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Senior Marketing

we're to shift gears here I feel like I didn't want this show to go without high school seniors because that would be the teen side of this um I feel like you've had some very strong senior programs with south so I didn't want to take you know and rebuild a three day program but I do just want to give you our theory of high school senior marketing because we do shoot a lot of seniors we should as many senior sometimes as we do children so we love high school seniors I have a paul this is where I can actually be very creative I can control the light you saw in that siri's how I went from if I could just get them to sit still I'm doing good all the way up to turn your toe turn your head tilt your head I mean that's when you get into these ages you could do the really cool creative stuff so I do want to cover a little bit of senior marketing and um we'll start with a little video show no wait wait e wait get out of the way I was to show you that I take senior pictures a little different t...

han the kid's a little more edgy little more control lot more lighting control you can see that you know everything is about sculpting the light for twenty three old money or twenty three month old it doesn't matter for in seventeen year olds lighting is my passion seeing light and feeling that light is really important to me so you can see that that's sort of the difference between the two gonna talk a little bit about branding because I think high school seniors the whole entire mentality and marketing structure is very different so when you're designing you should design for impact ah good complete brandon kid and this is not all that it should include but everything from your business card your appointment card what toe wear brochure graduation announcement gift certificate what to expect brochure social media brag tags senior album these air all the things that we like to brand out tohave are looking style so this is actually in fact I can show you this year the two selections the two products that we have given away which we're going to give away now to you guys glow and sparrow now the reason I designed this this way is for me I wanted something kind of cutting edge and trendy so when they designed it designed these I looked at both of them and I personally favored sparrow a little bit more the kind of lighter kind of poppy looking one however glow the reason that it attracts a lot of photographers is that it's very customizable if your colors were pink and purple you could change a green and yellow it's just a little easier to work with if you're working in layers so we created them both because again what when I create things I first create them for my esp you students then they're available online and so we kind of came up with these ideas and I went with sparrow and so I built my marketing campaign around sparrow and you could see everything from postcards to studio posters business cards everything has the same look and feel I mentioned earlier that especially in senior portrait it's hard to separate yourself if you have ten really good studios in your community and then you're gonna have fifty more than our average to below average photography you khun wed your way through the average photography and the not so great photography but the excellent studios in your community if you lined up you know ten portrait from each studio even I would have a hard time guessing who's who they were from because no offense their work looks a lot like my work a shooter that nose lighting and can control lighting will get very similar outcome um shooting so it's something that um you know you kind of have to keep that in mind I have to separate myself by my brand not necessarily my work I like to think that I'm a strong shooter I do not think I'm the best shooter in the world I absolutely do not I what I do think is I'm a skilled shooter and I'm a knowledgeable shooter but that's twenty four years of learning and growing and soaking it all in so so branding should be a complete and total concept everything right down to our price list we do work in a credit system and we will mention that tomorrow we did a full explanation last year of the credit system sense creative live we have probably converted just from creative live a lot of people picked up the pricing book and plus a rescue members we kind of walked them through that as well we have converted I think we were trying to keep track and from what the emails I've got we were up to like two hundred people that had converted overdue and that wasn't even adding spu this was people who contacted me and said you know thank you I mean that conversion and we're gonna mention I've got a couple of infect one person who sent me an email that was in the room that doesn't know I have it in the show sorry dear but I really thought that you're I mean this was just you randomly contacted me about a sale the difference that working with me for a week you came to the in studio workshop had a little more time but the difference that made in your studio so it's not about me or honestly my philosophy it's about finding somebody who has had success who understand success and finding your own version of that success and you have to change it up for you so so the credit system is an incredibly powerful system it's something that most of my spu students I c a sort of a conversion they're all switching over because they're hearing so many people say my biggest cell was three hundred dollars I just had a my first credit cell was fifteen hundred dollars I mean we're talking you know tripling their income just by doing that so we'll explain that a little bit later this is actually just the session card um and I'll show you some priceless tomorrow a little bit later all right I'm gonna give away to you guys this was already given away the senior brandon kit so hopefully nobody through that other name back in there but it's just to be a new winner this is the entire brandon kit so this is everything you see there including a really nice senior album that album alone is eighty dollars on a website so you're getting the full kit you can choose glow or sparrow and this is going to christine so yeah so enjoy that you know it's nice just to have it all done so which one would you pick off the cuff hello yeah more my style exact well and you can change the colors and adapted to so good luck with that one traditional mart marketing it's important to discuss the marketing