Lessons

Lesson Info

Displays & Referral Programs

we have the calendar and I apologize if I had a choice honestly I would spend an hour and a half on that calendar because there's so much more I would like to teach you but we did that last time and other than the basic structure we need to go past that so we get new information now foundations are also something that I always teach in every show because I truly believe that these three things are the foundation of my company this is why we're successful these air the things that we do consistently so I teach them in every show however I give you different options different marketing options each time so even though the foundation never changes the ideas are totally new and should give you some definitely from belize and babies give you some follow ups to the tots to teens the three foundations that we believe I believe built my company our displays which means getting your work everywhere making sure that you're very visual that people can see you keeping in touch which is using utili...

zing newsletters e blasts uh facebook block post et cetera and then a referral program saying thank you getting people to talk about you if you really want people to talk about you give them a reason give them a product etcetera so we're gonna cover those now last time we talked about displays and I think we covered hospital displays and that was that is really a big one for my studio but I wanted to follow up with some other types of displays so there are all kinds of displays we have everything from temporary displays like this is an example of this is aspen grove shopping centre and a outside outdoor shopping mall in my area and uh you know we get opportunities all the time we'll contact these places and say hey you've got a big open window there you know would you consider renting releasing or giving it to us for that matter so usually for a very low price we can get these temporary displays the idea for the company is it's giving them something pretty to look at as a big instead of a big empty space and for us it's giving us something visual giving us visual impact without a high price point we're pretty hard negotiators usually they'll come up with something ridiculous per month that this window is going to cost and we usually can come in and explain to them the value of what we're creating and it helps once you've had one take pictures and show them like wow this has huge wow factor it's good for you I wish this was a picture of the last one we did because we have a lot of q r p code's in the windows of you people are walking by and if you think about this if you were a shopper and walked by this it's not a portrait studio so you might just think oh pretty pictures and not think about it so there has to be some visual impact so typically in a display like this we have your peace codes in the window so with a special offer the display right before we changed it to this one was there was half of it was a baby plan and the other half was high school seniors so there were actually there was a q r p in one side that was seniors with senior promotion and on the other side with the baby promotion so people come walk by and if it does catch their eye they can just use their phones and they can go right to the web site and get more information so uh cure p codes are important I think they worked really really well to drive people where you want them to be but a temporary display I mean it can be anything from the library the chamber of commerce you could do some research and find places that are gonna allow youto have a display of many times you could get thes totally for free so it doesn't have to be something that you have to spend a ton of money on um sometimes it's worth it did invest a little bit sometimes it's not now we talked about hospitals last time we mentioned doctor's offices but I kind of wanted in this case to go through how the process what the process is to actually get into a doctor's office now with the doctor's office you have to have an entire marketing concept it has to be very comprehensive it has to be you have to think about all the little details what is the greatest impact that you can have now little tim pediatrics ironically enough is my own children's pediatrician and to be honest with you twenty years ago when I moved to colorado I walked in the door I heard this was the best pediatrician office they're wass walk in the door and the first thing I notice is another photographer's work and even then it was slightly dated it was older work by the year so my first reaction was oh bummer you know I would have loved to have had this spot I am definitely not the kind of photographer that would try to push somebody out or take somebody's display I just wouldn't do that and so I just let it go on for all these years I haven't had a display in that office but I pursued I know the value of display so I pursued every other office that I could well um funny thing uh one of my employees her children go there as well and she was there several months ago and she happened to be talking to a nurse and was talking about they were doing some updating of the building and she was talking she just happened throughout the display concept and the nurse got pretty excited and she got another nurse involved and then pretty soon the office manager was involved in this conversation and and tiffany was able to describe how beautiful and you know the look in the style and all the sudden you know stars and diamonds these these boys we're thinking this is a great idea so it was kind of funny because they were in the process of changing out the old artwork anyway and it just gave us an open door so after twenty years of just assuming I couldn't have it within a ten minute conversation she had pretty much locked up this this idea and when we go into a doctor's office we have to go through sort of a process we have to figure out how to market and how to capitalize on that so let's go forward first of all when we do in office we go when we measure the walls the first thing we need to do is how much visual space will they allow us to have every square inch israel estate understand