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Marketing Your Photography Business Online Part 2

Lesson 13 from: Start and Grow Your Photography Business

Kevin Kubota

Marketing Your Photography Business Online Part 2

Lesson 13 from: Start and Grow Your Photography Business

Kevin Kubota

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Lesson Info

13. Marketing Your Photography Business Online Part 2

Lesson Info

Marketing Your Photography Business Online Part 2

So how do you want to work this social thing? Number one is you gotta know your audience. Before you post something on there, think about who is my audience? Are they even gonna care? Are you just posting something that's totally irrelevant to your target market? Surprisingly, you see a lot of posts, a lot of things on sites and social media that is your business social media has nothing to do with your target audience. So make sure you think about that, first of all. You do want to share deals. Things that people are interested in, always deals, people want deals, they want some behind the scenes, they want something unique about you or your business. Maybe a reveal of something new, maybe something they didn't know about you, or five things you didn't know about your wedding photographer. I'm gonna tell you what we do in the bathroom, alone at night. We clean cameras. Clean, clean, clean the camera. Whatever. Anything behind the scene, unique insights, and of course, education is gre...

at. Talk about that. Do a little Snapchat or a Instagram or even a Facebook Live video on how to take great pictures of your kids with a point and shoot camera, with your phone. All of you are probably somewhat qualified to at least give a few tips on that. Don't you think? Could you do that today, tomorrow, next week maybe? Sign a contract saying you're gonna do this by next week for your target audience. Do a little live video, a live little mini class on I'm gonna show you how to take some great pictures of your kids, or gonna show you, as a bride, here is one of the biggest things I see in weddings that goes wrong, or here's one of the biggest things you can do to make sure your wedding goes right. How are you gonna phrase it? But offer some sort of educational little tidbit. Doesn't have to be giving 'em everything, just enough. Think about doing that on a regular basis. You can't do that every day. That's a lot of work to keep up with that every day, but maybe once a week, every couple of weeks, make sure putting out something really informational for your target audience. Be personal, but not unprofessional. So personal means letting your personality out, but not, of course, being over the top, crazy drunk pictures, and all that kind of stuff, and cursing and whatever else. Professional but personal. Stay away from politics. Just a good general rule. (laughing) It's crazy. I don't want to go there. I'm not talking about politics. Just stay away from politics. If you want to attract the most clients, stay away from politics. You will alienate a big chunk of clients if you start into the politics thing. And for some people, I've talked to a couple of people who said it's more important for me to stand up for my values than it is to have every possible client, and they make that decision and that's okay. That's up to you. But just know that you will alienate a big chunk of people as soon as you start talking about politics. They will unfriend you, unfollow you, stop, no more. No matter how good you are. So think about that before you do it. Interact with your followers, asking them to engage you. That's a simple, powerful thing: ask. Do you ask your followers, when you make a post, do you say I want your feedback? What do you think? Tell me your opinion. That is one of the most powerful phrases out there, is tell me your opinion. Ask them. I've seen people do that, it's kind of one of those things where you're like are you just creating something to ask? Or they post a picture and say tell me what you think about this picture. Tell me do you think I should do it this way or this way? Give it to 'em in a Photoshop form, like what do you think? Should I enhance it this way or this way? And you look how many people reply. It gets an interaction because people want to give their opinion. So how can you use that when you're making a post to attract your client? What's your opinion? Tell me what you think. Interact with me. Tell me something. Get them involved. People love to give their opinion. On your posts. And videos, photos, stories. Now I used to think that videos were the most popular thing and I think, first of all I thought you had to have a photo, and then I thought, wait no, now you gotta have a video to be popular. And then I realized stories were actually a crazy, powerful thing. And I went to another seminar. It was a TEDx seminar, in Bend. You know the TEDx's, right? Of course, they do them in the local things. And one of the speakers there she did this thing about the power of storytelling. She was fantastic. I'm gonna look up her name, too, I can't remember. Somebody up there, find me the name of