EP 31: The 80/20 Rule

00:01:37 Alison
The gist

00:01:37 Alison
of it is there is a huge imbalance between results and input.
00:01:42 Alison
So it may not always be 80 to 20.
00:01:44 Alison
It might be seventy thirty, ninety ten, fifty forty, but there is an imbalance between input and output.
00:01:50 Alison
Hey, I’m Allison, military spouse and family photographer.

00:01:53 Melissa
Hey, I’m Melissa, also a military spouse, born photographer, and SEO expert for photographers.
00:01:58 Melissa
Between the two of us, we have a combined twenty seven years in photography

00:02:01 Melissa
and have lived through nine business relocations.

00:02:03 Alison
We’ve coached each other

00:02:03 Melissa
through all these challenges, and now we want to share

00:02:03 Alison
our experience with you.
00:02:03 Alison
On this podcast, we’ll give you actionable challenges, and now we want to share our experience with you.
00:02:07 Alison
On this podcast, we’ll give you actionable steps to help you keep it moving.

00:02:14 Melissa
Hey.
00:02:14 Melissa
Welcome back, y’all.
00:02:15 Melissa
Today’s episode is all about the eighty twenty rule and what it is and how Allison and I use it in our business.
00:02:22 Melissa
So I’m gonna let Allison tackle what it is.

00:02:25 Alison
Oh, I love this rule.
00:02:26 Alison
Okay.
00:02:26 Alison
So 80 so it’s called the Pareto principle, and it came from a guy in Italian, Velvetto Pareto, who observed in the early twentieth century that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population.
00:02:39 Alison
And it has since been applied to various industries and businesses, economics, productivity, all kinds of things.
00:02:45 Alison
The gist of it is there is a huge imbalance between results and input.

00:02:50 Alison
So it may not always be 80 to 20.
00:02:52 Alison
It might be seventy thirty, ninety ten, fifty forty, but there is an imbalance between input and output.
00:02:58 Alison
And so how can this apply to our businesses?
00:03:00 Alison
One, it can apply to business, it can apply to productivity, and it can apply to time management.
00:03:05 Alison
When it comes to these things, like, it helps to know your numbers and where from so that you can prioritize, problem solve, and spend your effort most of your time and effort doing things that are gonna get you a quality return on your efforts.

00:03:17 Alison
Right?
00:03:17 Alison
So this could be what like with marketing.
00:03:19 Alison
80% of your clientele can come from a very small fraction of of effort, whether that be ads or blogging or Instagram, your time management.
00:03:28 Alison
You could spend very little time on something that gets you lots of results.
00:03:31 Alison
And revenue, when it comes to business, 80% of your revenue can come from the same small repeat clients or high ticket clients.

00:03:39 Alison
This eighty twenty rule is so like we said before, it could be any variation of the proportion, but it is an imbalance.
00:03:45 Alison
And so it really helps to know your own business, where things are coming from, and to help you really narrow in and streamline for maximum capacity.
00:03:53 Alison
And so it’s really affecting my business here lately too.
00:03:56 Alison
Melissa, how do you use it in your work?

00:03:59 Melissa
So for me, I’m gonna tackle them kinda one by one.
00:04:01 Melissa
So with business, it really comes down to, like, inquiry sources for me, which ones are working and which ones aren’t.
00:04:08 Melissa
So, like, I can go in.
00:04:09 Melissa
I have Tave as my CRM.
00:04:11 Melissa
You might have DubsBug or something like that.

00:04:13 Melissa
I don’t know if they have all the reports that Tave has.
00:04:15 Melissa
I have heard that Tave is pretty good with their reports.
00:04:18 Melissa
But I can go in and see my leads by sources and stuff.
00:04:22 Melissa
And from there, I can see, like, how many came in from each source, how many converted, like, what my conversion rate is, and all of that kind of stuff.
00:04:29 Melissa
So, obviously, for me, SEO is huge.

00:04:31 Melissa
That’s where everything comes from on the photography side.
00:04:35 Melissa
But interestingly enough, like, on the SEO side of the house, referrals are actually where most of my stuff comes in.
00:04:42 Melissa
And I’ve done different things, different groups, and so I can actually see which ones are providing you know, which ones have clients that are converting the most.
00:04:50 Melissa
And then that lets me say, okay, I know what groups I’m gonna hang out in and answer questions in because those are the ones that are gonna have the best conversion rates.

00:04:58 Alison
And the Tavay as well will not only give you all that information, it’ll tell you the average spend, the average client spend per source.
00:05:06 Alison
So you can get not only, like, their time to booking and conversion, but, like, what did it actually profit?

00:05:12 Melissa
Yeah.
00:05:12 Melissa
And sometimes when I look in there, I’ll see, like, referral or photographers and stuff like that.
00:05:16 Melissa
That’s typically, like, a 100% Or a past client referral.
00:05:20 Melissa
Like, maybe it’s a past client coming back or they were referred someone.
00:05:23 Melissa
Those like, the numbers are smaller, but those are really high also.

