Stop Losing Leads: Small Website Changes To Help You Book More Weddings With KP & Jessie

In this episode we’ll cover:

• Why your website might be losing you leads and what to do about it
• The #1 mistake wedding pros make with their portfolio pages and how to easily fix it
• How to turn your portfolio into a powerful sales tool
• Simple ways to infuse your personality into your website to build trust and connection
• The strategic power of blogging for SEO and how it can bring in more leads
• The different types of blog post topics you can use to attract more leads
• How blogging creates long-term assets that continue to bring you leads and bookings for years
• Why optimizing your navigation is key to improving your website’s user experience
• The surprising benefits of using case studies in your portfolio to showcase transformations
• Tips for curating your portfolio to showcase your best work without overwhelming visitors
• How to strategically organize your services to appeal to different types of clients
• Small, impactful website changes you can make today to increase conversions

Stop Losing Leads: Small Website Changes To Help You Book More Weddings With KP & Jessie

Heidi Thompson
Hello there, my friend. I am your host, Heidi Thompson. I am here helping wedding professionals of all different kinds book more weddings with the clients that they absolutely love working with and build a business that gives them time back, that gives them the freedom to enjoy the fruits of their labor. And today I have an interview with KP and Jessie from Inkpot Creative and if you are not familiar with them, you should absolutely check out their work.

They do such amazing brand work, and website development work. They are big on loud, bold, colorful brands and they work with a lot of photographers. But they work with all sorts of different creatives who kind of want to go against the grain with their brand in some way. And because they are working with websites for you know creative types largely in the wedding industry they see a lot of mistakes and they see a lot of issues that are losing wedding pros, a lot of leads, because, yes, you know people are landing on your website, but are they taking that next step? Are they inquiring? Are they actually doing what you want them to do?

And it’s so frustrating when they’re not. And I totally get that. We’re talking about strategic changes you can make. They are small changes. We are not asking you to completely, you know, overhaul your website, throw the whole thing away and start anew. These are relatively small changes that you can make now that are going to set you up for success this booking season and every booking season after.

So, without any further ado, let’s get into the interview with KP and Jessie.

Today. I am joined by KP and Jessie from Inkpot Creative, who you may be familiar with. They have been speakers at my summit and they love supporting creative wedding photographers who are building anything but ordinary brands, and if you look at their website work, you will definitely see it is loud, it’s bold, it’s colorful. It’s all the things I love to see on a website.

Quite frankly and I’m really excited to have both of you here to talk about the website changes that you should make in order to increase conversions, because I think you know a lot of us think when your website’s done, it’s done, but there are so many things we can adjust that can have, you know, huge implications for us. So thank you both for being here.

0:03:50 – KP
Thanks so much for having us.

0:03:54 – Heidi Thompson
I know you do complete branding, you do complete web design for people, but for someone who maybe already has a website and is looking at, okay, what are the things that I could adjust? What are the things I could change? Maybe even small changes? Where should they start?

0:04:17 – Jessie
So one of the first places that we like to start is in your gallery portfolio. Whatever you have for your specific site and I think this is a really great area that tends to get overlooked and basically you set it up when you first do your website and then you never touch it.

So one of the things that we love doing is basically setting a a almost like a recurring task on your calendar reminder every like quarter, every six months, to go through and do a gallery or portfolio cleanup, kind of review them, see what’s on there, make sure that it’s actually reflecting the work that you want to show off, because oftentimes we’ll let it kind of sit. We’ll put new stuff out on Instagram, we’ll show off new things on Instagram or stuff like that, but then our website still feels a little outdated and we’re not necessarily showing our best work in the level that we’re at now.

So, going in, looking through that, seeing if there’s anything to update, seeing if there’s any tweaks you can make to it, even transforming your portfolio into almost more of a case study where you can say like, hey, here’s what they were dealing with, here’s the things that they wanted for their wedding, here’s the things that they were looking for out of X, Y and Z, and here’s what we actually did. Here’s how we made that happen.

Going through and getting reviews from your clients is super big, like even if it’s months after reaching back out to them and be like, hey, would you mind, you know, giving me a review that I can put on my website.

Worst thing they do is don’t respond or they say no and you know that’s it. But you might be able to get a review that you can put on there and you know, seeing the transformation, seeing the photos from the event, whatever it might be, and then hearing their words directly after it can make a, you know, a big impact on someone who’s trying to decide.

It’s that, you know, little bit of extra social proof. So going through and checking them frequently, I feel like they it’s an area that kind of gets forgotten a little bit. So taking the time to kind of check it and update it and make sure that it’s actually reflective of where you are in your business right now can be a really, you know, big way to put your best foot forward and also kind of show off your best work to attract those ideal clients that you want.

