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Lesson Info

Niche Marketing

we have to over haul our marketing. We talk about this all the time. My baby programs was not stagnant, but same thing for about 10 years. We reinvented in 2008. We have recently reinvented it because even though the concept stays the same, the marketing structure has to change constantly because our arm Judy, so to speak, has changed so much in the last 10 years. It's fun to look at the parents that I deal with. I mean there a little high strung sometimes, but they are, you know, they're all about like their cars and their house. The number one priority is their kids, though, and they love their kids. And this mom, she dresses cool. She looks cool. She has great clothing. She invested herself. Her kids look great, her kids addressed to the nine. They do their best to put him in private schools. And and you know, I I definitely recognize certain traits in this particular bomb. But the one thing that I think is really cool with my parents is they may be into some of those worldly things...

, but the love they have for their kids is unsurpassed. It is the number one priority, and they put everything into their Children and capturing those moments become very, very important. So So I know we can think about our moms that I mean, my mom I grew up on a farm, so my mom was definitely, like the hard work in a bar. Mom, I joke about this all the time, but my vision of my mom when we were young is, remember those moves, those little zip up house coats? I could see the back of my mom at the scene with the muumuu on, and she's a beautiful person. But, you know, that was what we grew up with. Is she had boots on or a muumuu on at all times, where nowadays these women are pretty chic. They're pretty hip, and it's kind of fun to see that now. Women who track all the latest trends they freely spend for the latest and greatest and they happily recommend you are the type of women that's here. Judy, that's who we're really looking for. Women between the ages of 30 and 45 represent the single largest, largest spending group in the world, but they're not necessarily the highest income earners. They're an extremely powerful group because they control the money. If you think about the women in the household, if she wants it, she's going to find a way to get it. And that goes for everything. In fact, if you consider marketing these days, how do people market? How does how does the industry how does in all industries market? It's always about the female, Whether they're selling watches or tractors or liquor or cigarettes, there is going to be a beautiful. We all want to be her woman involved. She's going to be strong personality. She's gonna be confident she's going to be the woman we all want to be, and we're gonna look at that. Go. I need a tractor. I definitely need a tractor. I want one of those, you know. And if I want a tractor, I'm getting a tractor and I'm gonna find a way to get myself a tractor. She will buy things for her man. She will buy things for herself, for her significant other. She will make it happen if she truly wants it, and that goes right down to her kids. If it's important to her, he's gonna make it happen. So she's who were marketing to. Reality is she is who everybody is marketing to. So we have to get our piece of the pie and make it happen. We talked a lot about branding, and so I don't want to go too far into this. But branding becomes very relevant to this because it's important. Understand? What is she like? What does she want? Who is she? Where does she shop? Your mood board Was you your Judy was her. How do you get those two to like each other? How do you get those two to say, Woo? I love her. Look, and I love who she is. You've got to get Judy toe like your style. Dude, He's not gonna like everybody style. I saw your mood boards, and I I know in my case, my mood board is a reflection of me. It is not a reflection of my client, though I what I would choose for my favorite colors. And my looks would not be my average client. So sometimes have to think out of the box and say Okay. What? Is it better to be true to yourself? Is it better to be true to your client, or can you find balance in between? Can you appeal to them on that level? Ah, lot of times I believe my saving grace in that case is the emotional and personal connection. Because I may I I intimidate some people. I'm told that often that a lot of people are not sure if you guys knew how emotional I think you guys might. But if you know how emotionally connected I am to people, everybody makes me cry every day. I'm not. I'm not a stand offices, you think, And that's why my security blanket is the people I surround myself with. I told you, my employees have been with me years, 15 years, 17 years. People don't stick with people that are not nice people, So I have to keep telling myself with it. I can't be that bad because they still hang out with me because they know me. They know they know my true heart, and they know that I put on a show cause that's what I have to do. But ultimately I am the biggest baby you will ever meet. Everything the stars, the flowers, the trees everything makes me cry. Everything is so beautiful to me. It's so, so big and so powerful. And