00:05:26 Melissa
And, like, they outperform because they’re such small numbers kind of thing.
00:05:29 Melissa
Because, obviously, when it comes to your SEO, I get a lot of inquiries in, and sometimes I’m just not the right fit for them.
00:05:35 Melissa
I’m not available.
00:05:37 Melissa
So my conversion rate on that is going to be lower, but my effort for that SEO was done a while ago.
00:05:44 Melissa
So it’s not like an ongoing thing versus, like, in things like that.

00:05:47 Melissa
And Instagram is one of those.
00:05:48 Melissa
I just never book from it, which is why it’s always low on my totem pole because I’m like, I’m not gonna book from it.
00:05:55 Melissa
And then also in business, for me, repeat membership clients.
00:06:00 Melissa
So that is something that, you know, if that’s 20% of my business, but I can tell you that produces, like, 80% of the income kind of thing.
00:06:08 Melissa
So that’s gonna be my focus too is getting people into a membership.

00:06:12 Melissa
Even if they inquire for maternity or they inquire for a newborn session, I still pitch them the memo.
00:06:18 Melissa
Yeah.

00:06:18 Alison
It’s the stage of life where people want more than one session usually.

00:06:21 Melissa
Yeah.
00:06:22 Melissa
But even if the baby’s already here and, like, we’re getting a newborn session done, I’m like, you could still do six months.
00:06:27 Melissa
We could still do first birthday.
00:06:29 Melissa
And sometimes I’ll even tell them, like, heck, depending on the time of year, maybe we’re gonna do fall photos when they’re, like, a year and a half or something.
00:06:36 Melissa
I usually give them about 18 kind of things.

00:06:38 Melissa
So those are the two big ones when it comes to, like, business and inquiry type stuff.
00:06:41 Melissa
And then productivity wise, it’s that creating content for me.
00:06:46 Melissa
So if I’m thinking about what’s the 20% of my that are producing 80% of my income, what’s the content I wanna create for them?
00:06:54 Melissa
So for me, if it’s newborns and memberships, then my content’s gonna be around that versus if it was families or something like that.
00:07:01 Melissa
Allison’s probably opposite of me.

00:07:02 Alison
And I didn’t even think about that in that way until just now because, yeah, I would love to do more newborns than I can right now.
00:07:09 Alison
I don’t do them because they’re not sunrise required, and I can do them during

00:07:12 Melissa
the school day.
00:07:13 Melissa
But the

00:07:13 Alison
fact is there’s just not a whole lot of newborn clientele here in Hawaii.
00:07:18 Alison
Like, it’s just the it’s the weirdest thing.
00:07:19 Alison
You move to Hawaii, you think, oh, rich because I live in Hawaii.
00:07:22 Alison
Nope.
00:07:22 Alison
Not the case.

00:07:23 Alison
Competition to

00:07:24 Melissa
the visitors.

00:07:25 Alison
It’s all the visitors, the people who own homes here, it’s a second home, they’re not having babies here.
00:07:29 Alison
And then there’s the military.
00:07:30 Alison
But yeah, absolutely.
00:07:31 Alison
I can’t remember the last time I did anything newborn related from any sort of content, social media or my blog.

00:07:36 Melissa
And then that also comes down into optimizing your content, especially if you’re moving.
00:07:40 Melissa
Mhmm.
00:07:40 Melissa
You’re like, okay.
00:07:41 Melissa
Now I gotta go back to all of this content and change it.
00:07:45 Melissa
I would tell you, stop.

00:07:46 Melissa
Go look at your Google Search Console.
00:07:48 Melissa
How much of that content is actually getting clicks right now?
00:07:52 Melissa
Focus on that could be that 20% that moves the needle versus, okay, I’m just doing everything and you’re focusing on the 80% that aren’t getting clicks anyway.
00:08:01 Melissa
You could have waited to do something with that.
00:08:02 Melissa
Focus on the ones that are getting clicks and get those optimized for your new location possibly.

00:08:08 Melissa
And then I would say, like, prioritization wise, again, it’s that whole, what am I gonna focus on?
00:08:13 Melissa
What’s gonna drive the most traffic?
00:08:15 Melissa
Which pages do I need to focus on getting keywords on?
00:08:18 Melissa
And for most photographers, I’m gonna tell you the first one needs to be your homepage and then some portfolio landing pages.
00:08:24 Melissa
Yeah.

00:08:24 Melissa
Even when you’re looking at your website, you do not need to SEOify your about page and your contact page and your 50 other pages you have for stuff that aren’t doing anything.
00:08:35 Melissa
Like, they’re just info pages.
00:08:37 Melissa
You don’t need to worry about SEO on those.
00:08:39 Melissa
There could be an argument that your about page might have enough content to put a keyword on, but your contact page typically don’t worry about that.
00:08:45 Melissa
So just helping to figure out what am I gonna prioritize so that I’m not trying to optimize everything at once.