types because with traditional marketing you know you have to think about who your marketing to would you say that when you market seniors you market to the students or to the parents the students you said both I would agree both mom may or may not make the final decision mom may be the boss of everything the child may be the boss of everything so we really look at it as both we have traditional marketing which is what mom and dad is used teo that's actually shifting slowly to the marketing and organic marketing but traditionally up until now it's been mom likes postcards student in the last five years like e mail type uh marketing campaign so we're going to separate those two and talk about them both because traditional marketing I believe is mohr driven towards mom for the most part and organic marketing is driven towards senior so for traditional marking things like postcards displays yearbook ads referral program senior family promotions getting the families back on and custom graduation announcements these are all things mom likes the announcement the kid does not care if they sent out one hundred fifty announcements mom wants that they care a lot when they get the checks that come in from those announcement but there they don't really care about what goes on it these air all mom marketing techniques and you know what it's important to me we talked about it yesterday that great quote about you know social media is a ship that you know part of the ship it's not the entire ship so don't throw this stuff out yet um some of the things that we use like this is the glow marketing this is the one that you got this is like this's the poster we liketo have big strong dominant pieces this is a sample of the postcards the front and the back um you go forward this is ah wallet email reminder so in that marketing concepts we're looking for ways to get people back so of course after the senior portrait after they've gone through school this is ah reminder that goes out um right before school ends because we want them if they if they didn't buy signor announcements we want them to buy wallets to throw in there announcements that's an extra fifty to one hundred dollars in a sale but it's after the fact as well so we're always looking for marketing graduation announcements this is also an announcement we send out if if they have not purchased announcements from us we send it out but every marketing piece we create it's not just a postcard we will send out a postcard will post it on facebook we will send there's an e blast that matches it so that it's a comprehensive marketing we talked about the five marketing it's poster e blast facebook post uh postcard and if it's a charity it will have a press release with it um now we do have their the ambassador programs we call it a spirit session it's not really an ambassador um we do have a spirit session and there is a process so I'm gonna give you the fifteen second version we do have two ways we can get spirit coordinators the most popular for us is we have been literally farming names for fifteen years when I had I would have two year olds and three year olds and room but if I've got a mom that spends well and I know where her child would go I mean I had asked these questions where you gonna go to school you know where the kid's gonna goto especially when they get in the teens area I'll say oh where is she going to school and they'll say oh heritage and I'll say how do you know what we have a program a spirit programme I know it seems early but do you want to go on the list because when she becomes a senior and junior her summer year of being a senior she can actually will contact you and she could be our spirit coordinator and what that is is she will actually put together help us with some marketing things and in exchange he's going to get a lot of free portrait's what do you think and mom's immediately I mean I have a thirteen year old moms like put me on the list call me so I've been doing this for fifteen years we have names for every year coming up for you know sixty eight more years of great moms with great kids that we've already engaged in and that's really important so that's our favorite way and you might be going well I don't have clients well now is the time to start I mean I didn't twenty years ago either in fact this was probably fifteen years ago when I got my studio twelve that I thought well that's a good idea and at the time it seemed really dumb and now it's a gold mine because I have the butt and these are people that every year till they were five and then they disappeared but I didn't forget them they exist the second way is of course more viral marketing sending out to the school mailing list sometimes you could by that as an option you could pay for it is a preferred photographer you khun try dropping off things where seniors hang out that does work um school mailing sometimes they'll let you pay to do that sometimes it's free a lot of our schools in our area have a photo fair where you actually get to set up sort of a little display and stand there and talk to the kids but there might be fifty photographers in the room most of our schools have a price you have to pay to be what they call it preferred photographer they have twenty so if you pay to be a preferred photographer there they mentioned you to the parents where you know the other fifty and your community don't get the mentioned so it gives you a better chance but it's all about money and how they could make money and that's okay it's it is okay to make money for them tio um but you know you want to find ways to get it out there so once we find the right kids to be spirit coordinators we give them a letter that explains to them what they're asking with it's pretty I mean way expect a lot out of them if they're going to get free portrait's and some kids free portrait aren't that big of a deal some it's a really big deal uh but what we do is we give them a what's to expect god we give them the little contract we do have a consultation where the parents come in we do group consultations in this case where we have coordinators from every school we have a couple nights a week that they can come they pick the one that's good for them there could be two people in the room there could be fifteen students in the room we talked about the process what they get we set up up their sessions we want to do indoor sessions outdoor sessions really unique stuff we may select not in the group but we may select a few that we want to do some