't know what the hashtags mean just a quick comparison january two thousand thirteen this is how me paige likes I had seven hundred thirty seven two years ago I now have over fifteen thousand in part thanks to creative live but mainly in part to my lovely sarah okay, now she steadily grew us heavily and we started to get a big spike this was the first time I was on creative life so that's kind of why that occurred there but you could see there's a nice steady growth okay, sarah saved my business when it comes to social media and most specifically when it comes to organic reach like this, I was not paying attention to facebook at all in january one of two thousand thirteen I had an organic reach of three people okay in april remember creative live was september of two thousand thirteen, so but in april of two thousand thirteen I now had eighteen hundred people that were looking how much organic reach she got me I hired her right here I mean it's so clear what good content and consistent content does for your organic reach and that's what people complain about these days is not being able to have organic reach that you have to paint you on. Facebook is now a publicly owned and traded company so it's money you know you gotta pay to play but I still get incredible organic reach my percentages I forget the exact number she told me and I've forgotten but she's telling me that it's a better way better than most people because we're producing content every day and content that's valuable to our consumers, okay, they want to know what we're doing so important. Okay, so where do you start a list? Your social media. Okay, this is what I want you to remember. Number one assess survey your current channels you're on. Where are you? Where do you need to be? What's not working? What can you not keep up with? And is it worth dropping? Assess what's important, what you need to do and what you don't want to dio do your channels represents you? Do they all look consistent? Sarah is a just a a bugger about me about that, like, well, your twitter page doesn't look like your facebook page that I'm talking about like the same it's, a brand chili it's brand she's absolutely right is every channel up to date with information? Can someone contact you very easily on every chance? You know, I see all the time is all these photographers who have personal pages and they're darn business pages not connected to their personal page. You go into the personal page and look at the about me like what they dio and their work isn't even listed is that why we're not connected to your to your business page right there? I should be able to I find you in a heartbeat so make sure all your information is up to date everything's clean everything looks branded just the basic info so the first step is to assess the second is to analyze look at your target market market not everyone needs to be everywhere okay where are your clients? This had goes back to market research and those psychographic sw what social media channels are they on? What aps what technology are they even technological people so what are the most important channels for you to be on and on? Lee focus on the top two for now, especially for you doing this on your own is a lot of work okay assess analyze three is assets look at the content that you can produce how much volumes of photos do you have? Don't post one session in an album spread the love take it if we do this all the time when we're short on sessions like september will take sessions from two months ago and post him so we only post one image at a time and that's you know you don't want to do more than one fish at a time because people do not click on albums toe look at all the images they just don't they stuff goes to their feet and they just look at and go like comment like so save your content for when you need it okay what's the best way to release content what time of day? Look at your insights and figure out when people are on your page when they're on facebook, what are going to be the best times of day? And I'm going to show you some tools here ought to use that will help you automate all this and create a system out of it. Okay? People love behind the scenes they love education five tips on how to make your kid smile kind of thing trends and news stories that talking the heart follow blog's in your industry for ideas and quotes quote means people love quote means those little pictures with q quote on them logs in your industry follow like if you're in a major market like new york or something like that and they've got these people who are like baby planners, look, we'll help you plan your nursery and like for high end target clientele, follow those guys and post neat things about how to set up a nursery or senior photographer. Same thing activities going on in the community that have to do with high school events. You want to post that kind ofyou want your page to be a valuable source of information for the target client that you're trying to find okay, so that should give you some good ideas for content then finally an agreement have a serious talk with yourself how committed are you to your channels our reach is so low we should be on facebook, okay, your reach is low because you're not posted every day and you're not posting interesting content. If you post interesting, valuable content for your target audience every day, twice a day, you will have organic reach. You can pay to play if you want totally optional, but you must make a commitment to consistency, consistency of message, consistency of updates and consistency of engaging with your audience. Okay, so sarah daily media is giving you guys something for free it's a guide to a listing your social media you can get it at sarah daily media dot