0:06:37 – Heidi Thompson
I’m so glad you brought up the portfolio page. I want to ask you a million things about this because I feel like it is the for lack of better words the redheaded stepchild. It’s the weird forgotten about page that is like I don’t really know what to do with this, to really do anything beyond what’s there.

So, definitely making sure that you are updating it, that it reflects the you know the people that you’re trying to attract. It reflects the level of work that you’re at and that’s not, maybe, something you did five years ago if that doesn’t align with where you’re at now. But I love that you made this point about transforming it into a case study. Is that something you guys have done or that you’ve seen?

0:07:24 – Jessie
It is something that we’ve done with a couple of our clients and it’s something that we’ve even done on our own site. But one of our clients is a wedding planner and she created this kind of case study setup for her portfolio and it was really great because she was able to talk about what the clients were actually looking for, what they, you know, valued in their wedding, what they wanted out of, you know, the entire day, and then kind of go into a little bit of detail on how she actually helped them do that and like what that looked like and you know how the end result actually ended up.

So it’s it’s a great way to. I know it’s sometimes we think about it when in the wedding industry we’re like, okay, it’s not like us, like we can be like here’s their website before, here’s their website after, here’s the brand before, here’s the brand after, but like there’s no, here’s the wedding before, here’s the wedding after. So I think sometimes people are like, well, can you really do it?

And the important thing when it comes to this is thinking about what issues or concerns or things were your clients coming to you and like, here’s what I want out of this day, here’s what I want out of my photos. Here’s what I want out of my wedding planning.

Here’s what I want out of my, you know, floral arrangements, whatever it is that we’re that we’re talking about. Kind of mention that, because it’s going to connect with people and be like, actually that’s what I want too, that’s what I’m looking for out of my wedding planner, and then you’re able to show here’s where they were, here’s the issues they were having, here’s how we made that vision come to life on the wedding day and kind of show in that way the transformation of kind of the thoughts and ideas in their mind to the actual full wedding day and and how it turned out. So we were able to do that on on her site.

And then again, having the reviews from people directly you know the couple involved or you know anyone else who would have a good kind of foot to stand on when it when it comes to that review. So that was a great way to kind of you know again further that point of like they were super happy. Here’s everything that happened and and the end results and then, depending on you know who you are and what you want to kind of feature.

I think with hers we also included the different vendors who were involved in that day to kind of show off the whole thing. Obviously, as a wedding planner with her, she was kind of involved with all of these different vendors. So, you know, showing that off and having that there as well, but being able to kind of show like here’s what they valued, here’s what the day ended up looking like, here’s their thoughts on it, like that in itself can be, you know really powerful for a potential client.

0:10:06 – Heidi Thompson
This is so weird because we didn’t talk about this, we didn’t talk about covering this, but I’ve been obsessed with this idea lately and I was talking to a copywriter friend of mine about it and it is just I wouldn’t even say underutilized in our industry.

It’s basically not utilized and it’s so powerful to be able to take people through. This is what they wanted. This is what they were concerned with. These were the challenges. These are the steps we took. This is the end result. That is such an incredible sales tool that, for some weird reason, we just don’t use in our industry.

0:10:48 – Jessie
Yeah, and it’s one that you know it does the selling without feeling salesy, because I know a lot of us are like we don’t want to sit out there and feel like a used car salesman trying to like push our you know our services.

But this is a way to just be like look, here’s what they were having trouble with, like you might be struggling with the same thing or you might be thinking the same thing. Here’s how we made it happen and it almost lets people picture themselves, you know, in their, on their wedding day, in those shoes, kind of what their day would look like. So it’s a really good way to sell without feeling like you’re pushing it too much.

And it also kind of shows how your services can be applied to like a range of different situations, different types of couples, different types of weddings, big weddings, small weddings, you know, whatever it might be. It kind of shows the range of what you can actually do. So again, people are like okay, you don’t just do one single thing Like you can do X, Y and Z and it looks great in every single you know different option X, Y and Z and it looks great in every single you know different option.

0:11:45 – Heidi Thompson
I love this so much and I think it is a way to turn your portfolio into a sales tool, because a lot of times it’s just like this thing that sits there and, yeah, it demonstrates your work. But you know, for anyone that has spent much time studying sales, you know there’s more to it than just showing your work there’s.

You know well how will this be addressed in the process and what about this and are they a good fit for this sort of thing? And you can hit all of those points with a case study Plus and, knowing you too, you can SEO optimize the hell out of it and get it found and have it be this independent piece that is not just serving to show how you can help, but also doing a lot of selling for you, which I absolutely love.

0:12:38 – Jessie
No, a hundred percent, and that’s one of the things that we love about doing these kind of case study versions of the portfolio. Because one to start off, if your portfolio is all on a single page and it’s just like little pop-ups, definitely change that. Each portfolio page should have its own individual page, because what you can do then is you can put keywords on every single one of those pages.

