EP 66: Stop Marketing Your Photography Business Like a Hot Mess

Melissa Arlena: Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. We have a rerecord today for me and Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: we recorded this back in I don’t know, the spring may Alison: April Melissa Arlena: And yeah, it was something, and I was really excited about this topic and I had to run to get my daughter at the end, and I closed out before it uploaded my audio, it turns out. So, Alison: Whoopsie. Melissa Arlena: when we realized that that was just not gonna happen, that we would go ahead and rerecord it. So today’s Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: is all about like. Annual marketing planning for your business. And when I say that, you know, people are like, oh yeah, I need to be marketing all the time. No, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about like, we’re gonna put some pen to paper. I want you to pull out like a calendar. I want you to like Alison: Timelines. Melissa Arlena: with this episode. So is something I think that even as a business owner, like I know to do, but I don’t always do it. But when I do, I’m like, Alison: Amen. Melissa Arlena: I need to do that more. Alison: Absolutely. Melissa Arlena: Yeah, Alison: same way. I. Melissa Arlena: ever had like a, you know, an event like mini sessions or a motherhood event or [00:01:00] something like that, that you threw together last minute and then like marketed last minute and hated life, this is what we’re gonna do to like, stop that from happening Alison: Yes. Melissa Arlena: let’s not do that anymore. Alison: I think every single one of us has gone through that. Every listener at some point has whoopsies like that, so Melissa Arlena: And what’s funny is like I’ve been Alison: I. Melissa Arlena: other business owners who are really super detailed with planning and then they like have their stuff together and they’re planning weeks or months out and they’ve got all their crap in order and I’m like, I wanna be like you when I grow up. Alison: Right. Melissa Arlena: that’s Alison: Proactive, not reactive. Melissa Arlena: Exactly. Alison: seasons come up every year. Like the fall’s the same. The fall, the spring’s. The same spring. Melissa Arlena: But Alison: We can do it. Melissa Arlena: We’re like, oh Alison: Yeah. Whoopsie. Melissa Arlena: So before we get started, what we want you to do is grab like a notebook or something. If you’ve got like a printable, if you’ve got like a calendar, you know, that you can Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: I always love that. And I want you to sit down and I [00:02:00] want you to write out any events that you know you’re gonna be hosting this year in your business. So, you know, back in the day I would do red truck minis. So I would go ahead and look at Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: On what, what weekend did I wanna do that? In the times where I have been traveling, you know, when I lived in Florida and was coming back to Virginia, I was doing fall family sessions, I was doing spring cherry blossom sessions. I would Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: out on the calendar. Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: Even so I want you to mark out. that you know that is gonna be happening. So if you’ve got a motherhood event, a spring event, blue bonnets, whatever, get that on the calendar. If you’ve got anything summer wise that you’re gonna be doing back to school, if you’re somebody who does like back to school portraits, if you Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: for Alison: Sports portraits, Melissa Arlena: Yeah, Alison: right? Melissa Arlena: portraits, all of that kind of stuff. Write it all out even if you’re a wedding photographer. Like what does your wedding season look like? And you Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: obviously, you know, we know normally when you guys need to market, but want you to write it all down and just dump everything that you might offer this year. And then I want you to think about too, like those booking periods [00:03:00] of when do you wanna have more? sessions, more family sessions. Like I know a lot of senior photographers, they get so busy with seniors during a point that they’re like, please don’t send me anything else at this moment. Alison: Right. Yeah. Melissa Arlena: and Alison: And I would also encourage, yep, sorry. I would also encourage, like mark down what days you’re not willing to work as well. So I know back in the fall, like when I was really busy in Okinawa, I, I blocked off one month, weekend every month. And that was part from my sanity and my family, but also as a weather backup in case I had a rainy weekend, I had a, I had room to not push clients off and we could just reschedule and I would flip flop. My off weekend would be the rainy weekend, and then we would hope for the best on my open weekend. So strategies like that need to be blocked off as well. Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Spring Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: for your kiddos, stuff like that. Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: And then once you’ve got, you can just brain dump a list to start with of like, what did I do last year that worked? And if there’s stuff Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: not wanna do, I think Allison said she didn’t wanna do many sessions anymore, right? Alison: Nope, I’m not, [00:04:00] not doing it. Not doing it. Note for the audio, that was me washing my hands. I’m done not doing that again anyway, in Hawaii anyway. And how many inquiries have I gotten since I said that out loud? Melissa Arlena: Well, Alison: least two. Melissa Arlena: Exactly. So you can cross those off. If you’re like, I’m not doing Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: year, Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: and cross those off. And then I want you to take that calendar and actually put down some dates. And so if you don’t have a calendar, at least just open up the calendar on your phone and start marking some dates on your notebook about when those things are gonna be, Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: and you know, you wanna think Alison: Or if you’re like me, go buy a fun little $5 annual calendar from. Target, like right now, July, they have like a little wall calendar that’s flipping and it goes July to July of 25 to 26. So it’s $5. You get some, you get some color coded pens or like Melissa’s got the one catch Schmoyer giant Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Alison: calendar. You can have a couple of those printed out. Make it fun. Make it fun for yourself. Go buy some like school supplies, business supplies, fun, color, erasable pens, like [00:05:00] make it fun. Melissa Arlena: Yeah, and actually I just did this with my catch more calendar, my quarterly plan for the rest of this year for Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: SEO and marketing business. Like, I sat down and was like, okay, when do I wanna work? When do I not wanna work? I started like, Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: You know, what are we gonna be having? I mean, I don’t have many sessions, but you know, we have promotional periods and Alison: Yeah. I wanna get it for my family. Melissa Arlena: Oh yeah, I’ve really thought about one of those skylights calendars. Alison: It’s so expensive. I just want. Melissa Arlena: I Alison: I just, yeah, just to catch more things at a time. Here we go. Melissa Arlena: so yeah. So you wanna, and Allison, I know you’ve pointed this out before you wanna be planning around deployment schedules, PCs, dates, Alison: So family, like the, yeah. So my husband’s travel calendar, PCSs, deployments deployments, workups, all those things. Busy season for your competitive sports or not competitive sports. Hawaii has a fall break and a spring break. Oh, winter break. We decided that we were on the fence about, we’re probably gonna be traveling [00:06:00] around Thanksgiving, maybe even pulling the boys out to travel at Thanksgiving. And so I’ve already gotten three, three inquiries for the week of Thanksgiving and I’ve already been like, sorry, I’m not sure I’m actually gonna work. I’m not gonna be able to be available. I haven’t told them no because we haven’t like, fit the bullet and bought the tickets or even said what dates when. ’cause I could theoretically work the Saturday, Sunday or Monday before Thanksgiving and then still have a full week and then go on vacation. But I’ve noted them in in Tave and it’s tave forever. I don’t care what’s happened, but it’s taught me forever that they’re early planners. I’ve got a little demarcation. They’re not closed out. So when I do decide. I’ll be able to go back to them and say, Hey, this is actually an option if you’re still, if you, if you’re still looking for it. Yeah. Deployments, families, travel schedules. Colin and I have a whole strategy around his travel because I can’t plan for it. Like he had a whole, he has a whole trip that popped up for next week that it’s just gonna happen. And so we’ve got a, we’ve got contingency plans for that, whether it’s rides for school or my kids just go to school late. [00:07:00] Like, I’m just gonna, it’s just gonna be what it is. Like say, love you. My kids can’t handle it. Melissa Arlena: just for shooting guys. This also is leaving you, you wanna make sure. When you are planning out these events and you’re putting on your calendar and stuff, I want you to block off some breathing room for editing. So like I know Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: used to have my red truck minis and stuff, that was, you know, 17, 20 sessions in one day and then I, you know, I’m promising everybody, you’re gonna have your gallery in X amount of days. Well, if I Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: on a bunch of other stuff that following week, I would’ve been killing myself, like trying to shoot while I’m still trying to edit. So. That’s the other reason you wanna start putting this stuff on the calendar because you don’t think about it unless it’s on a calendar and you’re looking at it and you go, Alison: Right. Melissa Arlena: I blocked off a week after my mini sessions. Why did I do that? But you wrote in like editing and you’re like, oh, that’s why. Yeah. ’cause if I had booked those two sessions that contacted me for that week, instead of Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: ’em to the next week, I would’ve been hating life. So these are some of the things that you wanna think about when you’re [00:08:00] marketing, is that you wanna. Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: You wanna think about when the event is, you wanna think about things beyond the event. And then what we’re really gonna talk about is more of like the marketing runway, which is how much time do you need before an event to plan it properly and market it Alison: Yep. Yep. Because you cannot talk too much about it. I know. That’s where people get hung up. Like, I already shared it. I already did this. Nope, you didn’t do it enough. You cannot do it enough. So. Melissa Arlena: I would say too, you know, you wanna, you wanna have at least a few weeks before any kind of event, and depending on how big your event is, you gotta start that early, like Santa sessions. Those need like Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: runway. I mean, we’re talking Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: a lot of people is when they launch them. I know even our Santa photographer that we go to. September 1st, I gotta put it on the calendar. In three days I have to get up at the crack of midnight and wake up and get a spot, because if I wait till the next morning, they’re all