Lessons

Lesson Info

Marketing: From Prospect to Client

today. I'm gonna cover a little bit about what we talked about the other day. I know a lot of a lot of people were not able to catch that section, so I'm just gonna touch on it. And then I'm gonna go deeper into what you do once you get to your email lists, Um, and then how we've automated our system. Now, this is how we do it. Okay? How you do it, it's gonna end up looking different. It's gonna fit into your life. It's gonna fit in tow. How you want to design your business and how you want to attract your client. Okay. So, again, everything Rachel and I do is how we do it. And it's not necessarily orthodox. It's just what works for us and and the trail that we decided toe blaze for ourselves. So let's get right back into it. Business of boudoir. So the other day, I brought up our totals and our first total was my ad buy for last year. For 2000 and 13 Askew can see it was about $12,000 for the entire year, so that's only a couple of dollars a day. You know $5200 a day, depending on whe...

re we were. Our revenues were 329, on that return on investment was 2744%. So that that's the number I like the best. The other numbers. That's just money. But this tells May how much of an impact one number had on the other number, you know. So it could be any numbers in the top to the bottom one that I'm looking I'm looking for. And again we touched who? Who has checked Facebook this morning. Anybody and crew who has checked Facebook this morning in the everybody everybody and also your clients have to because, as I said, Facebook is where your clients are. We talked a little bit about Facebook ads. Why I like someone. It's where your clients are. But also I can track it. I can track it in real time. I'm seeing what my engagement is. I'm seeing how much my engagement is costing May as well. So I always have something going on, and it showed, uh, what my numbers were, what I was spending per day. It's really time I can stop it. I can start it. I can move it. I can do whatever I want. I can start different campaigns. If something's working, well, I can build on it. And I can build that engagement with my perspective. Client. Um, excuse me. So it's the engagement that I'm looking for. Marketing is what? It's an exchange of information. It's not selling its Hey, here's something that I think you might want to know more about. Let me tell you about it. I want to tell you about it. That's all I want to do. And so we can open up a dialogue between our perspective clients. Okay, Um, I don't like selling anything. I don't Upsell anything. We don't sell products. It's about an experience for the client. It's not a technical issue. And then we went into how we could do the demographics, how it could really target. We could be that Archer, right? We can. We can see where our client is. We could move him a little closer so that we can really target in and get to that perspective client that's anywhere in the photography business. As we touched on that and is in the bonus materials. You have me doing an actual ad. How I do it again. How you do it should be different. This is our personality. This is how we do it, how you do it. It's gonna be fantastic for you toe to find that it's gonna be very exciting. It was when I found it. It was like it was that Ah ha moment. You don't get a lot of those in life. So when you do get it, grab it and go with it. And then I showed you where we direct our perspective client to a specific page from whichever product that we want to give them. Or information about whichever session in or in our business what city where Rachel's gonna bay and way get them to our landing page for the specific city to wear. Then we can get them into our into our system. Okay, so for all of you that was just covering where we were the other day for that hour and 1/ or so that we that we went, I just wanted to give a refresher so that we can get right back into what we're going into. All right, so what I was talking about. Where we drive our prospect. I'm very specific where my prospect lands. I want them in a spot. Okay, I want them to get information about this one place and that could be all across your market. So if for instance, let's say that your you have a teen market and and wedding market don't be general when you're driving Teoh two weddings or Children or especially boudoir. You want to be specific. You want to be that marcher. So the information that they're getting is what they the ad originally promised them that this is where information is. This is where I'm gonna learn more. All right. A general, a general landing. Though I say still keep the general and I'll show you that in a minute. I have a list of probably about 35 different landing pages that people go into. So when I'm saying, keep the general, if I have ah, general announcement, for instance, the creative life course that was a broadcast to everybody within my system. This is great information that I know that that people want to know what Rachel is doing, where she is. What what's going on so that they can follow and find out what's happening with her and what's happening with our, uh, with our business. Not that they're worried about the business, but she has a following in and of itself. It just kind of want to know what's going on. So I keep big announcements for E books, things like that that will go to the general list. But on the specific, for instance, we have she has Honolulu coming up. So