the girl. But I'm gonna look it up, because she really was fantastic and all she did was drive home the power of storytelling and she challenged us in the audience to do this, to go home, your next blog post, your next Facebook post to tell a story and see what happens. So I did. So I put a story, and this was not driven for business, I really just put it on there because I wanted to see if people would actually read a story and was that engaging. It was on my personal page, it wasn't a business thing, at all, but the results were phenomenal for me. So I made this post, and this was something that happened not too long ago. I had a friend, a dear friend of mine, whose son was missing in a river, in Idaho on a river trip, and I went to take my drone to help search for him. So I drove out to Idaho, flew my drone for several days up and down the river to try and find him, and unfortunately, we found his body, not him, and I was there to help pull him out of the river and help him get home. It was hard for me to write this story, and the story was very long. It was a long, several pages long story. As you continue reading it, it goes woo. And I took some time and thought about the story, and I included a little video of the drone footage, just a real quick video. And it was a powerful story, but I also realized the magic of a story. I got more on this, over 20,000 views on the video, 500 likes on the likes, 179 shares, over 200 comments, now. This was taken a while ago, this snapshot. Because it was a story and it a story that was several pages long in this post. If you would have printed it out and people read it start to finish, and I got all kinds of comments on it. And I've done other posts that are stories, not so dramatic as this one, and they also had incrementally better response and interaction from people than just posting a pretty picture. So she proved her point, and I proved it to myself, that yes, stories are engaging. People want to hear a story, and it could be a very simple story. It doesn't have to be a heartbreaking story, it doesn't have to be a magical story. It can be a very simple story. But when you make a post, say you're gonna post a picture from your last session, it's what we talked about earlier, is there something about this person that you learned in the session? A little tiny story. Whatever it happens to be that you can bring into there. It could be a two paragraph story. It could be a Instagram, it could be one paragraph story. But that is gonna engage people so much more than just a blanket look at my pretty client. Look how much fun we have, look how much we love each other. It really works. The power of stories is tremendous. We are built, as humans, to trade information via stories. So think about that and this, if nothing else, you take from this class, I think this could make a huge difference if you start to focus your messaging with the story behind everything you do, and that's part of what we're driving at with your About Me statement, is there needs to be some sort of passion story in there. Maybe you could tell a story of a time in your life when you realize that art or photography or making women feel beautiful. Find a story of when you first had that aha, I can make women feel good about themselves. When did it hit you? Then they can relate. Women will read that and go I can see myself there. That's what we want. Well, that's the reason why I called it (mumbling) photo stories. Photo stores. One of the services I do once I have a portrait session is I do a verbal portrait of the client, as well. And that's when I do, I use Animoto for slide shows, I will include that in telling how I view them, whether it's a story they've related and how I see it because I am a writer, so I can put it through the prism of my writer brain. And yeah, I find it very powerful. That's the way we see people. It's not just the image of a person, it's what they relate to us. Yeah. So that should be on your website. There's nothing about that on the website, and that's powerful. I love that. That's different, it's unique, it's powerful. That should be the focus your website, right there. Tell a photo story. Included the multimedia, whatever it is you do, a verbal thing, a slide show that tells their story as their images are coming up and down. So powerful. That's light years above what you're doing now, if you do that right. Let's talk about give back marketing. Give back marketing, we alluded to that earlier, and this is the idea of you are a source. You have knowledge, you have something to give. You're not have something to sell. This is the part of the customer focus, customer-driven marketing versus company-driven marketing. Remember that? Company driven is here's what I have to sell, please buy it. (laughing) Customer driven is here's what I have to give, to share, to educate you about, how can I share it with you? This is kind of flip-flopping the focus, so give back marketing means when you're gonna get on, say for example, you're gonna get on Instagram and start searching for people who hashtag weddings in Oregon. Weddings in Bend, Oregon. Whatever, and