So for this client that I was talking about, I think we did different like types of themes because they were all different. Some of them were like summer camp vibes and some of them were like rock and roll.

So you can do keyword research and find keywords to put on every single one of your portfolio pages, which you can’t do if it’s all on a single page and everything’s just a pop-up or a hidden gallery or anything like that. So having it on separate pages first plus if that might be a small tweak that you can make like right now but then finding those keywords whether it’s locations, whether it’s different styles of weddings, whatever it might be is a great way to kind of boost that SEO, making sure that you’re getting yourself visible on Google and kind of expanding your reach on you know what people might be able to find you with, as they’re searching for different things.

It’s, you know, the literally the best way to get people organically to your site is through keywords. So anything you can do to kind of optimize these pages and get more views in it 100% is going to make a big difference in your business.

0:14:08 – Heidi Thompson
I love that so much. And I have to ask, because I see such a range, how big, small should a portfolio be? Because sometimes it’s like, oh, is that enough? And sometimes it’s just like, oh my God, this is overwhelming.

0:14:24 – Jessie
That is a great question and I think to an extent it depends and it’s going to kind of vary from person to person. I think for us we kind of aim to have it where it shows different like styles of things that you do.

So everything doesn’t, you know, match the exact same thing. You’re not showing the exact same. You know, wedding over and over where, like it might be a different couple but they all look exactly the same. So I think a part of it is, however many, you need to kind of show the different style of options that you have. But I do also think it shouldn’t be to the point where people are overwhelmed and kind of scrolling through and like never seen an end.

I think for ours we have maybe 15 projects on our portfolio and you know, obviously, we’ve done probably over 100 sites now something like that. And you know, obviously, there’s things that as they update it and as your style evolves or things get, experience goes up. You want to kind of weed out the older ones.

But I don’t know, maybe nine or so is a good place to start because it’s going to give you an opportunity to have a wide range of different weddings to show off without feeling like you’re showing every single thing. Your Instagram is a great place to show every single thing.

Your Instagram, or your blog, is a great place to blog about every single wedding that you do, but you want to make sure that the best of the best is on your portfolio. And then, when it comes to your actual portfolio, I know we work with a lot of photographers and this is something that a lot of photographers will struggle with when it comes to like the photos you actually put on there. We would say like max 50 photos in a gallery.

Normally we try to aim around like 30, because any more than that, again you’re going to get to that end the scroll and people aren’t actually going to get to the bottom to go to the contact page or services page or whatever it might be. So you want to think about the user experience and how long they’re going to scroll before they get to a different thing. You don’t want to overwhelm them, but you want to show the range of what you can actually do.

0:16:36 – Heidi Thompson
I like that because if you have a cap to it, if you have a limit, it forces you to be really intentional about the weddings, the projects that you’re choosing, and they have to have a reason why you’re highlighting them, because they showcase you know some particular way, you did something or some particular style of wedding, and it’s not just like let me just throw literally everything I’ve ever done on this page which I have absolutely seen.

0:17:04 – Jessie
Exactly, and you know what, if people want to see more, they can always reach out to you and be like, hey, do you have more of X, Y or Z or do you have an example of this or this? And, like, you can send them information, you can send them different galleries, you can send them, you know, whatever it is. If they want to know more, they can ask for it.

But you know, using your portfolio to kind of show the best of the best is a good way to draw those people in initially, and kind of show your range.

0:17:30 – Heidi Thompson
That is a part of a website that I’ve always struggled with, you know, just helping my clients and giving feedback with and part of it is a curation thing, part of it is most portfolios don’t really have like a function. They’re not trying to get people to take the next step in any way. So I really like your way of thinking about this, like very intentionally, and thinking about the user experience of like okay, what do we want people to do? We don’t want them to look at 200 photos, we want them to contact us, exactly.

0:18:05 – Jessie
Yeah, and you know your portfolio pages, I think you know when we first started we didn’t necessarily think that it was going to be a thing, but, like your portfolio pages can rank on Google If you use the right keywords. We’ve had clients portfolio pages rank and start to like be seen in the search results and bring in traffic directly to those pages. So they’re pages that you don’t want to ignore. They do matter in the grand scheme of your SEO strategy.

0:18:30 – Heidi Thompson
That’s really interesting I’ve never really heard anybody talk about that from an SEO perspective.

0:18:36 – Jessie
Yeah, it was definitely a little bit of a surprise and now it’s something that we focus on with all of our clients. We do add keywords to all of their pages and so making sure that you know all of the portfolio pages have something on there and obviously the more content, actual copy that you have on the pages, the more you can kind of fit in keywords and optimize it that way.

