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Four Steps to Plan for a Marketing Campaign

So how to plan for a marketing campaign? My mama always said if you fail to plan, you plan to fail so often times you need to do is to get something ready to go in here. We're gonna break this section into four steps now first thing to do is to set a budget. I don't think that your budget needs to be complex, but it needs to be realistic. Now I want you to understand in your mind that there is a distinction between a full styled shoot and a marketing shoot. Ah, full styled shoot if you have the time and the connections and the wherewithal do it. If you don't know how to start that, I taught a course a couple of years on creative life entitled how to shoot an editorial wedding where I talk to you through how to get a coordinator, how to get rentals, how to get florist, how to get paper goods I walked you through step by step, so that's not what we're focused on today because that is a lot more expensive and a lot more time intensive. So we're going to talk about today is to figure out h...

ow much you can spend, and then you need to tell yourself I will not spend more. Because the temptation is if I just been another twenty five dollars if I just do this and I just did that honed in on in because especially beginning when you start doing these, your expenses will skyrocket but then you feel like it won't be as worth it you feel like you have made a lot of mistakes, so pulling it back in now the budget for the shoot that you will see today it was two hundred fifty dollars I will walk you through how much each of those things cost throughout this and show you can do it at home as well. Now step to define your photographic style now I believe it is easy to get caught up looking at other photographers and saying I love that I'm going to try that next time I love that I will try that next time oh lovett trying it next time but what happened is that we run the risk of applying all of these things that were reportedly love and then we put them into our style and what manifest it looks like there's multiple photographers living in her body and they're all shooting different ways and processing different ways and while I get it is part of the creative process, the last thing you want is for a perspective client toe look at your work and think which photographer am I going to get my wedding so I think it is more valuable for you to take a step back and for you to say to yourself, this is what I want, this is what I do, and this is who I am when you say that and you own that, what you get attracted to you wants what you want, appreciates what you do and applauds who you are the minute you askew all of those things, the less opportunity you have to actually have a client who appreciates you. So if you're at a point in your business, any wonder I don't know why I am getting the clients that I'm getting what's attracting these clients to me, or were not the best fit, it is not their issue, it is yours. You're not doing enough to put out your vision, your aesthetic and your style. Now I want to make sure and clarified that I am not saying that you cannot change your style. I'm just saying that it's natural to be inspired by the photographers, but you have to make these changes small as you work and you change your photographic style. Now, the sooner you photograph, the sooner you define your photographic style, the easier it will be to book the right client for you, so attract and show what she want, and it'll manifest itself now. If you want to get more about, get into defining your photographic style, please check out the thirty day boot camp because I'm really just condensing what we talked about there but there's a a full hour segment, a pool cue and a talking about how you could define yourself had a change of style and howto work toward getting what you ultimately want. Now step three how define your models. So here we get into the how this is definitely what I get asked the most is that how do we get people who really want to take time from their days or schedules to actually come and participate in a shoot? My first suggestion is to ask your peers, friends and family. Now at this point in your career, your friends and family might be tired to be like, oh, she wants us to those were again, I get that I got to that point as well, but you never know your circles of friends change or people might be a different places in their life where they might actually want to help and be a part of that. Now, if you get reach out to your immediate circle and you do not have any feedback in regards to that, ask the creative team who you're collaborating with. So if you're collaborating with hair artist and or a makeup artist and or bridal salon anybody was participating in your chute reach out to them, send them an email and say hey, I'm looking for a couple do you know anybody in your network the shoot that I will show you later today I actually was having a hard time finding models and so I e mailed the makeup artists and they said totally random but do you think you could help me out finding models within twenty four hours? She was like hey girl emailed me and she's an aspiring model and she's trying to build her book but she really wants just to work with her husband which is really rare and I was like yes great let's let's let's do this so I'm thirdly put it out on social media no it does not matter if your networks are very large are very small if they're larger than what you have speaking one on one to people so don't hesitate to ask for things because people want to help now leading up to this course on photo week I would have the honor and the privilege and the psychotic desire to join the creative life a photo bus tour up the west coast and sew myself in about I don't know one hundred sixty other people were on a bus for a few days together and I'm just getting sixteen but it felt like a hundred sixty way stopped in portland, oregon, and they said we needed models to participate in a photo shoot, and I put it out on my social media and the best part of this wasn't that people on my facebook page participated the people on my facebook page or attacking their friends in portland and taking the friends in