com so go there and you'll have to give her your email because she's a marketing expert, too, and she will provide that document to you for free, which will help you, and she will be giving you some ideas. How to systemized this there are companies like who'd sweet sprout social, where you can go on a monday morning and schedule your content for the week and it's done fifteen twenty minute process, and that way you're not having to be in there every day being distracted by social media when you should be working on your client, stuffing your marketing, etcetera, etcetera, consider outsourcing it. Is that worth it? It was to me okay it was hugely worth it because so many of my clients are on social media on a daily basis I knew I needed to blanket the market with that and now that we have fifteen thousand likes other businesses in my town see that and go who we wanna partner with her she got reach it's amazing what happens when you start to grow and marketing and now that we're in the hospital people wanna partner with us because they're like you she's got the hospital audience that's a direct line to the source so once you get one big project, other projects will start falling in your lap it's like the celebrities who get everything because they're rich and famous it's weird and it's like you just start it's because they know you have the pole okay, so the like I said starting the snowball rolling down the hill is really hard at first trust me I was there, I did it, I spent tons of money made boatloads of mistakes things didn't go right had the best equipment in the world spent all the money on promotions and nobody showed up I mean, I've been there and cried myself to sleep at night doing it so but it is possible to get the snowball to run down the hill by itself you just have to be devoted and committed to it yes, my dear, I have a couple questions leave about it so in my area, there's a lot of new born photographers who do have some boutiques already. So my question to you is how often should I go in and ask people that don't have photographer's already advertising? Or if they do, how many times should I go in and keep bugging them to try and get in myself? I would circle that like a vulture on a dead animal and that's, what I did with my original display at the baby store is there was already a photographer in there. Well, I just waited for the crowds, you know, I just kind of waited for everything to be the perfect situation before I went in, swooped in and took it, and what happened was, is that photographer dropped the ball so many of them do it. Yea, it's my vantage, I know they're going to drop the ball because ninety percent of people in the world are not willing to do the work. We'll be persistent to build a business when they screw up. I'm there to take it it's capitalism in a competitive market, guys. And I know that sounds a little harsh, but I think I'm hoping you're comforted by this because there are I mean, it may take a while it's all about just circling and be in the vulture okay? And waiting for the right opportunity I would go into that store I patronize it I talked to him every few months kind of see what's going on take her to lunch, build a relationship you know, make make the skies part for her make it all fun and hunky dorry and be her friend and then eventually what's gonna happen is the other photographers were gonna drop the ball they may or may not have to take the risk clearly, but there could be other events and things that you could partner with her on that don't have to do with her story her display you know you need to brainstorm ideas for how you can help her and then she'll see that you're promotions and your partnership opportunities are better than this other one and if the other girl starts dropping the ball, then eventually you know what someone says really not working out. We're kind of looking for somebody new do you want to come in and display and you're gonna be the first person she asks do you know? I mean it may take a while, but like I said, that hospital took me three years to get and that was what I did circle because there was already another girl in there with exclusive rights and then she went out of business when the market crashed like a few years after market crash, and I saw that happening, and when that happened, I swept in and I went well, if her contract, if she was not business, that our contract is now null and void when there was a fight, trust me, there was a fight. She was not happy. I don't know why because she wasn't a business anyway, but the hospital had to pull in their legal department and all kinds of interesting things happen, but I ended up getting the display and it put it like like I said, it was circling, I had to circle the dead prey before I could go in, you know, that sounds disgusting. That's a terrible analogy, but it's true and I know this sounds evil, I don't mean to sound evil, I'm not I don't do it evenly. I do it with my been my baby, my business, best interests at heart, I do it knowing that the current person and there is not serving the needs of the business owner the way they should be, and I know I can do better, so hopefully no one my markets watching they'll know I'm coming, but it's uh it's uh, you know, they they'll start stepping up the plate, but I think that's really important if you're going to be in a business that serves its community, the vendors who are part of that need to do that and they need to step up to the plate. So, yeah, I'm sorry we were going, and then when you go into these businesses, majority have your twenty five percent twenty five dollars coupon ready to just give them or would you discuss with them what they wanted and then go make your material and bring about I