EP 79: Mini Mentoring with Kristina Graff in Washington

Melissa: Hey guys, we are back this week with another mini mentoring episode. So these are ones where Allison and I sit down with a photographer or small business owner who’s facing a move or has already moved and just needs some help getting their business restarted faster. So this week we have Christina Graff from Christina Graff Photography. Hey, Christina!

Kristina: I’m so excited.

Alison: Yeah, these are my favorites. Okay, so tell us about yourself. What do you do? Where do you live? Have you already moved?

Kristina: Okay, yes. So we already moved. We’ve been here, it was a year in June, so I guess almost a year and a half now, which is crazy. Where are you? So, I’m in Vancouver, Washington, which is just across the river from Portland. We’re like 20 minutes away from Portland, Oregon. Where did you move from? I moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico. So, we went from like dry desert.

Alison: Yeah. Lush green.

Kristina: Wet.

Alison: Yeah. Note for the audio, we both made faces. That’s a difference. That’s a difference. Okay, how’s it going?

Kristina: It’s just slow still. So I’ve been just a little discouraged.

Melissa: And is this, was this move, are you going to move again or was this like a permanent, yep, this is going to be the new spot?

Kristina: This should be, unless something comes up, this should be the new spot. We’re staying here for a while.

Alison: And what prompted this move? Was it a job related?

Kristina: My husband’s job, it just, new job, new situation. That’s real.

Alison: Yeah, okay. So what have you already done in the last 18 months or two years since this move happened?

Kristina: Okay so before I even moved I did like a one-on-one SEO call with someone just so I could have the plan of yeah I’ve never moved before and I don’t know what to do and just having a plan of like when to switch things over and with my website and my socials and stuff like that. So I did all of that stuff like I had done that switched everything before I had moved and then when we got here finally I I did free portfolio sessions for a couple of people that I had met through my church, and I was just like, hey, I’ll give you a free session if you could just post on your socials, or maybe post some family photos, post for kids’ birthdays, and stuff like that. And one of them has brought me two full-paying clients, so that’s good. The other one got me an inquiry, but not much has happened from that. And then I also passed around flyers at my husband’s work with special, because I don’t do mini sessions, I do petite sessions, they’re like 10-minute sessions. And so I was like, special dates, book during these dates. And I got no one booked during those specific dates, but I did get two or three bookings from that.

Alison: Let me back up for a second. What type of photographer are you? What is your niche and specialty?

Kristina: Family. I do some graduating seniors, but mostly family is my job. Okay. Studio or location? Location.

Alison: Outdoor. Yeah. Okay. And what’s your business structure? Are you pursuing like a luxury high-end thing on location or with a client closet and all those things or what have you?

Kristina: I would say I’m more of like in the middle. I do want to provide like an experience. I really want to capture like families and what makes them really them. Do you shoot film? No, it’s been something I’ve thought about.

Melissa: Your work looks like film. I’m looking at your website now. Your work is beautiful. Your skin tones on one of these photos, I’m like dying. I’m like, I want those skin tones for my family photos. Thank you. Sorry, I know I interrupted, but I was just like, no, your work is really good and stuff.

Alison: Are you doing any sales, artwork sales, or is it just digitals?

Kristina: Mostly just digitals. I have a print credit with my full sessions. Are people using it? Most of the time, yes. Most of the time they just use it to the amount. Sometimes I’ll get people that will use more than the amount. I earn a little bit.

Alison: What’s your booking rate like now? I guess two questions. What is your busiest season? How’s the ebb and flow? And then what is your average booking rate?

Kristina: So I feel like I still don’t know. I feel like things still are not normal here because in Albuquerque, I was booking months in advance during busy season to the point where I was having to turn people away. How were those people finding you? a lot of times on Google or through Instagram. But I was getting more and more because at first I did like through word of mouth. I feel like that’s it grew really slowly the first couple of years. And then I started figuring out SEO. And so then I started to get a lot more inquiries from people that I had no idea. Yeah, that’s the goal. Yeah.

