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Researching Your Market

Lesson 24 from: Studio Systems: A Photography Business Bootcamp

Julia Kelleher

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Lesson Info

24. Researching Your Market

Next Lesson: Marketing Systems

Lessons

Class Trailer

Free Bootcamp Introduction

1

Introduction to Studio Systems Bootcamp Part 1

1:04:25
2

Introduction to Studio Systems Bootcamp Part 2

1:22:38

Photography Studio Customer Service

3

Customer Service Part 1

1:08:05
4

Customer Service Part 2

1:20:46
5

Customer Service Best Practices: On–Location

58:14
6

The Customer Experience: Client P.O.V. Studio Walk-Through & Session: On–Location

1:16:45

Photo Session Systems & Image Workflow Systems

7

Photography Session Systems

1:13:36
8

The Studio as a System to Success: On–Location

55:38
9

Image Workflow—From Camera to Client

50:15
10

Post-Processing Systems

1:18:37
11

Back-Up Systems

53:41

Sales & Ordering Workflow Systems

12

Overview of Successful Selling: The 6 Ps of Selling Part 1

1:23:09
13

The 6 Ps of Selling Part 2

1:17:11
14

The 6 Ps of Selling Part 3

1:38:38
15

Real Life Sales Consult: On–Location

1:29:54
16

Tracking and Packing an Order: On–Location

34:34
17

Dealing With Client Objections & Problem Personalities, with Consistency

1:02:34

Pricing & Financial Systems

18

Financial Tracking—The Power of Knowing Your Numbers

1:02:39
19

The Science of Pricing-—A System for Your Products

40:26
20

Building Packages That Work

1:15:41
21

Your First Outsource: Accounting: On–Location

21:23

Marketing, Branding & Promotional Systems

22

The Importance of a Solid Brand System

1:02:11
23

Living Your Brand: Inside the Studio: On–Location

43:41
24

Researching Your Market

54:19
25

Marketing Systems

1:19:09
26

Understanding Buying "triggers" and Using them in Your System of Promotion

36:33
27

What We've Covered: Getting Systems Right

05:48
28

Why Systems Are Important - and How They Help

11:10
29

What's Your Plan - Let's Talk 5 Years Ahead

37:16
30

What's Important - Let's Prioritize

17:33
31

Where do you start? - Dealing with the Demon Inside

15:44
32

Looking In the Mirror: Finding Success

14:49
33

The Power of Never Giving Up

20:00
34

Getting Back to Your Purpose - Why Do You Do What You Do?

09:09
35

Introducing the BIG WINNER!

13:13

Lesson Info

Researching Your Market

Where aware art thou clients that is the big question right channeling my inner shakespeare write but targeting specific people is something that a lot of people are a lot of business owners I should say are scared to dio because they think they're leaving people out if I target to specific of a client then what about all those other people who could hire me this's so far from the truth it's not even funny when you target specific people you're going to get a qualified client okay but who is that? Who is that qualified client? You can't do good marketing promotions and effective branding if you don't have a picture in your head of who that ideal client is and you don't live own brief love and eat everything she eats you know that kind of thing I know it sounds a little crazy but when I say things like that but it's true I want you to immerse yourself in her life and that's what this whole segment is going to be about and learning how to define who she is and I say she because the major...