that's honestly who I am. And if you know that about me, you understand why it all falls into place. So for me, branding, finding that happy medium is not as hard as I thought it would be because I get people and I think you guys get people to just from the things I've seen you talk about and do. I understand that you relate to people, and that's why you're here. So when it came to a baby program, I had my artists come up with a bunch of different campaigns because I'm one of those. I want to see lots of choices and then pick what I like. And so once they came up with all these ideas, I eventually This was not this round but the last round. I eventually got it down to these two as the favorites, but this is something we didn't talk about it branding, and I want to make sure that you understand whenever we talk about marketing and branding, we always do research because everything we produce is available to our students We have to make sure that we know what we're talking about. So I spend a lot of hours looking outside the industry, reading, marketing on sales and and understanding the the intellect behind how people make their choices. And one thing that was really interesting with the baby campaign that I saw more so in any other literature that I'd ever researched was. People who are having Children are very much connected with certain. A certain color palette, interestingly enough, and it makes sense. Baby pink, baby blue, light green and light yellow are the predominant colors that appeal to people who are pregnant. Andi, I know it's true because I joke about it all the time. I hate pink. Pink is not my color, but there are actual documented pictures of me pregnant in full pink outfits, head to toe. I look like a pig. I'm honestly like a big fat. But I was wearing them, and I I often look at those pictures and think I would never buy that. But there's something connective there when you become apparent. Even before the baby's born everything that's baby appeals to you. Think back, we would walk at the mall and go, Oh my gosh, that's so cute. That's adorable. And it was pink or blue because it was representative of that, that your future of the baby that you would have. So after I did that research and I realized that color and tonality were really important. As much as I love the milk campaign, that's this brighter one was more my style. I ended up at that time going with Lulu because Lulu had the color elements that I needed. And you have to think about it this way. If a client, especially with print marketing, let's say a client goes to their mailbox and takes ah, bunch of literature out of their mailbox and they're pregnant. She's pregnant. She's flipping through the mail when she sees that baby campaign with the cute little baby in that pink in that blue, and she's standing there eight months pregnant. She's going to stop in their tracks and go, Oh, how cute. What is this? And she's going to read it and take the time. So I started to learn that color and tonality effect how people think and how people buy, and that was a really important thing for me and my business growth. Now, if you're going to start a baby campaign, I'm gonna kind of skip like I taught the baby program here. So I'm skipping the entire baby program. I've given you the foundation. And again, if you don't do babies, apply it to what you do. How could you create the idea? Here's how could you create a an entity that would draw people in that would commit them financially and give them a path to stick with you so that you can create their legacy so you can create your legacy program. So in my case, getting clients in the door for the baby program, the fastest way to do that was a model search. Now again, pick a genre. You want to be a senior photographer, a wedding photographer, a pet photographer. This applies to all of you. I'm going to show you how I do it, and you could make it work for you. A model campaign is basically used searching for people to fill a gap you need. You need samples for your albums for your displays at your studio, your home, whatever it is you're looking for. Your looking for models. Now the most important thing with this is the key. Word is model, because how many of you have clients that think they're Baby is so cute? They should model everybody, right? Like, how many have kids that you think you're so cute? Vision? Right? So every parent has the most beautiful child in the world, period, period. And so we know that it's an ego based modeling campaign. We know our ego based marketing campaign. We know that it appeals to a parent's ego. When we say we're looking for the cutest baby, you know darn well that Mom thinks they have the baby there, Mama, that Mom absolutely thinks that their child has what it takes right out of the gate. I'll be very honest with you. Very rarely do have a client care why we're doing it? Very rarely do I have a client care what they get out of it. They just want their babies to models. So in this case, I'm gonna read what the ad says. It says internationally Acclaimed photographer Sandy pushes looking for adorable babies to create images for her next tour. Models received portrait art as compensation and images may be used in the 2011 cutting edge Creative Edge Tour, So I