So that’s another bonus to doing the case studies. You can actually add more keywords in, but it’s definitely a page that gets overlooked, but it can, you know, still be really beneficial to your overall SEO strategy.

0:19:07 – Heidi Thompson
When you guys do these, are you aiming for kind of a certain word count, like whether it’s a case study or not, if it’s just a portfolio page, or are you letting it be pretty much the images?

0:19:23 – Jessie
I think when it, when it comes to it, I think you at least want to have a couple of paragraphs on the page just so that people can kind of read it, more than maybe a little like bullet point of you know what it was.

I feel like 300 words is the kind of minimum if we’re looking at things wanting to. You know rank well, so whether you know that can be spread out from like what was happening before, how we kind of optimized it, the, or what we did to kind of make the wedding vision come to life, the different services that we actually did, anything like that. So I would aim for for 300.

You also don’t want to make it too, too wordy that they’re not getting to the different images or visuals or things that actually show that transformation. So you don’t want to make it, you know something where they’re just staring at walls of text and not, you know, seeing the points that you’re talking about. But kind of having enough, enough content that you can explain it and then back it up with the photos that kind of show off exactly what you’re talking about is kind of the sweet spot with it.

0:20:30 – Heidi Thompson
Do you get photographers that fight you on that? Because I think a lot of photographers feel like well, the images should be able to stand for themselves.

0:20:39 – Jessie
We have definitely had our fair share of photographers who maybe struggled with the 50 photo limit on galleries and we’ve had some where you know we’ve put more on it and I know it’s.

It’s difficult and you have that emotional connection to your photos and like they’re your babies and you’re attached to them and all of them look incredible. So sometimes we’ve kind of wavered a little bit on it and have done more.

But I think a good, if you’re really struggling with it, a good way to kind of do it is having someone who’s not a photographer look at the photos and point out the best. Because I think one of our clients showed them to their partner and they were like, okay, well, these actually go like look like the same thing and they’re like, well, no, these are completely like this is a whole different pose and they’re like, yeah, but it’s just two people in front of a tree, like that’s the same photo and they look the same.

So I think sometimes having you know someone else look at it can kind of show you ones that are actually different and show the full range of what you do, or even looking at if you send galleries to your clients and they can have like a favorites folder. Seeing what they favorited and what they loved is a great way to kind of pull out the best images, to kind of show off and attract those similar clients.

0:21:58 – Heidi Thompson
That is such good advice because it is so hard anytime it’s your own work to make those decisions and you’re like, no, no, no, all of these are necessary. And someone else can come in and be like no, no, no, all of these are necessary. And someone else can come in and be like, yeah, no, not, not really.

0:22:09 – Jessie
Yeah, exactly it’s. It’s one of the things where you’re really it’s really hard to step away from your own work and separate yourself from your own work, but someone else can very easily be like no, these are the best 10 photos. Just use these, okay.

0:22:21 – Heidi Thompson
I love this and I love that you led with updating your portfolio, changing your portfolio. What other changes should people be considering with their website to increase conversions?

0:22:36 – KP
All the time through Inkpot, and that’s to add more personality to your website. And the reason that we say this is because when you’re able to show off more of your personality throughout your website, it’s going to make people know you that much better when they fill out that inquiry form.

So when they hop on a call with you if you do like sales calls, discovery calls, whatever you want to call them they’re going to feel that they already have more of a connection with you.

0:23:02 – Heidi Thompson
I like that, and I think that’s one of those things that maybe we all know is a good idea, but it’s one of those things that’s easier said than done. So what are some ways that people can kind of like sprinkle more of themselves across their website?

0:23:17 – KP
Yeah, absolutely so.

One of the first ones is to use, like any video gifts throughout your site, brand photos, especially if you’re a photographer that’s one of the things we like always have to remind photographers to do is to actually put photos of yourself throughout your site.

Even if you have gotten like any brand photos of yourself that were kind of taken like right after each other in like a photo burst, those can be turned into like some really cool GIFs throughout your site just to kind of show you like I don’t know like even making like a funny face or like you know, opening up like a Liquid Death can or you know whatever like actually shows off like something that you really love.

You could also add a lot more movement throughout your site, making your site interactive without being overbearing, trying to get a lot clearer on like your brand voice, so kind of making sure that the copy throughout your site actually sounds like you, sounds like the way you talk, sounds like the way you want your brand to sound. You can even get more fun with like your buttons.

So something that we like to do at Inkpot because we like to be a little bit more bold with our buttons sometimes is you know, instead of just saying like let’s do this, you could say something like stay less, I’m in. So just trying to like find some fun ways to like add little snippets of who you are as a wedding pro throughout your site can really go a long way.