you pull it up and boom, you got all these people and there can be brides posting like hey, does anybody know of a great florist, does anybody know of a great wedding venue? Some will ask for a photographer. We kind of want to be careful how you jump in on those, but there'll be things, and their friends will be posting oh, you're that. What you want to do is to be a resource and start recommending flowers, venue's, bridal tips, DJ's, limos, free information. Say hey, I'm a wedding photographer, and I've used these people, they're awesome. Here's a referral code, or here's a discount thing or whatever, boom. End of story. You don't say by the way, if you want to hire me as your photographer. No, you just leave it open ended and they'll know. They'll find you. So you're jumping in there offering tips and tricks and helpful information. Whatever industry you're in. Weddings, commercial, fine art, whatever, you have information you can share with your potential clients to help them make a better decision and think of you as a resource, rather than just trying to sell them something. And being a connector means just that. So you're gonna say I'm gonna connect you with this DJ. I'm gonna connect you with this florist, with this wedding venue. I'm gonna connect you with whatever you need and help you make whatever it is you're doing successful, and they're gonna be oh gee, can I have you, too? Do you come with this deal? I want you as a photographer, as well. And I've seen that happen a lot in my business, 'cause I would always, I had so much information about the wedding industry in Oregon that I would start handing out just information about oh, you gotta use this person, this person, this person, this person and inevitably, you're like well, can I hire you, too? Do you come with a deal? They'd hire my wife as their wedding coordinator 'cause she knew more about their wedding coordinator. I've actually had people fire their wedding coordinator because when they hired us, Claire was so amazing at helping them with resources and coordinating that they didn't feel like they needed one anymore, so they would fire their coordinator and let Clara do it. (laughing) Which is not always a good idea, but she wasn't the official coordinator, but she gave them enough information to make them feel good about it. How would you do that for portraits, though? It's obvious for weddings with so many people involved. So portraits, how about connecting to where business people go. Providing branding tips for them that are not directly related to the photo, but they include the photo, but think about, as a business person, say talk about creating a LinkedIn profile. Here's one thing you could do. LinkedIn, business people in your market probably gonna be on LinkedIn, that's kind of where their working it. So you get yourself, make sure you're on LinkedIn, make sure you're connected in there, and start offering tips like on personal branding. How to ensure you're presenting a professional message, da da da, and it includes these things. And then one of the things is a really professional portrait or headshot, but that's not the focus of it. You want to focus on other things so it's kind of a soft sell that you actually do portraiture, as well. 'Cause there's a lot of things people don't know about professional branding that you could probably help them with, too. So here's a challenge to you guys. This is not a contest, like the other one, but it's a challenge for the next three weeks because I think if you do this, these challenges, and you actually commit to them, you'll see something change and you'll realize that yes, these things actually work. So for the next few weeks, focus purely on helping others for your social media channels. So instead of just yay, yay, yay, here's about me, here's about me, focus on helping them. Helping them can be a via story. I found that my story, I didn't intend it that way, but my story of helping to find my friend's son on the river was very helpful for a lot of people because I included in the story how it affected my view of life and death and perspective of friendship and a lot of these things that are very, very deep and effectual to me, and it really helped other people to kind of come to terms of that themselves. I got a lot of comments about that, as well. So, it was helpful to people, even though it was wrapped in a story. So if you can do that for three weeks, magic will happen in your life, and fairies will come in and twinkle little bells will appear. What about advertising on social media? I know some of you do some advertising. Has anybody here done Facebook advertising for their business? I'm curious, what has been your feedback with it? What are your, yea or nay? I don't know. Nobodies called me and said I seen your Facebook ad, and I want to hire you. I got a lot of hits on it. That people might have not seen it otherwise. Anybody else? Same experience. never booked anything from-- Nothing that you can directly trace to? No, and I've had some shady, interesting people who like. They'll click the like button. And it's interesting because I