Lessons

Lesson Info

The Booth

all right so we are at the south and kata booth at the creative live bridal show right now and uh so here we are this is our typical booth so what I want to do is kind of walking through and set the stage for our booth notice in our booth we do not have no cappuccino maker no couches no construction going on in our booth this booth is set up in probably about ten or fifteen minutes when you say telling you set it up this morning I noticed a couple of things right so let me kind of set the stage we don't sell couches we don't sell cappuccino we don't sell tables and chairs and all that other stuff in my booth and I got news for you your brides don't want to walk by your booth and sit down that's not what they're looking to do they are they're shopping you know for their vendors so I'm telling you do not decorate your booth that way and again just sharing a true story when we get up to when we get to our bridal shows even if it's a two day event on the there's thirty photographer so we d...

o one bridal show where there's literally thirty photographers at this show and on the other side of the booth is typically there's another photographer there and and this is a true story he gets in on a on a thursday night he's got the saw going the drill going he's building out his booth right he's got tables and chairs and everything like that he's got like four pictures in his booth right so guess what look how many images are in my booth and this is of course an abbreviated kind of booth force but you know what there's no doubt about it when you walked by our booth there's no doubt what we do we are photographers so when I get tired you know when I've had a long day I go over to his booth and I sit down in his comfortable couch that's what I do I do this is this is comfortable this is awesome right but he's not he's not attracting the right client is booth looks beautiful don't get me wrong but I am not selling furniture I am not selling a lounge area I am selling great imagery so couple of things I just want a highlight for everybody as we go through this so you understand our booth so one it's all about imagery that's what I'm selling images on your all dramatic images noticed there's no pictures here of shoes of bracelets of jewelry off flowers I take those pictures I don't want anybody to misunderstand I take those pictures but we kept talking about this yesterday we kept talking about it over and over again today you have to find your bride my bride is the bride is gonna walk by and see this and be captivated I mean this is just a sea of pictures okay even the way we lay these out are very very simple right vertical horizontal vertical horizontal vertical horizontal were staggering we're creating an art display okay vertical prince across the bottom everything is mounted on styrene right I'm not selling framing so nothing is framed in my booth everything is big dramatic architecturally based pictures and it's not uncommon during a product you'll also notice the table is pushed forward this is a key so if you take one thing away this table is a must have this is pushed is close to the aisle as we can because what happens is people are window shopping they don't want to commit brides walked by and they don't make eye contact don't make that contact they don't want to commit because they don't know they're gonna have to get sucked in and talk to you and they're used to all these awkward vendors being there so you have to have a way to bring them into your booth and that's what this table does because they don't want to come in and commit to this yet so but they can walk by and this is really close to them and then they say free this is what gets him in because everyone's there to get free stuff they know if they all have to do is fill out their little card and they could possibly win something so that's the whole purpose of this is to get people to come to the booth and we're also collecting their names so now I have their names and email and the day after the bridal show I'll call down every single person I don't want that for you hang tight so here's what you don't want let's get him to the boot first right so here's what I don't want to do I don't want you out in the aisle you look stop like no right that's vegas let them do that in vegas that's not us okay that's not my brand right if they don't want to come into the booth don't be that weird person trying to get them into your booth just kind of chill hang back hang tight let them walk by and what's not uncommon to see is we'll have brides walked by and they just stop in the middle of the aisle they don't want to come like taylor said they don't want to commit they start getting this close they know you're gonna talk to him so they'll stand over here and they're like oh my god look it look it look at that picture a while was that was that in room allow lookit lookit lookit that one with the car that's people wow well I see this happening on cake guys we're giving away a free dvd slide show if you like to sign up toe win they're like oh free okay that's how taylor pulls him in so she just let some kind of sit here for a second and then she tells him hey we're giving away free dvd sideshow in today's brides are very very savvy because what they do is even though we have these forms okay it says name email your wedding date your phone number your address brides walking to the bridal shows with stickies so they have all this stuff printed out so they're just walking by appeal stick slap it on throw it in the bowl okay so what we're doing is we're encouraging that toe happen but before we get into the actual conversation I still want you guys let's get to get a wide shot of this I want you to see what's in the booth big images three layers so I like to personally have a double booth by the way this is a single booth so I would normally have in a bridal show a double booth remember just like the magazine stuff go big or go home so I want a double booth and it would be this times two so you'd have this entire sea of pictures and then all across the bottom so