was looking for models for a tour that I was coming up. Most people don't have tours, so let's change this up looking for models for your whatever I'm trying to think of it. Your portfolio. Thank you so looking for models for my portfolio looking models for a new mall display, looking for models for our gallery again, I don't think the clients really care. They just needs to have purpose. You need to give them marketing with purpose. But you could be anything you want. Of course, the most important thing I want you to get out of this is models will receive portrait art as compensation. They're not paid. They're going to receive portrait art. I bet if you guys were to guess, you already know what we give them. We give them a complimentary session on the $100 credit, right? And for people who are new who are just jumping on before you write down $100 credit and do that, there are things you have to take into consideration. My eight by 10 in my studio the least expensive. Eight by 10 starts at $150. So for me to give $100 credit means that clients gonna get about a five by seven. So I always want to qualify that because sometimes I see students go $100. Okay. Got it. And I asked him how much? 38 by tens are, and they say $20 they just gave away an entire package. Right? So don't take the number I'm giving you. Take the concept and say Okay, well, my by tens of $50. So I'm gonna give a $40 credit or change it up so that it works well for you. We never, ever on any of these campaigns. We never give product. We talked about that yesterday. You never want to give an eight by 10 or five by seven, because more often than not, clients will say You know what? I got my butt. And that's good enough when you give them a credit, a number, they start to go. I could get a five by seven. Or I could use this to get something bigger. We talked about that, but I beat it up because it's really important not to give a product away. So model searches the first way to get people in the door. If you're starting a business, pets, weddings, whatever. Put a model search out there. Now, the question is, how do you do that if you don't have a database? I built my business on fliers. Now, this is you've got to understand. This is 19 Gosh, what was at 93 or 90 fours when I got to Colorado 92. Actually, when I got to Colorado and I don't have any money, I had two babies. I had foster Children for foster Children. No money, no computer. So, you know, people take for granted the whole graphics and photo shopping, all that you couldn't do any of that with. You wanted to make a flyer. You have to take pictures, taped them on a piece of paper, type around the pictures and go make photocopies. And that was the best you could do. I can't tell you in the middle nineties when clip art came out and I could put ducks on things and rabbits. You know, I thought I was like an artist, So those were some pretty horrific pieces, but at the time, that's all I had. So I would make these photocopies and little half sheets on purple paper, green paper, all these horrendous things that you never do in marketing. And I would go out and I would deliver them everywhere. I would put them in consignment stores. I would put them in restaurants. If they had a little place, I'd stick them up on walls. I would go to playgrounds. And if I was comfortable, I would hand out a few things for model searches. I put them in public bathrooms. I'm not gonna lie. Go to a restaurant and I'd stick them on the counter. I figured, you know what? Maybe somebody will throw him away, but maybe somebody's gonna walk in here and pick him up and say, Hey, that's pretty cool. I mean, my opinion was wherever people go, I wanted my literature to go. And you know what? It absolutely works. It was the cheapest, were talking for a few dollars. I got my name out there and I started building a business. I always say that if you don't have money, you have time. If you don't have time you have money, right? So at that time had a lot of time and no money. So I took that time and I delivered things all the time. Once I started getting more money than I could that I would use my time better. And I started doing print, marketing and advertising. Um, as I'm trying to apply this to, like, weddings and brides. I was wondering, um, if if it's recommended it all to do the $100 credit towards a wedding package or I'm just I'm trying to figure out how to apply it. I totally think you could, because for me, I mean, if I could find, like, you did a bridal fair or something like that. A lot of times, almost every photographer and Brad affair is gonna do the U. N. A. Free engagement session. But yours might be you in a free and get engagement session and a credit toward your wedding package. Then just raise your wedding packages $100 then you're making the same amount of money, and you're giving them something that they feel that they're getting mawr over and above other people. What I know about wedding photography because I did it for 10 years when I started is that the relationship you create in the engagement session is why they book you for the wedding. If you can get them in for engaging recession, it's almost nine out of 10 times. If not 10 out of 10 they're gonna book your wedding. So how do you become the