ity of buying decisions and u s households are made by women believe it or not and especially in photography whether it be wedding portrait high school seniors it's mostly women now in the commercial world it's a little different you're targeting businesses who want your services and those khun b male and female owned businesses so with commercial work you're going to want to do this with the men in your life too and you're going to wantto do this market research with the ideal business in mind not necessarily the ideal target client does that make sense? So if your commercial star for your kind of trying to get other businesses to hire you to do their commercial work catalog work, food, photography things like that you're going to want to target the business itself and not necessarily the woman who's making the buying decisions in in the household. Okay, so who is your ideal client? Do any of you have an idea of what that is? At this point? I want to kind of go around the room here and talk to some folks and find out if you have an idea in your head of what that target client could be so let's pull out the microphone and shot a little bit do you want to go first? My dear lord what's your what do you think her ideal client is? My ideal client would be a dual income family with young children that have a lot of money and they value portraiture okay on their walls awesome. Anyone else want to chime into that? Anyone else? I mean it's a pretty we all yeah, yeah, but you know what? You were very a detailed as you think you are you were very vague and I'm gonna we're gonna help narrow that focus down a lot today in this class um it's not just about who's like what her age is what her gender isn't all that okay so that's where things are going to get deeper and most photographers that's exactly what they do when they think of their ideal client they think of okay she's twenty two two thirty five years old has two kids a dog and loves photography and a lot of money in a big house okay yes sir lindh wants to safe what her ideal client so I live in the los angeles area and I think that my ideal client is somewhat similar to laurie's but also I would expound upon that that you know, grand parents in the area you know specific ethnic groups it's in the area that I know like status and you know, portray that status or tout it in the community a lot of russians in eastern europeans middle easterners and your live in my target area you know kind of also the celebrity clients you know I live close to hollywood malibu s o not only dual income you know private school the beverly center shopping you know like you said yesterday the porsche cayenne driver but also you know those people that have family abroad or across the country ok there lynn let me ask you something you're naming a lot of different people that's a lot of different people to try to target in your marketing and promotional branding efforts what do you think about maybe just picking one of those people and what does that make you think? Well I think like you were saying about zip codes yeah so I think ah lot of those people live in similar zip codes in some of the areas I think I'm from the san fernando valley I think been terrible of hard uh calabasas is so even though there are different groups I think the zip code thing might kind of bring them all together so on dh that's that's going to become important in your marketing segments in kind of targeting your market but what I'm trying to get you guys to focus on is that one person who is your ideal client just the one who is she yes will you attract the others along with that of course but I want you to narrow your focus so much so that your brand reflects her ideal self that makes sense we talked about that when discuss branding you guys want to contribute I think my ideal client is somebody of course somebody that has some money but it's not necessarily always about money in my area there's a lot of people who just value family so I'm looking for somebody who has my style that likes a natural earthy feel kind of a hippie you know? They really concentrated and family oriented and they value that and although they may not have a lot of money, they'll still spend money on portraiture because they believe that it's important yeah, I think that's great stuff to think about and we're gonna talk about that here in a minute being a psycho graphic, which I'll explain the definition of in a little bit. Yeah, my ideal client gets up early and she goes to yoga and she works out and she can do that freely because she has a nanny at home who takes care of her children because she's multiple children and she has a very clean environment, you know, her walls are they're covered with portrait's of her children that are very I wouldn't say elegant but clean and crisp and fresh and she's probably married to ah husband who makes a decent amount of money or not, but he he's a hard worker too, so kind of like the type a entre po muriel, you know, whatever their jobs are, they're just busy on the go hit people don is definitely thinking more about her target client in terms of their lifestyle and that's where what we're going to learn to do it it's a combination of both you guys so who is your target client? Depends on a number of factors that you need to define okay and as we unveiled the nitty gritty ease of these factors all your target clients are going to start to become different. Okay, number one demographics okay, this is the basics. This is a gender location ethic, background moralist as education income, home value, children, employment status. This is the kind of stuff that your census measures, the factual stuff, the statistics. Okay, so you want to take these parameters, and when you say age, I mean my target age is twenty five to forty. Do I attract people outside that age range? Of course I did, but my typical client is a thirty five year old mother who's having a baby for the first time. That's my ideal client. Do I have clients who are twenty five giving birth of babies? Of course I do, but to me the most ideal one is the one who's, thirty five, who is a little higher income level than a twenty five year old. All right, just in general she's married she's, obviously and bend ethnic background is unimportant for me. Uh, education. She has a college degree or higher her income is at least fifty thousand dollars or more okay, home values. She lives in the nicer naret neighborhoods in town and granted ah lot of people out here going, why are you defining her so tightly? Because I'm trying to get her in my head in order to develop my own business to target that person, not because that's the only person I'm going to serve that's ridiculous this exercise is so that you understand who you're speaking to and who your audience is does that make sense so I can just kind of here people online going oh my god, it doesn't matter where they live or what they do and what their ethnic background is no, you're right, it doesn't but you needed to find it in your head so you khun better target them in your marketing, your branding and all the above ok, is she employed or not? That kind of thing, does she? How many children does she have? Who is that ideal client? So look at the list and think about how many of these demographic factors influenced your last major purchase. This is important stuff there are things you buy, sorry, alex just cause you're a girl guys don't need it makeup not kind of thing make up cos they're targeting women so they do that they have to have their ideal client in their head so they