0:24:25 – Heidi Thompson
It’s funny because it’s really easy to discount those small things like what does the button say? Or including a gif versus not. But when you do see that and you actually pay attention, you have so much more of a like a visceral connection to the person, cause you’re like, okay, I get you, I see where you’re coming from, like yeah, we could be friends, kind of thing.

0:24:49 – KP
Yeah, 100%. I. This was like not my idea at all, but I’m like literally actively looking for a bookkeeper right now and I was on a bookkeeper site and like even just on her contact form, like the smallest changes where you know, like the fill-in-the-blank text, like that was updated to the show, like different things about like her as a person roll, like what do you do?

And then like the answer was like your favorite designer’s favorite designer, like finding ways to like just add little things throughout and spots that people might not even expect it and kind of like catches them off guard. I think really goes a long way.

0:25:22 – Heidi Thompson
I love that. I really love when you catch those little things because they feel like, you know, like little Easter eggs, like, oh, I found this like fun little thing and it’s light, it’s playful, it’s easy, easy, even if you just go and do nothing else but like tweak some of your buttons and tweak some of the copy throughout your website.

it is a very, very simple, straightforward way to add more of you who, ultimately, that’s who people are hiring yeah exactly would you rank those in any particular order, like if someone’s thinking like okay, I want to make one or two changes to bring more personality into my website. Are there any that you feel are a little bit more of a heavy hitter than the others?

0:26:12 – Jessie
I think the kind of buttons or adding little pieces of your brand voice, anything like that in would maybe be at the top with then like videos, gifs, anything like that. I think those two kind of speak to your personality the best and kind of show off who you are and you know what you love, any anything like that.

Even just you know adjusting a couple headings throughout the site, since they are kind of bigger and and catch your eye a little faster, like those are, are kind of the two that people are going to notice and pick up on really easily. Um, and it’s a little easier than you know sometimes doing any like transitions or adding movement to the you know site elements itself. You’re not kind of adjusting any of that. You’re really just like switching out button text or you know adding those little touches, changing a photo or anything like that. So I think those two are probably the most important.

And then making sure like you have a photo of you on your website. I think we’ve had a lot of photographers where we even start designing the site and we’re like, okay, you didn’t send a single photo of yourself. Like we need a photo of you and if you don’t have it like actually planning a brand session where you can go out and do something fun.

That wedding planner that we’re talking about ended up doing one like in 7-Eleven and had like checkerboard shirts on and disco balls and was drinking Slurpees and it was just so personality-filled and didn’t have anything to do with wedding planning, but it showed off who she was Planning. Something like that can be a big boost. Even if you’re only using a couple of the photos on your site like it still is a really great way to show off who you are. And then, once you have that done, you can kind of look at adding some movement throughout your site, some different elements, different transitions, anything like that to add those bits of, you know, unexpectedness to the site.

0:28:05 – Heidi Thompson
I love that and I that honestly. That photo session sounds incredible and, like you said, it’s like not highlighting her as a planner. It’s highlighting her as a person. But guess who you’re working with every day as you plan your wedding? It’s going to be that person and that needs to be a personality fit, or you’re going to hate the entire process.

0:28:28 – Jessie
Exactly. With weddings like they that is one of the most important things is if you vibe personality-wise because, like you don’t want to feel awkward with someone in your you know getting ready room while you’re getting dressed for your wedding. You want to make sure that that everyone who’s around you you’re comfortable around and you want there on your wedding day.

0:28:47 – Heidi Thompson
Now that I’m thinking about it with just gifts, like there was this super short kind of goofy little video of myself that I turned into a GIF and it’s in a welcome email and I have gotten so many comments about it and it was really surprising because it was just like, oh yeah, I guess I should put my face on this and okay, yeah, sure, I’ll turn this into a GIF. And people are like, oh my God, I love that. That’s so cute.

0:29:18 – Jessie
And like, okay, I did not expect that but all right, yeah, it really doesn’t have to be anything like over the top or extravagant or, you know, professionally done or literally just like any little bit of your personality that you can let shine. People are going to pick up on and notice and you know that’s the things that they’re going to really connect with. That is so helpful.

0:29:40 – Heidi Thompson
And the fact that it can be small, I think, is really really helpful for people because it’s you know, we’re not saying you have to rewrite your whole site or like redo your whole site. You know it’s these small changes that can make a substantial difference, which I love. I mean, that’s absolutely my jam If we can do a small thing and it has a big result.

0:30:00 – Jessie
I’m all for it. No, a hundred percent. The low-lift things that like. There are so many low-lift things that can make such a big difference.

0:30:08 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, tell me about another change that you would recommend the listener make to their website.

0:30:15 – Jessie
One of our favorite things that’s going to make a huge difference for the kind of strategy behind your site is your blog. I know it’s the other big thing that we do here at Inkpot and I know a lot of people go back and forth on it and are like, do I really need to blog?