guy that they want to go to most? It's personal. It's that relationship. And then it's sad to say, But in a thing like a wedding boutique or something like that, if there's five photographers, they're you know darn well that half of those ladies are gonna pick the one that has the best deal and has nothing to do with personality, art or look or work. It's sadly who's giving you the best offer. So get in there with the best offer and get in there quick. When those people put their names in that fish bowl drawing, you should that evening be calling them and saying, Congratulations, you won. You should not drop something in the mail. You should not wait for the other four photographers to pick up their phones. The nicest thing you have in your advantage is that people are afraid of the telephone. Biggest fear people have is telephone. The greatest tool in marketing is a telephone again. The Legacy Project has proved that proven that to me every way that I could have ever imagined. So So you want to be first wannabe fast, and you want to create that relationship right out of the gate, so I would say it would totally apply. Cool. I like it. All right, let's do it. So that wasn't my starting point. These model searches now. We all know when we do the model searches searches, right? January, February, March and April. That's our slow season. That's how we're gonna amp up our business. We don't do model searches in July and August and September October. That's when we're making good money. Model searches are a great way to start if you don't have clients. If you can't find can't. The Flyers aren't working friends and family if you have a good community church, something like that. When I moved to Colorado, the very first thing I did is found my church and I started saying, Hey, I'm a photographer and I love take your pictures. I did a lot of free work. People ask all the time. Is that really a good idea? Yeah, because you have to start somewhere. I mean, there's just no other option. Everybody did that. It's how long do you let it go on? And and the hardest part is making that transition between giving away free stuff and then expecting to be paid. And that is one of those ripping a band aid. The day you decide that you were there, You rip it off and you say, Now I charge and you have to be comfortable with that. I know that's That's one of those scary touchpoints we could talk about later from there. That's how I started my business. From there it was referrals, and we gave the referral information yesterday, thanking clients, telling them to talk about us. Um, people who have babies, no people with babies. So I could tell you right now, if you have a client in your studio that has a baby, they know one or two people that are having babies. Ask them the question. Do you know anybody? Would you like to give a gift certificate, etcetera? If It's pets. People have pets of love pets, people who are extreme pet lovers. They know somebody who loves their pet. They go toe social groups that have pets, weddings. If you dealing with the bride that's getting married. I bet she has three other friends that might be getting married or that will eventually get married. And so that's how you start creating those connections now from there. Over the years with my baby program, I did a lot of mailing. I bought a lot of mailing lists 10 years ago. I would have been teaching you. I would've given you names of company and said, Go by mailing list these air really good. We typically with a mailing, you want to expect a 3 to 5% return rate. Now think about those numbers. If you send out 100 you're gonna get 3 to 5 phone calls, is what you hope to translate into actual business. It doesn't sound very good, but that's actually statistically what you can expect out of a mailing. So I would buy 3 to 400 names a month, hoping to get 5 to 20 new clients a month, and I did that for over probably 15 years in Colorado. Eventually, though, laws changed. Marketing changed. Privacy laws changed. It used to be that baby names. You could go to the newspaper 15 years ago. And every Sunday they would list who had a baby with their names and addresses. Just ride him down and sent him stuff. Nobody does that anymore. You can't get that kind of information you can still, violist. The only reason I don't give you the names of the company is they're not accurate anymore. I just had too many people call me that. We sent something. Teoh. We've had everything from I've never had a kid. Why are you sending this to me, Teoh? I lost a child. Why are you sending this mean? Which is, of course, horrible. And I just the the odds are against you. And we started to see those that 5% drop to 3% drop one or 2%. If we were lucky for the money I was paying for the list, it just wasn't worth it. So I had a look at my company. Go. Okay, well, that's not working. Now what am I gonna do? This program is my bread and butter. So how do we take it to that next level? It always comes back to referral. The honest truth is the number one thing in your company will be referral marketing. Getting people to talk about you is the most important. So with that, I started to look at my clients and this was one of those those intersections where I was in. I just had a conversation about