can more readily and mohr effectively target women that's obviously a black and white answer okay there's gray areas so think about this list and I will make you realise how important these statistics are when it comes to defining your target market because you know in your life you have made a purchase purchasing decision based on some of this information about you alone, right? You bought some stuff because you were married right? There are products out there for married people people who are going to get married an engagement ring jin's are you're not going by engagement ring unless you're about to get married. Okay, so all of these thieves statistical analysis here have some kind of influence on a buying decision? Correct? So this is the basic stuff this is what we're talking about, lori and that their land addressed in the beginning statistics age, gender, education background, marital status, that kind of thing. Okay, very factual information. This kind of information is readily available from your census in your in your town or city. We were talking about where to find information a little bit here, but first we're gonna go over what information you need. Now the other type of information which is just as important if not more are the psycho graphics of your ideal client. And this is where dawn got into things a little bit more psychographic ce are very difficult and they will take you a little while to marinate on and really develop in your head about your ideal client okay, but this is the most important segment this type of information goes beyond the external and identifies maura about a customers deeper values okay, it's what motivates the buyer to take action and can often be learned by examining the media they consume actually okay, good psychographic profiling can be difficult to do because it requires you to immerse yourself in the markets inner psychology and develop an empathy and familiarity with the target customer that's from tommy walker who's a wonderful writer does that make sense? You have to get into the mind of your target client to really figure out who she is and you have to be in her shoes and have empathy for her situation. This is why it's, you know, just because I'm a new born photographer, I'm goingto mention this this is why when I had a baby, I knew how to target my clientele little better because I was fully in her shoes and I know what it means to have a baby, okay? So I was better able to market and brand to her right now. Does that mean that before I had a baby? I couldn't do that? Of course not. Is it harder? Yes, is it harder for men to market two newborn mothers? Yes simple is that because they've never had a baby at least not coming out of their body? You know what I'm saying so there is something but like I've said so much during this whole five weeks with you guys is it's all about the art of the spin market is simply taking limitations and turning them into positives that's all marketing is so a male perspective could easily be spun as something good about when it comes to being a newborn photographer from the dad's perspective okay so mark it profiling is critical to finding your ideal client and those psychographic ce are where most business owners drop the ball because it's hard to do and it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort so people give up okay demographics is who is buying psychographic are why they are buying and people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it so if you understand why they are buying the two purpose and their psycho graphics go like this okay so psychographic include their psychology their personality interests hobbies, values, attitudes, behaviours and lifestyle behaviors what did they do and get up what do they get up and do in the morning don talked about going to yoga do they read the newspaper a woman who goes to a yoga class in the morning versus someone who breaks out and read the financial times is an entirely different woman so what does she do every morning? What is her attitude towards things? What is her attitude towards her children? What is her attitude towards grocery shopping notice I'm not talking much about photography or art at this point, I want to understand her on a day to day basis and really, like, be able to knock out her day exactly what she does. Does she have a nanny there's a big difference between a woman whose home schools her child and sends her kids off to a nanny while she goes and socializes on upper east side? Okay, there's a huge difference between those two women and what they value their behaviors and their attitudes towards life and family, right? So this I want you to take this list of psycho graphics and really immerse yourself into it and ask yourself your target clientele. What components here are valid in their life? Try not to think of keeping a targeted profile is excluding anyone, which I know it seems like you're doing, but rather keeping your messaging focused on the people who have the most impact. Remember the big giant pumpkin that's your target clientele, and you need to understand what that pumpkin needs to grow to grow. That means you have to understand how it thinks, how it acts, what it eats, why it likes the soil, etcetera, the disease goard's you don't really care too much about because they're not going to survive anyway. Will you get nice pretty other pumpkins in your patch as well? Of course you're going to get other clients, but the ultimate goal is to keep your messaging focused to the ideal client that makes sense. I trust that everyone else will follow once you've made in a day oppression with your core market because that's, exactly what happens and that's exactly what nitch ing is when you need in a specific area seniors, weddings, babies, whatever all and you brand and focus your message to that ideal client the others follow, I still shoot seniors, I still shoot families, I still shoot weddings, god forbid I love you people who shoot weddings, I have so much respect for you because I cannot do it, but I get requests for this stuff all the time, even though you will not find one semblance of that stuff in my marketing or branding materials. It's very strange it blew my mind when I learned that I'm like, I am not showing any seniors, but all get like ten five to ten requests a year for seniors and I'm not marketing them at all like at all. Usually it's referred clients are people who know of me and they're coming to me not because of the specific subject I photograph, but because of the reputation of the business and the brand does that make sense which blew my mind but it's absolutely true and nobody believed me when I tell them when I need it my business doubled it it was so counterintuitive it doesn't make sense does it? You think that the more you do and the more stuff you cover, the more you'll clients you'll have it is so not true if you focus heavily on one specific area, you are more likely to get those ideal clients who focus on that area of expertise does that make sense? So I'm going to read this again try not to think of keeping a target profile as excluding anyone but rather it keeps your message focus on the people you want in your business who will make the most impact trust that everyone else will follow once you've made an impression with your core market okay let's talk about demographics for portrait clients we're going to go through portrait wedding and seniors ok excuse me portrait wedding I think you're saying we'll see I thought I added in but hopefully maybe it was the difference so far