00:08:51 Melissa
And then time management.
00:08:53 Melissa
So this one kinda comes to the podcast.
00:08:54 Melissa
Allison and I it was recently, I messaged her, and I was like, girl, I don’t think we need to record this Thursday.
00:08:59 Melissa
I was like, I think we need to sit down and organize.
00:09:01 Melissa
And we sat down, and for two hours, we organized, and we got our crap straight for six months.

00:09:06 Melissa
We have plans on what the episodes are.
00:09:09 Melissa
Now we know who we need to be contacting.
00:09:11 Melissa
For guests coming in, we talked about what kind of guests we want.
00:09:14 Melissa
We talked about, okay.
00:09:15 Melissa
Hey.

00:09:15 Melissa
We need to push more because we wanna have some more mini mentoring.
00:09:18 Melissa
Like, we scheduled out.
00:09:19 Melissa
We thought about, like, when are there pushes in our business?
00:09:22 Melissa
I was like, Allison, I’d really like to take January for a lot of episodes because I know that’s when you guys are gonna focus on SEO, and I want there to be content for you guys to listen to and to be able to implement in your business.
00:09:32 Melissa
And, like, just that two hour blocks, I don’t even think it was 20% of our efforts at this point.

00:09:37 Melissa
No.
00:09:37 Melissa
I already know, like, it’s gonna make such a huge impact when we sit down and we do things.
00:09:44 Melissa
And that can be something too within your business is you could just decide, hey.
00:09:47 Melissa
I’m gonna spend a little bit of time, like, organizing something so that going forward, it saves me time kind of thing.
00:09:54 Melissa
Yeah.

00:09:54 Melissa
That I’m gonna put in that 20% of effort to save 80% of effort later on.
00:09:59 Melissa
Your blogging categories and your website are

00:10:01 Alison
getting into

00:10:02 Melissa
that mess.
00:10:02 Melissa
Yeah.
00:10:03 Melissa
Sit down and come up with a plan.
00:10:04 Melissa
Sit down and do, like, a marketing plan type thing, a blogging plan where you say, okay.
00:10:08 Melissa
Hey.

00:10:08 Melissa
I know fall family sessions, so I need to start pushing those a month or two beforehand.
00:10:13 Melissa
And, like, planning all of that kind of stuff out is gonna be really helpful.
00:10:16 Melissa
So just keeping that rule in mind of if I put in a little bit of effort now, it should be able to pay off later, but it’ll save me wasted time later.
00:10:24 Melissa
And then, like, for me on that time management thing, for the longest time, I was doing custom pricing videos for everyone.
00:10:31 Melissa
And then I started looking at some of my Loom analytics, and I was like, some of these people aren’t clicking on this thing at all.

00:10:37 Melissa
Some people aren’t watching through all the way.
00:10:40 Melissa
I was like, you reply, like, that 20%.
00:10:42 Melissa
They’re like, oh my gosh.
00:10:43 Melissa
This is amazing.
00:10:44 Melissa
Like, we want a book.

00:10:45 Melissa
That’s all well and good.
00:10:46 Melissa
But for the effort I was putting in, it just felt annoying.
00:10:50 Melissa
And so I decided, okay.
00:10:52 Melissa
You know what?
00:10:52 Melissa
I’m gonna take some time, and I’m just gonna create a general video.

00:10:55 Melissa
So it’s still all the same information, except in the beginning, I’m not like, hey, oh my gosh, I’m so happy that you’re having a baby boy, and it’s your first, and you’re gonna name him after your grandfather.
00:11:05 Melissa
Like, I used to get really custom and personal with that.
00:11:08 Melissa
Yeah.
00:11:08 Melissa
And now I will say, if I have somebody who is giving me a lot of info and I have the time, I ring a one off.
00:11:13 Melissa
If they’re giving for me, I would I’m gonna give back to them.

00:11:15 Melissa
But the ones that are like, what’s your price?
00:11:17 Melissa
Or we did want more info.
00:11:19 Melissa
Nope.
00:11:19 Melissa
Limiting verbiage.

00:11:20 Alison
That’s what it is.
00:11:21 Alison
Limiting Yeah.
00:11:21 Alison
I’m like, you’re not giving me

00:11:23 Melissa
a lot.
00:11:23 Melissa
No offense, but I’m not gonna give you a lot.
00:11:25 Melissa
You’re gonna get more than what you might get from another photographer.
00:11:28 Melissa
They may just send over a PDF and then you’re done.
00:11:30 Melissa
Whereas I’m sending you a video and I’m walking you through it because also y’all, by taking that time and walking them through my pricing, I have less questions later about what pricing is Yep.