would probably discuss first what would work for them and what would work for me kind of a tit for tat before I did that because I don't want to just blanket do anything, but I also want to be careful when I have multiple things going on in different vendor's again, the forty thousand foot look, if a customer goes baby storing its telegraph, keep on and then they go to the such of the store and get a hundred dollars, you know it's like you've got to make sure that all that's synonymous with one another and speaks to your gran okay, yeah, my question goes off of that as a wedding photographer, if I were to partner with a florist for a styled shoot, so I have to be about which florist I choose to use can I use them each a different times? You know, like partnering with them they're competing with each other do yeah, they care that I'm reaching out to all of them or do I have to pick one that's a really good question. I see a lot of photographers work with a lot of different florist um they're all part of my brand. Yeah, I might consider really I would talk to them all, but then pick the one that you think is gonna work best with you that's probably initially what I would do and then see how it goes, like hone in honus represented on in on the best representation for your brand, the person, the business owner whom you mesh with the best whom you think you can help and they can help you the best. And I would see how that worked for a while and then if it stops working or stops kind of really, really engaging in what you need for your ideal client, then I would kind of start branching out seeing single what else happens? But I'm sure you see lots of talk, but if it's a really good relationship, you guys were giving each other clients, then you're not gonna want to mess that up, you know, so I would honestly interview lots different flores and see which one I wanted to go with initially and then play it out and see what happens, okay? Oh, yeah, a lot of questions. I know this is like a big topic everybody loves. Okay, who's first go. I was going to ask at what point if you're partnered with a vendor already and you are the one giving and giving and they're not oh yeah, fulfilling their end of the deal. At what point do you pull out or have a serious discussion? Yeah, I think that's what it comes down to is is the trust inauthenticity, integrity of actually sitting down and say, hey, you know, I'm trying everything I can I'm not really feeling it from your end, is it best if we part ways, you know, what do you think? Like sit down and have a come to jesus meeting with him? And, hey, is this really gonna work or not? And then, you know, chances are they're like all yeah, because they're not on the ball is what's happening? They're dropping the ball there gonna lose you if they drop the ball and if your bringing them good business and doing it's tough for them, then chances are they're going to want to step up to the plate. And if that doesn't work it's just like any relationship that doesn't work then it's time to cut your losses you can your time can be spent better on someone else just like you know when you're with the wrong guy that's more time you're not finding the right guy in your life would you actually go in and like pull your art off the walls? It depends if it was the hot like the bottom of the contract says and I would make sure you have a display contract when you install your contract if you if it's not a donation then yeah I would start going in employing my stuff off the walls and saying okay, I'm gonna take this simple to somewhere else or whatever where it's me with the hospital was a donation so in my contract it says the hospital after the term of the contract has the right to move the display anywhere they want they do not have the right to throw it away if they want to throw it away they need to contact me and I will come get it that makes sense they're not gonna move it. I know that why would they looks gorgeous and it's beautiful and why would they and I'm going to keep baby sitting it even if I even when the contract ends so chances are it'll just keep going going going until I dropped the ball because there I know they're always going to be happy with me that makes sense if they're always happy with me they're not gonna let anybody else come in and display more that makes sense it's all about relationship building is really what it comes down to you okay final question that make it even um this is just, you know, it's hard to get into hospitals and also doctor's offices so a good medium way is three d and forty centres and you know they don't have the restrictions and there also that's busy and there a business like any other business and great idea yeah, I don't have one of those in my town nor do I have a fertility clinic but fertility clinics are great our great ideas too so just be thinking about these different kind of vendors that will help you okay moving on I gotta get through the stuff we got a lot of flights online communities, baby brief this is the basically when I was pregnant and bend I could not I was you're dumb when you're pregnant number one the hormones like takeover and number two you leave your keys in the refrigerator when you don't mean tio number three you have no idea where to go you like you seriously, what do I know? The first thing you do is go to your o b because that you know where you go but the same thing holds true for wedding people wedding clients you could totally build a resource guide online for weddings in your town like a knot for sandpoint idaho forever so these special event kinds of things and what about family resource is ah family photographer can build an online community all it is is a wordpress block you guys can go visit