baby clients women clearly right twenty five to forty years old any race or ethnicity pregnant or trying to conceive a mid to high level income well educated, married or attached employed or a stay at home mom residing in affluent neighborhoods demographics are pretty easy right straight forward the psycho graphics are a lot different appreciates fine art cares about home good corn design enjoys a custom experience, takes fried pride and family and community sensitive to becoming a parent looks that having children is a life altering experience forward thinking but nostalgic technologically adept cares about attention to detail and takes pride in their classic taste. The only thing even kind of relating to photography is the fine art part, but art could be anything right? Are khun b the local museum art museum or whatever? What about for wedding twenty thirty five generally right? Obviously that scope can change because women get married later in life too, but my point in showing you this democratic and that is that it can be specific for your business if you want to target young brides with parents who are wealthy and can afford you, this is the demographic you would be targeting there's no harm in totally targeting the second marriage crowd the folks who are getting remarried at fifty and sixty years old what's wrong with having a targeted branded business towards that it would be incredible no it's a niche nobody's doing I'm sorry what'd you say sir island and they have more money yeah she's right so if you wanted to target the older crowd getting married, that would be awesome and you probably wouldn't hit bridezilla very often, which is a lot a lot better any s so this is just a hypothetical example I guess that's the point I'm trying to make this isn't that this is not the same for every wedding photographer, so you need to figure out what you want to target as your ideal claim any ethnicity engaged you're planning a wedding clearly mid to high level income or family with it well educated come from affluent families well traveled and employed different woman right younger, hipper, trendier psychographic scan get very interesting for weddings, right? Who are you trying to target and again hypothetical example demands a certain status cares about appearances covets high end brands technologically savvy culturally hip and trendy appreciates fine art cares about fashion decor in design enjoys a custom experience takes pride of family and community imagery is a priority for her has a busy type a life totally different woman than the mom with the baby right she's hip and trendy and getting married and loves instyle magazine and you know gracie armand and all these I mean she's a different woman right? She gets up, works out the morning goes to work for a little corporate bank job dressed all cute walks to work in a big city getting married is so proud of her four carat engagement ring you know that's a client is that your client you get to pick it's up to you and what you who you want to target okay I think that's my goal here is to help you understand that psycho graphics and demographics can change depending on who that ideal person is were you to grow your big pumpkin so the question is is where are these women? Where are these target clients which websites are they on so for a bridled bride style me pretty the knot right for new mothers gosh mommy sites parenting magazines that kind of thing right that's kind of why I we're going to hear all about this and tomorrow segment about about marketing promotions but that's why we developed a site called the baby brief baby reef dot com is a resource in bend an online resource for new mothers so when I saw you need the market I filled it and this is where my clients are hanging out I created the media which they consume which social networks are they on facebook women are a lot different than leaked in women right? I know this is overwhelming I know you're brain is like whoa you're going you're like I'm okay um are they glued to their email are they addicted to apse which app where they shop what entertains them where did they exercise okay what do they need? Which restaurants do they dinette what services do they use in your community if you answered all these questions about your ideal client you would be slowly but surely putting yourself into her shoes right when that happens and you fully understand her what will that better able you to do? It will help you to market directly to her and being her headspace when she's looking for a photographer yeah, your brand will target her which means she'll be attracted to it now will you get others? Of course. Of course you know, this is this is targeted marketing guys, this is doing full on research. So what who that audiences that you're going to try to address and it's so important I love this quote from the daily egg the information you put together for your customer profile combined with knowing where your audience hangs out online in your town and how they use technology we'll facilitate the delivery of your marketing message if you know her that well it will be so easy to market to her it will be so easy to brand your business not only with your own sense of visual style, personality and moral promise but that moral promise will mess with hers. So the big question is where can you go to find this information right? This is where things start to like it's like oh yeah julia that's all well and good but how the heck do I figure this out? These are not cut and drive black and white answers right? You have to think about it and marinate in it for a little while, but there are great resource is in your community small business development centers, community colleges, chamber of commerce score ok scores, a business organization, all chapters all around the country and the national census data. If you put in the google bend, oregon, census data, government sites will pop up and you can look at your census data is very easy to find this information as journalists, we were trained to do that, and google is your best friend. I mean, it really is it cracks me up so much that people aren't willing just type in something to google that look something up because it's just there's a world of information. I mean, back when I started in tv news in graduate school, google was barely living and, you know, we had to go into a lexisnexis for data remember lexisnexis I thought from the government remember that all that you have to go in the library and the role of jacks and research all this stuff and find books and now it's, like in our home computers that's in our phones. Okay, so this data is very easy to access. You just have to look for it, and if you can't find what you're looking for our line, call the government and ask for it there's somebody there who can help you you might get a little round about and get passed on to different people before you find the answer to what you need but you will get the answer to what you need and this is so kiss stupid stupid simple and nobody does it which cracks me and I'm like why is anybody doing this? This is like the easiest information out there to get and target and too and nobody does it business owners like get lazy and stop doing it and it drives me crazy but these organizations this is just a minor lift but also consider your I mean every town has something like this the bend oregon visitor's guide okay this magazine is chock full of information about the psych a graphics and demographics of my town it's got ads and what to do all the state parks where people