Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction to Post

welcome back to day five of creative live our wedding business boot camp and you know I got my energy level so back home if you're feeling whooped it mentally then you've got like thirty pages of notes I've seen some of the pictures of notes people have been posting online its absolute insanity it's like being back in high school or college but today is going to be there's going to be no shortage of information so we still got a ton to cover today we are going to cover post event workflow so yesterday and start queuing up your questions guys because I know some of you we ended yesterday with the slide show and we didn't really take any questions on it so before I get going I really do want to talk a little bit or handle some questions around the slideshow so today we're gonna talk about what do we do after the wedding so now we're done with that wedding we go home now want what is postproduction workflow look like what e mails are sent to the client host of other things social media wh...

at are we doing on that sunday on that monday after the wedding so we'll cover that today we'll also talk about facebook and seo search engine optimization remember when we go back to the five ways all the way back today one that seems like a year ago when we go back to day one one of the things that are brides were telling us the number one way they were finding us was through internet search seventy nine percent of the bride's polled are telling us that's how they find us we'll are you on page ten of google search results if you are there not finding you that way and so today we're on page one if you google st louis wedding photographer st louis wedding photography we're coming back on page one and page two so how did we get there we're going to talk about a strategy that's an easy to implement strategy by the way you don't have to be a programmer or anything like that I'm going to show you exactly how we do it um we can cover a live client preview so right lynn and chris from yesterday we took those pictures we sent him off to evolve at its they edited those pictures force overnights right auto magically they're back here for us I could go to sleep at night and let someone else handle the heavy lifting so we're going to look at those images and have a sale cycle post wedding with a client so we'll see because it is different than our engagement sales process and so we want to cover how that would work well go overpricing again post wedding on then finally willing and the day with album designs on going through the album building process and you'll see using our forms and everything else not overly complicated so typically we're designing our albums in less than sixteen minutes max two hours we're going through album design and we'll show you show you how uh that being said let's talk a little bit about how do you use this course and I keep covering this everyday because as I go into the chat rooms on you know I'm trying to talk to people on my team we're talking to people I'm hearing from something out everybody I would say ninety nine percent of the people have this figured out but there's that small percentage of you that are still convinced that this won't work for you or won't work in your market to me that means you're not listening and so you've got to understand that I'm showing you I'm giving you in this five day course an absolute blueprint to run your business we're running a successful studio we don't photograph for weddings a year we photographed forty five to fifty five weddings a year so everything we've been talking about all week it's not theoretical this is what we're actually doing so it can work for you take your shooting style plug it in tow our framework and I promise you you'll have success uh you know what forms were using the processes most importantly though the communication I think a lot of photographers struggle on how do I say that to the client how do I communicate here how do I handle objections that is probably the biggest challenge for all of us his business owners how do I handle the objections from my client what we've been covering those all week and we'll cover more today ah and this is about making real money two thousand eight our studio did about fifty thousand dollars in gross sales two thousand eleven gross sales of over a million dollars that's really money four years during the middle of a recession all week I've been trying to show you a tea stas best I could give you examples of how here's how we did it in two thousand eight here's how we do it today so that you could see the path to grow your own business I don't expect you if you were a year or two in business to suddenly start making a million dollars a year it's not gonna happen but I also don't want you to wait ten years until you until you get there and again you can't tell me how it will work for you find a way to implement this stuff in your local market and this applies worldwide you know for my internationals you may be struggling with some of the pricing models right where we're saying charge a thousand dollars five thousand dollars and that's okay you've got to figure out what that is whether it's euro or any other currency just figure out and use the framework right when I'm talking about framework it's those pull through techniques offering high end products what that price point is I'm less concerned with as is if you have the framework memorized so that's more important to me all right so before I start taking questions ladies I want to go and make sure we have wrapped up any loose ends from yesterday around that slide show now that we're talking about so in here let my lady's first