have a target audience for my general area, and a couple surrounding areas. But I'll get people from across the world, and I'm like how are they seeing this. So, I get some interesting likes, which is really nice but I'm not sure how it's all connecting. I'm not gonna be able to fly to these other countries to do a portrait session. I've never booked anything from them. Okay, anybody else? Similar experience. I got a lot of hits and a lot of like, but nothing really came through. I'm not sure if it is also because I didn't run it long enough 'cause I got a little hesitant so I pull it-- Pull it back? Back. Maybe I did it too early. Right, could be. Anybody else have any thoughts on that? What you're all experience is pretty common. Does it work? Yes. It does work, but it works kind of like putting an ad in a magazine. Do you know who actually called you because of your ad in the magazine? Usually not. They don't always call and say I saw your ad the magazine. But what it does is reinforce your name. When they see these things enough, they tend to get subconsciously pushed to actually contact you because they've seen your name enough. Where this ad keeps popping up, popping up, popping up. And then, finally, they're like oh, I need a photographer. Oh, there's that one. Okay, yeah, I remember her. I'm gonna call her. And they may not ever mention it, they may not even remember they saw your Facebook ad or whatever, but it just kept popping in their mind, the number of impressions before somebody actually makes an effort to call you or contact you has to be a certain number in advertising. It's kind of a rule. Sometimes you can track it. Some of our workshops, we try some of the advertising for some of the workshops, and I have been able to track. Somebody would say yep, I found out about your workshop through Facebook. You never know. But a lot of it depends on the wording, the image that you use, and of course the target market that you pick, just like Google. Google Ad Words. There's a very, very scientific way that you structure your words, your timeline and everything to make it effective. If you just put wedding photography in Bend, Oregon. Not so enticing. May not get so many clicks on that. So there's a lot to think about as far as what you're gonna put in there, and there's actually a lot of good information if you go to Google's site, if you go to Facebook site, they help you with here's how to make a great ad. So look at that, think about that. I wouldn't rely on it completely, but it is something that can work, especially if you have a special offer or some kind of cool deal that makes it worth them clicking that they need to respond right now to this. Oh, that looks interesting. Boom, I can click and get it. But if it's just like Kevin Kaboda photography. Boom, I just want that up there all the time, that's gonna spend a lot of money to get that impression out there and probably not gonna track a whole lot of hits to that. So, you need to have something compelling to draw them in or to sell immediately to really make those work. So my case, workshops. If I'm selling a workshop, there's a reason for them to click now, sign up before the spaces are filled. This workshop maybe there's a deal if you sign up right now. Whatever. That tends to work for me but that's because there's a deal. There's a compelling reason. How much to spend? That depends on your budget. You really have to set that into your plan, like I'm gonna spend $50 a month or $25 a month, or whatever you decide to do. It also needs to be consistent. With advertising, back in the old days of print advertising, when I was starting out, we advertised in magazines. We would actually put, remember this? Magazines? You put an ad in a magazine, which is so foreign right now, but the idea was you can't pull one ad and then be done and expect it to work. You had to advertise every month for a year, and then you start to really see that boost after maybe six months to a year because it's impressions, a number of impressions before they actually pick up the phone and call you. And that's kind of one of the worst things about a lot of advertising is you don't know how it's working unless you run it for a year, and really your business has not increased at all, then you know it's not working. (laughing) Is there still value in print ads and periodicals? Periodicals, if you can get your work in an editorial, yeah, that's great. Editorials in magazines, if you can get an article written about you and picked up and put into a magazine, awesome. Paying for an ad in a magazine? Huh. It's really risky, it's really expensive for a small business, unless you've got a local magazine that's giving you a crazy good deal on it, it's tough. I would spend a lot more effort on social media marketing than that unless I was really ready to move big. But photographers, you hardly ever see full print ads anymore. It's so expensive and hard to track. Let's talk about this, 'cause this is more down to earth. Third party endorsements through testimonials. And here's the bottom line. And you guys all know it's true, it's not what you