video work for we're going to show you another one of the stronger pieces that we have today um we may select a couple kids to do those privately because we could tell this kid's into football and they play baseball and he rides motorcycles and you know we'll select kids that have a really edgy look to be a part of that and then um we can send out a spirit e blast as well we do collect email addresses with our database and we keep track of children's ages so we can send the parents e blast at the appropriate time for their children's age so so keep that in mind I mean your databases your gold mine for years and years so try to get that in order as well now social media is more the organic way tto handle marketing and that really goes to more towards the senior themselves you're dealing with generation why also known as the millennial generation these air kids born between nineteen eighty two and two thousand two if you want to reach them you have to get online and a website is not enough these kids are so virtually everything that you know what children these days didn't get the average in the united states for child owning a cellphone now is eight years old so that's pretty crazy I mean you know and I and I'm just a cz guilty my kids have had cell phones for way too long but there's a safety thing as a parent you're thinking ok if they're at soccer and I missed their forget you know so a lot of it isn't a status thing I think the parents go into it from where I know where you are kind of a thing so I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing I just think it's it's a thing it's what the way we're going but children today don't use telephones they have them but they do not make phone calls texting is how they communicate even though we all know it's easier to pick up the phone and talk they text because when they're texting they could talk to fifteen people at one time and they're not locked into a conversation so so websites not enough there has to be other options these web users look towards their peers over traditional media however they're not looking at them for like they're not saying hey can you tell me what's cool here they're looking at what school they're seeing what the buzz is and they're following trends the reason they're not impressed with traditional marketing is they've been bombarded for years of just constant movement in the media and so they want social connections but I think when anybody my age thinks of a social connection we think of meeting somebody having dinner talking social connections to these kids are chat rooms check groups video games online video games texting has very very little to do with physically being together so they're social circles are broader then hours but they also are maur viral you khun send somethingto one kid and they can have it out to seventy eight children other kids in minutes they can I mean whether they posted you know so so there's a lot of potential there for working with them um you saw our website matches yesterday our website matches the feel of our marketing we want to keep that brand across the board we liketo have a good strong look in concept and we do change this about every two years because we want to update refresh sometimes every year depending on where we are but we try to at least change it up doesn't mean a total rebuild its just freshen it up it gets old pretty quick now what does this mean social media is evolving it's not just a place to hang out for kids it is a virtual world it's a new platform for communication and information sharing and marketing now let's talk about some e marketing to catch those students how could we do that we talked about this when the facebook trend that timeline is awesome so this is one of the I'm not sure this one is available for your download but this is one of the ones that we that we put this in the client's order when they pick it up and what it says it was our pleasure working with you we'd love to hear your feedback and give you a free gift create a status update about your session with us tag assume the status and you could be selected to win one of our weekly prizes now student goes home they get excited they post a tag and then what we do is we will send them this we will send them a timeline car timeline so that they have a timeline with their own images kids love their own images and they will stick it right back up so the timeline covers are easy to produce they are a favorite for these kids and it is such a powerhouse when your logo your information is on there because once it's up there and they tag themselves in it all their friends now know they're all going to be driven there and they're all going to see your work so there's a lot of exposure to be there another thing that we do this is actually the free certificate that you get is that senior facebook party um and this is one where this one is free the business once we do we charge twenty five dollars this one's totally free we sent out a blast these kids forward it they market for us we tell him there's a big party at our place it's a facebook party wednesday night five thirty bring your friends we don't keep track of who's coming because it could be twenty it could be one hundred fifty we get him in we do some fun creative shooting it's kind of think model kind of modelling kind of a thing but five or six shots per kid we let them pick their favorite right there on the spot like they just come up and we say you like that one awesome we retouch them we post them on our page and then we let them steal them and tag them off of our page they don't pay anything this is exposure for us this is getting them in the door getting them to see our studio we don't limit it to juniors it's senior sophomore fresh because my opinion is of a freshman's there for three years in a row with a facebook party that's where they're gonna go for their senior pictures so the way they marketed as we ask our current seizures seniors if they're interested we e blast the students that we can and we do have postcards that we drop all over and it's kind of a buzz thing once the school gets to do a couple of these that everybody's going when's the next base with party I'm not missing it because we try to create in a very short period of time we try to do some really cool edgy stuff um to make them get really excited here's a fun one that I threw in here on the referral program at the end of the session after the sale when the client has placed their order and paid a lot of times