while you're queuing up questions any questions about that slight chill from yesterday we have questions you've got questions about questions that you do all right so we'll come here think about it all right so a question from k rice photos is how to sow feel about the school of thought of not showing any images until the ordering session some photographers feel that preview sneak peeks ruined the initial response which may hurt sales later and now we touch him a little bit but again no that's a great question I love questions like that because it tells me people are thinking about maybe trying this and that and they want in their china balance it with other information they've gotten here's my philosophy on it and you know like everything else I've taught you all week this is in fact my philosophy howie do things in our studio you've got to adapt it to your own system my thought is they're excited so the night of their wedding their excited and I'm mohr concerned with blowing them away right with speed at which we're doing things than holding back on them and so what I find is remember I'm doing that slide show at the wedding and so I love doing that's larger with the wedding it gets them so stinking excited to see their images and now I'm going to post some of those online and so I found the word I want to use momentum it just continues in a moment um I think about it if you've got your bridegroom and two hundred gas and now they don't see pictures for two weeks three weeks four weeks five weeks there's no more momentum life starts getting in the way you start thinking about they've got bills to pay they just moved into a new home they need a new blender I don't want them thinking about that I just want them excited and stoked to come back in so it is not hurt our sales averages it's actually helped an enhanced our sales averages because they're that much more cited I'm only showing them a sprinkling of pictures so it's a good thing do it so steve hamel dot com from st albums albums uk says is the purpose of the slide show to promote your images to the wedding guests or just to add some theater to the day or both both yeah he's definitely to add some theatre when that all I can tell you is in that slot show comes up at the end of the night we go from being photographers to being rock stars at the event because people are just blown away about how you know they understand digital everybody understands digital today and they're just blown away by how wait a minute just a hour ago this guy was still taking pictures and now I'm looking at one hundred of them today and so that just separates us from the pack again it's one of those things where people are saying I've never seen anything like that and I want establish our value and so that theater that is there the excitement is there but of course the branding is there you want talk about a marketing push I just showed my images to two hundred people captive audience if I post online I will never have a captive audience there's never another moment in your wedding career that you will have a captive audience like that so I want to take advantage of it write a question quick question from w l knew how again how does the slideshow get presented do you bring a projector yes good that's the kind of those kind of questions I was working looking for the way we work this is we have an absent screen fully collapse with collapsible screen you can find it on being h I want to say it's about one hundred fifty bucks hundred it's not expensive we carry that with us it's a sixty inch screen it goes up in ten seconds or less again I'm all about speed and efficiency so this screen goes up in ten seconds or lies we have a projector from absent as well eh so we bring our own projector our own screen and then the venue gives us just a little cake table they take the cake off when they go to cut it now we use that cake table to put the projector on there we put that in the middle of the dance floor s so it would be back here imagine this being our screen the projector would be right here and I pulled two chairs out right next to it for the bridegroom right on the dance floor the deejay then encourages thie guests to gather around the deejay makes an announcement he says hey everybody in about five or ten minutes we're going to show a slide show of pictures from today the photographers have assembled and that's important that they announce it that way because when get see the projector come out on the screen come out gets what they think it's pictures off little kids right nobody wants to see that and so the I tell my bridegroom all the time trust me your gas don't want to see pictures of you at thirteen in your awkward phase what they really you know they save that for the night of the rehearsal dinner things like that that's usually appearance they may want to see that that's great for rehearsal dinner and so now we have to make that announcement that these are pictures from today we didn't have the venue dim the lights were controlling our environment once those lights go come down a little bit everybody starts focusing on the slide show and we will have the dance more filled with anywhere from one hundred people to two hundred people just watching this sideshow it's absolutely incredible try it I promise you it will change your business so quick follow up from brazil do you tell the couple about the flight show or is it a surprise to them as well that's an awesome question and very important you understand no we do not surprise our couple with it because they would freak out if I tried to hijack their event s o they are well aware of the slideshow it's in our pricing so in our initial pricing and packaging it says