the people I already had continually market to that one city for new interest. But what do I do with all the people two years ago, three years ago that showed interest in Honolulu, They probably haven't been on her page in a while. They don't know what her schedule is. Hey, she's gonna be there three weeks. Oh, yeah, I wanted to do that. I need toe again. Start that conversation with Sean to get more info, cause I can do it this time. I'm in the headspace. I have the money are just want to do it now. So you keep that part of your prospect engaged in what's going on as you continually cultivate new prospective clients So it's not only the new. You've got to keep the old going as well. So you have your new engagement, your old engagement and you keep it going together. Can spam of 2000 and three Does anybody know what the can Spam actors right in Congress? They were brilliant at this 1.2003. They had the can spam at what it did. We were, as everybody knows, we were getting killed with spam for content that we certainly did not want. So the government came in and said, If you're going to send somebody an email, they have to have either done business with you requested information from you. Um, they also if you said if they have requested information and you send them information and then they want to unsubscribe, it has to be done. What happens if it doesn't? Is a $16,000 penalty? For every individual case of sending unsolicited email to somebody, that's a big liability. Just let that sit for a minute. 16,000 per case. Now they're obviously going after big fish after everything, but I sure don't want to be on the hook. I don't want to be on the hook for stuff like that. I'm a big liability guy. We have huge insurances. Rachel travels. She goes to private homes that she secures vacation homes. Well, if something happens, you better have a good liability policy. A nice umbrella policy. Always talk to your insurance agent. We've ours in several 1,000,000. You don't want somebody to trip and fall, and they will. Again. I'm big liability person in our industry, security of the client, not only physical security, but the security of their images. If that gets out in 1/3 party, that's my liability problem. So always be very, very careful with client images in any part of the business. Especially to me, especially this part of the business. I wouldn't want someone to be 1/3 grade teacher, and somehow their image got out. We've all seen the story about the third grade teacher who had a picture somehow show up and then doesn't have a job. That'd be my fault. One is a person I don't want that, but also liability wise, always very, very protective of your client. All galleries or password protected their Onley up for a certain period of time, that not only are they shut down their pulled off of anything that can be accessed via the Internet, and they go into hard storage where you would have to come and rob my locked files because if it can access the Internet, you'd have to be really, really smart. But it could be gotten okay, that's the that's at least the way I see it. That's the That's how paranoid or how attentive I am toe to potential liability problems. And then I also you get. You'll get a lot of clients who will ask, Well, what? I see all these images, but I don't want I don't want Rachel to use my image. Of course not. And we have. We have systems in place for that client to opt out and specifically say, I don't want my images used. I would say over 65% of Rachel's work isn't never seen. So put that into your business where a client has to in right and tell you no in writing, tell you yes, in policy, you can say if you haven't told me, I'm going to use it, but it's always It's always good to make sure that you have written permission or else you're you're using somebody else's imagery in a very, uh, intimate situation and you want to do that so again, can spam act. It's a $16,000 penalty I before the act, and this is a while ago, I would try and do all of this stuff myself. You know, someone's up subscribing. I should get him off my email list. Well, not well. You have to get them off. So I don't recommend setting up any system where you're in control of it entirely like it's on your server. And there's not 1/3 party company that has good liability as well. If somebody breaks into my email company, well, that that's their liability. So you're there's some protection there. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. You should contact an attorney for all legal advice, but eso The company we use is a Weber. There's mail chimp. There's constant contact. There's my Emma. There's companies who have software that will take care of all of this for you. Um, I highly recommend that you don't do it yourself. It's just one. It's that one detail that it just opens you up to too much potential problems. I don't want that for me at least. Um, also with the larger companies, we do a double opt in. So, for instance, let's say you you click on my ad, you go to my landing page, you put an email address in Well, you got to do one more thing because my company, I've got it set up that an email is going to go out to you and say, Hey, are you a real person? Did you really ask for this? If so, please click this link and that That confirms, um, and as soon as they're confirmed, that's when the whole conversation really really opens. So what? What this does is it gets your perspective, client. They've acted on three occasions now