that every image that goes on a wall in a situation like this is real estate you own it they will not take it down unless you do something wrong which is very unlikely so it's it's important that you understand that you want to take a much as you can now this happens to be a tremendously big display and I know a lot of photographers you know the last thing in the world I want people out there to do is start to say well that's because you have money or that you have a bigger business you know I started out just like you did I was seventeen years old I had no money I had the same camera for the first six or seven years of my business but you know what I had displays pretty quick but my first display it was actually in a consignment store it was two pictures it's all I could afford and then the next but as soon as it started bring me business I went whoa this it's powerful stuff and I got three images and that was four and that was five and I kept building it up because I realized the more I could show them or I could sell so start small please what I tell you don't let it overwhelm you into panic I mean heck if you could get one image up it's better than nothing at all and just build off of that so we go in and we measure all of the space and try to see how much area that we can take over then in this case we went home and we started the design process now one of the most important things that we want you to understand about displays is the fact that everybody in the images should have something to do with the location that's so critical because for me to take pretty pictures and put him on a wall it has impact but it has a certain level people will go wow that's really cool and then eventually it fades back where if all of these children you were looking at were clients of the doctor's office if they had an emotional connection to these people it creates it generates more power because now grandma wants to see it and mom every time she comes in she's doting and if the nurses children are in there and the doctor's kids are in there they're gonna be driving people you know they're going to want to showcase that to people so it's important we try to we try to teach that everybody in the display should have something to do with the location if possible in this case and it's very rare that this happened uh little tip pediatrics did not want to do a model search they did not want to go that route we tried to convince them but they just didn't want to they said we'll just use work you already have so it's kind of a bummer for me but still I wasn't going to miss the opportunity so we went through and selected images that we thought would work and you could see from these sizes they're pretty big pieces but we try toe pick images that had great impact that covered they have to be very diverse images you need to cover a little bit of everything so we tried to put something together that had a lot of power and that works and I'm gonna go back a slide or back to slides because at that point you also have to decide how are you going to relate to the clients that come in there so we pre planned the marketing structure things like providing a complimentary session card to make sure when people come in and they see the display there's something that can take home we also do things like the appointment card that you're looking at we never asked the nurses if we can make these we always do that as a free surprise we'll go ahead and we'll like in this case we took their appointment card and we scanned it and when we hung the display we have printed five hundred of these appointment cards and we took them to the office manager and we said by the way a lot of our doctor's offices that we work with like to have these appointment card so I hope you don't mind we took the liberty of creating some for you you can use them if you want or if you don't want to just throw them away well nobody's gonna throw away beautiful appointment cards with your work on them so of course what happens and we know this works because usually three to four months later the nurses will call and say we ran out of those appointment cars how could we get some more so that's a great thing because realize every single person who gets an appointment card when they go to the doctor's office everybody every single person's gonna walk out and if you've got your work and your logo on the back it becomes a business card where did these end up on the refrigerator exactly so this is your way of creating that mark of getting your name in everybody's head so this is just something we do is a freebie and it works every single time so understanding the marketing structure in addition to these two things we have albums with beautiful fideo albums that we donate to the office so that when people are reading those magazines they can pick it up and all of sudden they're looking at albums that have quotes that have our logo that have our contact information so visually they're getting kind of hit it from all levels um all of the work that we place we'll have our signature on it as well so that the name becomes recognizable so you see the walls then we have the concept usually we do model sessions with their clients and with their children it takes about six months for us to create a full display and then we put it up when we make kind of a big deal about this presentation in this case we picked images which is my least favorite and then of course we went in and we hung them up and you can see they take up every square inch that we can we want to have an impact because you know I start to imagine all the clients that I see they're all they're all their patients coming through there and you know how much this is going to affect their day how they're going to really start to drive home that market and that brand value now the funny thing about this particular display is when we put this up we had to it was a tough the office manager was really tough and we had to battle she wouldn't do them ah model idea she wouldn't you know she was just very difficult on the images that she would let us put up and it was funny because this went up and then all of a sudden she was like