sacramento, so there was a couple of sacramento who showed up, and they're like, what? What are all these peop people like? They had no idea that the voter shit was actually help a bunch of photographers, so you would be surprised how people actually want to help you now model mayhem dot com is a good start if you're totally in a pinch now, for those of you are not familiar model mayhem is site it's kind of like facebook for models, photographers and makeup artist toe all interconnected and network with each other. Now, in my early start of the career, when I wanted to find people to get in front of my camera now model made him isn't necessarily for a professional model. Thes air people, girls who want, you know, updated pictures for facebook. These girls were trying to become models trying to build a book, and we'll do a trade for services, the on ly, um caution is that what you get what you pay for is what you get and so I whenever I would encounter things the model mayhem models would just flake out all the time. So if you decide to use model made him make sure that you you see a record because people will leave nice comments like hey was a great shoot thanks for showing up and so otherwise social validation that actually if you work with him the auction show up to the shoot lastly, if you have the wherewithal and you have a connection with the model agency in your neck of the woods that is an absolute wonderful place to start. Now most model agencies will not work with a new or bordering photographer they want somebody established with a portfolio a pretty impressive website. Sometimes they will also ask you to pay a model fee and then in addition to think the model fee there's by and large they will have parameters as to what you can do for the images. So if you plan and using the images for marketing they would want a higher rate for their model as a byproduct. So these are the things to think about and talk about but working with model agency if it's with your wherewithal is absolutely fantastic so between all of these you will be able to find a model now step for making a bouquet let me take a step back. I had posted the video them about to share. I had posted this sneak peek on social media and I said photographers here's how you can make a bouquet well, that link got put up in some florist private group on facebook and my email inbox just got lit up how dare you degra gate the artists and ship ofwhat we dio that's like us taking our iphones and shooting a wedding, eh? Tell people to shoot it in the wedding and I got it and I sent back emails of apology but to a group of photographers let me just keep it really when I first started and I need bouquets and I was emailing florist nobody was emailing me back nobody wanted to spend their time even if I paid for supplies nobody wanted to take the time and effort it would take to get to the floor mart to wrap it to send it to me to get all the logistics involved with it it wasn't worth fifty, sixty dollars in their time. So for those florist I say I take my hat I agree I think every photographer's work of the florist but be careful what you ask for because our farm, any photographers than there are florist you will have weeks of work to do if you wanted to, but by and large you won't so if you're in the position and you have reached out to florist and they will not participate with you, well, welcome to my club now, I can say years later, as a decade, being a wedding photographer, I do have friends that I could turn to and say all payer services, and then they know I will get them the images in the time of matter we'll share in social media and it's hanging manner, so they trust me if you do not have a layer of trust, this is where I want you to go and be confident with it. So I'm gonna do is I'm going to show you how I make a bouquet? This video is about eight or nine minutes, and I really think it's going to be valuable to have a deeper understanding of what you can do and how you can do it. You're gonna get into that right now. When I was searching youtube for tutorial on how to make a bouquet, I was so impressed with what I saw, but part of why I was so impressed because the people who are making these tutorials were professional florist, so then they began to wonder, can I make myself a bouquet for a photo shoot that I need? And I needed to do this for two specific reasons I needed to do it on a budget and I've never created a bouquet before someone walking the steps, and then we're going to ultimately see if I was successful enough creating okay, so I woke up at six a m this morning, and I went down to the orange county flora martin, I wanted to make sure that I bought the flowers wholesale because I can get a better price for them. I also set my budget for this, okay, forty dollars, I'm gonna walk you through the flowers that I chose for this, okay? We have silver brew nia, I've got these as thicker flowers to kind of create more death within bouquet. I have burgundy, dahlia, I have low monia and I don't know if I'm actually saying that correctly, but they have smaller spray roses and I also have a campanella garden rose, so I've got the dahlias as a pop of color. Now I'm talking as if I really know what I'm doing, but I'm not. I was really intimidated walking through the whole, the the wholesale centre, but I picked up lars that I thought would match with the dress and we're going to take things from there. I'm going talk about creating the bouquet in five steps, so first things first, what you want to do is you want to cut the flowers. And get a nice, clean stem and you also want to have a clean area space and have everything that you need out in front of you. So what I have right now are a paris scissors. Now, if I was a professional florist, I absolutely would have shears, but I decided just to simply go to target and get some martha stewart says recency. Hell, they'll do. I also have a few pins, which is how will the pitting the bouquet with the ribbons at the end? I also have flour taped, and I just picked up this flower tape from michael's, and I'm sure that they're florist who are watching this are totally cringing, and I also picked up this silk ribbon at michael's. Now what you want to do is you want to choose two to three flowers to be the base of your bouquet. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose the flowers that I think are the prettiest, and I think that these roses and a dahlia each dahlia was priced about two dollars, on this particular dahlia has two blooms, which was like a bargain, so I'm going to start with, um, a dahlia into, um, garden roses now. There have been I was reading on the internet that you, khun tape a little bit of this center if you feel like that would help, but I think I'm just going to try to do it as organic as possible. Now, there's not going to be a right or wrong way to start assembling the bouquet, it's going to be a matter of taste and aesthetic, so I'm simply going to get a few spray roses and kind of just balance it on each side to the best of my ability now, because I am making it on a budget I'm going to have I understand that the bouquet may not be that big, but I'm okay with it. And so I want to make sure that the spray roses are balanced and then the lemon ella, I think that's what it's called all kind of just be placing, uh, just randomly around the bouquet and again, I chose this because it was cost effective, but it also gave a little bit of depth. Teo, uh, depth to the bouquet and the beauty about this is that flowers are just pretty in general. I also created a bouquet on a really, really, really cheap budget, and they simply went to trader joe's and I bought like lily of the valley. And then I just went home, and I wrapped them in in ribbon so it could be as simple or as complex as you would like to make it. I'm going to get a little bit of the brew nia and just added inn where I think it should be now I saw on the internet that you should kind of just take a look at the bouquet at the face of the bouquet to make sure that it's balancing out in a way that you like because you don't want to get to the end and then realize that it's not as balanced as you, you had kind of envisioned. So now that you've seen my bass is getting bigger, now we have the lemon l a kind of like sticking, sticking out a little bit, and I think I might adjust at a later point in time, but I think for right now, we are good now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get another dahlia, and now we're going to start balancing the dahlia to the best of my ability, I'm gonna get another garden rose, and we'll simply add on from there. One thing to take into consideration is that you don't have to feel connected or completely tied to okay as you're assembling it if you feel like it's not going in the direction that you want, don't hesitate stop put everything out again and start over and that's the beauty of kind of doing things on your own in creating in a way without any pressure. So now we're getting towards the end of the bouquet assembly and I've saved a few of the green left over to incorporate with the blooms and balance it out so you'll see that I'm going to add just a few of these here at the end and then what we're going to do is we're going to get into the final step as we wrap, okay? So I have a few greens left, but I'm not going to feel the pressure teo teo really incorporate them? I'm just going to say that this is where I'm going to end and now I'm going to do is I'm going to wrap the bouquet, so I'm going to show you the head of ok? And I think that for the most part I like I like the splash of color, I like the different dimension and I'm just going to be okay with this bouquet being what it is beautiful for flowers on a gorgeous bride and I can't complain, so what I want to do now is get my floral tape and you want to do is you want to get the tape and you want to stretch it out a tiny little bit as it makes it a slightly stickier it's not necessarily all that sticky as as an adhesive now you don't want to do the full tape too high towards the head of the bouquet because you don't want it to be exposed will cover all of this with ribbon in a sec and every time I rapid I'm adding a little bit of tension to the tape so that I could get the one sticky for the last step. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to start wrapping my bouquet so I've chosen the front of the okay and I'll pull the amount of ribbon that I think I might use I'm gonna make sure that when they start wrapping them okay it's nice and tout I want to make sure that the ribbon doesn't bend as as a rapid and I want to make sure that I am covering the floral tape so what? I want to make sure now that I got a nice little system and it's rolling, I want to make sure that my floral tape is fully covered and I will be cutting off this is of this bouquet and once I have what I want, I will cut the ribbon. So now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to fold the ribbon over so that the frayed edges aren't exposed port nice and tout and then I'm going to get maybe one or two his we're gonna place it down you can get away with one pin, but I think I'm going to use to just to be certain I think it bears to say that this situation versus how it might be different on a wedding day is that on a wedding day I would shoot the bouquet on its own and stylized it for the florist make sure everything that I wanted but because the bouquet is just a simple part of the photo shoot in and of itself and not necessarily going to be a main focus point, I wanted to be pretty, but I don't necessarily need it to be perfect so the ribbon does cover the tape and then it's not too much for that I'm gonna be cutting the bottoms and the bride will be holding it so most of the ribbon will be covered in general so now I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut the bottoms and then we're gonna head on out to the ship. So this is our final bouquet way have a mix of flowers, lots of bright colors. This will be the front of the k I put the pins in the back of ok and what you're going to see here is the final touch and overall it's not perfect, but I am definitely okay with it perfect so just one thing to keep take into consideration is I made this video not for florist napper buys, but for photographers heading to photo shoots. So you clearly know that it is not a perfect okay, but does it dub doesn't do the job effectively for the photo shoot? Absolutely, at least, I think so.