But blogging can make a major difference. There’s a couple different reasons why.

One is just going to be from an SEO standpoint. You know keywords. You’re getting more keywords out there. If you’re actually blogging, you know doing it right and looking for keywords and finding things that people are, you know, actually looking for. But basically every blog post you publish is another page that is on Google that people can find you from. So at a minimum, you’re just expanding your reach and giving people more ways to find you, which is going to bring in those you know cold leads, that organic traffic onto your site.

So you definitely want to make sure that you are blogging and, in that sense, to kind of get that traffic coming through. But also it gives you an opportunity to highlight different things. It gives you an opportunity to show off different you know areas of your business, or even you know a lot of, when we’re looking at wedding pros, a lot is localized, so you’re in a certain area. When you’re looking at your website, it’s probably focused on a certain area and you know that’s where a lot of the content is. But if you are someone who travels, you might not want to put that you photograph in Vegas and LA and Miami and Chicago on, you know, in the keywords on your website because that’s going to confuse Google.

But you can blog about all of those and bring in traffic from those people looking for all of those different places. Blog about all of those and bring in traffic from those people looking for all of those different places. So it kind of gives you a wider reach on what you can actually talk about without confusing Google, which, like as much as we would like to say it doesn’t matter. Google matters a lot in what it thinks of your website and you know what you’re doing really well or maybe maybe not so well is going to have a big impact on where you’re actually ranking.

So we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to be on Google’s good side. So you have an opportunity to kind of show off a wider range of things.

So if you have blogged already, updating any posts. Normally we say like once a year maybe. Look through the posts, see if there’s anything you need to update, especially in the wedding space, like, unfortunately, sometimes venues close or you know something happens or more vendors pop up that you really love to work with that you might want to update a list of you know your favorite venues in your area or whatever it might be.

So, going in and making sure that everything is updated, catch up on anything that you haven’t blogged about. You can find a way to blog about every single wedding that you do. So, whether or not they’re in your portfolio, this is a great way to kind of show the ones that they were great weddings but they just didn’t quite make it into your portfolio

Write a blog post on it. You can format it in a similar way to the case study and talk about what they wanted, what happened, you know how you made it come to life, the venue, the different vendors, whatever it might be and still show off the photos and highlight that wedding.

And then, if you don’t have a blog or if you want to start blogging, you can think about things like questions that you’re asked frequently, if your clients are constantly asking you the same questions. Odds are, other people are typing that into Google and it’s probably a keyword, so you can reach that kind of in Google.

But also you can make it quicker and easier for you to answer questions because you can just be like, hey, I have a whole blog post about this and all of these other questions that you might want answered and just send that instead of constantly having to type out a million emails every single week. So you can think about what questions you’ve been asked a lot, any specific things that you love in your area, any venues, any other vendors, anything like that where people are in that kind of planning process.

Hopefully you want to think about who they pick or who they would book before you and kind of grab them there so that you aren’t, you know, talking about, maybe, florists as a photographer. They’re probably going to book their florist after you. So as a photographer, you might want to talk about wedding venues and wedding planners, because those are normally the two different vendors that are booked before a photographer.

So kind of think about who’s being booked before you and make sure you’re catching those people in that like planning phase before they actually, you know, were to book you. But any of those things, any of the weddings that you’ve done before, are great things to blog about and I promise there is basically no way that you are ever going to run out of keywords that you can write about for your blog. Like, as a photographer, there is an infinite amount of topics that you have. Or as a wedding pro, there’s an infinite amount of topics that you have to actually write about.

0:35:04 – Heidi Thompson
I love that you talk about this as creating more opportunities to be found, because I think it can feel to some people a little bit like the way social media does I just have to do this and then I put it out and then it dies and then I have to do another one. But if you think about it the way you’re talking about it, which is much more about creating an asset, creating an opportunity that is going to continue to live on you know, this year, next year, the following year and so on I think that, at least in my mind, I could see that making more sense in terms of like justifying in your own head spending time on this if it’s something that feels, you know, kind of disposable, the way social media does.

0:35:57 – Jessie
It is 100% a long-form piece of content that you, that you have and it’s something that really snowballs. So the more you write, the more things start to rank, the faster Google is going to start to rank your content.

So you know, we’ve seen it on some of our travel blogs where when we, you know, first start we’re posting things, it’s taking a couple of months, kind of that like six to eight-month range sometimes for things to really start ranking. And then as we started to post more, it got down to, you know, a couple of weeks before things are ranking. And then you know, there were some times where we posted something and, you know, four or five days later things are already starting to rank. So it’s something that snowballs. It’s definitely a long-term thing.

