Lessons

Lesson Info

Marketing Plan: Weekly

wedding day post the highlight image if you send your missus you don't you'll have him back by that wednesday you can start peeling the blogger post block post looks like it goes live you know again in this case that's a week and a half later you know you don't need to do it a week and a half later maybe it's two weeks for your brand maybe it's a week later I know a photographer who's in salt lake city terra cooper she posted block post the very next day I keep telling her she's crazy you know what she knows why she does it she has a reason for why she's doing it she has done the homework and she's learned that that is one of the primary reasons that people refer her is because of the way shit not just the fact that she has a block post but what it leads to it leads to this wonderful wonderful affect but here's the thing that terra knows and I've talked about this she could never drop the ball on that she can never drop the ball on that so that's the thing about a system it's the beaut...

y of a system and it's the negatives of a system you set up a system you're now holding yourself accountable your hold yourself accountable for what you are obligated do for every single customer but it's a good thing otherwise if you post so and so's block post two weeks after the wedding and then life gets bad and by october you're posting someone says block post six weeks after the wedding now what what if they were referred by the person whose thought post went live two weeks after the wedding what about my block post why didn't I get it too am I not as good is my wedding not a special what no one has nothing to do with you I'm just overwhelmed oh that's a bummer the system helps keep you on track so share on social media take that vlog posting we shared on social media the next day we start painting images we block out time to network with vendors so maybe one of the things that goes on this right here is to have a plan to meet with one vendor from every single shoot that you d'oh that's ambitious I know right can you imagine doing that what if you actually made it a part of your plan what if it became your monday morning what you do you meet three weeks after the wedding you meet and have coffee with one of the vendors it's a part of the plan you have to do it now you have to give yourself time to do these things I don't even need to talk about the power of the vendor referral just spend two minutes on it the power of the venera for all so we talk about these client referrals and climate froze their great every time you shoot why don't you have one client that could refer you one couple and they can tell their friends about it however at a wedding and this doesn't work for some of you who don't go toe I agree this is very wedding photography specific but for your wedding to go to a wedding and there's ten other vendors there and those ten other vendors all come in contact with twenty five other brides each year so the others at each wedding you go and photograph there's ten opportunities to impress and love on these vendors and they are now in front of twenty five other target market people potentially every single year so if vendor and networking and knowing of benazir is not part of your marketing plan sharing your authentic message with the vendors you could even go and have so we're going to get to hear the second but you could even go and network with that vendor and during that network time interview them for your upcoming block post and then now you've had coffee with him and you've interviewed him and you're about to do a block post about them and then later on down the road that block post turns into part of the thing that you use for the guide that solves the problem of how to pick your music selection for your first dance because you networked with the deejay you had coffee with the deejay deejay knows who your authentic brand is can start to recommend and refer you you interviewed him you had another block post you can share with your target market that then turned into a guide that now khun solve more problems for your current customers all because you had a plan in place and it started with meeting with that vendor two weeks after the wedding two and a half weeks after their wedding sharing images of the vendors this needs to be a part of the plan otherwise some vendors get images some don't write it into your plan and do it the same time every single every single time obama is one of the biggest areas that we got business was from vendor referrals at one point it accounted for forty percent of our business in one year the great thing about knowing those numbers is every single time I say accounted for x percent of our business it makes me both happy and scared at the same time you go yes that means we're doing a great job then referrals o know what happens if we start doing a bad job of inter referrals but we would make it a point to ensure that we got vendors images after wedding within I think it was within one week fully edited and ready to go and it was like we would stay late at the office to make sure we did it like it was just a deadline we stuck to what about us what else blawg post so we have our first block post on a story that we're going to tell a story that comes out even a part of our post shoot workflow so let's talk about non post non non shooting related things there's things we need to do to market our business that have absolutely nothing to do with shooting think of this if you think of your business and you if you were taking a class on business when the first thing they talk about is that there's two types of costs there's the variable costs and there's the fixed costs this is very similar to that a variable cost is something that only comes up when you're required to perform that action a second shooter would be a variable cost you never have to pay a second shooter if you never book a wedding they were gonna matter right never getting the second shooter if you don't pick one that's a variable costs and so it only gets done and only gets paid when you actually have a way that you book ah fixed costs if you have a studio that's a pain that rent is an example of fixed cost doesn't matter the landlord does not care if you book one wedding zero weddings two thousand weddings he wants your rent check every month you're gonna have to pay it that's a fixed cost doesn't matter what you or how many shoots you do so we've moved from talking about marketing and a plan and building out I gave an example of how to build out a plan for what you do every single shoot now we'll talk about the things you should be doing your business no matter what busy season slow season lots of shoots no shoot it doesn't matter it's about building on a plan for the things you have to do no matter how many shoes so if you're if you're watching online and your brand new you don't have any shoes you're saying well what can I do this is the stuff you khun d'oh these are the things that you could be doing even have any shoes if you're online if you here in the studio are watching us and I have one hundred shoots this year well these things are still very very important you have a lot of work to do let's talk about that networking with a vendor or a past client perhaps this is something that you want to set up to do every week now granted the weeks that you have that shoot and networking from a past client from from a past better from three weeks ago that weeks those fall you might have to networking meetings that week that's how systems work systems work toe where the things you have to do pursuit and the things you have to give your business that don't with a tissue sometimes stacked on top of each other nothing wrong with that but having the oversight allows you to see that coming having as part of your plan I'll tell you about the tools you can use to see your day to see you're weak so you go through next week I somehow because I had two weddings three weeks ago I'm going to meet with three vendors maybe because I falling we didn't have a wedding I'll move one of those vendor appointments out to the following weeks that we have to and I have to but you have to have a system and I'll show you the tools that where you can actually get that sort of insight repurpose older content so this is a great time you talked about how with your seniors it's a very seasonal business we'll repurpose an old content doesn't matter what season it is you can always go back and re share on facebook that old blawg post that got a lot of traffic from six months ago still very relevant topic you can always go back and still share the guide that you produced you can always go back and still put a lot of effort into your pinterest account and make sure your repurpose ing older content jason grub talked about how every month he has a notification in his counter that goes off and it reminds him to go back and re pen things in different galleries in different boards on his pinterest plans social media interaction I love that jason brought that up yesterday because it's so important I can't just post a social media and expect to be done social media is also at the engagement but I'll be honest with you I have to plan that into my day otherwise it just doesn't get done if I don't plan to go on and respond if we as a company should I don't plan to go on and respond to social media with it wouldn't get done it has to be a part of what you do and some have been a weekly basis you going to make sure you replied everybody who's commented and said I love that photo you posted on facebook go say thank you I appreciate that jason talked about how valuable it is to respond to people planet share non shoot specific images on instagram pinterest jason talked about how he shares both brides and grooms and their weddings but he also shares non shoot related stuff like behind the scenes images that support their brand that isn't something that you would add to your per shoot marketing plan that soon he would add to a marketing plan that exists outside of that what other things do you do in your business that don't have any relation to a shoot that are just things you need to do to build your brand we talked about guys in the last segment guys don't having the do with the shoot you're not goingto probably trigger sending something a guy two weeks after their wedding you're gonna want to send that to them to send it out to your customers at a certain block of time you know in october that's the time when you want to prepare people and educate them on their family portrait session and that's why you have a guide about that