are going where they're hanging out what's important to them in the community it's just a matter of keeping your finger on the pulse of what's happening in your town order the newspaper and have it delivered to your house and read it every morning there is so much fun information in there that you can think about when you relate to your business and your target clientele this came out in the bulletin isn't bend oregon bulletin and it's just like an insert it's like a special edition insert and it's a wonderful magazine that basically talks about how the recession affected our area and how we're bouncing back, what new industries, air growing who's been affected, how real estate is coming back and like hardcore numbers and information, different businesses that are thriving in surviving all this is like great fodder for me to not only find my ideal client, but to also develop marketing campaigns and vendor promotions and things that I can work within my community. Once you start getting out of your own head and realizing that you are a viable business, just like all these other ones in your town and kind of getting that confidence that you're just a cz good as they are, then you realize that you can plan and you can plan and partner with them and put yourself in the same realm is then you are no less than any of these other amazing businesses that are in my town. So why can't you go and think and strategically about some incredible marketing campaigns to partner with these people for your business? Now, do they all target your same ideal client know you want to make sure you pick that and be strategic about that? But I'm saying this kind of information about your town is so readily available. Another location and bent ed co the economic development of central oregon move start gro is their model central oregon business begins with ed co this is their website you khun go into their website and find all kinds of information about central oregon this this website is designed for start up businesses invent okay people in infrastructure max business and economic data central oregon communities I mean this is like a gold mine for businesses in my town and I'm in the town of eighty eight thousand people come on if I have this you guys have it too okay so go find this information and guichard make start making a list of ideas of not only your ideal client but also about marketing opportunities and stuff you can use this information for and for goodness sake all you got to dio is go to google and type in things like small business resource is your town and state and trust me everything and is then anything will pop up another beautiful way to find out information about your target clientele and or the market is to ask the right questions directly to the source surveys if I could only know what my ideal client is thinking you can ask him you shall receive okay and by the way if you are spp for the course you get our client customer service satisfaction survey for free ok serving your clients or cold leads what's a cold late I was just going to say it's an unqualified prospect yeah it's somebody who doesn't necessary know about your business who isn't warm like they haven't gotten there yet? They may not know about you. Okay, yet thes are stranger people stranger danger thes air, strangers okay, they know they don't know about you or your business. They are cold leaves. Okay, so serving your current clients, which are your warm leads, right? Or you're cold leads khun tell you a lot about how you should be running your business direct from the source. You can just ask them yeah, I know it's scary, but you're just a chicken. Okay, seriously it's scary, but it will. And the reason is because you're afraid of what they're going to say, you're afraid, especially with things like customer client satisfaction surveys that they're going to say something bad about you and that's scary, you know, tio own that, yeah, I screwed up. I gotta fix that or that's not working my business. I gotta fix it. You know, if the tree falls in the forest, it really happened, you know, if nobody can hear it, that kind of thing, that people who run businesses don't want to face and own up to the fact that they're not doing something right. But when you do ask these questions of your clients, they actually feel mohr endeared to you because they realize you care very deeply about doing it right whenever I get a survey from like when I buy something off being h or whatever and they send me the little survey like how was your experience with being h or if I have a problem with a lab and I called them up and say, you know, we need to replace this or whatever and then I got a quick customer survey did we serve you well? Is everything going okay what what can we do better that to me is like well okay they really care about the fact that I needed help and customer satisfaction is a huge part of that and that all of a sudden makes me think higher of their business even if it didn't go that great do you mean like even if it didn't go that great and they want to know their feedback and what's even better is if I tell them it didn't go that great and they do anything and everything their power to make up for that that's good customer service right survey's going talk about two types warm lead sending it to your current clients and then we're gonna talk about cold leads okay? So surveys khun b done internally meaning you want to find information about customers who have already patronized her business right your current clients that means they've experienced your brand okay, these people are more likely to respond because they already like you right you'll get a decent conversion rate on this kind of thing ah conversion rate is, for example, the number of times someone sees your survey and versus the number of people who actually fill it out so if you send it out to a thousand people and only one hundred do it that the ten percent conversion rate okay, so keeping the survey confidential will get honest responses, so keep that in mind here your clients want you to succeed, especially if they like you already and you've done a good job for them so they'll be happy to help you and they'll be happy that you gave them a chance to voice their opinion so oftentimes it's fun to prove if you want a higher conversion rate is to provide incentive to fill it out. How would you do that? She said discount off the session yeah, you could do that! Yeah, three pictures in their sticky album it's cheap, it's free it's easy for you to dio um if you want to spend some money on it, give him a set of holiday cards something like that to get really honest response is out of it, but I also don't want the gift to influence their decision, so maybe you say off the next session so they'll get a complimentary something off the next session that's a little bit better because it's less bias does that make sense? But doesn't that make it not anon anonymous? Because now I understand what you're saying you could make it a not you, khun send out their companies, and I'm gonna tell you what, what we use, but there's companies out there that you can send it out, that you won't know who the responses come back now you're right, if they need, if they want the prize at the end, then they would need to be non anonymous because you need to know who it wass but I always give them a choice, so if they want to be anonymous about it and not get the gift or whatever the incentive, you could also do it as a download. So you could do like fifteen ways to get your kid to smile in pictures