the baby program, and it's not that was doing poorly, but we were not seeing new clients come in. We had them. But I there's a tail and you know that that Taylor, you're gonna catch up to the tail. You got to keep new people coming in to keep that train going. So So we just had a meeting about it. And then I was in doing a session right after that, and Mom was bouncing a baby on her hip. I'm talking to her and she said something and also that clicked. I'm like, Wait a minute, you have a baby. You probably know five people that have babies, and that was sort of that turning point for me. I came out of that room going. Okay, guys, you know what? I realized? Two things people have babies know people who are having babies. Because when I had babies, all my friends had babies. Now we all have teenagers. The other thing is my clients that are financially a certain way. Most of their friends are in the same financial circle. People tend to hang out with people who are like them. So I thought if client A has a baby and spends really well, she probably knows client B, C, D and E that are about the same as her that she probably could send our weight. So how do we get her to do that? Yes, we have a referral program. That was good. But it wasn't a guarantee. I needed to take it to the next level. So we started a baby referral program, and it was simply started with a poster in the lobby. We sent out an E blast in a postcard and basically told our clients Look, we have these cute little gifts for you. I bought a whole bunch of frames wholesale. These frames had just cute little baby, non sort of non gender frames. And in the frame. I put a nice gift certificate. The gift certificate was for the baby program. Now the baby program. As you know, it's for an associate session. You guys know that it's $99 right? But you also know that the value is a lot more than $99 right, because it's three sessions and product, so the values like 6 99 So this gift certificate certificate was Please accept this certificate for a baby. Siri's value 6 99 That's a pretty substantial gift to the average person. And we told our clients Look, we have these gifts. We have these gift certificates. You can give them out to your friends. How would you like to give a $700 gift to your friends? Are clients loved it. We kept him in the lobby. It everywhere it says, Ask about our baby referral program. So what happens now is we tell our clients Hey, look, your friends having a baby, of course they're gonna buy a baby shower gift. Why not add another $700 value to the baby shower gift? So now your client is going to take that and they're going to deliver it to their friend. That baby shower, whatever. They're gonna give him this awesome gift. They're gonna tell them how awesome you are. They love you. They're gonna rave about you. They're gonna want them to use that certificate, that clients gonna come back and they're going to utilize that certificate, which is really great. So So that's how that program started. And this is now our number one marketing resource for babies, but it doesn't work if you're idle about it. We have to solicit every client that comes in the door with a baby. We say, Hey, by the way, did you know we have a free baby gift program? You can give out the baby program now. What is the advantage to the client giving it? If they give it number one, they're giving away an extra $600 to the friends. But that doesn't matter to them. They get a $50 credit for everybody that calls in books. That appointment, that's the most important thing. They're still gonna be that what's in it for them? Yeah, it's nice to give a gift, but I'm gonna forget it. Unless there's value to me. So they get a $50 credit. I always have. Students asked me. Well, don't they get mad that they paid for the baby program and now they're giving it away? They don't because we say, gosh, give two of these away and you paid for your baby program. Does that make sense? So we have answers to those questions before they get asked. And that works really well. Just like everything else. Any marketing campaign that you have to give away, it has to be done. Has to be done comprehensively. It has to be full program. The postcards, the literatures, all that stuff. This is actually what my baby program looks like. Now, this is the current baby program. So you want everything to have the look in the style and the feel that you have with your baby. All right, I know we're coming close to the end. I want to get through at least the graduate program. Part of creating a successful program is creating an extended version. The baby program was great. I needed to keep those clients active. So we started eventually the graduate program again. I've taught us here, so we're gonna fly through this because we have a lot more to cover today. Graduate program is a continuation. They pay another fee, but they get 18 months, two years, three years, four years and five years. They do not get the product till they complete the series, so of course, they're going to buy Portrait's along the way. Our goal with the baby program is to maintain the client base. We want those babies to stay with us. We want to continue those relationships. We also want to give them unique opportunities to return. We're