Alison: Yeah. Okay. So what have you done now for SEO? What blogging? What have you done at all? Okay, so mostly blogging. Blogging is my… What are your target keywords? What are you, what kind of blogs are you focusing on? Are you focusing on like client prep, session shares, local expert?

Kristina: When I first got here, I focused heavily on like location specific things of what families would be searching for. So playgrounds, indoor playgrounds. I’ve recently done or I did like a summer activity, budget friendly summer. Yeah. And I recently did pumpkin patches and I just post one for Christmas activities, holiday tree lighting. How are they performing?

Alison: Are you watching Search Console to see if they’re getting clicks?

Kristina: A little bit. I should probably do better about watching it, but I know my Vancouver Parks one has risen and then so has my, because I also did before I moved, I did locations for both my favorite outdoor locations for family photos, both Portland and Vancouver. And so my Portland one has been one of my top pages. Oh, cool.

Melissa: Good. Okay, so you’re doing it well. So I have a question on for SEO. So you were saying in your old location, you were doing okay with SEO and stuff. Did you change your website or anything in the move?

Kristina: Yeah, I changed all my all the copy I changed. Do you change the design or anything like that? I updated it with new photos and stuff like that.

Melissa: Okay, because just one thing I’m seeing with your homepage right now is your keyword is not your main header. And you have eight main headers on the page right now. So there’s definitely some on page for your homepage for Portland Family Photographer that needs some work. Because right now when I look at it, I can see you have eight H1s and none of them are your keyword. Your main keyword, Portland Family Photographer, is actually an H2. I think you’re going to want to go back through your homepage and clean up some of the headers and stuff like that and get that keyword on the page more. I think that right now, like I said, I only see that your keyword on there once. And so to me, that’s probably why that page isn’t ranking very well. But it’s great that you’re doing those blog posts and stuff like that because you’re but then with those blog posts, you do want to make sure you’re linking to your pages, your service pages, because if they showed up on your blog, we want to get them over to your family portfolio page stuff

Kristina: I usually do some sort of call to action at the end, whether it’s funneling them towards my newsletter or Instagram or to my contact page.

Alison: And I would make sure earlier in the post you look directly at the pages. Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. Not just once. You do it at the top, two more contents, boom. Do it again. And then in the middle and then at the end. You cannot do it too much. You want to think about like an analogy would be like Christmas holiday shopping. Everybody’s coming to the cash registers, but they don’t have enough registers open. So if somebody opened another register in the back like Target does, right? You get out faster. It’s the same idea with buttons. More buttons doesn’t nullify your effort. It just makes it easier for them to keep going. That makes sense.

Kristina: Yeah, I guess I just don’t know how to format that to not make it look random.

Alison: It might look random, but do you ever look up recipes on Google and you see a Pinterest graphic for it? Yeah. For a link to somewhere else? It’s the same concept. It can look as however you want. It’s going to be a little random because it’s in the middle.

Melissa: Yeah, I mean, if you look at my photography website, you’ll see on some of my blog posts, I have a couple different styles of buttons. And so then I just put them in. And so it’s a very deliberate button that says, want to learn more about lifestyle newborn sessions, or there’s another one says, book your lifestyle newborn session. And so I just have those in various things. Because the thing is, waiting for somebody to get the bottom of the page, you have a lot of opportunity that you could lose them before that. And so beyond just the buttons, I also would make sure somewhere in your blog post, like towards the top, you’re going to say something about Portland Family Photographer, and then you’re going to hyperlink that to your homepage or to your family page, something like that, because that’s going to help us get interlinking going on, which is going to help your pages get crawled. And I know, because you’re on Squarespace, right? Yes. Yeah, so the thing with Squarespace that you may run into issues with the headers is it attaches it to the fonts. Yeah, so you may have to play around with that.

Kristina: Yeah, so that’s what I was going to ask. I did not realize that. I thought it was just the font style, but it is.

Alison: And full disclosure, would recommend a different website provider because of that. I know, nobody wants to hear that.