same day slide show couples are more and more open to this kind of stuff because in the video world right it's very popular the s t e same day edit so this is the photographer's version off the same day at it right we're not going to show video we're going to show our still imagery and so yeah we definitely coordinate with them every once in a while we have a couple that goes no we don't want inconvenience anybody we don't want to do it and that's totally fine but I would say over ninety percent of our couples want that slide show they've seen or heard about it so you said that the slide shows in the pricing of the delivery of the slide show k m l l r two thousand three would like to know what if what do you do if the bride and groom wants to purchase the slide show family wants to purchase this they absolutely can after the wedding as you'll see later today that slide show is built into our pricing and packaging so they absolutely have that opportunity to do that and that's another I just got them excited about that slide show now I'm giving them an opportunity to buy so it's a huge pole through item for us as well they're getting it man you guys were getting it out there I love it all right so I've heard this objection before a swell and karel de photo asked from greeley colorado don't the clients think then think that you have an easy job editing with such a fast turnaround for the slide show you know I don't have that problem much thinking I have it they're more impressed by the whiz bang of how quickly we're doing it and you know it's funny because questions like that always come up like don't post the images too quickly because then you're going to make clients think it's it's too easy who cares there's more than what goes into our business and photography so what are we playing this sleight of hand game I'm gonna make you wait a month cause it's overly complicated it's not complicated stop acting like it's complicated you're not fooling anybody everybody's a photographer today so if we've already agreed everybody's a photographer all we're doing is acting like we don't understand our business we need to understand our business yes I could turn it around quickly but there's a cost to it plus my client's also understand that these air just interim files that I quickly edited down and dirty they're not fully polished so we don't have that problem where we're like you know diminishing our brand or service because we showed them so quickly we're only showing one hundred images or less so terry love photography from north carolina had asked if it only takes thirty minutes for you to complete the shite slideshow what if there isn't a break between the ceremony and the reception if there's no bridge between the ceremony and reception reception and comes back to the same concept timeline we need to own the timeline and this has been a recurring theme over the last five days I'm not surprised when I walk in wow what a my supposed to build the sideshow when you go through our timeline form on we're working that through with the bride and I think taylor did that on day two or three where we showed her the conversation with the bride the slide show came up and it's going to come up we make time for the assembly of the sideshow so if there's no time between the ceremony and the reception more than likely we're going to tell the bride we're not going to be able to do the sideshow for you unless you give us some time here and then it's up to the bride to make that decision and that has happened but it's a one off so we have so many questions on this but I know that there's you want to take one more one more like these have been good discussion like we left everybody hanging yesterday on before I take this last question is very important we understand some of the questions are around well you know what if you don't want to show people their images to quickly look everything in business is a balancing act we've got to make decisions pro con it that is a concept you will hear me say to my team over and over again right any time any of you are thinking about well should I do this or should I do this think about what I'm about to tell you pro con it for me what are the pros of doing it a one of the cons of doing it a lot of the pros of doing it be one of the cons are doing it b and when you look at that list I guarantee you the answer will be obvious that is the way I've run my entire life there's you know there's always going to be challenges in our businesses challenges in our lives and we've got it don't get overwhelmed by them step back and just merely quickly pro con it it's got to become a part of your genetic makeup so anything that goes on any day in my life whether I'm at a wedding with ramada senior chute whether there's something going on in my personal life I will quickly without thinking about it without being prompted pro con it because the answer will become much clearer when you could write down the pros and cons does that make sense so yes so that let's go with that and let's one more quick one just about about an emoto you showed us the light room sideshow doing just straight from light room have you considered an emoto are is there yeah don't do that or not that I'm a huge proponent for an emoto I love an emoto but you'll find at the wedding it's almost impossible to do an emoto because you need an internet connection and not only do you need an internet connection you it takes time to upload takes time to download I don't have that time and so that's why I use light room for the day off slide show because it's instantaneous but as you'll see as we move forward here great segue way we use an emoto to deliver the final animal the final sideshow