the proudest it was all her that you know had thought of this idea and had created this in and then she came back to the station so I called my gosh everybody loves this and we want you to do they have two other offices there like we want you to do the other two offices but why don't we use our clients and I was like oh that's a great idea you know but it was her idea and once it became her idea all the senate was the best idea ever so now we're in the process of doing the other locations but again this one display has now become a second and a third display so getting your name out there is a good yes there is an expense here we donate these images to the location we do not charge for these so if if if a budget is an issue to prints up and then put a third and a fourth as soon as you can but a cz much impact as possible this was really cool this was from creative live uh listen standing at western critical eyes life course this spring you inspired me an introvert enoughto walk into a doctor's office say I want to make a donation of art it works and I can't thank you enough for making me believe thank you so I thought that was really cool I get all kinds of emails from creative life from students that tell me about their life changes and of course I I related to this because you know she said she was an introvert and that does it takes a lot of courage and the biggest thing what's that yeah I had a question and I think she might have just answered it but is that generally you know you're donating the art they're not paying for anything I was just gonna cover that so when we present to a hospital or a doctor's office we and that's really how we sell this this is the big seek but when it comes to this and I used to be very protective of who I would tell this because you know I don't want to tell everybody how to do this but when I present we say we're making a donation of art wei contact a place and you know how we do it this is the honest I gave this last time but this is the bourbons that we use I'll have I don't never do it myself because it's actually sounds cooler if somebody else says it so one of my associates one of our marketing associates will call a place and I'll say uh the owner of the corporation that I work for would like to make a substantial donation of art to your hospital who do I contact and when you say substantial donation of art you get right to the right person so now if I had said you know I'm a photographer and I took really awesome pictures and I'd love to put some up in your office itjust doesn't work you have to have that that prominence and that presents and that's why for me it's easier to have somebody else to have somebody else talk about you there to talk about yourself so what happens and we might get somebody on the phone saying oh well what corporation isn't and they'll say oh I can't actually stay on the phone is it possible to make immediate that sounds like a really you know you know andrea reality is it's just little old me and my little old pictures but it's how we carry ourselves we go in with this whole prominence we are portrait artistes we are not picture takers this is art we're donating these air not pictures and once we create that presence and we get that meeting then when we sit down and show them slide shows show them galleries and other versions of other people's displays we create that sort of that we separate ourselves from everybody else we walk in as artists and that's kind of you know that's kind of what we're trying to teach you so so to hear that a student was able to walk in and the key is being confident because if you believe in what you're doing everybody else will too whether it's true or not I mean that's how how this stuff works so courage is important now another type of display we do a lot of children specialty stories most communities have like a place where people like a high end boutique area for children sadly this economy is a lot of them out of business it's been a hard few years I mean there used to be tons of them in my area and now there are a lot of them have closed up because you know people just aren't spending the money but they're still out there and in addition to places like this there are you know children's gyms and high end preschools in places that that you're looking for where is your target market going where does she take her kids where does she shop where does she spend her time in her money those are the locations that you're trying to get to this one is many years ago but I thought it showed this one because this was my first approach in colorado and you have to invest a little of yourself in order for people to invest in you so when I saw the store open up I went in and I thought you know I really want to display here so the first thing I did is I looked around and I try to find who was in charge I didn't want an associate I wanted an owner or a manager and I went in there with the sort of the guise of I've got four children and I need some cute outfits for a wedding I'm going to and so I immediately caught on to who the owner was because she was the busy one running around fixing and cleaning and organizing so I went up to explain that I was going to a wedding I needed several outfits for my four kids and of course at her prices I'm sure that honor was like oh yes sure so she personally took it upon herself to help me and I spent a good hour and a half with her helping me pick out outfits and I'm watching the price tag going holy cow I mean you're talking little jackets at one hundred fifty dollars you know but I knew I was creating a relationship and you have to invest in people for them to invest in you so I went I spent all that time shopping and I was getting towards the end and I still hadn't had the courage to say anything and so I was kind of getting in a panic because now I'm watching that cash register ring up and I'm like holy cow I was spending like a lot of money here and and I saw my in and I saw a bunch of cards at that time kim anderson was really popular that was the cheese he used to do the like the dress up children black and white's hand colored happen to see those cars and I said oh my gosh