Melissa: Squarespace is one of the, it’s just harder to work with. I think if you, the thing is what you’ll have to do is go in and figure out which, so like I’m telling you, your Portland family photographer, that’s your H2. And then I think one of the things is small moments, something like that’s an H1. So small moments magnified. So it’s just going through. And so you may just have to go into those font styles and swap them even or something so that your H1 is what the style you want. And then your H2 is something different. But yeah, you’ll just want to go in there and swap those. Cause Squarespace isn’t bad for SEO. It’s just a pain in the butt. I was talking to somebody earlier today and she was saying she loved her Squarespace site and she doesn’t like her show at one. And I’m like, Oh, no, I’m opposite. Because I get annoyed with Squarespace that I can’t put something exactly where I want it with the right and change the designation and all of that. But there are ways to do it. You just gotta work with it.

Alison: Girl, are you still struggling to get profitable? Are you relaunching your business or trying to refine your profitability? Allison here, and I’ve been there. As a military spouse for 15 years, I’ve moved my photography business seven times, effectively launching a new business with each move. I’ve never worked anywhere longer than three years. I’ve had all-inclusive, hybrid, and virtual IPS structures, and I know what it takes to adapt and thrive. I went from barely supporting my hobby in the early years to generating consistent six-figure sales, supporting my crazy family along the way. If you’re ready to break through the roadblocks, attract a dream client, and finally see the profits you’ve longed for, let’s work together. Visit allisonbell.co to learn more or DM me on the gram at keepitmovingpod. Links in the show notes. Let’s do this.

Melissa: And so that’s where I would say SEO wise, go back to your homepage and do another pass on it and make sure you get that keyword in there more.

Alison: And the same thing on all your service pages, your genre page, your portfolio page, making sure you’re not cannibalizing and using the same keywords on every page, but that the structure is correct with the right number of structure. What about your previous post for New Mexico? Did you archive anything or are you still ranking?

Kristina: Okay, so, no. One of my top hits still is my Albuquerque locations and then things to do in Albuquerque with kids. Those still get a lot of hits. When I had talked to the other SEO person, he was like, sometimes if you delete something that’s doing well, it can tank your, yeah.

Alison: Just getting clicks for anything, whether it’s relevant to your current location or not, is going to help you. So don’t touch the high performing stuff, but the other stuff, archive it.

Melissa: Yeah, so I did delete a good amount besides that. And I would go into that Albuquerque post and I would put a paragraph at the top and just say something like, hey, I’m now serving Vancouver. Go check out my look, whatever for this in Vancouver and try and get that. I always tell people to look at your top posts and then link them to other pages and stuff like that on your website. So just putting something in like italics at the top. is a good way to capitalize on that traffic. Because the thing is, if somebody searches Albuquerque locations and you just redirect it to Vancouver locations, you’re going to piss them off because you’re like, wait a second, I was looking for Albuquerque. But if you say at the top like, hey, by the way, I’m now a family photographer in Vancouver. Here’s my latest stuff. You can still keep that, but you’re updating it. I have similar problems with past locations. I’ve tried to take Miami and anything South Florida off my website, and I still get inquiries almost every week for South Florida. I’m at a point now, I’m like, how are you finding me?

Alison: I just got an inquiry this week for Christmas truck minis in Virginia Beach, and I haven’t been there for two years. And this summer I got inquiries for Charleston family photography, which I haven’t done in three years. three or four years at all.

Kristina: I got two from Albuquerque this fall, and I was like, what am I doing wrong?

Alison: That header structure is really hurting you, to be honest. Once you fix that, I would expect a jump. of some sort.

Melissa: And I would also adjust your meta descriptions really long. And you mentioned Portland in there and you mentioned Vancouver and you mentioned that you’re a family photographer, but you don’t have an exact match for Portland family photographer in your meta. So I would definitely update that. I think updating that, updating your headers, working that keyword, making sure that Portland family photographers on the page more than once needs to be on there several times and then start linking back to that page from your blog post. Because that’s the thing right now is now we got to rescue this homepage because it’s just sitting there. Yeah.

