How To Get Your Calendar Consistently Booked
Hi guys! This is Colin.
We are now on episode 2 of The Photography Business Secrets Podcast!
In this episode, I want to chat with you guys about consistency with your photography sales and kind of how to get there.
So, you are this rising photographer out there currently in the phase of comparing yourself with other photographers and saying,
“Man, how is this person able to always book sessions and I’m over here struggling? I take great photos. But I’m just struggling to book sessions. What is the difference?”
You take great photos and you may actually be the best at that in your area, your clients love you, but you just can’t seem to consistently book clients. You may be able to book a handful for this month but then the next month is just crickets and you’re just there trying to figure out what the problem is.
We feel you. Been there, done that.
Here’s the question:
What do most of the successful businesses out there have that they just don’t run out of customers, of leads?
A CONVEYOR BELT, that’s what they have!
First things first. Here’s the main focus, I think, for this podcast that we’re trying to get across. It’s this — that the business of photography should not be different from any other business, okay? It sounds really simple but sometimes it’s the simple stuff that’s hard to digest, right? That is the key. Again, our main focus is trying to convey to you that you need to look at your photography business as just that as a business that happens to do photography as the product. What is the key theme for businesses that typically succeed and do really well? Well, I guess it’s there are multiple factors, but on the foundation of successful businesses, is the fact that they have a conveyor belt you can look at, of consistent leads coming into their business that are being converted into revenue. That’s the foundation of any business you look at that is successful, one of the biggest pieces of that business is having some sort of system that consistently generates new leads and consistently converts a percentage of those leads into revenue. Whether it is a chiropractor, running a business, and he has a certain amount of consults with folks with back pain, a certain percentage of those folks will turn into six month continuity plans of coming in month after month, getting their back adjusted, maybe there’s some sort of other program that’s provided or maybe a supplement routine and stuff like that. Chiropractors have that, the good ones.
What is that system?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the art of getting your website or your content, be it a blog, your main website to rank high on Google or other search engine providers based off of keywords that you’ve used on your website or your blog. For instance, if you have a website, photography website, and you’re doing brand photography, and you’re posting blog articles about previous sessions or just other blog articles in general, and a lot of the keywords that you’re using in your blog have to do with things like brand photography, photography in your location, photography in your city, things of that nature. As that content begins to compound, the idea is, you’ll be able to rank yourself higher in the search engines.
While SEO helps a lot in increasing traffic to your website, it does take time, doesn’t it?
Here’s a little secret. What if I tell you that there is an alternative way that when done right, could actually work even better that SEO? I know, kind of hard to believe but this is what we have been doing and this is what’s bringing all these blessings to us month by month by month.
What is it then?
Direct Response Marketing — simply, the art of presenting some sort of message in front of your target audience to get a response. One form of Direct Response Marketing is Organic Outreach.
Now, what is direct response marketing? That’s the question you’re probably asking, what does that mean? Maybe you kind of understand the concept.
Essentially, direct response marketing is the art of presenting some sort of message in front of your target audience to get a response. That response may be ‘Yes, I’m interested’, ‘No, I’m not interested’, ‘Maybe later in the future’, or no response at all. But ideally, direct response is giving you some sort of response. You’re getting a direct response. So what does that look like on paper or in practice? Well, direct response for us, looks like a few different things.
Organic Outreach
One of our biggest revenue generators, not the biggest, but one of them is what we call organic outreach. We actually have a free course you can grab if you’d like, I’ll put that in the show notes for you. It’s free, it’s actually pretty in depth, I think you all will really enjoy it if you’re looking to grow your photography business.
Organic outreach is simply the art of using the social platforms that we currently have in 2020. These platforms may change, Facebook may turn into a completely different platform, Instagram, there may be another competitor that comes up, that’s much better, who knows, right? But the idea of what we’re doing is evergreen, so whether it’s on Facebook or whether it’s on a new platform five years from now, we’re going to continue to do this as long as there’s messaging available and keep that machine rolling.
Organic outreach is simply us using these social platforms, to target our ideal clients and send them a message. That message is usually very simple. Most of the time complimenting them on their profile, just mentioning how you think it’s great that they are in a certain position, whether it’s we’re messaging realtors or insurance agents, creating a connection with them and just saying, “Hey, by the way, I don’t know if you’re interested but this is who I work with, this is the product I offer. I think you’d be a great fit for it. Is this something you’d be interested in?” And then waiting for a response.
The Doubts
Some of you may be thinking right off the bat — “Ooh, man, I don’t want to do that, that comes off as spammy.” “I don’t want to be sending people messages. I don’t like when people send me messages.”
I totally get that thought process. That is something that we also kind of struggled with. At first, I was like, is this okay, can I send people messages? Do they think I’m weird sending them a cold message called DM? And again, that’s a really common thought process. But here’s the thing that we found out, and these are some of the mental obstacles as a photographer that you’re probably gonna have to get over in order to run it like a business.
The Reality
There are people in your marketplace right now that are waiting, and are interested in what you offer but if they never hear of you, if they never hear from you, you’re never you’ll never be able to transact with them.
And so here’s what we found by using organic outreach methods on LinkedIn, connecting with other business owners sending them messages about branding sessions and headshots, also using things like Instagram to reach out to folks, is a percentage of those people we message are so thrilled to hear from us. They’re so thrilled and then of those people that are interested what happens well percentage of those books on our calendar. So then what do we end up doing? Well, and in this course, if you decide to grab it again, it’s free. No cost at all. We show you we actually track everything. So we start to figure out, hey, when I send a certain amount of messages on LinkedIn, I get a certain amount of people that respond back, excited to hear from me. Then of those people, a percentage of those will book on our calendar and turn into revenue. So what do we do, we just rinse, wash and repeat. We just continue that cycle over and over and over and over again. In our marketplace, Dallas, Fort Worth, there are many, many business owners that we could work with. It would probably take years and years and years to message all of them. So this is something that we can continue to do over and over and over again, if you’re in a smaller market, you may not have as many business owners to work with but you’re probably safe to assume that there’s going to be quite a bit even if you’re in a small rural town, this will still work for you.
That is one specific tactic that we’re using right now, to fill our calendar with new bookings. Again, if you want to grab our free course, it’ll be down in the show notes, you can grab that and that should help you out kind of give you the framework of how we do that. So that’s one piece of direct response marketing is again, presenting a message to our dream client, our ideal client, as we call them, somebody that we’d love to do business with, and waiting for a response. Sometimes it’s “No, I’m sorry, I’m not interested.” Okay, no worries at all. And then sometimes those folks down the road decide they’re interested in their reach back out. Then there’s a subset of people that are interested right away, there’s another subset of people that are interested down the road and so that requires follow ups, which we’ll do another show about follow ups.
I know we’re kind of getting into the weeds on this stuff but under the umbrella of how do you create a consistent photography business is the art of direct response marketing.
Wait, There’s More!
Now that you have figured out the real thing and what direct response marketing is, we now have to develop tactics on how to successfully keep those leads coming in and how to read the numbers so you could execute the perfect plan to double and even triple the results.
In this podcast, you will hear me talk more in detail about these topics so you could successfully incorporate direct response marketing into your photography business and keep the clients coming.
This has blessed us in many ways than one. We believe this will bless you in thousands more ways than one.
We are glad and honored to be a part of your journey.
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