tohave the conversation with you. This is somebody who is very interested in what you have to offer because you have gone out of your way to put up a barrier around you. The velvet rope kind of thing of I'm happy to talk to you, but you've got a You've gotta get some hoops done before. I'm willing to just freely give you information. I'm not gonna spill my water. Um, for me, I like that it gets again. Some people don't like it, and they get very irritated. And they're not my client because I don't wanna If you want information, I want information to its an exchange. It's not just really giving you everything the keys to the kingdom, because in our situation, you'll will have a lot of professionals who are trying to see how we do our business as well. So I want to make sure I'm happy to share that. But you still have to jump through the hoops to get to me. I don't just want to talk to anybody. I want to talk to people who are interested in what we're doing. And then drip, drip, drip. Who has heard of drip content? Anybody? True content? Okay, this'll is all automated, and I'm gonna show you that in just a second. If I had to monitor this, this is it would be all that I did yesterday. I had while everybody was in class, while everybody was watching. I had two ads going and I had 14 e mails from four in the afternoon to six at night. I don't want to sit there. OK, I got it, and then I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do that. That would take me all day. That would be like Rachel retouching longhand. It's not effective, its not efficient. And once you factor your time as your most expensive resource, that's when your life opens up, right? Your time is the only thing that you concretely have. You've got nothing else. That's the way we see it. We only have time with each other. I could be hit by a bus in 10 minutes. Well, I sure wish I was working more. Rachel would have wished I was working more. My kids would have. You know, it's that. Excuse me, that's the whole thing. Once that's your commodity once that's what you're selling as the business person. Not is the artist. It's your time, And to me, that should be for me a $1,000,000 an hour. That's how important it is to me to do whatever I want to be doing. So I don't I don't want to be doing all this. I want to set it up once, and then it's like a big ball it's hard to start, but then afterwards you just tap it and it keeps moving. Tap it. It's almost like you're tapping it downhill. Starting it is pushing it a pillow. It's a lot of it's not a lot of work. It's going to take you a little bit. It's gonna your market wherever you are. However, you design your business, however your current business is. Once you start implementing something new, it takes a bit. It may not hit in two seconds. It may take a while, but I know it works. Why? Because I do it every day. So I'm positive that it'll work and it works across multiple industries. But it works great and photography as long as you're offering a product that people want as long as the work is there. So there's the everything has to keep moving up and up and up. Always keep learning. I'm right now studying Mawr on what's coming down the pipe from Facebook and what is happening ad wise with retargeting, and that's a different class. But Facebook is coming out with website custom audiences, which for marketers is huge. It's gonna be huge. That's the next thing retargeting is the current next thing for people who like us. We just have a small little business. We're not a big brand store where we're not a big cell phone company who can afford tens of millions of dollars I can afford, You know, 50 bucks a day right now. That's all I want to spend. I don't spend more than that. All right, so drip, drip content. Somebody reaches out to us to get information. They go through the hoops and then they get an email. Here's a lot of information about a session, and it's several pages long and you'll see some in a minute, A lot of information and they get to digest it and his links out to different pieces of information on our website. So it keeps them engaged with us. And then two days later they got another email, and that's more of a personal. Everybody's nervous about this, and a few more days later, they get another email about Rachel, and then a week after that, they got a follow up email from May to make sure that they got all the other emails. So what I've done is I've had a month and 1/2 conversation or a month long conversation with somebody with and engaging them all done automatically. Now, any point during this process, they'll give me a call or they'll email me and ask a question. Obviously, I'm getting right on that. That somebody who is getting my information and continually engaging with me. So I want to stay on top of that. That's, um that's your client, right there. Questions. Any questions? Right Now, start with our studio audience of Yemeni. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one thing that I thought was interesting. When you say you take your galleries off, you have to certain time, period. So you don't use any type of cloud because, you know, some clients they want to be able to teach best client doesn't run my business. I run my business, and I'll talk to you about that in a in a minute about time frames and things like that. Okay, um, don't clients are awesome. I love them. Don't give them too much permission to run your business. Okay? You run it. And once you do, I know I'm like this once somebody tells me. Well, this is just how it is in most situations If we're having a nice friendly business agreement your of my client. Oh, yeah? Well, you need to do this by this date. Well, I'm going to do that by that date. Unless it's egregiously and against everything I believe in, then I'm not gonna kick up a fuss. This is how somebody's running their business. I'm doing business with them, so I'm just gonna follow along and they know what they're doing. And I want to buy what they've got. Any other questions? You just a quick one from Kirk Elliott Photography in ST Lucie A. You sound a lot of emails. Do you write them all or do you use copywriters way? Write them? Um, the big emails. The inquiry email is written by Rachel. It's in her voice. Um, she's written, I think the three big ones because it's not copy. Copy is selling. Something copy is selling something copy is an advertisement. Now, if I am, I'll do the big broadcasts. And again I've done. I've read a lot of copy on DSA BSA tribe to a lot of copywriters, so I get it. I understand. Hook, I understand. This is what I'm telling you. This is what I'm going to tell you. This is what I just told you and making it fun and making it interesting. So I'm kind of a geek. I like to read a lot of things like that and figure stuff like this out. I don't like necessarily to pay other people to do it, but there are great copywriters and they're great websites to where you can, for a very limited amount of money, can get somebody to do it. Freelancers. It's cost effective again. This is all in our voice. This is how we do it. And with copy, you're trying to sell something. In my opinion, just a quick question from Kirk Elliott. Photography or sorry from Seoul Scraping. How far before an event are you starting to run the ads to get them often into the emails? That's good question, and it depends. It's like the tide you kind of know when it's coming. But unless you have specifics, No, that's about analogy. Start about that. Um, I'll start about six weeks. I'll start sprinkling it. I'll hit my older email, my older opt ins earlier than that with Hey, Rachel's coming up. You want to remember this, so it gives that and I'm only telling you right now, so it gives them the opportunity to start booking first. Eso that they get the choicest times in how they see it. We I will go into it. I don't book. The client doesn't tell me when they're coming. I tell the client when they're coming. The client asks for a specific part of the day on dykan. Usually 95% of time accommodate that, but not a specific time. And it's due to the idiosyncrasies of Rachel's schedule and how it works again. When you lay things out in front of people and you walk them through it, they tend to follow you. Does they figure out how they figure you know what you're doing? So okay, But then the hard advertisement, the daily stuff. About four weeks. I'll start doing every other day. Never. Here's a little gem I never advertised on a Friday. It's just a way. Found it to be a waste of money. People are talking about the weekend people have got stuff to do, but I might advertise on a Saturday night. People are home. Hey, it is a cool. Let's look into this. I find that to be a very good time. Nights are good for this type of business. Uh, I think probably the not safe for work links might not be a good idea. A good point. Consider I never actually thought about that. I love it a lot of times. That's I'll hit nights, early mornings, and then I've got to think of time zones. I've got to think, OK, she's going to New York. I shouldn't get it now because there three hours ahead of me. So I've got to figure that out. Facebook right now Doesn't Doesn't let you dio start at this time. Stop at that time started this day Stop that day and time. Um but so I go in and I kind of ride it every day. I think we can keep going. Okay. So drip content is very important toe automate to just allow you not to have to do it though. People, sometimes we're gonna get somebody who says Well, I wanted a specific question that well, they didn't read it. They didn't because everything's answered. Every question that's asked the Onley time that it's special is that the potential client has a special story. My spouse passed away or on a weight loss journey, or I'm on a It's not a question it's they want. They want to tell you more about themselves. Rarely is it questions not answered. All right, so this is just kind of a glimpse at when I said specific. Andi, specificity is the key. So I've got, uh, Honolulu, Maui, Minneapolis, Phoenix. This is stuff from our main site. This is stuff from action sites. Los Angeles, San Diego. So I've got people who have told me where they live and I can market to them specifically for when we're gonna be in their neck of the woods. Um, the numbers don't mean much to you. They mean a lot to me. But I know how many people I'm going to hit that day and then even better. So I do a brought Let's say I do a broadcast email out to potential clients again. Uh huh. And I have several links. One link will be to booking a session another, maybe to some different looks. Two days later, when I come back and I see my results, I can see how many people clicked on the first link. How many people clicked on the second link? How many people clipped on the third link? And then I know, let's say my first link is to booking a session, and I've got 45 people who clicked on that. Now I consent a specific email