say it's what they say about you. You could have the most beautiful website in the world, you can say all the most amazing things you want about yourself on this website, and somebody be like, hmm. That's nice, but. And then somebody, a friend of them goes, you need a headshot, call Yanina. All right, and they call. It's amazing. Like all you need is just a little push from a friend to make a call and all of a sudden you're calling. So how can we generate more of those? That's what's important. So here is the three ways you can get your testimonials, your referrals, and all that. The first and most powerful is a candid endorsement, meaning somebody just randomly tells somebody else you should use so and so photography, you should call Kevin Photography. You getting married? Call Kevin. That's the most powerful. My wedding was amazing, he was great to work with, that's all they want to hear. Unless the style is totally totally different when they get your website, that's gonna work. That's what you want to focus on. At least 10 times more convincing than anything you could say, the most beautiful website you could create, that simple one-to-one recommendation is gonna be 10 times more powerful to get them to book. Second most is solicited endorsements, in other words, like when you put on your website, like Yanita's, on her about page, the quotes from her past clients. Absolutely, you should have those. Nothing wrong with those, but they're not as powerful as a friend telling a friend go book Yanina, 'cause people are gonna look at that, they'll believe it, but on the other hand they're like she coulda just created that. Who knows if that's even real? Or maybe those are the only three clients that ever liked her. I don't know. (laughing) Those are the only three testimonies she's ever had over 20 years of her photography. So there's doubts, but it still works. And the last is paid endorsements, which I don't think anybody here really wants to USBC it all the time. What's crazy to me is that we fall for that stuff. You see some golfer recommending a car and you're like I like that golfer, I'm gonna buy that car. What does he know about cars? Nothing. He doesn't even drive a car, he has a chauffeur the whole time, but he's recommending this car 'cause it's like a little economy car. A professional golfer, does he drive an economy car? No. Not that there's anything wrong with professional golfers. And I know a lot of you do drive economy cars. Just sayin'. But that, amazingly, still works. But it's lower on the list, of course. So, I don't like to talk about it because it's not really anything I'm encouraging any of you to do. It's just not in our sphere. So let's focus on the first two. What you need to do is seek them out, ask for them, encourage them. Really important, 'cause you're not gonna just sit back and wait and hope that people write you thank you letters that you can share, or hope that they're gonna tell their friends about you, you need to ask them to do that. You need to make sure that you're closing statement whenever they leave your studio is I really love referrals and I would love it if you would tell your friends about me if you're happy. It seems kind of cheesy, but it's not. It's powerfully and it's effective. Make that a habit. Remember there's the baby steps to building a habit? So your first step could be, when they say goodbye, you can just say I. (laughing) See ya. Next day, say I would really appreciate, okay, that's all. The next time, it's like I would really appreciate a furl. So build a habit of whenever you're closing a deal, getting off the phone with a happy client, I would really love however you wanna phrase it, your words. I would really appreciate your referral. If you know anybody else that could use a wedding photographer. Or I just love referrals. One thing you can do, too, is even offer bonuses and incentives, it sounds like it's kind of like cheating a little bit, but what I do is I don't tell people, so if I find out from a client, they tell me oh, so and so tell me about that your a wedding photographer. They recommended you, and I end up booking with them, I'll just send that other client like a little gift basket or a gift certificate for a restaurant or something, and say hey, thank you, I appreciate your referral so much. Boom. And you know what? Those people I tend to get a lot more referrals from later on. And it's worth it. If you're booking a wedding, several thousand dollars, you can send a $25 gift certificate for something. No problem. Or even just, even a thank you note is plenty. But you have to ask for them. That's the key with all this stuff is if you sit and wait for it, you'll eventually get them. You'll get some of those. But you're gonna get a lot more if you just ask. Ask for them on your website, ask for them on your Facebook page, ask for them end of your sessions, whatever it is you're doing, ask for testimonials and things. We'll talk about some of the other ones, as well. Asking for reviews. Does anybody here look at reviews when they buy stuff online? Does it make any difference to you whatsoever? Heck yeah, it