across the bottom the's air twenty by thirty prints mounted on styrene okay vertical of course because that's we're gonna want across the bottom up here these air all twenty four by thirty six is mounted on styrene and I want you guys to see these easels they're really inexpensive you can get them from displaced to go the number to go dot com and they're collapsible so they're super light and they break down like this so we put him just in this plastic bin yukio bridled you like an infomercial for five forty nine no it's super easy so you know it makes it easy to set up really quickly and in its light so we're not carrying anything really heavy we bring one filled with this stuff and then they go up just like that there was this one this one leans across it at this level yes so this just sets on these little legs which you can adjust the height and then the all the prints along the bottom are just leaning against the legs so it's really just three easels back here call it iss I screwed this up so ario so that's how easy it is for us to set up our move I spend more time obsessing about what images are gonna be at what level than I do right setting up the actual booth this is really easy forced to set up in the booth also now notice off to the side here our wedding albums so this becomes very important because this is what we sell we sell albums that's the number one thing we offer our clients to differentiate ourselves from shooting burners I mean so again you've got albums with custom leather cases right that clients are walking by and they're going hey man I've never seen anything like that can you imagine this is one of our glamour line uh albums for photography right so this is like red scarlet leather you pull it out custom custom album right bride you're going crazy for that and then out on this table out in the front you want your like best album just the one that's the most different that's going to catch people's eye so we always put our panel album out there because no other photographer really carries this size in our market so whenever they see that we're like oh that's different I've never seen that before and then that's how I get him to stay at our table so once they start filling out the slide so uh what you have out here is really going to suck them in and get them to stay the other thing out on this table is the engagement gas book right so back in the day what used to be popular innovate or die what used to be popular was having the eight by ten matted right on an easel where people sign okay that's really cool when you're like nineteen years old but as you get older in your home no one whatever I wouldn't want people walking in my home and be like oh this is a really cool look wow billy signed this what right that's not what I want that's not a cool product that's not an innovative product that's not a high end product so we started doing was producing these engagement gas books and what they are as you flip through him there's gonna be one page where the image is full color the next page the images faded and it allows their guest to sign all around it and this continues through the through the book these air books that we we produce it takes taylor because we used everything we do is template driven so taylor designs this book fifteen minutes there's ten images in it easily laid out in a template fifteen minutes max this is designed so we're not investing a whole lot of time in it but yet from a client's perspective this's gold they absolutely love this engagement guest book so this is also sitting out on this table fish bowl free dvd slideshow so this we're using an emoto right is a slide show because what if you win the free dvd sideshow I can't deliver it to you unless we photograph your wedding it's impossible you should I'm saying what I'm gonna give you slide show off wedding I did last week right if I'm gonna give you this you're gonna end up having to book me but I don't know if anybody remembers how much this was on our allah car priceless yesterday anybody remember man it's tough being in the audience three hundred ninety nine dollars so this has a three hundred ninety nine dollars value so you could even enhance this win a free dvd sideshow three hundred ninety nine dollars value so from a bride's perspective she's going oh my god this is worth four hundred bucks I'm signing up for this so now we're collecting all these names from a typical bridal show will collect anywhere depends on the show anywhere from seventy to one hundred forty names in that in that range that's our lead list and that if there is a really special bride that you had a great conversation with after she leaves you just take that name out and write a little so star put a star on you put in your pocket because that's someone you really want to follow up with if they showed a lot of interests you want to make sure you give them a call uh say their name like hey stare I had such a great time talking with you I love to uh set up a meeting where I can walk you through everything is that making sense and so taylor I hope everybody caught that if we if we connect with that bride rather than throwing her name into a list of one hundred fifty names that we won't be able to find her again we're gonna write a little star there we're gonna make a little note you know petite blonde had a great conversation with her her dog's name is pluto's and they want to go to the moon right whatever s so we're gonna we're gonna take those notes right them there so that when we have that conversation or follow up with them via phone call we have all that data there's because you know we're calling down all these names now we will talk about before we end here our strategy with a bowl of names so just before I keep going because now what I want to do is get to the point where flyers yes we're not on the table you do not have these laying around whatever you're giving out brides you hold close you don't just give it to them it's what happens yeah put it out there okay so what happens they're just gonna walk by and grab it and they're not even going to stop in