to those 45 people. So you compare it down, pare it down, pare it down, pare it down. That's becoming the archer again. These are all systems. Every business has a system. What's your system going to be? This is what our system is. And I'm sure many of you already have a system. Or many of you at home already have a system. Is it efficient? Can it be more efficient? Kind of give you more of that time. Can you get more that time back? That's that's what's important to us. That's how we've tried to figure it out. We've did not find that our business model was something that was done much. Um, we kind of I think invented it as we were going along saying, Hey, this works. Hey, that works. And it's one of those not really knowing what the rules were in what you're supposed to do because our society is changing so quickly. The way that we interact with each other in the past decade has changed. And I remember getting my first tax like what? What's that? You know. And then you had the nine numbers and you're trying to figure out what what to type in. And now it's ubiquitous. It's you're everybody's walking around like this all the time. We're always communicating with each other. We might not be saying very much to each other, but we're always communicating. Um, all right, so I'm gonna give you a little bit of those that drip content of what? Of what we do and how it works. So a client, a potential client, this is I have new email just as of January 1st. But this is my The only thing that changed is that number. Um, so now you have gone through the different levels of wanting to get information, the streamlining and time saving for us. So this is what comes out, and it tells pretty much everything, and if it doesn't tell everything, it's got links, so you're continually having to interact with us. right. So, Rachel, lay it down. Um, you can check out testimonials or see her galleries. This is when you use your main website. The clients already there they've already paid using again as we talked about the other day, sending an advertisement to a main website is probably the biggest waste of money in Facebook ads. It just doesn't work because you're not asking a client to do anything. You're not demanding something for the privilege. You know, it's just kind of like picking up a magazine to the doctor's office. They can just fold through and pick up a new one. They're not focused. You want to focus them, you wanna give them the information that you want them to have, And then they can go do whatever they want because you've given it to them. You've got in your system that is going to continue for until they opt out of it. And guess what? Eventually, they up back in, We get out, we get in, we get out, we get it in, people say, stop sending me emails. Okay? Hit the opt out button. Everything has to have opt out and the big companies automatically in the footer. It'll have unsubscribed opt out or whatever. I even have, Ah, email filter in my outlook to filter the word unsubscribe. So I know who's sending me email. Who's sending me newsletters? So have a whole folder that way. It's not in my inbox is just in a unsubscribe folder that I know I'm gonna want to read later. Um, so don't tell that to your client to make a filter. Then they might not be reading your stuff, but for you, it's a good idea. Trust me up were on vacation. I came back 3000 emails, unsubscribe, 1800 emails. And then everything else was in that folder. Um, so she'll link out to our main site if for reviews. We find that important. Uh, it's a good selling point. What other people say about you, Not what you say about you. I know. I love May. I want you to know other people love me, our Rachel, not me. And then we've got a frequently asked questions and we and she covers everything. How much? What's the time? Is makeup provided? What about clothes? All of that Biggest one for me? Um, his bookings. I want people. I want to drive people to our, uh, booking software and the booking software. I'll go into that in a minute. It's totally different than than normal photography scheduling software. The reason is her schedule so weird. Um, not so weird. So efficient for what we do. But it is different, and the schedule is included in the bonus material. When you sign up for the course, Correct? Yeah. So this guy that you can see how how she runs her schedule, it's something that you build up to. You may not wanna do it that way to start off, cause she'll do a lot of clients in a day over a weekend. We always offer a military discount. That's been a great business booster for us. Um, and we do it on both the session and on ordering images. Discounts are great because you're going to get somebody who will say, um, I'm with the charity I most of this or they're going to give you a story. Will you offer me a discount? And you say, you know, I already do discounts we already support. Uh, Rachel has a breast cancer page that she'll do a pro bono session in each city on DWI also do discounts with the military, so we already do it. I'm sorry, I'm not doing it with you. And then that totally changes the subject. It acknowledges what they've said. You've acknowledged it is important, Yes, but this is what we do currently. We're not open up to other other types of discounts for a charity or whatever. Um, but and then we were talking about our drip content, so that was the first. That's the immediate email that goes out to a potential client right after they have subscribed to, um, the