00:11:42 Melissa
Where I didn’t see the pricing.
00:11:43 Melissa
Because I’m like, you couldn’t have missed the pricing because I literally sent you a video walking you through that pricing and explaining the pricing.
00:11:51 Melissa
So there should not be any confusion on that.
00:11:53 Melissa
So to me, that was time management thing.
00:11:56 Melissa
It’s freed up my time, so now I don’t have to do those anymore.

00:11:58 Melissa
But then it’s had so many other benefits going forward.
00:12:02 Melissa
And I would say the last thing with the problem solving is just creating, like, for me, an onboarding automated process.
00:12:09 Melissa
Because, again, instead of spending all of my instead of spending all this time going back and forth with clients, onboarded, I sat down.
00:12:17 Melissa
I took the time.
00:12:18 Melissa
It was a small effort of time, and it saved me so much time later on.

00:12:22 Melissa
So I guess that’s really for me, I look at a is a lot of that stuff.
00:12:24 Melissa
If I do this small thing now, it’s gonna save me so much later on.

00:12:29 Alison
Yeah.
00:12:29 Alison
And that’s how I feel about blogging and SEO in general, everything.
00:12:32 Alison
That was really good, Melissa.
00:12:35 Alison
Hey.
00:12:36 Alison
Yes.

00:12:37 Alison
I’m talking to you.
00:12:37 Alison
How are you feeling about this move?
00:12:39 Alison
It’s a lot to process, but I’ve got something for you.
00:12:42 Alison
I want you to grab my pre move checklist to make things a little easier.
00:12:46 Alison
Even where you’re going yet, it’s not too early to start.

00:12:49 Alison
But you could be losing time on that SEO juice if you dilly dally.
00:12:52 Alison
So head over to alisonbell.co, that’s alisonwith1l,bell.co, to get your pre move checklist.
00:13:00 Alison
You got this.
00:13:01 Alison
So for me, this has been a really big point of pressure for me lately because summer was so busy.
00:13:07 Alison
I had inquiry calls I couldn’t keep up with.

00:13:09 Alison
I had family come into town and I took two full weeks off completely and wasn’t going to even the first inquiry call.
00:13:15 Alison
And and actually, just to give you my business, I require a discovery call with every single one of my clients.
00:13:22 Alison
And so that by itself has been a point of prioritization and time management because there was one day I did four or five discovery calls in one day back to back, and it was awful.
00:13:33 Alison
I was confusing people’s names.
00:13:35 Alison
I was referring to people by the wrong name, even though it was in writing in front of me and I had their notes up and I was taking notes and I had their form, my mind was mush.

00:13:42 Alison
And so I just knew time management, I couldn’t keep up.
00:13:45 Alison
That just wasn’t gonna happen.
00:13:47 Alison
So I limited to three calls a day because I knew I could keep up three different families in a single day.
00:13:53 Alison
And then I also decided to move forward only doing calls on Monday, Wednesday, Friday because it was just sucking up so much time.
00:13:59 Alison
So then you add in that schedule, three days a week, three families, so really only nine calls a week.

00:14:04 Alison
And I had a point where I had in a five day period, I had 13 inquiries in the height of it this summer.
00:14:09 Alison
Holy cow.
00:14:10 Alison
Like, I just I can’t do all that.
00:14:12 Alison
And then if I’m booking only a small fraction of all those calls, like, why would I keep spinning my wheels getting on the phone with people to do all of this?
00:14:21 Alison
Right?

00:14:21 Alison
To book maybe what?
00:14:22 Alison
3%, 10%, something like that?
00:14:24 Alison
So the way I did it, the way I applied this rule was with some problem solving.
00:14:27 Alison
I can’t keep getting on the phone with these people, even though I want to.
00:14:29 Alison
I love getting on the phone with people because I feel like I really can I do things differently so they really understand?

00:14:35 Alison
And I think getting on the call saves me time ultimately than going back and forth via email 20 times.
00:14:40 Alison
Right?
00:14:40 Alison
Like, I’d much rather get on the phone with you for fifteen minutes, explain everything, listen to your tone of voice, listen to your hopes and dreams, your goals, listen to you talk about your children, and get all kinds of information and personality that you can’t even get an email.
00:14:54 Alison
That by itself is a time saver and helps me with that time management.
00:14:57 Alison
But I just can’t do the sheer quantity of them when they’re only booking at a 10%.

00:15:02 Alison
I made a big pivot this year after all of that September 1, I changed the pricing information that I put on my website to curb the number of inquiries because I only put the starting information on because I want people to inquire.
00:15:14 Alison
I want people to understand the value of what I’m bringing and why I do things differently.
00:15:18 Alison
So I do wanna get on that call with them and give myself self the opportunity to pitch the value of why I do things differently.
00:15:24 Alison
And I know I book people that way.
00:15:25 Alison
Right?