and you're gonna get hammered because then other brides are just gonna keep coming through and grab it right and so you don't want that and you're like I could see you right now you know what know what right you don't know how to talk to you you're gonna get overwhelmed right so you can't we will not leave those out anywhere there so but let's let's pause with that so questions around just set up vendors anything yes yes show going on and everything's happening and then there's like boost outside that area on and I hear mixed things on to be set up in the main ballroom are to be set up on the outskirts what are your thoughts on where to be set up so great great question by the way because that is experience we've had either way I find personally I don't know what your opinion is we've never really talked about this that were inside the ballroom and that shows starts you can't have a conversation with anybody anymore like school that once you're in the outside rooms and you're not in the main ballroom once the show starts everyone disappears so it's a catch twenty two right so if you're outside the ballroom once the show starts that usually empties out because everybody's going to watch the show but if you're inside even if the show's starting even though you lose those brides you can't no one can have a conversation anymore so I'd almost rather be outside knowing that there's gonna be a dead moment right usually it's about a half hour during the show and I'm okay with that because they're going to see me on the way in and I'm going to see me on on the way out but our best bridal show that we do every year isn't just a big convention center so it's just one big open place you always wanted end cap in the middle aisle so they will have rose broken up into two with the main aisle going in between and we always have an end cap close that center aisle so by having an end cap let's say this worthy in cap here right I hope everybody understand what that means you're at the end of a rope yeah brides would be walking by right next to your booze and then they come down the island and they see it this way so you're getting maximum exposure if you're on an end cap okay that's gonna cost you a little bit more money do yu a major investment piece with the album the calendar style opening album but I've done the variety where I've done of an album of just one wedding or a collage for your main album would you recommend a wedding from start to finish or o'clock because I just I feel like my ones I want to show so much of my portfolio and I don't know if it would make more sense to have the main album a collage album or wedding from start to finish yours is a good question I would imagine a lot of tigers have that question when you're starting out you know you can go with the best right and that could be your collage style album but man every image in there better be like impact style imagery ok what you don't want to do is have you no one album in your booth I think that's a mistake so notice we've got a plethora of albums here because what's gonna happen is at a certain point you're booth he's gonna get mobbed if there's just one album people aren't gonna wait for other albums so that you want all of these in here and by the way this allows me and taylor to have a conversation up here and brides to kind of sneak in behind us and start flipping through stuff and that will happen when the bride comes in here and we'll cover this in a second right we'll talk to them and give them a little bit a little bit of spend other brides walking by so your booth is full and people are really interested it makes them more susceptible to come into your boots as well once they see other people there and notice I think I don't know if I cover this notice how the tables aren't forward tables air pushed back I don't like when a tables forward and I have to talk over a table to a client I find that to be very impersonal I want to be able to connect with that bride right that's not gonna happen if I'm talking over a table so we find by pushing these tables back it creates a much more open inviting environment and allows us to have that conversation but again I want to focus on these images again I don't care if you love or hate my images they are consistent when you look at my booth you look at my imagery they're consistent in that remember that schizophrenic I was talking about we don't have the spot color we don't have pictures of flowers and choose and then big dramatic architectural images we have architectural big images why because this is what I want to sell this is what I want clients who were looking at this and going I want that in my home if you're looking at this and you don't want this in your home your pride just gonna keep cruising on by and so that I have a very good chance of getting the right bride to stop at my booth because they will see the images they will see our albums and say I've never seen anything like that before and the more I can get clients to keep saying I've never seen anything like that before the better chance I have of separating myself from the pack and closing that business at a higher price point um the dvd slide show but I've also seen I mean I love having just the images in the booth but I've seen some people exhibit with a large screen and a running slideshow of other images and are you not doing that because we're giving away a slide show or do you just think it should be just photos if I have a double booth I'll have way do video as well so if I have a bigger booth I'll have a tv set up playing full on cinema not just a slide show but there's nothing wrong with a side show I love the idea get a tv stand set up but in addition to this I have a slide show we can't get away from the printed product that's where we're making our money so if you're just showing digital products that's what you're going to track the bride looking for digital products that's not the bride I want I want the bride was looking for artwork in their home is that making sense and questions out on the internet oh yeah a lot of them so that's good that's