Alison: And that’s where you want to get people over to and everything. And especially if you’ve got high performing stuff, interlinking all those blog posts back to your service pages and just creating a massive interweb of interlinks is going to help too. What about retargeting like ads? Have you done any ads or retargeting?

Kristina: No, I’ve thought about doing Facebook. Actually, can I ask one question about SEO stuff before we get into that? Because I did check search console the other day and I have a good post that I also posted to Pinterest about like my favorite color combos, family photos, trends, because what is it? It’s impressions and clicks. That is the two. They were both sometimes one would be up or someone be down, but they both followed the same general curve. And in the past month, all of a sudden, which one was higher? CLIX is still climbing, but my impressions is falling away.

Melissa: Did it happen around September 9th that it like nosedived?

Kristina: I think so, yeah.

Melissa: Okay, so that’s a general thing. Basically, there was an overall thing that happened where AI… Google changed something up so that the impressions, if you’re not on page 1, if you’re on pages like 2 through 10 or something, went away. And so traffic started… Everybody’s traffic dived down because it had been going up and up because it was getting found in AI for all this stuff. And so Google was like, basically, if you’re not page 1 for whatever that term is, you no longer see the rankings for it. And it’s not you, it’s Google. It’s not you. It’s a Google thing. And it’s basically because people were showing up, even if they were on page 12, maybe, in AI searches. And so I don’t know why Google did it, but everybody I know, September 9th, it’s just like a cliff that they’re I don’t know what that means. And it was interesting because it started taking off, I want to say in May, because it like started separating out because my husband does data science and I had him looking at it because I was like, did I break my clients’ websites? They’re all like doing this. And what it was is they all started getting found in AI searches, which was great, but I was worried.

Kristina: Yeah. Yeah. OK. OK. Yeah. Good to know. Yeah. So you’re good. Okay, so ads.

Alison: What are you doing them? Are you going to?

Kristina: What’s your plan? I have not done any ads. I’ve thought about doing Facebook ads. I’m at the point now, so like last year I still had a preschooler at home and so I only, he was only in preschool three days a week for a couple hours and so I only had that dedicated time to work on stuff and so he’s in kindergarten now. So I do have time to work on it, but.

Alison: You need to do a retargeting Facebook campaign. So that’s anybody who has, so you install the pixel on your website. Anybody who’s been to your website organically will then get Facebook ads. So you’re not spending money. Yeah, you’re not spending money on a cold audience that hasn’t seen you or isn’t in the market or floating around or hasn’t already been on your website. You are specifically retargeting. You’re targeting the people who have already been on your website.

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Alison: So it’s a very effective campaign. And so I would put some money into that couple dollars a day.

Melissa: Like, yeah, I usually do three dollars a day kind of thing. And I have three different ads that I typically run. I’m actually about to update mine. But you can do that even if you’re doing one or two. And one of them can just be a general. Hey. family photos, like book your family photos or something like that, or book your senior portraits. And then the other one could just be a recent post from like Instagram or something like that. And with those ads, you can run them to people who’ve been to your website, plus people have interacted with you on social media and things like that. But you can do those fairly cheaply. And the idea is if people are coming to your website already and they’re checking out those blog posts, now we want to kind of show back up in front of them of, hey, they’re already warm. I’m a family photographer, that kind of thing. So that can be another good way to start getting a little bit more traffic. Pinterest is good too. So it’ll keep pinning your recent blog posts and things like that on Pinterest.

Alison: I would, for those ads, I would do one general one that you can leave up a year round. Don’t forget about it. Cause you’ll get a bill and be like, Oh, forgot about that. But then also think about your seasonal marketing, right? Like we’re a little too late for fall, but it’s not too late for, are you going to have a cherry blossom season there? I would start putting that stuff together and start that in January or February. Or if you’re going to do something like a motherhood, something in the spring for that, or Anything else, think about it quarterly, like what are you doing? What’s coming up quarterly? What do you need to get in front of people now? What do they need to be thinking about? And what are their options to try to reel them in for whatever you have going on? Think about the next six months at a time. And you could do that for a month or two. And then as far as like business, like what is your next six months look like as far as if the family season is passed? What you got going on? Good question.