00:15:26 Alison
So I know there’s value to it.
00:15:27 Alison
But I added a print credit requirement to that session fee September 1.
00:15:32 Alison
And it’s both of the kind of what is it?
00:15:34 Alison
Tourism, like, low season for tourism, but also putting that pricing on my list.
00:15:39 Alison
My inquiries have dropped off completely, but I’m okay with that because I’m not spending an hour or two on the phone three days a week at the moment.

00:15:46 Alison
Like, I love getting on the phone with people, but they’re just a lot of them just have no idea what to expect when I say heirloom quality print products and it’s not wasting time, right, with people who just can’t do that.
00:15:57 Alison
I

00:15:57 Melissa
did that when we were in South Florida at one point.
00:15:59 Melissa
I had taken pricing off of my site just to gauge that, like, okay.
00:16:03 Melissa
Am I gonna get more inquiries in?
00:16:05 Melissa
And I started getting more inquiries in.
00:16:06 Melissa
Great.

00:16:07 Melissa
And then I started getting on the phone because I was trying phone calls.
00:16:09 Melissa
And then I would get till we were into the phone call for a little bit, and then it’s like, oh, let’s talk about pricing.
00:16:13 Melissa
And then it’s like crickets.
00:16:14 Melissa
And they’re like, oh, we didn’t wanna spend more than $900 Yeah.
00:16:18 Melissa
And I was like, I hate this.

00:16:20 Melissa
I absolutely hate this.
00:16:21 Melissa
And so I was like, nope.
00:16:23 Melissa
I always put a starting price.
00:16:25 Melissa
What is my session fee?
00:16:26 Melissa
And then what do my collections start at kind of thing.

00:16:29 Melissa
And that at least eliminates the people who are like, I was looking for a session for $250.
00:16:33 Melissa
So absolutely.
00:16:33 Melissa
It really does.
00:16:34 Melissa
Yeah.
00:16:34 Melissa
My inquiries went down, but the ones that I got were much more qualified.

00:16:38 Alison
Right.
00:16:38 Alison
Booking and conversion went up by that.
00:16:40 Alison
Yeah.
00:16:40 Alison
And that’s exactly what we’re talking about.
00:16:42 Alison
Right?

00:16:42 Alison
That problem solving of where I was spending my time helped me to backtrack and manage my time better by putting some more information on my website.
00:16:50 Alison
And then one of the things I noticed, you mentioned Tave.
00:16:53 Alison
So I used Tave as well because Melissa told me about the reporting and I said, oh, that sound interesting.
00:16:58 Alison
So going into that reporting, just like she mentioned, I can see where my clients are coming from because they self report in their web inquiry.
00:17:05 Alison
Right?

00:17:05 Alison
We’ve got a required form that says where’d find me.
00:17:07 Alison
Yes.

00:17:07 Melissa
And if you don’t have that, add that to your form.
00:17:09 Melissa
It’s going to tell you Yeah.
00:17:11 Melissa
Whoever you’re with, it’s gonna let you start figuring out where are my inquiries coming from versus just guessing.
00:17:17 Melissa
And then when you

00:17:18 Alison
have a CRM, it does it for you.
00:17:20 Alison
It tells you all this stuff.
00:17:21 Alison
And so you go to your booking trends, and then you can see not only where they’re coming from, how long it took to book, your conversion rate, how many books versus how many didn’t, but how much that profited.
00:17:32 Alison
So I can look and see how many people that came from book Facebook and how much they spent on average or a total.
00:17:39 Alison
I can see how many people found me from or, organic search, and it’ll tell me how much they spent collectively out of all those people.

00:17:47 Alison
And I found that social media, both Facebook and Instagram collectively, were my least invested clients, like, across the board by a lot.
00:17:56 Alison
And so, again, this summer, I was like, I’m usually spending about fifteen to twenty minutes a day on social media.
00:18:02 Alison
Doesn’t sound like a whole lot, does it?
00:18:04 Alison
If I’m doing something every day that’s getting me clients spend the least amount of money, is that a good use of my time?
00:18:12 Alison
I said, so I’m taking it was fifteen to twenty minutes.

00:18:14 Alison
And I say fifteen minutes, it’s probably more like twenty to thirty because I end up having fun with it or, like, I roll with it.
00:18:20 Alison
And some days I don’t do it at all, so I guess that maybe it does average.

00:18:23 Melissa
I can get on Instagram or something like that because next thing I know, I’m watching dog videos and cat videos and It’s true.
00:18:28 Melissa
And then I’m like, why am I here?
00:18:30 Melissa
And I’m like, oh, yeah.
00:18:31 Melissa
I came here to try and find out when my client had her baby or something, and I’m lost down the rabbit hole.
00:18:36 Melissa
So you’re ten or fifteen minutes of, like, oh, no.

00:18:37 Melissa
It’s twenty minutes before I have to reel myself back in.

00:18:40 Alison
So yeah.
00:18:40 Alison
So I’m taking that time, and I’m redirecting it towards something else in my business, need more attention, and hopefully will profit off of that.
00:18:46 Alison
That’s brand new.
00:18:47 Alison
So we’ll have to keep you updated on that.
00:18:49 Alison
And then so same with the marketing.