going talk about limited editions and things that we do a little bit later, and we want to reward their loyalty. They get to continue to use special pricing. They get special packaging discounts and offers throughout the year because they are club members. So it's a little different than if somebody called me and just wanted a photograph. Their baby. Now, the way we introduce them to this is we at their first birthday session, we give them a gift, and the gift changes all the time. But typically it's a little graduate T shirt, and it comes with a gift certificate in a card that explains the next program. It says, Congratulations, you. It's your first birthday you made it. We'd love to work with you for the next five years. It also explains emotionally what those milestones air. Why an 18 month is adorable. Why five year old portrait is the last really classic child slash toddler Look, when they have their teeth and their teeth cheeks or tubby and and you know that right after five, when those teeth start falling out by the time they're eight, they look like this with their mouths. Gets a little rough there between eight and 14. So we know for us financially that that is the pinnacle of how long we're gonna work with these clients. We market through eight years old because we know after that we're just not going to see them that much. Other than family portrait and high school, senior portrait is a poltical. I also now know that getting them through this graduate program creates that relationship that we need so real quick. I'm just gonna go through some quick little videos and then we're gonna take a break 18 months if you ask me what the hardest age to photograph 18 months. Is it period? 18 to 2 years. They're mobile. They're independent. They understand every word you're saying. Just so you know, Don't ever baby talk to a baby because they get they know what you're saying. They just don't want to do what you're saying now. We always say they're tough. They are not just a photograph, but they're tough. Kids is the very safety oriented age. Of course, this is where there mobile. They could get hurt easily. We try very hard to keep the place safe. I'm gonna show you a quick little video. We'll take a look at this. Oh, it gets better. You go. Okay. So he made out OK, And I only show that because there are six adults standing within three feet of that child and we still managed to ram his head into the wall. So my point with that is you just have to be really careful at this age. They come in with bumps and bruises. Just so you know, we don't charge to retouch between the ages of one and two. It's included Any bruises, bumps, scars. Because if they kept trying to reschedule, we would never get them in. They will be covered with bumps. 2 to 3 years is a lot more fun they can communicate on. This is my favorite age, but they still are very mobile. In a silver independent, you have to change your techniques often. And posing is not really an option. There's no posing for a two year old. It's really simple poses moving them in and out. I'm gonna show you a video. Of course, this is not a program on how to photograph kids, but commonality is important. Listen to what I say to this chair will say, Oh, is it broken? Oh, no. And watch his face toned down. And also I fixed it and you'll see his boys. I have to use my voice more than anything to control kids and how quickly they move. That's awesome. Hang on. Come and see you stay there. Oh, guess what? Guess what? I think my camera's broken. Can you put your head? Is it Can you hear it? Like a little less right there. Okay, ready, I Let's see. Let's see if it's working. Okay, One, Don't take it off. Oh, it's broken. Oh, no. Uh oh. It's working That means I can come go ahead and slide his hat back a little bit. That was great. Guess what. Here I come. Actually, I'm gonna give it to Mommy. Montcalm, stand right by me. Oh, who's going to get you now? What? You got your own? I just bring that. There you go. Just bring that tickler all the way up by me. And guess what? A lot of their No, Don't tickle me. Escape, escape. Hey, in. Do you want to go look at the fishes in a minute? Okay, Stay right. And he's out of there. So that's kind of how it is at that age. It's Move, move, move, move, move! Talk, twin ality, the tickler, the chicken. Those are the things that I used to stop them. And then, of course, we get into the more couture ridge. These air, the kids that actually four and five and six years old. They care about their clothing, their little stylists. This is also the age that they start to force their smiles. And the only way to work around that is to have them repeat things back to you. So if you know my work, you know. I'm constantly saying, OK, look right here and say, Mommy's a monkey or Daddy's daddy wears diapers or those phrases are repeated 10, times a year. But they work. They always get that exact smile. And the one thing I will tell you, especially at this age when they force their smiles on Lee ways to get them to repeat things back to you. And the best part is if you've got three or four kids, if everybody says the same thing at the same time, their smiles will be in the exact same place. That is how you nail all of those smiles, so very, very important.