list that they were funnelled into. And then three days after that, they'll be kind of Ah, hey, everybody's nervous. I understand. And this is from H. This is in Rachel's own voice. This is she gets it and has a little story about it and wants to make you feel comfortable and knows that you're worried. And maybe it's not something that you want to do, and that's fine. Days after that is Rachel's personal story, which is, in my opinion, quite moving. And that's this one gets a very good response in conversation because we're very open those people who we are, where we've come from. It's been a long road to get here, and so where we're in perfect, just like everybody else. So then her personal story will go out, and and that's that opens more conversation to where people see Hey, this is not just a business, these air people, and that breaks down their defenses. Our defenses are already down. That helps humanize us more and break their defenses down. Then over a week, I think I've got it seven days after that email Little follow up from May. Hey, did you get this? Can I answer any other questions? Um, if I can just. Well, if you don't want to talk to me because I'm a guy, right? So people often ask the question and I've had it in classes. Is you? I'm the one who who deals with all prospective clients. Rachel never talks or meet somebody until they walk in the room. It's very rare that show that even there's email exchange unless the story is quite substantial. Unless there's it's quite moving and this client needs her, they don't need me. They need Rachel. At that point, we had in a recent city very fortunate. We had a cancellation. It was weird. And 10 minutes after the cancellation, a woman with end stage breast cancer saves three and with not a long prognosis, called and that's Rachel needs to talk. She didn't need May, so luckily, this thing canceled and we were able to just get your stuff Go right now, go tomorrow morning and we'll take care of it. And that was part of our giving back because she gives the free sessions to breast cancer survivors. So find out whatever it is that you I feel strong about giving to not something that's going to get you business giving is not about getting. It's about giving, you know, questions. Yes, most people book after the fourth inning. Probably not. I would say most, most people that you start the conversation with Don't book the first time you're having the conversation, and that's fine because you're have a conversation still open. So some of those numbers that I showed you earlier are people who were in that email list. They may have been there for two or three years, but will eventually become a client, hopefully, but If not, there's another person in that list that might. And if not, there's another person that night. So that's why you want to keep engaged with your previous, uh, prospects and your current all marketing. It's You have the macro numbers and it goes down, down, down, down, down, down. So maybe out of 100 people who were inquire four might become a client. But I can tell you, out of 98% of people who call me become a client if you're on the phone with me, your client, you don't You may not know it yet, but you will be by the you will be by the end of the call, because you're calling to see what's the availability at a specific city or you just want it. You want the human voice. But if you if you've called, you've gone through so much stuff, just get to us. You know I'll have people, so I never put my email in. Of course you did. I have a record of it. I have the I P address, and I know when you sent it. But if you want to subscribe, there's a button right here just unsubscribe, please. Yeah, it's very simple, but if somebody wants to unsubscribe get get them off your list are not your client, But they may. They may subscribe again in the future. Don't worry that the numbers that you see will dwindle, dwindle, dwindle down, Teoh. It's like distilling right. So you get you get all your emails in and then information keeps going out. What? I what I always hope happens. Let me go back just a second. I always hope happens before you call me, because that's time. I hope a client will hit booking. I'm just going take care of it because they already know. They're like, Hey, the pictures. A great I've always wanted to do this or, um they There's a lot more text down here, um, or they thought, Yeah. I mean, we'll get a good percent out of that, But by the time you called May, when you're on the phone, I've got a script that I run through. Um, and I let the client know client at that point that I'm gonna tell you, Let me tell you everything that you can expect and then one time done with that. If you have any questions? Just let me know. And then I'll go into about a seconds to a minute and 1/2 script that answers every single big question that they're gonna ask, even pricing. And I answer pricing by not answering pricing. Give somebody an indication you can expect between this average client will invest between this amount and that amount. So what have I done right there? I've satisfied how much in my willing to spend from the client's point of view. They've given me this ballpark, and I always end it. Now. A lot of people go way, way over that number. A lot go under. But that's my average. And as soon as I'm that, then I'm again getting right into the contract. Rachel has an opening in the morning or in the afternoon. Which one would you like? Start writing it