gone. So, Alison: when I did red check. Melissa Arlena: a while. Alison: And when I did Red Track Committees back in Virginia Beach, to your [00:09:00] point, the editing, so I had to do all of those in November. I wasn’t waiting till December because people wanted to put them on a Christmas card. And so literally doing, getting the calendar out and reverse engineering that timeline of when do I need to execute the sessions, y’all, I did some so early, they were in October. I had, I had clients that went and did a. Wicked Halloween, 5K as a family, dressed up in Halloween costumes in October, and then came to me midday to do the Christmas money session. Melissa Arlena: Yep. Alison: And they were happy to do it because I had marketed and educated them and they had been repeat clients. They knew that this needed to be done, so it could be off their list outta the way, and they would receive their cards in time to get the pre rush sales of their Christmas, Christmas card order. So we’re not crazy. Your people aren’t crazy. Yes, it takes a little bit of time and education for some of some of the new folks, but. That’s okay. Melissa Arlena: Yeah, Alison: okay. That’s what you’re here for. Melissa Arlena: you know, like mi holiday mini type things and you’re trying to plan for deadlines, lab deadlines and stuff like that, I’m same as Allison. I remember at times with my [00:10:00] red truck minis, I’m looking at the background and it’s like, gorgeous fall leaves. ’cause it’s like the 2nd of November and I’m like, well, Alison: And that’s okay. It’s better than dead, dead branches, right? Like it’s Melissa Arlena: yeah. Alison: tall vibe that goes right into your beautiful red flocked Christmas trees. Melissa Arlena: Right. There we go. So with Santa, stuff like that, any kind of holiday stuff, you’ve gotta be talking about that early, talking about it Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: So I would say for those you really wanna have, you know, even like a six week lead time and stuff, I think on that, at a Alison: Yeah. Easy minute, months. Months are great. Multiple Melissa Arlena: Months Alison: months. Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: lot more fall sessions and stuff. I would say with, you know, if you’re booking like family fall sessions, you can probably wait until like later in August, early September. I know for here in Virginia, I just had somebody who was inquiring about a fall session and I was like, Hey, if you want fall colors, we gotta wait until the end of October. Like that’s Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: the peak color bloom is, the temperatures are really good. It really comes down to those last Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: October. So, you know, knowing [00:11:00] that I start pushing family fall sessions now for advertising so that I can book those sessions in that late October timeframe. So you really Alison: And Melissa Arlena: there early? Alison: Yeah, and that really is a good point that you need, you really need to consider where you are in your season, in your location, and what people want out of their photos. Because I’ve heard of another photographer who she’s, I think she’s based in the desert where there are no fall colors, but she started going to her clients at the end of summer. Her repeat clients. Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm. Alison: at the end of summer, she was maximizing the fresh, the, the fresh hands that everybody still had. She was maximizing everybody. Our, all the kids already had fresh haircuts and new clothes, and she was like, Hey, let’s get your Christmas card done in August, I think she was also a studio photographer, so it didn’t matter what time of year they happened, just that they would be. Done and new, new shots. So if you’re not looking for fall color, or if you are a close to the, close to the beach where October is, probably the color’s already gone by then or it’s already getting too cold for the beach, like you really gotta factor that into your planning and what your people want.[00:12:00] Like some people may want a little of both, in which case you could be doing minis as early as. Melissa Arlena: Yeah. And I know when I was in South Florida they were, they were outdoors from November to May, and then from May to November, which is what I was used to in Virginia, Alison: Yeah, Melissa Arlena: to go outdoors. So like Alison: right? Melissa Arlena: too, if you’re moving your business, you wanna think about like. What is it gonna look like in that new location? Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: flipped on what I’m used to? I mean, I was doing sessions in January and February and it was gorgeous and and wonderful Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: And I was like, dude, if I was back in Virginia, I don’t even wanna go out. Like I’m not Alison: Right. Melissa Arlena: that’s outdoor in January or February. Not gonna happen. Alison: That’s all market research and we’ve done whole episodes on that, so know your place. Melissa Arlena: yeah. Yeah. So I really think when you, when you sit there and you go, okay, I’ve got the dates. I know when I want to be Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: need to then back up and say, okay. When am I gonna do a big broad announcement? Am I gonna do a VIP list? Do, when do I need to Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: page ready by? So if Alison: Right. Melissa Arlena: dates and like we’re saying, the earlier you can get started on this, the better. ’cause you need [00:13:00] that long runway. You need to constantly be talking Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: I would much rather. That you start marketing something, let’s say even 12 weeks ahead of time, and when you get within four weeks of that session, you know that date, you’re already 75% booked or 80% booked, or even a hundred percent