does. Gosh, I can't even quantify how much I value the review of a product before I buy it. If it's got a two star review, I don't care how beautiful it looks, I don't care what it says in the advertising copy, the picture, if it's got a two star review, I'm really probably not gonna buy it. Unless I'm just absolutely desperate for that, that's the only option I have. So how can you make sure that you've got five star reviews? On your Google. Local businesses, a lot of people use Yelp. Trip Advisor maybe not so much for what you're doing here, but Google business searches can be huge for you, for your local business. And how do you get good reviews? What do you think? (mumbling) Hey! You ask for 'em! (laughing) Oh my gosh, we ask. It's so funny, I get messages from my friends a lot of times in the industry, like hey, I just wrote a book on photography, can you go give me a five star review? I'm like well if it's good, yeah I will, but I'm more inclined, I absolutely am more inclined to go read the book, and if I was gonna give a review, maybe it was four stars, and they really said please give me a five star review, I'll give 'em a five star review. If it's valid. If I really think it sucks, I just won't review it. I'm not gonna say anything bad, but I will, if it's somebody that I know or somebody I've worked with and they're asking for a review, yeah I'll do it. When I travel I go stay as a Airbnb, or stay at someplace else. If I had a good experience there, I don't have to have a fantastic experience, but if people were nice, here's the beauty of this, guys, we talked about this earlier, if you are a nice person, and you treat your clients nicely and have a nice experience, if you ask for a review, they're gonna be reviewing you based on how much they like you. More so than actually how great your photos were. And you can leverage that. Leverage the fact that you're a nice person asking for reviews and they will go, and I know for a fact, 'cause I've had people, when I've gone to a business and I've had something that's just, it's good, it's average, but they say hey, our Yelp reviews are really helpful, would you mind putting a Yelp review or Uber. Get outta the cab and the guy's really nice in the Uber and he says hey, make sure you give me a good review if you would, please. If you were happy. Heck yeah, I'll do it. I want to help them. And I was not unhappy at all. But if he had never said anything, I would've just got out the door and forgot all about it. Is that not true? Right? So, are you asking your customers, you're happy customers, and I know you have lots of happy customers, for reviews. So, one way you can do this, if you kinda shy about it, put it on your invoices when you deliver your final images. Make sure there's a nice little thing on there that says hey, we would love your positive review on Google business, or on online or on Facebook or whatever, 'cause you can rate businesses on Facebook, too, now. The business pages. Make a monthly contest for reviewers. I've seen this a lot, and it actually works. Everybody who does a review this month is entered in a contest for a free portrait session, or free whatever, album add on to their thing. So, you can add a little contest for it and ask for reviews in exchange for that. Email newsletters. This is something we haven't really talked about, but it's something you can offer, and I think you should offer to your existing clients, is an email newsletter of tips and cool stuff that you do. Going back again to Yanina, keep picking on her 'cause she was up here, but she could send out a business tips, business branding tips newsletter to all of your business clients. Here's the latest, could be just one nice big tip that you learned that month and this could be from you maybe spending a little time online researching how to brand yourself better, how to be a more professional executive, or maybe just like how to ace a job interview. Something like that. In your job interview you say, here's the 10 things you need to do in a job interview to get the job, and at the bottom you can add a nice little funny tagline like oh, and make sure you have a really cool head shot, of course. Bing, from Yanina. And that's in your your email newsletter. Any business you've got, I guarantee you you can figure out something that you can share that's interesting and helpful in a newsletter. So, here's an example. Review us on Yelp or Google Places and win a free session. Winners picked each month, and you can put that, again, on your invoices, on your email tagline, your email signature when you email, if you use email a lot of your clients, put that on there. Encourage them to give those reviews and ask them in person and you'll be surprised how many more reviews you actually have in the coming months which are gonna be very positive for you. So, the path to endorse-n-ment is to ask, whether it's in person, on Facebook, ask for referrals. Post and tag photos. You know how to do that on Facebook, Instagram is very powerful. Alicia White, if you guys look her up, she has lots of contests. She always ask people share or tag