you're so cute I love these pictures this is yeah you don't you should do you should take some of these clothing your clothes were so cute you should do some some pictures and images and put him up on your wall and she said like she'd never thought of it she said oh my gosh that's a great idea she said I'm kind of new here I don't even know any photographers and you know what's so funny I know one she's like really who is it I said well actually it's me and of course she laughed and I and I started to explain the process and I told her I said you know I said I worked with a lot of other stores and in reality at that time I didn't really I was kind of new to the area too but I said you know the idea is here we want to make this great for you so one of the things we could do is we can have your clients be our models we do model shoots with new fashion shows we started talking and all of a sudden she was all over it she loved the idea so some of the things that I gave to her that I wanted her to feel like there was a benefit to her as I said you know I constantly have clients looking for clothing and they come in for consultations I would love to use you as a reference as a resource would you like to provide me some discounts and I'll send people your way so right out of the gate I'm telling her I'm going to send you business it's not about me this is about you I told her that we could do some seasonal stuff if she wanted teo a santa special like where people could come in and maybe do a charity where she was you know the money that we created she personally could make a donation to her favorite charity and she loved that idea and then we talked about a fashion show you've got all these great clothes you get your client's involved and you know the more you involve your clients the better it is for you and so right out of the gate it was all about her it's how can I make your your your store better and that's really important as well the most important thing is what's in it for them when you walk into any display your whole goal is how can I make it better for you because it's sort of that karma theory of it always comes back to you there's always the benefit to you but always try to go into it with her being all about that now I showed this because this is the very first display that went up I wanted the kim anderson you know hand colored feel made so many mistakes out of the gate first of all we used her clients which is great because that created buzz in fact uh one of the clients the little girl with the headman over there they they are in the top three spenders in my studio and that child is now fourteen new thirteen fourteen and they have been my number there in the top they toggle between second third and fourth and when I and when I say top centers extremely well specters so one image alone has paid for itself ten years over but things that I didn't plan I didn't tell her what outfits to bring to the model shoot so everything she brought was like black and brown and you can't hand color any of that I didn't really describe what the model session should be like so it's not that I mean all children are beautiful but a lot of the kids weren't right for the outfits for the clothes like the little girl bless her soul she is like a two year old she's in a black outfit you can't hand color and she's one of the two year olds itjust doesn't have hair she's got little short stubby blond hair and so you know this was a good trial for us because after this we learned that we needed a certain type of model we needed the big hair and the bows and the fluffy skirts and things that we could color and so so for a first try it wasn't bad things that we didn't write the follow through was excellent when we put up this display it wasn't that I just went in you know put pictures on the wall we had a grand opening we had a unveiling I should say where all of the kids involved in the display were invited with their parents and grand parents and their friends and family we had order ves we had we made a big deal about this unveiling and so it was great for her because she got all these grandma's and people in her store shopping and people stopping by to see the images so so we realized that that worked really well for us and then we started to set up two times a year we would do a spring and a fall model session and do a spring or fall unveiling and we always pick new clients each time because obviously that was good for her to get new buzz it's great for me because I would get six to twelve new clients clients that can spend one hundred twenty five dollars on a newborn jacket where the right clients for my studio so we found ways to to build our businesses together so these are the types of resource is that you're looking for there are all kinds of ways to network market we did things we're working together we would do you know we had certificates that one client it's came to us for consultations we would send them there to go buy clothing and vice versa when they would go there to buy clothing uh if they hit a certain dollar mark she would give them give certificates back to our store so we were constantly sending people both ways we did things together like coupon packs where we would go and I would find five different researchers like a children's store a hair salon my studio something else and we would all combine our resource is for marketing we would each print a coupon and we would put it in a hand addressed envelope and we would mail it out to all of our data basis so my coupon was going we usually put a number on it like a thousand by thousand best clients her thousand best clients the hair salons thousand best clients so I was getting with five people I was getting four thousand new clients that I'd never heard and they were getting my top thousand and where we were creating joint marketing so the postage was split in two you know in fifths on the print costs were half in the cost of the envelopes were you know a fifth of what it would have cost me and I got the benefit of all those new clients but you could never walk in a store and say can you give me your mailing list there's no way but if you say we can combine