good that means we're giving them good information we're forcing them to think just to get the vendor questions out of the way um people are again wondering who prints the signature books and also about the little the little stand so the signature boats yeah the signature books are from signature collection I think they mean let's go no this's from signature collection albums this is our album company very very high end fine art book the press printed books we get from bay photo all our prince we get from bay photo sobeih photo handles all our printing and I've got a special for the booth for your booth display from a photo so it's time to give it to the second but it's it's rock solid and the little weasel the easels are from displays the number two go down and they're about thirty bucks u know what uh those are floor standing easily so there's floor standing so if he set them on the floor they're gonna be about this high and then over here we have table top so uh for if you want a low level prince that these small table top versions on and then those air floor standing versions and we just put them on top of the table thank you very much have a question from adrian far from england some of your friends are just as amazing as your pictures why would you not have some of those in your booth to showcase some of my friends yeah yeah because the reason the reason I don't want to have the frames in the booth first of all they're a little more expensive on your bridal show booth when you do five to seven shows they are going to get destroyed we refreshed these prints every year so we have new images and you want to keep that refreshing every year and with that kind of stuff we can't afford to and it's going to get beat up so if we're using it for displays at our studio we don't want like chips in it or anything like that remember in our studio we're going to have those display may be framed and canvas and framed acrylics right but from a bridal show perspective I won't quick easy polish and I like taylor said over over time a very short time those frames are going to get I mean just destroyed no matter how much he tried not to so many questions we're doing good on time lets him uniquely debbie different finishes on your photo displays are all just a matte finish we actually always do metallic finish we just didn't do metallic for here because of the cameras lighting and everything but metallic really makes it pop and grabs people's attention when they're walking by yeah we're big fans of metallic prince we just love the vibrancy ah that comes off the images you know when you're when you're using the talent but like teller alluded to we knew the heavy lights will be in here and there'd be a lot of glare so we just went with a matte finish but typically spend a little bit extra money get the metallic finish great okay tom from denver would like to know do you get lists of bridal show attendees from the show yes we do but don't rely on that because by this time the show gives you that list every other vendor at the show will have already mailed them a swell so that's why we collect names so the very next day actually I e mailed them that night so as soon as I get home from the bridal shows I'll enter all the emails into an excel sheet and then email blast the brides that nine seo had a great time meeting you we were this booth this is our website I love to talk with you more about your day and then the next day you can call and follow up with all the brides before anyone else does that's going to blow them away and you're going to be fresh in their minds to a week or two weeks later by the time you get that list from the show they won't remember who you are guys paws she just gave you the blue print right there okay if you want to beat your competitors to the punch remember what I told you our average bridal show has anywhere from twenty to thirty other photographers and that's not just unique to st louis I guarantee you no matter where you are in the world everybody's a photographer how am I going to differentiate myself well yes some of its products and if it's my personality taylor just showed you a very easy way to stand out from the crowd collect the names yes those every bridal show almost everyone will typically give you the list of names it could be a week two weeks sometimes longer but when you get that list from the bridal show so has every other vendor okay do they don't remember who you are they're going to hit delete so instead and most importantly more than likely they've made a decision on a photographer in that two or three week window so what we're doing is we're taking hot leads if we got seventeen aims to one hundred names who stopped by our booth and dropped off right forman we've gotten those air hot leads to me the female has already been drafted before we get to the bridal show so the bridal shows on a saturday the emails already been drafted on friday taylor gets home saturday night we are exhausted it is the last thing we want to do but taylor diligently goes through this list and there's all the names into an excel spreadsheet and then we send out that email blast that night looking to schedule a meeting with the bribing room that is powerful man because now two weeks later is when everybody else is hitting them do anything follow up after that typically know if suresh said they'll call you back unless with one of the special brides that I kept their names and I might follow up another time and with a phone call but usually we don't because you start you start running the risk of being that creeper I don't want to be free bird like thinking I am thinking about you I didn't want to do that so I just want to be able to like taylor said we hit them on the saturday night or sunday night whenever the bridal show was with the email and then the next day taylor's calling down the entire list oh and ladies wear heels I know it sucks it hurts so bad but you wear heels you have to be a fashion east at the shows you wanna impress those brides uh whenever we started doing bridal shows I had these flashy red heels with uh