as a pdf that they would want to read and I'd be educated about, and in exchange you have to fill out a survey to get the get the cute thing, then it can remain anonymous if you do kind of elektronik a gift of some kind. Okay, yeah, they still get something, but so there's a couple ways to do it, but when I actually find is the anonymous responses are usually the better ones I learned more from those than I do from the ones people going on, it was great. I don't want to hear it's great, I want to hear what we can improve, okay? And and you have to get past that because the first time you sent out a survey, you're like, uh, you know, it's a little like, you don't want to hear the bad stuff, but then you realize the bad stuff is going to know is what's going to help you make things better? Okay, I also make sure and tell people how we're going to use the responses. So this for this survey is going to be used to help improve our customer service, or we are doing some research on a new product launch, and this will help us determine if it's something in the market that our clients will want. Okay, so for example, hair and makeup on newborn sessions. Should I incorporate that into my session so that mom and mom doesn't have to do with hair or makeup? She's like what she was confused for? Second no it's. Okay, I know. Okay, good, sorry, I didn't mean bivalve hair and makeup on a baby, gently, no for moms because they I want to be a full customer service studio, and I tell them to just get there, but they still have toe. Make themselves look good so that would take that customer service the extra mile so I want to know of my clients if I had had that it's a service would you want it number one and would you be willing to pay extra for it and it means coming in earlier so those are all questions I want to ask in order to really feel if it's something that we should give us an option because why waste the money on it and put it in as a new product if it's not gonna work okay so tell them how you're goingto use their responses all right cold leads this is more interesting you can use social media advertising to attract respondents this type of survey would be something you would do to research your market so these air cold people you just want to talk to the community is what this is about okay, so you want to ask questions that are more targeted to your psychographic you want to find out about your community and who's there? This is ah harder survey to write because clearly you're gonna be asking questions like what kind of aps do you love to use? What are your favorite restaurants in town? And you have to make sure you ask the demographic portion of that because clearly you're not really worried about the men in your community who were what apse there buying you're worried about the women so you're going to create surveys that we'll be sorted according to women and your rage and target demographic, and then you're going to analyze the psychographic questions that you asked them? Does that make sense so again, keeping the survey confidential will get honest responses? You can do the elektronik gift kind of thing again, which I'm just going to talk about here in a second and that's what I call a lead magnet. You guys don't know what a lead magnet iss, for example, if you go to my website right now, jewel dash education dot com ah pop up will come up and two photographers, it says, get our studios policies for free use at your own risk give us your email and you'll be on our list, I'm trying to get leads and I'm giving the studio policies as a lead magnet. I want to give something of value to people in order to be able to market to them same thing goes with surveys, I want to give them something of value so they will fill out the survey for me so you can set it up so that they have to fill out a survey before they get the lead magnet, okay, so of course also tell them why you're asking the info, but do you see? And I I want to make sure I don't I passed by this topic in case there are questions, but you see what types of questions you're going to be asking these people versus the warm leads your current customers, your current customers, you typically ask them about their experience with you and how to improve your business. Not always. I mean, this could go different ways, but then the cold leads. This is the type of thing where you're going to be doing a survey to the community to find out maura about your target demographic, how she thinks how she feels. So you, khun, better focus your messaging to her okay, and by elektronik lee putting the survey online and then using facebook advertising targeted around your community bend, oregon women such and such age. So you get more responses from the people you really care about, right? All for the lead magnet, you're going to get information from complete strangers who are now going to learn about your business and you're going to learn about them, which will help you target them better, so use social media to your advantage. This is like an ad that you could do on social media five ways to get your kids to smile in pictures free, download it now help us learn more about consumer interest in professional photography. They click the download they have to go fill out the survey, which of course includes their email which grows your marketing lists and then they fell out the survey so you get two things from it and then they get the little pdf that says five ways to get your kids to smile in pictures which they're super excited about because every single mother out there has trouble getting her own kid to smile on camera genuinely right, I'm guilty my kid does not smile for me if but yeah just does not happen okay, so target your add to your ideal demographic demographic we're trying to find the answers to psychographic questions here, right? So if we define our demographic in the ad that's who facebook is going to target in the advertising and you could spend fifty bucks on this and probably get a decent amount responses it's going teach you ah lot about your clientele in your market because remember over these last few weeks we've been too talking. How about how every market is different? How do they feel about the price of photography? What would make them be willing to pay more for photography if the customer service you know so all imagine the amount of information that you can get if you if you structure your questions correctly yes, so if you don't have time to develop little things teo give away or where you get stuff like the five ways to get you kids smiling pictures or little things that would be a value to well, I always make my own um I wanted to be unique and it's not hard to make I mean seriously going into photo shop or making a word document a little pdf and showing some cute pictures of your work with kids smiling and take five one, two, three, four, five it's not the quantity it's the quality and photoshopped will allow you to turn it quickly into a pdf and honestly if if you think about it it'll probably let take you less than an hour to create I probably wouldn't give away someone else's stuff without their permission because we're using it for commercial purpose in that kind of stuff it's copyrighted so that's where it's probably best to make it yourself I'm not sure my answer your question I'm not sure you're going to find something like that now if you have a friend who has things like that that they're willing to help you out with great go for it and they give you permission we want to be extra careful with taking lead magnets