When we’re looking at social media, you post something. It maybe has a 24-hour life cycle. If we’re lucky blogging you might not see that instant hit, that like instant effect, but as you go on it’s going to, you know, start bringing in more traffic. Things are going to kind of pick up and pick up. So, like we’ve had clients that we’ve written posts for that. We probably wrote the post a year and a half, two years ago and it’s still bringing in traffic and people are still finding it. So like it’s still bringing in traffic and people are still finding it.

So it’s not something that just stops. It’s kind of almost like set it and forget it and it’s going to keep working for you and you can repurpose everything. So, even in our own business, we will take our blog post and we will repurpose it on an Instagram post, a reel, a TikTok, whatever you want to do. You know an Instagram post, a reel, a TikTok, whatever you want to do.

Taking that you know long-form piece of content and breaking it up. You can find literally so many different ways to post it. I think, honestly, our social content I don’t think there’s a single piece that was done from scratch this year Like everything is repurposed off of other long-form content that we’ve had. So it’s a really great way to have that long-term effect. You know, have something that is continually working for you on the on the back end, but also helping you put out content on some of these shorter term, you know marketing platforms as well.

0:38:07 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, I think when you start with a bigger piece, it’s so much easier to break it apart into smaller. You know whether it’s graphics or text or video or whatever it is because, like the meat is there, You’re not making anything up, You’re just reusing it in different ways.

0:38:26 – Jessie
Exactly, yeah, and oftentimes, like we love leaning into more educational-type blog posts. They, you know, tend to work really well and position you as the expert and you’re able to kind of give a lot of information that really helps people. So when we’re looking at that, it’s so easy to break those up into carousel posts to talk about it, or every single heading is its own post.

And now all of a sudden you wrote one blog post and you have, you know, 10 Instagram posts that you can use over the next few weeks. Like all of them are so valuable and you want to kind of make sure that you’re hitting people in all of the different ways that they, that they can find you and, you know, giving everyone kind of an equal opportunity to find all of the great information that you’re putting out there. I love that it feels like cheating.

0:39:12 – Heidi Thompson
It’s like yay, I get to use this in a million different ways, as opposed to constantly creating new things, and I totally get that. Gets exhausting for people and I think this can be a way off of that treadmill to encourage wedding pros to post new blogs and I get that, that’s kind of like how long is a piece of string?

It could be many, many different things, but I’m hearing the person listening to this and being like, okay, you got me this. Sounds like a great idea, but how often am I supposed to do it to actually see results?

0:39:50 – Jessie
So our suggestion is to aim for twice a month. So putting out two blog posts a month is kind of a good cadence. It doesn’t really matter when you put it out in the month. A while ago, you know, it was kind of seen as you want to schedule posts, make sure they’re going out on the same exact day every single month, or you know anything like that. Really, now, whenever you get the post out is totally good.

We, you know it’s it’s kind of the thing of the sooner it’s out there, the sooner it can start to rank and be seen by Google. So it’s not not a bad thing to just get it out there, but kind of two a month is where we like to start off. If you miss posts, it’s totally fine. It’s not the end of the world. You can also post more every month. Or maybe you only did one last month, two to three this month, or anything like that. So that’s kind of the spot where we’ve seen things start to pick up.

And then most of our clients that we write posts for, normally around the 12 post mark, which is about six months in that kind of like six to eight-month mark, are when we start to see the results come in and the traffic increase and more of those ideal leads coming in, whatever it might be for the specific client.

So you do want to give it time. It’s not something that’s going to instantly work and it also might take more time for some people over others, depending on a lot of kind of like background, seo stuff and other things that you’re doing on your website, how old your domain is, like all of these little nitty gritty things. But if you can twice a month, that is a great place to start, not too too overwhelming, and kind of go from there and see how it works for you and if you’re noticing any trends or anything like that and adjust from there.

0:41:41 – Heidi Thompson
And for your clients that you write blog posts for. Is it a wide range of different blog post topics? Is it like part you know, case study type stuff, part featuring other vendors, part educational?

0:41:53 – Jessie
Yeah, so we write about a lot of different things for our clients. We’ll do education-type posts, that kind of highlight different things. You know we work with a lot of photographers, so it might be things on, you know, tips for prepping for engagement sessions, or even you know why have engagement sessions, why do X, Y or Z at your wedding, you know, whatever, whatever it might be. So we have that kind of chunk of educational posts.

We do also do a lot of portfolio pieces. So we encourage our clients like every time they have a gallery ready, you know, send it to us, give us a little bit of information about the wedding and we’ll blog about it and, you know, highlight that so that even if it’s not on their portfolio, it’s still living on their site and people can see it.

So that’s definitely you know. You know a big chunk. And then also those other vendors that they love working with or that they recommend a lot of times, especially when it comes to wedding venues.