if you want baby brief the baby brief dot com and we're still working on it perfecting it but you can literally make a family site events for families in town resource is for fan pediatricians you know mama needs a spa day that's a family service, right? Yeah. Okay mama's need respite so all this kind of stuff can be targeted to whatever client you're trying to target but basically the baby brief is businesses resource is classes, articles, recreation held child care registry local resource is for mama's in bend who are newly pregnant okay there's articles on their tula versus midwife. What you need to know your registry what you really need photography, what to look for in a pro advertising all the imagery is us. Okay? We're starting to accumulate articles on there about being pregnant, so build a community and then the goal for us is to make a postcard basically that postcard right there and distribute to every business that we've listed in the guide in the online guide okay, the online guide we put everybody who targets new moms on the guide they did not have to pay set we just put him on there it's a service to our community and so worker to go into their businesses and say here's a resource for your new mommies you're on there already at got print dot com for ninety bucks I can get a thousand five by seven cards how cheap is that can't imagine all the businesses to handle their clientele and all of a sudden I am growing an online community that features us and our photography in our business. Yes, there are other baby photographers on the site all my competitors are on the site for free they are flabbergasted what the heck is she doing? It's strategic okay, but I'm also so I don't want to sound ego centric so I hope you don't take it that way but I'm so confident in our brand and what we do that we're different that I don't worry about that and you will get to that point too and I hope this craft will help you get there um and as far as advertising goes the only real advertising I do because I kind of think advertising is a waste of money is ben ness, which is the local parenting magazine in town and the ben nest is all trade, so I do their cover that was their second edition it's a brand new magazines so I'm sure you guys recognize that image from the capture injections class it was released during valentine's day so we adjusted the ribbons to be a heart and then I get a free full page ad in the magazine plus an ad for the baby brief so I shoot their cover and usually an inside story so I'll do the gift giving guide where matter fact next wednesday after the once the class is over I get to shoot the next cover and the gift giving guide for uh for this for the christmas issue that comes out okay so trade with organ with publications for this kind of thing here's another one we did this is last year's gift giving guide and the cover that sarah dailies daughter who got the cover and this's my son playing with the toys of course that turned into my christmas card as well last year and that was done as a product and gift giving guide inside the bend this magazine so trading for things is fantastic and it doesn't have to be photography services that give me graphic design work all kinds of ways and then like by trade with sarah sarah run sarah daily media out of my studio that's her office she basically rent space from me so she can have an office and I get part of my social media coverage taking care of I pay her more. I mean minds more than what she pays. So I end up having to give her cash every month anyway, but I severely reduce its a partial trade, okay? And it works out great. Very, very happy with that situation. So if you were thinking about getting a studio space, why can't you leased part of it to somebody who was going to benefit? You thinking thinking oh, that might give me two birds with one stone. Bless you, sweetie. What about unexpected trading places? Tv stations. Okay, resigned knows a thousand tv news for you. Why don't you call up your local television affiliate and say, I know you need commercial headshots for all your anchors? I would love to take them for you in exchange for airtime and advertising. Airtime is cheap for them. I mean, especially if it's a slow time a year like january after a political race, all the christmas ads in the politics they're over, they're usually hunting for advertisers in january. February. Okay, so you get, you know, make yourself in the video, make yourself commercial these days. Thirty second spot. Get it on the morning news every morning when the mamas are watching before their kids go to school and all you got to do is shoot the anchor head shots you know live on the scene when they're not there yet or the big billboard the flow of o'clock news team somebody's gotta shoot that stuff right pr firms when I first got to bend I partner with a little pr firm and shot their headshots in order to get press release to send out for stuff charity same thing partner web forum owner sarah daily usedto own ben moms for mom's which is an online forum for mothers okay we partnered together all the time for advertising and stuff way actually formed mommy mingle the charity event together she had the audience I had the idea molly had the space we all came together and formed this mommy mingle charity event okay caterers for my grand opening the ribbon cutting I traded services for catering so the whole event was catered and I like to do a shoot her dog okay that came out wrong but no one ever thinks you're actually gonna shoot a baby but when you say dog like people think you're actually gonna shoot god no all right let's go quickly seo is incredibly important on it's one of the cheapest ways to actually make your sight approachable to clients and