and using those for promotional purposes because they will violate copyright okay okay, so what questions do I ask in the surveys? Obviously demographics obviously psychographic sw okay the beautiful thing is there are companies out there that you guys have seen this this is all just kind of what we went over and I think we've discussed kind of I could do an entire two day class on surveys is what I'm saying there's so many questions to ask and to think about within all these second graphics attitudes behaviours technology social media interest personality hobbies outdoors indoors exercise habits I mean you could you could go off now don't make your survey too long or people will not want to fill it out because it needs to be quick and dirty I'd rather do multiple surveys over multiple months then try to get one big survey out there okay bufalino there's companies like surveymonkey dot com who will help you with these questions understand that cold surveys are harder to get responses from but they will give you solid information about your market so coming up with some kind of lead magnet is going to be one of the best ways to do that surveymonkey dot com allow you make a free survey up to ten questions don't forget that survey is gonna need demographic information too because if you just put psychographic information and if you don't know it's male female age gender whatever that they got that information is not going to help you so you need to have the demographic information there first but I think thirty dollars a month is surveymonkey and that will give you unlimited questions on limits surveys online offline and a print on the audio diatta okay, so I encourage you first to start off sending one to your own client as just kind of a customer satisfaction survey to help yourself warm up to this whole idea then as you get that kind of information and it can use your current clients to improve your business, then branch out to your ideal client and start doing kind of cold lead surveys using social media to help you out. That's the beautiful part about this guy's social media makes this so easy. People used to have to do male surveys like junkmail surveys back in the day or email surveys with a list that is kind of semi cold or somebody wanted it so much easier and for not very much money through facebook, you know as much as you can afford, basically, you can start to get a good sampling of information about your own market because the ad on facebook or so targeted when you can literally target down to mommy's having babies I mean I can when I do advertisement on because I do a lot of in person mentoring and my studio and I need babies when that happens, so I do a mom a call and we need those model calls quickly because I want babies for five to seven days old so we put the ad out five days, five to seven days before the student arrives, and I facebook target ads, two mothers and ben at a specific age who are pregnant or having a baby, and we fill those molecules frickin in twenty four hours, and I usually have a waiting list of, like ten people trying to get it. Okay, so another great way to get models just a side note if you want to practice and do stuff that's, those facebook ads are great for that. I usually end up spending about anywhere from twenty thirty bucks to get my model it's cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap advertising. Okay, but what's interesting is you can start facebook ads have such amazing insights and statistics, you can look at your ad to check your conversion rate, so if you put out a third day like the ad I just showed you, you can see how many people click on it versus how many people have seen it. So you'll be able to see how effective you're at is if your lead magnet is working or not, okay? And then you can see how many people if you use the right software like lead pages or something like that, you can see how people that minibar downloading and then, of course, whether or not they fill out the survey so all this stuff you want that conversion rate to be nice and high so that clearly you're doing something right if the conversion rate is high is the same thing with like creative live, we can measure how many people are watching and how many people are buying the class and that gets us a conversion rate which helps us determine content and the order of content and how things go. So conversion rates are incredibly valuable statistic for any business owner in any time of research purchasing especially online and facebook ads insights have all this information like ready for you to look at like right there it's awesome never before in the history of marking or business have we had such easy access to information, so I strongly encourage you to use it yes don course has a question do you send out surveys to clients or I guess they wouldn't technically be clients, but people who inquire and don't book that's a great idea I haven't done it yet, but that's a fantastic idea you keep a prospect list and then asked why they didn't book her what the thing what what the deal was provide a little goody two shoes for them not for if they decide to book where they filled out the survey, you could convert a bunch of clients prospects and actual clients it's a fantastic idea still, yes I should have thought about that why didn't I think about that that's a great idea yes for the facebook ads are you typically like boosting your posts? Are you doing like the sidebar ads? I know you do a full on ad so you would go into facebook ads and I would you know, upload thie upload the image the special image for that ad and then when they click download they would go teo there would be redirected either to lead pages surveymonkey for me toe for me to be able to target them does that make sense? Yeah. Ok so it's a little bit of a setup it's a lot of setup but you know you only do it twice a year it's not like you're gonna be doing this every day. Um but it's guys valuable information and it's just make sure I mean, if you discovered we think of a situation if you discovered that your market for example women who are I was just just a hypothetical example but you were in your market there's two hospitals and you're trying to figure out you think everybody's born at the major hospital like you think that's the major hospital that's hostile you need when you do survey you realize that most women are going to midwives and further centers or the small hospital across town when you thought everyone was at the major st something something hospital that is just going to totally change your strategy. What if you were trying to get a hospital display set up and you were talking to saint something, something hospital and about to put in a fifteen thousand dollar display? You did a survey out, you realize, oh, my god, everybody's over there, that could be a major mistake, right? Cost you a lot of money, so surveys and information like this can really help you understand your market and make you think things and change your mind about things that you totally thought were solid. So, um, and its so cheap to dio, I mean it's, so cheap to dio, and you're getting right from the horse's mouth. Exactly your clients, whom you want attract, you're getting the answer right from them. Talk about being able to focus your message in your marketing, right? That would be incredible.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Studio Systems Resource Guide
Interview: Social Media Guru Sarah Daily
Studio Systems Workbook and Homework Guide
Syllabus
Jewel Images: Sample Client Survey