00:18:50 Alison
So if Instagram isn’t working, what is working?
00:18:52 Alison
SEO.
00:18:53 Alison
If you’ve been listening to us at all, like, SEO was working for me and getting me paid clients before I ever even stepped foot in Hawaii.
00:19:00 Alison
So blogging and email, people that are already showing interest.
00:19:03 Alison
If you go back to previous episode about our funnels, people that have already leaned in a little with follow not follow on Instagram, but with an email, they’ve given me some value for value that I’m exchanging for with what or how to travel to Hawaii with kids, like, talking to them, getting them warmed up.

00:19:20 Alison
Hey.
00:19:21 Alison
Have you thought about doing photos?
00:19:22 Alison
Like, you really should think about doing photos.
00:19:24 Alison
And not only should you think about doing photos, you should do it the way I do it, and you should hire me.
00:19:27 Alison
So I’m spending more time with the blogging and the support on email over Instagram.

00:19:33 Alison
It formed heavily on where I’m spending money.
00:19:35 Alison
Two years ago, you’re eighteen months.
00:19:37 Alison
I don’t know.
00:19:38 Alison
I can’t even remember.
00:19:39 Alison
Invested in my website heavily with a rebrand, a redesign, and copywriters.

00:19:43 Alison
And I think collectively, it was probably 5 or $6,000 on my web.
00:19:47 Alison
And I cannot tell you how many compliments I’ve gotten over the last twelve to eighteen months.
00:19:52 Alison
People on the phone telling me, like, I felt seen.
00:19:55 Alison
We wanna work with you.
00:19:56 Alison
I just loved your energy.

00:19:58 Alison
We’ve looked at so many photographers, but nice thing after nice thing.
00:20:01 Alison
That totally informed where I’m spending my money, and I’m willing to hire more copywriters now because it’s working.

00:20:07 Melissa
That could

00:20:08 Alison
be its own podcast, honestly, about copywriting.
00:20:10 Alison
But all that to say, when I am relocating, I may do it all because every market’s different and then you just gotta see what sticks.
00:20:17 Alison
So, yes.
00:20:18 Alison
I guess the next question is, how do we know?
00:20:20 Alison
I think we’ve mentioned some tools already, but how do we know what’s working and what’s not?

00:20:25 Melissa
Hey there, photographers.
00:20:26 Melissa
Struggling with what to blog about?
00:20:28 Melissa
Tired of staring at that blankie waiting for inspiration to strike?
00:20:31 Melissa
Yeah.
00:20:31 Melissa
We’ve all been there.

00:20:32 Melissa
That is why I created the blogging club.
00:20:34 Melissa
Imagine this.
00:20:35 Melissa
Every month, you know exactly what to blog.
00:20:38 Melissa
No more guessing games or frantic Googling.
00:20:40 Melissa
Each month, I’ll walk you through SEO friendly blog post outlines with examples, teach you the latest SEO and marketing tips in a master class, and support you live in a monthly q and a to answer all your blogging questions.

00:20:53 Melissa
Plus, we’ve got a community to cheer you on after every post.
00:20:56 Melissa
Let’s take the guesswork out of blogging and start driving those dream clients to your site.
00:21:00 Melissa
Head bloggingclub.com and use code t b c trial to get 50% off your first month and join us today.
00:21:08 Melissa
Yeah.
00:21:08 Melissa
So I definitely agree with Allison real quick on the you may have to try everything for a while to figure out what’s working for you.

00:21:16 Melissa
So keep that in mind.
00:21:17 Melissa
But to me, like, I look at Google Search Console, especially when it comes to, like, blogging and things like that and my keywords to figure out which ones are hitting, which blog posts are doing well, which ones do I need to optimize if I’m going to a new location, that kind of thing.
00:21:30 Melissa
So I’m gonna pay attention to Google Search Console.
00:21:32 Melissa
Just looking at those search results, like the top queries, top pages, that monthly performance email that they send you, that’s an easy one.

00:21:37 Alison
Oh my gosh.
00:21:38 Alison
They got to look into that.
00:21:40 Alison
Yeah.
00:21:40 Alison
If you aren’t getting that email, you can send them.

00:21:43 Melissa
It’s super easy.
00:21:43 Melissa
If you’re signed up for a Google Search Console account, then it’ll send it to you.
00:21:47 Melissa
It usually comes out, I think, the seventh of the month or something.
00:21:49 Melissa
I don’t know.
00:21:50 Melissa
Somewhere in the middle.

00:21:51 Melissa
Yeah.
00:21:51 Melissa
I don’t know.
00:21:52 Melissa
Because we have so many photographers under our Google Search Console that we’ve worked with, I literally get, like, a 100 and something.
00:21:58 Melissa
They just start flooding into our inbox.
00:22:00 Melissa
And Yeah.