plans will say can I have some now is where can I get digital copies we tell them we do tomorrow we'll talk about pricing and what when they can and can't have digital copies but this just really quickly is something that we have these templates that at the end of the sale we say you know what we're going to send you a little email that's gonna have some of your favorites that you ordered today and you're welcome to show those two friends family so we have this template quickly drag and drop the fight we have different templates five six seven are three four five and six images depending on how many they ordered we'll drag him in we on ly show the images that they've ordered we don't want to give them anything that they don't you can see that it's a template so it's not big files but I want you to notice it says I recently had my senior portrait's created at sandy put portrait design and want to share some of my favorites with you mention this ad and receive fifty percent off your session I send that to mom and the student they said student sends it out to their friends mom sends it out to grandma grandma calls and wants a five by seven they're friends see the work that we do so refer I told you referrals top three things I'll give you a million ways to do it but they are very important there are lots of follow up products I'm trying to speak quick we have ten minutes left or less these air products that these air waste instigate more sales or to create relationships senior graduation announcements we kind of mentioned that we do send that out as an e blast as well as a postcard reminding them that we're going to graduate soon you got to do your math that calendar we taught you can't send out graduation announcement six weeks before they graduate they've gotta have them six weeks before you've got they've gotta order them four weeks before that you got to be sending this out early in the spring but you can't send it out too early because if you send it out at christmas it gets lost in the shuffle so timing is really important on these four one one cards also important when a senior graduates thes air the cool car their business cards they get to give them out to their friends when they're graduating so instead of you know writing scratching their name on a piece of paper it's really cool they've got their name their email address on their website most of them don't put their addresses because they're going to college or leading home so it's just a cool way for kids to hand out and of course it's got your name your logo on it it is a business card for you so can I sell these no they never buy them there an awesome product that they won't pay for them do you know where we use thes bonus items this is hope you've hit fifteen hundred dollars you now get fifty free for one one card so um and I know that I just got fifty marketing pieces going out the door they think they've got a gift I know I got a gold mine and that's really the way it goes as always I want to remind you that it's not always about selling I mean I know I'm a marketer and I know I'm a sales person and I know that you can see that it's not it's I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of what I do I'm actually very proud of it both on the photography speaking level and on these a client level but I think it's important that every once in a while truly from your heart you say thank you so we send out like I said yesterday the thanksgiving e blast this is senior a blast all it says his congratulations on your graduation we're proud of you go out take over the world that this is your time and it becomes something that you know it's just a thank you from us and there's nothing being sold here whatsoever it's just thank you andi really not even a thank you it's just it's all about senior it's all about you get out there and take over the world and really wishing them the best I'm going to do one more give away this is a senior marketing kit I don't want to mention something that I'm really proud of because this is the hardest thing for me writing obviously is not my strongest suit I can write I write books I mean I could writer but if you saw my grammar I look like a child so one of the things I'm most proud of is the fact that we hire professional writers and they actually write this stuff so it's very articulate and it's very grammatically correct I would say for a twenty dollar template the writing I used to pay writers and I would pay anywhere from you know thirty five to fifty dollars apiece just to have something written for me and I have a great crew and they love what they do and they can kick out things very quickly and it's it's a benefit to you guys so this is the senior give away this is the marketing side of this and this is going to monica congratulations hopefully this is one you don't have yes I got you so this is the senior marketing kits and this is gonna give you all those pieces you can choose whichever one you want and you're writing all that down right good things all right so real quick on selling your files because I've got to finish really soon this is what kids want this is what parents want now ten years ago I would've said no way eight years ago I was no way six years ago I was like oh I'm getting beat up out there five years ago I said okay this is happening to us and we have to stop pretending like it's not so how do I make it work for me we're gonna cover pricing tomorrow so I'm not going to do the speech here but the key is there has to be value it to you never sell a file for less than the minimum you khun make per hour to be successful we talked about that how much is your time worth if you need to make five hundred dollars an hour to leave your family or the people you love your files should be five hundred dollars per file now you're all panicking saying nobody would buy that good then don't sell it to them give us a bonus side of when they hit one thousand dollars they get three when they hit three thousand dollars they get six and so on and we'll talk well it'll make more sense tomorrow but I just want to kind of get you guys excited about the pricing segment that's rude files are your copyright they are your art and they should not be treated like garbage that is the problem in this industry it's not how many photographers it's how they're selling and how they're pricing the work and it's hurting all of us and my theory is instead of complaining about them and saying bad things and talking about the moms with cameras in the weekend