Ratings and Reviews

AlwaysFashionGirl
 

I look at this course as a library of amazing and valuable content. Everything that any photographer ever needs to run their business and make it successful and profitable can find all in one place, this course. I always felt inspired by Julia's amazing business skills, she is one of the best in this industry. I have taken all of her previous classes before and never felt disappointed. Instead, I would feel more confident, educated, empowered and inspired. Every segment is packed with so much information and it feels overwhelming at first, but the workbook that this course comes with, gives you sanity and helps you to work through it. I would definitely recommend this course to anyone. You should decide if you want to spend 10 years to get all this knowledge that this course already has, or just spend $199 to get it all at once and not waste anymore time experimenting!? Your choice.

a Creativelive Student
 

We're only 1wk into this 5wk bootcamp and I have already gained so much valuable information {already worth every cent}. Julia shares so much about how to run a business, and do it in a way that's successful, profitable and enjoyable. Have already started working on a few new systems to help run my business better, and my customer service has already improved. Now to just spruce up my home studio to make it more visually appealing and comfortable for my clients :) Thank you so much Julia!

user-faa438
 

I am so incredibly happy to have taken the plunge this evening, as I bought this course! Today watching the course a lightbulb went off and I knew I had to have it! This is worth every cent, and I am so very excited to watch the rest and implement these teachings into my business. Its time to take charge and take my business back! I am so amazed after standing back and looking at my business from a distance, of how much i have been giving away. Not only of not only my pricing but myself. I have compromised for clients that aren't right for me. This is giving me the confidence and knowledge to say no, in a nice way, and to focus on the business I really WANT! Thank you Julia, you are an inspiration! An amazing women with impeccable business sense!

Student Work

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