yourself and win this, do this, she's all kind of cool things, and the seniors have to share the photos and tag Alicia White in it, and then she has this contest going on, and it's crazy powerful, crazy good for. Ask vendors to blog about you or provide them with information guest posts. So say you have, you're a wedding photographer, and the wedding coordinator in town that you like to work with or want to work with has a blog or a Facebook page, provide them with some tips and photography tips and tricks that she can post under her blog. Help her put content that's helpful, 'cause what you're doing now is you're creating that circle where she's posting cross-information to her clients. As a wedding coordinator, she's posting here's photography tips. So she's doing what we talked about earlier where she's sharing information not related to selling herself, and at the same time, she's promoting you. And it comes in like one big circle. Tell other people they can promote you. And have clients make videos for you. Have clients ask them, hey can you send in a little testimonial video? Hey, would you mind just recording yourself? Just use your phone, do a selfie, whatever one little line. I love Yanina because she made me look so beautiful, or she made me, whatever it is, or it could be just more serious review, but ask them and you'd be surprised, that has to be so powerful to see somebody else's video talking about your business. There's also one other avenue which I think is kind of a secret, not really a secret, but it's unexpectedly effective as the SMS deals. There's this company called iText Photo that you can check out, and basically you sign your customers up via SMS, and you can send out almost, it's like a Twitter, but it's basically just goes right to their SMS, to their phone. You have to be really careful, you don't want to abuse this, 'cause people get really pissed off pretty quick if you're spamming them with SMS, but it could be a lot more effective because when you guys get a text message, you always look at it. You may not notice a tweet, a Twitter thing, 'cause you're not gonna notice somebody's get buried in the hundreds of thousands of other tweets out there, and if you're not on the top, you may not even notice Facebook post because Facebook doesn't show you all your friends' posts. It chooses which ones to show you on your page, in a certain order based on its own algorithms, so you may design is beautiful post, but your friends who like you on your page will never see it sometimes. Any other kind of social media, it's hit and miss sometimes. An SMS always gets seen. So if you can get your customers to sign up for an SMS deal, or a message, some kind of special thing, and again, you gotta think real carefully, 'cause you don't want to be just blasting them every day with some stupid text message, that will annoy people really quick, but if say, once a week, you send out a little SMS with a special, or a tip, or something that's worth reading, it can be super powerful. And I know, there's some stores that my wife goes to that she gets deals from the store. They'll send deals from restaurants in town that have deals that I've signed up for, and I'm anxious to see those. Kinda like oh, a deal where they're serving my favorite dish today. I'm gonna run down there and I show up, I go down there. And I see it, 100% I see it. So, think about how you can use that. If you use that effectively, I think that can be really, really powerful.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Branding Statement
Contract Do's & Dont's
Evaluate your Business
Keyword Exercise
Points of Contact
Sample Portrait Session Contract
Startup Checklist
Photography Pricing Calculator

Ratings and Reviews

Lauren Scott
 

Super great class. I've been in business full-time for 5 years, and I'm just now starting to get my "act together" I have spent so much time shooting, it has taken away from the business aspect and actually identifying myself as a brand, this was a good way to get the basics, learn, lots of good info. NOT boring at all, he is super funny and super personable, not pretentious and speaks to you in a way thats easy to understand... sometimes I feel like entrepreneurs come off a bit "nose-in-the-air" with all these terms myself as a creative cannot understand... but not with Kevin, down to earth funny guy! I also emailed him with a few questions and he was so kind to email be back right away! Thanks Kevin and thanks creative live! Bring him back!

KIS Photography
 

This was an amazing class to be a part of! I knew it would be good, from watching Kevin Kubota's previous Creative Live classes, and this course far exceeded my expectations! Kevin is a fantastic teacher, giving sound advice, presented clearly, with a down to earth, caring & humorous touch! I've watched it over on the replay, picking up on more things each time. This class will help me to get my photography business off on the right start, and I am looking forward to implementing all of his fantastic advice! Thank you Kevin & Creative Live!

Student Work

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