consumers how they confined you yahoo being in google of course with the big big things things to remember your home page h one tag your headline tag and body copy must use the key words that are effective for your ideal audience and trust me, newborn portrait art is not what they're searching for baby photos is the key word you should be using titling your page jule images bend oregon professional portrait photographer of newborns that should be in every title page the whole metadata the thing back and they don't look at that anymore it's all about content and your home page content in particular is the key word id and then those inbound outbound links half the reason I am number one on every single sight and bend is because I have major corporations like creative live and all these other things linking inbound in my sights and it goes both ways, so these link trade things are actually not bad they're actually pretty valuable and the higher the ranking of the site inbound linking to you and the more traffic it has, the more credibility you've got two according to google. So when people a and creative live and extreme makeover home edition that we shot a few years ago links to me that's automatically make google s is the most popular site in town for these key words so it's really hard for anybody in my town to knock me off because I've got these all this key wording down and these inbound and outbound lengths too valuable sites that's what google looks for here is the crystal ball for keywords google and it's free google adwords keep keyword planner okay go to add words dot google dot com forward slash keyword planner you khun go in there and start hunt sing for search terms that your clients are looking for when it comes to your genre so like baby photos baby pictures people don't use portrait sor images that's all lingle wheat lingo we used to educate the client make it sound better go back to the basics baby pictures bend oregon who's gonna pop up first me key word for that kind of stuff those are the type of words you want in your content okay so if you go to google adwords the keyword planner you khun basically figure out who's searching and how many searches occurred for that term set so I can put in baby pictures bend oregon and see that eight hundred people in the last month have searched for that that's a big key word it'll tell you how competitive it is like is it a medium or high competitor word photographer bend is high meeting there's a lot of competition there's a lot of sites trying to get that key word okay so maybe you want to go for the low hanging fruit the more specific keywords like baby pictures okay, so people are searching for things online and you want to be ranked high but if you start grabbing all the low hanging fruit you've got it all while everyone else is trying to go for photographer ben you're actually going to get mork clients going for the low hanging fruit, then you will by trying to get photographer bent. Does that make sense? It's got more work to do that that it is to grab all the apples at the bottom for all the different keywords, the keyword planner is really going to help you do that, and if you want to learn about this intensely, there is an entire course on it here and creative live the photographer's guide tosto and online marketing by lawrence chan and it's a great class and he will teach you everything little bit older, but he will teach you everything you need to know about howto ceo for your market, the eyeballs stuff here. So what I'm saying is ultimately, guys, creative promotions could easily be accomplished on a budget. The important things to remember are this you will need to market hard in the beginning if you don't have a current client base, be very strategic and who you partner with on ly make sure make sure they are taught you both have the same target market. Okay? And by all means, make sure you hold up your end of the bargain, okay? Big projects sometimes take years to get some promotions work some don't, but the fish in the river always know that you're standing on the banks. So as hard as it is not to get any clients from a marketing promotion or effort, okay, as hard as that is, they still know that you're there, they know you're there. Every marketing effort is not futile, some will work more than others, but try to be patient, and ultimately what happens is when you start that marketing, make sure this is set up, because if this isn't running like a well oiled machine, then you're not going to see the benefit of those referrals at the top. Referrals will automatically happen should you get this customer cycle going well, and the basis of that cycle is the brand, the experience and product line and the customer service, the water that keeps the wheels turning around. Do you have any questions before I get to your homework today? I know it, so I hope I give a lot of ideas, lots of good ideas. Good. So with those ideas, homework number twenty four almost done, my gosh list. Five budget friendly marketing tactics you can implement in the next three months to market your studio list your goals for each tactic, what you hope to get out of it, set dates and deadlines for completion, and write a task list for each strategy okay, now, five is a lot. You might want to try just two or three right now. Do not overwhelm yourself, especially since we've had so much homework. Twenty three other assignments before this. Okay? And, of course, down led a download a list, your social media, and complete that to really get an online social media strategy, working and moving forward for you. Okay, big homework. Seven today. It was a big section today, too. I think it's a lot of contacts, one of my favorite subjects I love about marketing.