crystals all over them and that's how brides remembered me like only with a wound the red shoes like all right this was working every show red shoes right there making decisions there remembering taylor in the sea off photographers because of her red shoes not because of my artwork but because of her red shoes hey you know what I don't care why you remember me if that's why you remember us but this is powerful stuff man because this is giving you insight into how brides are thinking they won't be confident that you're gonna make them look good if you don't look good it's common sense right I mean we all know it's just sometimes we don't want to accept it let's go one more question one more question and forgive me if you if you talk about this but brenda leigh and granville south carolina says do you put promo pieces in the show bags we don't so we opt not to because by the time it's in the show bag they're not going to look for that until I get home and now we're mixed up with everyone else the show bag is a waste of money don't let them suck you into that don't spend more money on it because like taylor said everything is just getting stuffed in the bag and if you're a professional photographer and you've ever been to like a show like w p p I r or imaging or any of those things and you get the show bag what do you do you walk by every booth and just stopped stuff in your bag look how good I was I said stuff you stop stuff in your bag and you don't look at it for another month okay and that's what we can't have that one other the thing that we do that everybody needs to understand you me that is we produced this flier now when we started out this this is an eight page flyer by the way and so this is an h pay eight page flyer it's got images in it and some copy and and so what we're doing with this flyer okay is this is our hand out to each bride this is gonna cost you about a buck a pop so it's not inexpensive at all but I want to talk about making a statement right big impact image on the front big impact image on the back so in the front okay it's real simple new york st louis chicago because those are the mean markets were shooting in my low goes up top and then I've got a picture of a bride standing in the snow inside of busch stadium bush tatum is the home in st louis cardinals so in st louis they are fanatical so when they see an image like this they're like is that busch stadium are the lights on is that snow on the field you know who's got an image like this nobody I can honestly say there is no one in st louis or anywhere else that is an image with a bride standing in the middle of the outfield in snow so that's an impact piece you may not like it but my brides go crazy for this because to get the lights turned on at the stadium just to flip the switch is about five to eight thousand dollars just to flip that switch so this had to go up to vice president approval of the st louis cardinals and the guy's like why do we need the lights on well when they saw the imagery they understood why they needed it so you've got to find that impact peace that you're gonna put on this flyer now when I started out I couldn't afford a buck a flyer so what I did instead was I produced a nine by six two sided card right so I'm showing you a high end piece and you can go with ah entry level midlevel piece the nine by six flyer you buy those in both I mean you're you're talking about pennies on the dollar that you can get these produced for okay inside of this is our pricing sheet so all our packages that we covered yesterday that's on one piece of paper but here's how you seal the deal and hopefully everybody can see this book today for ten percent off photo or video so I am actively trying to book them at this show one hundred percent I want to book them at this show that's another reason you can't just leave these on the table and have people grab them because that pricing is going to be greek to them unless you walk them through it just really quickly they have to book today so if they just throw this in their bag they're going to call your two weeks from now asking you if you will still honor the show special under no circumstances will you honor the show special beyond today I'm telling you that's bad behavior you're rewarding bad behavior and you I know how you are photographers you're just like I just want everybody to be happy no screw them they can't be happy if you waited and you didn't do it you can't be happy I need you to take advantage of this and you may not understand why this is so important bride's talk bride's talked to their cousins they talked to their friends if they were your your training them so now when you when they come in for their engagement sales presentation and you tell them the specials expire tonight would be like well special didn't expire at the show why cannot call in next week so you're training them for the rest of their life span with you that's a great point so hopefully that makes sense now we will have brides who will call us a week later and ask for the show special and we tell him no and what this has done over the years of consistently doing this is we will have brides walked right into the show okay and they'll I mean they'll just be line it right to us right they just walked right to it and they're like are you available on june fifteenth were like hold on we pull out a piece of paper so you get to keep a list of all the dates you have books on use that you can quickly look at and say yes I'm open and no I'm not right people that we have a list a piece of paper that shows all the dates were booked on when the bride asked me are you available on june fifteenth I just have to pull it out look at that list I see I'm available and I say door yes I'm available she's like well I want to book you take you know why she wants to book me she hasn't even looked at my booth she stalked my website right she's been on facebook she's read all are testimonials and the word is on the street that the best place to get a disc camp is by booking is at the show that's the kind of power right something like this can have