our mailing lists and be a powerhouse all of a sudden everybody's saying wow that's a great idea this is something that in this economy I mean this is the stuff that we have to be doing to grow we have to make sure that we're creating relationship marketing because you've got hair salon struggling got children specialty stores nobody's doing really well out there not me or anybody else's I've come to the conclusion the people that are the only people that I know of that a really successful in a recession are liquor stores and pawnshops honestly so unless you own one of those you're gonna have to work hard the difference between me and most photographers is I have a big studio with a massive overhead so when I say the stuff that I'm telling you this is not somebody successful saying this is what I do good luck it's me saying that if I don't do this I don't stay in business either and the way we describe it is my company's big we're like a big cruise ship but if we want to do something it's like turning a big ship where a lot of you are small ships working out of your home where you could make faster decisions you could do things like this and get him going quickly when you go to people when you become a leader and you go to these struggling businesses like a hair salon in a clothing store and you become that leader you become that strong force that saying hey we can save us all of a sudden they have so much respect for you and they want to listen to you because they know that you're you're helping them as well so again I'm gonna beat it up what's in it for them if you make it about them it's always going to come back to you now that's display so let's talk about customer loyalty now creating a relationship requires communication so there are lots of ways you can do that there's a good old telephone their newsletter ze blast the main thing is keeping in touch with your clients letting them know that you're there that you're active we do a consistent newsletter and have for every year that I've ever been in business I went into death in this on belize and babies so I won't go into in too far but again remember I said these are foundations the's are the foundations of my company and I could not take them out of the show the key is being a part of the community not just putting up everything you have for sale but if you if I were to look at this thing right here we've got some baby plans here but we also have some charity work that whole pieces charity work we have a client spotlight that's now I lay me down to sleep charity that is susan g komen charity yes we have our little limited editions this piece up here this big brown box that's a letter to my clients for me that's a personal letter that I typically tend to talk about my kids in my life and related to the fact that I'm very grateful for what I have and that they're part of my life so it's not all sales and buy me now it's in fact the majority of my newsletters are communication pieces just letting people know where I am in life and what we're up to so that's also important e blasts are also a great way to keep in touch this is one of those that we are spu students we spend a lot of time trying to make sure every marketing campaign we create hasn't he blasted goes with it because to me marketing is comprehensive it's not just a postcard it's a postcard and a studio poster and an e blast and a facebook post and a social media you know block post if we say that there are five elements six if it's to charity because the sixth one would be a press release anything charity based you should be putting out there is a press release but those five elements work together so that when we launch a campaign we don't just send out a postcard and pray that we get three people to call we send out a postcard we hit them with any blast will post it on facebook and we keep that and it has the same look the same feels the same consistency so that we're creating a strong message so um we have to really engage and get good at that however just like everything else I teach with the blast it should never be buy me buy me buy me all the time these air good examples of ads however there's some variety here we have everything from a model search to family portrait ce to a gift certificate sale um every month or so you're going to want to make sure that you have any blast that's just because you love your clients that doesn't have anything to do with selling our you know showing off products this is an example of the thanksgiving a blast and this is just a letter to my clients thanking them for a wonderful year talks a lot about my kids I tend to dote on my children just like every proud parent but third that biggest paragraph there is just about my children and how much I love them and that end pieces just you know wishing them happy thanksgiving and and thanking them for who they are so it's funny my children have been raised via newsletters I mean I have clients who've been with me the whole twenty years and they know they still talk about you know what my favorite newsletter was when your kids were little and the first time they saw fireflies and you wrote that story that my youngest was two and my oldest was five or six and everybody remember because there was something so for me that moment was so beautiful watching them see fireflies that however I wrote it to the state people still bring it up and talk about the fireflies and that was a newsletter fifteen years ago so the fact if I had said do you remember what was on sale in that newsletter I mean they wouldn't have a clue but that that connection that connection because everybody can relate tio first with their children and that's how that's how they connect to me it's it's never about what I sell it's about who I am every single time just keep that up singing for me every time all right referral program this is the third piece in the foundation referral programs are critical if you want people to be apart and to partake in promoting and grow and you you have to thank them for do they give them a reason to want to talk about you now we did this in belize and baby so again I try to make these shows on new but I know there's