00:22:00 Melissa
That’s an eighty twenty rule, guys.
00:22:02 Melissa
I probably should just go in to filter, come to think of it, in Gmail that just filters all of those to the trash because, no offense, like, I don’t need to see the monthly report for a 120 past clients.
00:22:12 Melissa
I look at the ones that are current clients and stuff like that.
00:22:15 Melissa
That email has tons of great information that’ll tell you, And you can look at it too.
00:22:19 Melissa
What is working that maybe you can create more content around that kind of thing?

00:22:23 Melissa
If you’re a newborn or a maternity photographer and you’ve got a post on, like, doulas that pop in, maybe you need to post on, like, midwives.
00:22:29 Melissa
Like, maybe you need to post on postpartum doulas.
00:22:31 Melissa
If that is getting traffic, like, maybe you need more content that’s like that.
00:22:35 Melissa
It’s local events in your area, and you’re like, I need to think about the next holiday and what the local events are and, like, create content around that.

00:22:41 Alison
Oh my gosh.
00:22:42 Alison
100%.
00:22:42 Alison
You definitely need to do that.
00:22:43 Alison
Similar to me, I was just looking at my search console.
00:22:46 Alison
And I have, in the last three months, 1,200 clicks to a restaurant post about Virginia Beach.

00:22:51 Alison
Yep.
00:22:51 Alison
I haven’t been there.
00:22:52 Alison
I wrote that, what, two and a half years ago now, and it reminded me that I need to do some more of that content for Oahu, for my local area, for Kailua.
00:23:00 Alison
Like, where to go for date night?
00:23:01 Alison
Where to go for a brunch?

00:23:02 Alison
Where to go for a quick bite versus fancy?
00:23:05 Alison
Like, all one blog post.
00:23:06 Alison
You’re already in Kailua.

00:23:08 Melissa
Yeah.
00:23:08 Melissa
That’s the thing.
00:23:08 Melissa
Because so she’s looking at past data to tell her what to do for current data, current stuff.
00:23:13 Melissa
So, yeah, Google Search Console.
00:23:14 Melissa
Allison can probably talk to you a little bit more about Google Analytics because I don’t really pay attention to it because, like I said, I don’t focus on social media or any of those other channels or even really direct traffic as much.

00:23:26 Melissa
I tend to look at Google Search Console.
00:23:28 Melissa
And then, like, with my email analytics, I will look at Flodesk Analytics per email and stuff.
00:23:33 Melissa
And I just feel like Google Analytics

00:23:35 Alison
is so confusing.
00:23:36 Alison
It has a 100%.
00:23:37 Alison
It has Google is a beast, and it’s its own worst enemy because of that.
00:23:41 Alison
But there is one place that I like.
00:23:43 Alison
It’s just one chart.

00:23:44 Alison
It’s the traffic acquisition chart.
00:23:46 Alison
So if you go on

00:23:47 Melissa
and go to Golytics, go home.

00:23:49 Alison
On the sidebar, it says acquisition, go to traffic.
00:23:52 Alison
This is the chart that convinced me to quit putting so much effort and energy into Instagram because those numbers within the organic search were at least three times higher than that of organic search.
00:24:07 Alison
So it’s gonna tell you and it’s gonna put it in order of husk, but it’s gonna tell you how many, like the numbers that are finding you organically, coming to you directly.
00:24:15 Alison
So that means like typing in the link or clicking a link in an email or what have you, and then organic social, and I think direct social.
00:24:22 Alison
And there was a new one this time that we were talking about unidentified.

00:24:25 Alison
I think that people in incognito mode, but that’s just a guess.
00:24:28 Alison
Yeah.
00:24:29 Alison
And it’s gonna rank them.
00:24:30 Alison
It’s gonna tell you exactly how many people came to you to your website that way.
00:24:36 Alison
And I have probably 1,200 coming organic and maybe 300 coming from social.

00:24:46 Alison
Now in the coffin.

00:24:47 Melissa
You can look at that too to see what’s your conversion rates on that.
00:24:50 Melissa
Mhmm.
00:24:50 Melissa
Keep in mind, obviously, your website, if you’re blogging, is gonna have a lot of traffic that is not necessarily direct client traffic.
00:24:56 Melissa
Could be potential clients down the road versus if somebody’s coming over from Instagram and they’re clicking on your website, that’s a little bit more direct of a client.
00:25:03 Melissa
Yeah.

00:25:03 Alison
It’s a slightly more warm lead because they’re seeing what you’re about already.
00:25:06 Alison
That’s a very valid point because most of my traffic is coming from July 4.
00:25:11 Alison
Mhmm.
00:25:11 Alison
July 4 events, Christmas, summer camp events, things like that are not photography specific.

00:25:16 Melissa
Yeah.
00:25:16 Melissa
And then really looking at your whatever your CRM is.