wires why not embrace them and teach them and give them those tools so that we can elevate the whole of the industry and I think that's really important we mentioned that my story yesterday and will close with a strong video and then we'll be done the my story is that high end senior piece if you were looking at the price list that my story is the platinum level and it is a two thousand dollar minimum purchase with a five hundred dollars session fee and that five hundred dollars is not going towards anything except brandon and my time we shoot together um knowing we're going and we both shoot video footage I shoot all the stills he does the majority of the video I captured kind of the opposite side uh we do have consultations it's very important we talk about scripting yesterday with seniors we do more scripting because we need to get the emotion there and they have to be prepared for that uh so way wantto take the tow us it's taking it to that next level it's it's how do we sell this experience uh the best way to do that is to show samples which I'm going to do in just a minute if it's a girl that comes in I'm going to show a girl version like the horse yesterday if it's a guy I'm going to show a guy version which is what we're gonna show you next but I'm gonna just give you an idea of how I sell it in the pre consultation because when people come in I think with seniors they have kind of a I'm not spending more than six hundred dollars kind of an attitude and that's okay because some most of my clients are going to spend a thousand dollars to fifteen hundred dollars uh I could take him from six hundred to a thousand pretty easy six hundred to twenty five hundred there's a little bit of work that goes into that so when I sit among down and you know this might not be your personality but I think you've all caught on that photography is extremely emotional to me I mean understand I started this seventeen so it is like it is my childhood all the way up to now so when a parent sits down and we start I go through the priceless or associate goes to the price list we start with the basic package or the basic session what it includes and kind of go work our way up and eventually we get to the platinum siri's and you know I turned to a mom and I'll say okay now before I show you this next one I don't want you to think about the price because what I want you to think of is the concept can you imagine telling your child's story but instead of that I want you to think about yourself do you remember what it felt like to be seventeen years old and of course I'll get confirmation also you know it's a long time I know for me it's a long time but the thing that I always like to remind parents is that that thing we talked about yesterday at seventeen that child is about to take off and I tell mom I said you know okay think back to when you were seventeen can you imagine you at seventeen and you're personally what you're like now imagine if you actually had a show a movie of you talking about yourself talking about your dreams and your vision and your passion what would that be like for you I mean I know what I was like it's seventeen and I would give anything to I just have something that I could see what I believe because there was no walls at seventeen I was going to be anything I wanted to be I was going to do anything I wanted to do and there were no barriers there when I start to talk to mom about that I can see in her eyes got her going back and kind of rewinding and visually seeing her life and where she wass and you know and just I can see her relax and just kind of feel that and at that point I want to show her you know what we're talking about so part of the concept with this process that price point is going to be it's going to include the dvd which is the my story and it comes with an album at that twenty five that's a starting point most my stories to be very honest with you those are our five to ten thousand dollars sales very few people walk away if they're going to invest in the dvd they're probably gonna buy wall portrait another thing so these are big hits they're not we don't do a million of them in fact brandon and I made a decision we're going to do to this month and no more because it's a workflow issue we don't want to shortchange anybody as well so we want to showcase certain things we want to cover pets and you know family and friends and we want to make sure that whatever is important to that student whether it's a hobby or a talent um I really want to focus on their personality and who they are and so for me it's all about seeing the future and knowing what the future is and when I take mom threw that journey and I say you know what just think about yourself and instead of what you see the sex video instead of thinking about doing this for your child I want you to think about if you had this for yourself what would this be worth to you we'll go ahead and show this I warm up before every match tonight piece I just think about what I'm gonna do what I've done every way I just loathe step on you man you're by yourself there's no team it's just you by yourself e I know a pretty aggressive way that answer tell myself over and over way dressing what my my brother who wrestled and coaches they always say that wrestling is the hardest thing I've ever done their life and whenever something hard comes up in their life they have to look back hard resting was nothing else is hard wait all right all life is a journey which passed we take what we look back on what we look forward to is upto us we determine our destination what kind of road we will take to get there and how happy we will be when we get there now hopefully that gave you a little inspiration I'm really gonna push that video thing again I have to get brandon's get bread and a round of applause because truly makes me look good between him and air and I got a good team here but honestly you can kind of see how this works I've also surrounded myself with amazing people so I would never take all of the credit but there's so much that you could do there's so many opportunities and you know I finished a show like that and if mom is you know thinking about her son and she's thinking about herself I end that with uh oh my gosh I have to do that and there's no way I could I would well I would want that for me I would want it for you let's do it for him we can and all the sudden you're going from you know I don't think so too do you have a payment plan and that's what we're going for us