a lot of people who haven't seen the show before and more than anything these disclaimers are critical to the program this is not because I said so this is twenty four years of making mistakes and I'll tell you right now the things that are on there right down here on my referral coupon and you can go to you can do dot com and we have like ten different versions of these just so you could see the variety but they all have the same disclaimers I will not go into detail today on why they're so important you're just gonna have to take my word for it but first one is good for one eight by ten or one smaller portrait so this is what we give people when they send people to us the second one is no cash value they can't trade it in for something else or taken discount off new sessions only that means that in order to use the certificate they have to book a new session creating new energy bringing new business in it expires one ear from postmark date so in other words we just put it in the mail and then of course expires when you're late er the truth is it never really expires because we want our clients to come to us so if a client comes with one that's expired we will let them have it and then there we put this disclaimer on are you can do products it says minimum purchase supplies personally I don't have a minimum purchase every once in a while because these air templates and accidentally ends up up on there and if a client asks us I always say it's a hundred dollar minimum purchase but I don't have minimum perch this is because I'm not a fan of them and it's a simple explanation I just feel like if I have to tell my client how much they have to spend that I didn't do my job very well because you know if a client didn't want to spend a hundred dollars then I blew it not them because I must not have done a very good session so for other photographers if you feel like you need that protection you can add it but my theory is if the client doesn't want to spend a hundred then I either need to reshoot it or re funded or do something because there's something wrong there so again that's a that's a choice option now what are other ways that we can get clients in the door and create referrals this something that we're doing at our studio you know I have this big giant studio and we kind of scaled back and really got it to the crew that we love and we're working really hard but I have all this space and I was trying to find ways to create new referral programs we've got a very powerful one in the bellies to babies the new referral program we're using with babies but with children it's kind of harder because had parents are so busy how do you get their attention so we are in the process we haven't actually got hired the person but we're in the process of looking for somebody that canoe story time at our studio now think about this guys it's a good idea right I mean it's something where I was thinking okay what kids like and I was going swimming pools you know I was thinking of all the things and I thought well what if you find a professional speaker or storyteller and now you have an event at your studio if you have one or even at your home if you have a smaller group but now you have this event and you've got you know toddlers you've got groups of toddlers coming in and maybe you have little refreshments and may be a game time like I know it sounds crazy but if I could get twenty to thirty toddlers in for story time and all their mom's air hanging out I'm providing this wonderful resource and it's an event that every wednesday a story time from ten to eleven just think about the return on that for a now hour of my time maybe four hours of prep time total I'm gonna have that opportunity to relate to people and its relating to them on a personal level not on a business level now all the sudden you're just really nice lady that has this really nice thing and now you've got mom's saying oh you know what you've got to bring you a little playgroup saying oh we go to the story time everyone's that you guys have to come and now you've got mom inviting five of her friends at play group to come to story time and I visualized and I truly believe that there's not a lot of free things for toddlers to do out there and moms are so bored you know when you've got three kids under the age of five you want to pull your hair out wednesday afternoon for two hours you know a story time would be like a heaven sent for these parents so of course they're still there we're not gonna let them don't forty kids off in my studio but the moms gonna have coffee and some doughnuts and the kids could be running around I've got the space for it you've got this engaging storyteller costumes dress ups I mean there's just my brain is racing with all of the ideas my biggest problem is I haven't been home to do this so now that I've sent it out to the universe and you're all going to do it send me pictures and let me know how good it is because I think it's a powerhouse and these are the kind of thing is that this is sort of that organic growth this is getting people to talk about you without pushing anything if I could get him in the door I know aiken book sessions I just have to get him in the door and I can't count on social media and print media to make that always happen so relationships show these last time but referral wallets I just want to put a reminder out there that every session that I shoot the client will receive eight what we call business card wallets they have our logo our phone number and our web address they are free the client does not pick the image this is we select from usually from the images that they purchased you can see our logo is very prominent because when we give these free client walks away this gives us eight we give eight so this gives us eight opportunities for that client to be bragging about us there in a play group saying oh my gosh you have to go see these photographers they're awesome now you've given them the tools teo really solidify that and that's you know so always think for to me for the two dollars in print costs that I'm investing I'm getting eight times the return and I think that's really worth it as well