Kristina: Yeah, so in Albuquerque, I was mostly just doing full sessions. I had just barely started doing petite sessions, but there I had enough clients that I could be like, I’m only doing petite sessions two times a year, and they’re going to be on these specific dates, and you have to do it on these dates if you want to be able to have that available to you. Here, I switched how I was doing things session-wise and I was just getting nervous because I went from basically doing simple sales with the three different packages to I wanted to be all-inclusive again. But then I got nervous because now it’s only one price and they have to pay that one. So then I opened up petite sessions to be like whenever. But I don’t love that because before when I was doing only specific dates made it like worth my time because I would book two complete sessions in one so it was like a full session. So when I only have one petite session, I usually don’t have time. It’s not worth it. And it’s not, yeah.

Alison: So yeah, I would say go back to the drawing board about what’s going to be worthwhile your time investment and also get you the return on investment that you need to see. And this is the part of moving that is super unique to every business. I did free mini sessions. I did half sessions people could book anytime, but not the weekend. There was a lot of permitting issues here in Hawaii. I did a lot of things those first six months in Hawaii that I don’t do usually. Like after six months and I got stable, I pulled them off really quick. And heck, I’m not even doing mini sessions this year, this fall, for the first time in my entire I wouldn’t say entire career, but in years and years because of the same reasons. Nobody’s booking them, not worth my time. I’m not going to push and give myself a headache to try to make something work when it’s not. So this is where you really got to think hard about your family, your availability and what you need to make it worthwhile. Because that’s the last thing you want to do is show up to a session and feel a little about it because you know what I mean? And then you don’t serve your client as well as you could. So you need to feel good about what you’re doing. So have you thought about going back to simple sales? Because that really does give a lot of option.

Kristina: So, yeah, the whole reason why I wanted to switch, because I was like, hey, moving, it’s like a good opportunity. Yeah, to do something completely new. I was working, I did Sabrina Gephardt’s Brute to Rise, so she was coaching me for a while, and so when I started the program, I was like, I am the most burnt out I have ever been, and it’s because of Simple Sales, because there’s so many more steps. Oh, gotcha. So that’s why I’m editing all the photos anyways. I want my clients to have all the photos. So it is something that’s important to me, but I also am like, but it was also nice to have the three different tiered options price-wise, make that available to more people. So I’m like stuck in the middle. It makes me like to go back to simple sales with all the extra steps and

Alison: What extra steps are you talking about? The extra steps to edit them or setting up the gallery?

Kristina: No, just like, hey, remember to pick your thing. Okay, now I’m going to send you the bill. Okay, or here’s the slideshow. It should all be automated. It shouldn’t be more on you. Yes.

Melissa: Yes, that’s true. Do you have Picktime or do you use somebody else?

Kristina: So I started out because I use Sprout Studio as my CEO. So I did start using Picktime to just make it more automated. But it’s just there are just some people too that it’s like you’re waiting and waiting for them to pick their package.

Alison: That’s going to happen no matter what business structure or what system or what platform you use. Ask me how I know. I got some postage right here that should have been squared away months ago.

Melissa: Yeah. And I’m only asking because I do, I use simple sales and it’s very easy for me because I do have all the automation set up and pick time. And so I’m not sending emails to track people down very often. Now, I have had people that, you know, have taken forever and then I have the ones that are my favorites that pay like the day of and it’s, yay, this is great. And sometimes it’s getting to know the clients because I had a member, I have a membership client that took forever with maternity and I was complaining to Allison on Pullo’s like, oh my God, do they hate the photos? And then I was like, no way. I love these. They can’t hate them. And so then when they took forever on newborn, I was, no, this is just them.

Alison: I just realized there’s sometimes it’s just the people. Yeah, and with virtual IPS, I walk them through the first calling of the stuff virtual on the computer. But getting them to book that gallery reveal can be like a split. Most of them do it really easy. It’s all automated. Some people I’m coming after them for a month and a half. Hey, we don’t have you. Hey, you got $500. You just been like, hey, you got doing everything I can to just please book this. Yeah. So you’re going to have that no matter what your structure is.