00:25:19 Alison
And if you don’t have

00:25:20 Melissa
a CRM, then at least if you’re not at that point yet, like, asking your clients, where did you find me?
00:25:26 Melissa
And then just putting the other spreadsheet, if you have to, of that.
00:25:29 Melissa
Mhmm.
00:25:29 Melissa
It can be very basic.
00:25:30 Melissa
Like, Allison and I use Tave, which we’ll include a link for Tave in the show notes because we love it.

00:25:35 Melissa
I’ve been with them forever and everything.
00:25:37 Melissa
There’s HoneyBook.
00:25:37 Melissa
There’s 17 HubSpotter.
00:25:40 Melissa
Dubsado, Seventeen Hats.
00:25:41 Melissa
Session now is, like, doing a lot more than just mini sessions.

00:25:44 Melissa
I think they now have galleries

00:25:45 Melissa
or something.

00:25:46 Melissa
I don’t know.
00:25:46 Melissa
I got an email.
00:25:47 Melissa
But you wanna look into your own data and figure it out of, okay.
00:25:51 Melissa
Where is this coming from?
00:25:52 Melissa
You could look at it and say, hey.

00:25:53 Melissa
We’re not getting anything from SEO, but I’m getting so much from client referrals.
00:25:57 Melissa
That tells you, alright.
00:25:58 Melissa
I wanna make sure whatever I’m doing, I keep doing to keep getting client referrals, but I wanna bump that up more, that kind of thing.

00:26:05 Alison
Or you wanna incentivize it.
00:26:07 Alison
If it’s happening already, encourage people to do more, get more, reward them for what they’re already doing.

00:26:12 Melissa
Like a senior rep program type thing.
00:26:14 Melissa
You can have a mom rep program or something.
00:26:16 Melissa
Like, you may look at that and say, oh, this is what’s working for me and go from there.
00:26:20 Melissa
So we’re not saying it has to be SEO and blogging.
00:26:23 Melissa
You know, maybe you’re opposite Allison.

00:26:25 Melissa
You’re like, girl, if I get an Instagram, I know it’s booking.
00:26:27 Melissa
Like, I’m going with it.
00:26:28 Melissa
That’s true.
00:26:29 Melissa
Lean into that.
00:26:30 Melissa
Lean into that.

00:26:31 Melissa
But I still think you should try all the other things just to make sure you’re not missing out on something, especially if you’re moving to a new area.
00:26:38 Melissa
Because I know I’ve had clients who have moved from a big city where SEO was working great for them to a small town where, like, no, man.
00:26:45 Melissa
It’s gotta be referrals.
00:26:46 Melissa
Everybody knows everybody.
00:26:47 Melissa
And then vice versa, where they’re used to just being referrals.

00:26:50 Melissa
And now they’re like, oh, wait.
00:26:51 Melissa
I could target a keyword?
00:26:52 Melissa
What?
00:26:53 Melissa
So you may just have to test it out in your area and figure out what is working for you.
00:26:57 Melissa
Which one

00:26:57 Alison
is it?
00:26:58 Alison
That’s awesome.
00:26:58 Alison
Guys, when it comes to your stuff, make sure you’re asking the questions.
00:27:01 Alison
Where are you getting your clients from?
00:27:03 Alison
Who’s spending the most with you?

00:27:05 Alison
Where are you getting the most leads?
00:27:06 Alison
Who’s converting?
00:27:07 Alison
Those are all the things that you wanna be looking at search console and analytics and your CRM for.
00:27:11 Alison
And I would even say, you feel like you’re not quite ready for a CRM, now is the time to go ahead and just start using a CRM.
00:27:17 Alison
Because they are a beast, it’s a lot to set up, and you even just have a little and you can just start growing into it without being overwhelmed.

00:27:24 Alison
I think that would be a huge benefit.
00:27:25 Alison
And then you get to track all kinds of data from the get go.
00:27:28 Alison
Right?
00:27:28 Alison
Alright, guys.
00:27:29 Alison
Thank you.

00:27:29 Alison
Hopefully, this was helpful to you.
00:27:31 Alison
If it was, like always, share this on social media.
00:27:33 Alison
Use hashtag keep it moving pod, and don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
00:27:37 Alison
Till next time.
00:27:38 Alison
Bye bye.

00:27:43 Alison
Thank you so much for listening.
00:27:44 Alison
If you’re enjoying the show, would you do two things for us?
00:27:47 Alison
First, leave a review.
00:27:48 Alison
Just stars would be awesome.
00:27:50 Alison
And two, forward this episode to a biz bestie, Nil spouse, or anyone facing moving their business.

00:27:55 Alison
We’d love it if you shared this episode with even just one person.
00:27:58 Alison
If you have questions, you can reach out to Allison on Instagram, Allison Bell Photog, or you can find me, Melissa, in my Facebook group, Picture Perfect Rankings.
00:28:07 Alison
Check the show notes for links, and we’re so excited to have you guys here.