booked. Like Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: less stressful than Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: two weeks out and you’re like, oh my Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: booking. Alison: Well, and think about, think about what you’re doing to your clients if you’re not giving them enough lead time to prepare what to wear for family photos is the worst part. I fully own it. I think it’s awful. I hate it. But it really does matter. And so you don’t need to be your, you have, your clients aren’t gonna book with you if you don’t give them enough lead time to prepare in a way that is satisfied, satisfactory to them. You gotta think about what’s going on in their life, what’s going probably something similar like start of school season. I need to wait till this is over. I need to wait till sports calm down or till I get my, my baseball schedule. Like your people want a long lead time too, right? Melissa Arlena: give ’em a lot of time. You know, you Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: that on Instagram. [00:14:00] Sample images, sample products. Even like Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: those ahead of time. So even if you’re like, all right, I’m gonna start marketing eight weeks before, or 12 weeks before, but you wanna have sample products and sample images, you might Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: about that another four to eight weeks ahead of time so that you can get some images to show for whatever it is, especially with products and stuff like that. Alison: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Especially if you’re doing an event and you want something onsite tangible that they could like cast a vision for what they could do with that images. Melissa Arlena: Yep. All right, so let’s talk content planning. So, when we’re thinking about the content for each event, you know, we’ve, we’ve come up with a few things like landing pages and stuff like that, but don’t forget about emails that you’re gonna send and Alison: Your wait list. Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: A wait, the, I’m a. Huge proponent of a VIP wait list because for Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: kind of lets you test your offer a little bit to see is like, let’s say you wanna do back to school portraits and you’re gonna have a bunch of little kids come in and sit by a desk and look really cute. If you’ve got a, you know, an image of that as a sample and you put that out, you know, two or three months ahead of [00:15:00] time, or even like middle of summer, let’s say for a back to school thing Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: push it out and you push it out and you push it out and you push it out and no one signs up that may tell you that no one is interested in the offer kind of thing. Alison: Right. Melissa Arlena: it just could be one of those things that’s not what people are looking for. Or you push it out, you get a landing page going and you look back and suddenly you’ve got 12 people who are interested and now you’re like, okay, this is a good idea. Yes, I wanna pursue this. Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: test that out. Blog posts social media, blog posts are definitely one of those two Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: you know, if you want them ranking for that season, you’ve gotta write them earlier. So you’ve gotta back Alison: A hundred percent. And then, and also make it evergreen. So like, I think we both have cherry blossom posts. I have a cherry blossom post that every spring. I haven’t shot cherry blossoms for three years now. Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm. Alison: spring it, it becomes an anomaly that this is ranking, it’s a top. 1, 2, 3. Position for what to wear, what to wear for cherry blossom, what to wear for Santa, what to wear for fall family photos outside, what to wear to family photo. Do your research, write a blog [00:16:00] post, and then take, as we’ve talked before, take that blog post and make it all your content. And repeat. Repeat. You can repeat on Instagram every week. Some things even every day. Like reshare those stories. Reshare everything to to your stories every single day, every other day. Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm. Alison: Ad nauseam, ad nauseam. Melissa Arlena: So for tracking this stuff, like Alison and I were talking about Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: that’s my big thing. I like Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: I like having a big calendar that I can write on a whiteboard works. Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: you really, it’s gotta be something that you’re gonna use. I mean, I have Alison: No matter what, yeah, I, I’ve started using a lot of digital ideation, but when I write stuff in my notes or write stuff in Google Google tasks. If it’s digital, I’ve realized that I forget about it. Like I just, it’s not in front of my face. And so I really like, I’ve, I’ve got a whole, what I call my real life Trello board, right in here to the left of me with real post-it notes and real strategies and real like the, [00:17:00] the timeline, the, the funnel for getting my clients from shoot to completed, right? So take that into consideration. What is gonna work for you, and in this case, probably something physical like that little calendar I talked about in the beginning. Melissa Arlena: Yeah. ’cause you can go in there and now let’s say you put in your fall mini sessions, you put in those dates and then you blocked off a week or two after those Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: you wanna get all the editing and stuff done and Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: up from that date, you know. Eight to 12 weeks to say, okay, this is when I’m gonna start marketing. And then you can start filling