Kristina: Unless you’re all-inclusive because then you can just send it and then you’re done.

Alison: And then you don’t get paid for your work and you don’t feel like you’re making the trade-offs real. I think you got some decisions to make. I think you really need to do some soul-searching and what is going to make you happy and not burnt out and feel like your return on time and money and energy is worthwhile. Like where you feel like, I can do this.” And that’s unfortunately something we can’t tell you what to do.

Melissa: But do you feel like your pricing is too high for Portland? Because I feel like Portland’s a pretty busy area and stuff.

Kristina: I don’t think so, because even my top price in Albuquerque that not everybody was paying, but I had a decent amount of people paying, I dropped it to like $100 below that for here.

Melissa: Here’s the thing, when you start in a new place and you’re starting with new pricing, if you change up your pricing now and then you want to change it later, you’re going to feel like you’re starting over from scratch. So it might be better just to bite the bullet, stick with the pricing that you’ve got, all inclusive, and just let that ride and find the clients for that. But like I said, I would say work on that homepage. And then I noticed you also do like seniors and couples. Make sure you’ve got blog posts or pages for those targeting their keywords. And then even with your blog, start blogging for some of those smaller cities around Portland and Vancouver. One of those, Vancouver and Portland are gonna be big places. They got a lot of competition and stuff. But if you start hitting some of the smaller cities, there may not have a lot of searches. They may come up and have no searches, but you write one blog post for it and maybe you get somebody who’s in that city looking and they get a near me post or something. So I would work on that also. And focus on getting more of your keywords related to like families and portraits out there. Because I think you’ve got a good amount for the location stuff around Vancouver. I think there’s plenty of that. Bring it back to photography and bring it back to locations, which is usually opposite of what I have to say. Yeah, that’s pretty impressive.

Kristina: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So I’ve been trying to do half and half. Is that good?

Melissa: Yeah, definitely. I would go half and half or even 75, 25. Cause you’ve already got a lot of those other posts and stuff. And that’s where I would focus on some of the other locations. But if they’re like, whatever, do you live in Portland or? I live in Vancouver. You live in Vancouver. Okay. So then I would just look at maybe another location that’s nearby and then also make sure your Google business profile and stuff like that’s updated. So we don’t have time to get into all of that, but definitely go and make sure that thing has all your keywords and is in the right location.

Alison: And don’t sell yourself short on your pricing, on your structure, whatever you choose to do. Dig deep. I make thousands per client out here. It’s full service. And so don’t discredit the fact that even if you are not your own ideal client, people want more. They want everything done. There is a whole contingency of people who are like, yes, I want printed artwork. Yes, I don’t want to have to do this by myself. Yes, I, and they’re willing to pay for that. So just wherever you land, don’t sell yourself short. That doesn’t, that does exist. Okay, so we have one minute left. Recap, your SEO, your blogging is great. Restructure your homepage header and do that for all your services. I’ve already archived most of those older blog posts. Look into some retargeting. Do some far-out planning. Do some six-month marketing and retargeting those warm audiences that are already landing on your page. And then do some soul-searching about what you want to be charging and making it worthwhile for yourself. And no, everything’s changeable. And especially when we’re in a new location, that’s the first thing we want to think about is money. That’s the first thing we all go to, right? It’s money pricing in kind of imposter syndrome. But try not to do that. Try to make it worthwhile so that you’re finding those ideal clients. It’s going to take time, but we’ll put it all together. You’ll get there. You’ll get there. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Christina. Y’all have a good one.

Melissa: Just Stars would be awesome. And two, forward this episode to a biz bestie, mill spouse, or anyone facing moving their business. We’d love it if you shared this episode with even just one person. If you have questions, you can reach out to Alison on Instagram, at AlisonBelleFotag, or you can find me, Melissa, in my Facebook group, Picture Perfect Rankings. Check the show notes for links, and we’re so excited to have you guys here.