that in of like, okay, I wanna have an email once a week at least. I wanna have, Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: posts a couple of times a week. I wanna get at least one or two or three blog posts out at the minimum during that Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: Like, then you can start, and even honestly, you guys can use just like a Google calendar. You can create a marketing calendar in Google that Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: with your personal calendar and then just start dropping that stuff in there. And so you’re just adding in, I’m gonna do an Instagram post on this day, and I’m gonna do Facebook something on this day and email on that day. And you can just start filling that in. And then [00:18:00] it’s like, oh, okay, this feels like a system. This Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: something Alison: And batching it. Yeah. Melissa Arlena: Yes, and Alison: Going back to like going back to your Google a Google calendar, you can also do a task that’s specifically marketing tasks and then go listen to our episode on Marketing Monday, where you batch, and one Monday you’re gonna do all the blog posts for this. This effort, this focus of effort, and then the next Monday you’re gonna do all the social media based on those blog posts and schedule it all out for this, this marketing runway that you’re talking about. And you’re just gonna break it down, just eat the elephant, one bite at a time, and it all at the same time, planning it out. And it really does become very cathartic. Melissa Arlena: Yeah, Alison: It feels really good. Melissa Arlena: a lot of that, you know, you can still have that VIP list going, and then let’s say Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: to that point where you’re booked or you’re past that session, you know, you can turn that landing page into a, a sign up for next year kind of thing like that Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: things for next year. Because once you book up, then there’s still more people that come and you’re like, Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: should I add [00:19:00] more spots? Like, that’s always Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: we’re Alison: And if your blog post, yeah. And if your blog post is taken off like, like we want it to, you should have a signup for that wait list embedded in the blog post. I know I had one a flow desk in bed on all of my red truck mini sessions, and I was getting them at the weirdest, I was getting signups at the weirdest time. Because people were finding it not necessarily year round, but months in advance because they were thinking about it, looking for their options, Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm. Alison: they were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanna know when this comes out. And they signed up. Melissa Arlena: the thing is people would rather sign up for a, like I would much rather sign up for a list like that and have you send Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: and remind me than me have to bookmark it and put like a note on my calendar to go Alison: Yeah. And that ain’t happening. Melissa Arlena: Yeah, it’s not Alison: That ain’t happening. Melissa Arlena: do that. But yeah, I just did a flow desk workshop in the motherhood anthology, and I know in the blogging club I’ve got Alison: Mm-hmm. Melissa Arlena: about creating those forms to add them to your blog post. So it’s really easy. You can go and look up. Just on flow desk and embedded form and adding those in there to get some VIP signups. So, all right, so homework this week. [00:20:00] I, I say block off like two hours this week to get this process started. And like I said, I just did this for our SEO business looking at, okay, I don’t wanna work in December, so I’m blocking off December. But then I also had to kind of realize, well, if I’m not working in December, how am I gonna make money? So I had to like. Alison: Yeah. Melissa Arlena: up the other months to make sure I can afford to like not work my butt off in December. So this is all fresh on my head. So you’re gonna block that time to sit down and look at this. You’re gonna begin with an audit. What worked, what didn’t. You know, if you’re Alison: Yep. Melissa Arlena: she’s like, no more minis. I’m dropping that. Then create that master list of like, okay, this is what I’m gonna offer. And then go ahead and start planning out dates. And even if you just get that far where you are planning dates a year ahead of time or you know, even six months or a couple months ahead of time, because I have definitely like last minute thrown together some kind of spring mini session event or fall mini session event and just buy the seat of my pants. And then been like, well that was stupid. Like if you’d buy this [00:21:00] earlier, it would’ve been a lot better. Alison: Yeah, I’ve done it too. Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Yeah. And then I would say, you know, remember this isn’t just about marketing. You know, Alison and I talk about this a lot. You wanna create a business that fits your life and not, Alison: Yeah, a hundred percent. Melissa Arlena: sucked into all the time. So. Alison: Yeah. Yeah. And we wanna see your calendars. We wanna see you do this process. We want you to share it. So tag us on social media. Keep keep it moving. Pod hashtag keep it moving. Pod, is it POD or podcast? It’s pod. So yeah, show us what you’re using. Some of my favorite things. Again, the target calendar, it’s, I don’t even know who it’s by. I’ll have to put it in the show notes. And then plum paper. Plum paper is one of my favorite calendars go-tos. I use it for daily, for monthly planning, planning out, and then weekly planning. So hope that’s helpful to you guys. If you have any questions, as always, reach out to us on Instagram. Thanks. Melissa Arlena: Bye-bye.