Basically any single wedding venue, the like wedding venue name, with, you know, venue or wedding after it is probably a keyword. So blogging about those individual venues is great. Or doing roundups of you know, the best wedding planners in your area, the best you know, wedding venues in your area, whatever it might be kind of highlighting those different vendors are all great, great posts.

So those are normally the kind of three chunks of ones that they do with the educational, the kind of portfolio pieces and then highlighting other vendors that they love working with that are kind of in the same area.

0:43:26 – Heidi Thompson
I love that. I like that variety that you’re doing, so it doesn’t feel like the same thing all the time.

0:43:32 – Jessie
Yeah, yeah, it gives that. At the end of the day it’s the more information for clients and you can kind of interlink and show different options. But it makes it so nothing’s ever boring or expected and you get to talk about a whole bunch of different things that your ideal clients are going to find helpful.

0:43:47 – Heidi Thompson
Okay, so we have updating your portfolio, integrating more of your personality, and either come back to blogging, start blogging. Are there any other strategic changes you would recommend?

0:44:08 – KP
Yes. So the very last one is to optimize your navigation, and this is one that I feel like is pretty overlooked, but it’s also like a very quick fix.

So with this, we would recommend that you literally just go through your site. First of all, make sure all of your buttons are still working, because you know, throughout the year it’s very possible Something’s got like linked wrong or unlinked or anything like that, and then literally just ask yourself if all of the links in your nav bar make sense, like, do you really need like five, seven links up there?

Like just look and double check and make sure that they’re all links that you really need. Because another thing is, everything on your site does not need to be linked in like your main nav bar.

You really want to make sure that your main nav bar links are the pages that people are like actually going to be looking for a lot. So that could be like your pricing page, an experience page, your about page, your contact page, your blog page. Well, everything else might be better off just being linked in your footer.

And then another way to to kind of optimize your navigation is to ask friends or family members to basically go on a hunt on your website. So kind of like give them a task of being like I want you to figure out how to contact me and then just see how long it takes them to like get to the contact page.

You can also ask them like very specific ones, like try to find this on my site, like where would you go to try to find this information? Just kind of like follow them and see where they end up going, just to make sure that things are actually clear and are making sense to somebody who might not actually like know the industry as well.

0:45:36 – Heidi Thompson
Oh, that is so good because it’s so easy to get stuck in, that you know that expert trap, that curse of knowledge of like. Of course, they know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m talking about and it’s like, yeah, but you know, everybody else doesn’t have the kind of expertise that you have, so they don’t really know what they’re looking at or what they’re looking for.

So I love that idea of having someone go through and like just watching what they’re doing. That can really really improve your user experience and prevent drop-off, which is huge, because if we have people coming to your website, the last thing we want to do is lose them.

0:46:14 – Jessie
Exactly, and one of the other things that we see all the time is naming your pages or your navigation links. You know, maybe you want to say that they’re personality-filled names. This is the one place where I would say keep it simple and don’t do anything like out of the ordinary because when people are looking at your navigation they are looking for expected things.

If, like one of our favorite examples is the whole journal for blog kind of became popular, but everyone coming to your site isn’t going to see the word journal and know that that’s a blog, so you can put fun and quirky things on the actual content of the page.

When it comes to the links in your navigation that go to the different pages, like, keep it simple with you know home about services, experience, contact, blog, like portfolio, that’s totally fine. You want to make sure that it’s really quick and easy for people to recognize what pages they’re actually you know, looking at and where they’re trying to find things. So that’s the one thing I know we say add personality to sites. Your navigation links don’t need to be that personality-filled.

0:47:26 – Heidi Thompson
We want to make it really quick and easy for people to find what they’re looking for that makes sense because it’s a tool you know it’s a tool that you’re using to move around the site.

I’m curious do you have an opinion about when you’re providing pricing? Do you prefer that to be a separate page in the navigation? Are you team pricing, team investment, team services or kind of does it depend?

0:47:52 – Jessie
I think it depends on kind of your own individual thoughts on it. For the most part, a lot of our clients will have a they’ll either call it a services or an investment page where it’ll list out the different types of services that they offer.

And normally they’ll all have at least some sort of like starting at price. Even if it’s not a, you know, this is what the exact price is going to be, because you can customize things and and all of that. But having some sort of kind of brief explanation of you know your services, what, what everything is that you offer and what the starting price is for that.

I will say a lot of our clients have also started to kind of create two separate pages where for their main services they kind of have, you know, a longer pricing page that goes more into detail about some of the packages that they offer, what exactly is included, and they can kind of dive into a little bit. And that’s a completely separate page from, like, the services page that people will click on initially, where it gives brief descriptions.

So if you’re worried about things being too long or kind of feeling a little too overwhelming, that’s a great way to do it or even split it up by service, which I know you know with our photographers.

Sometimes they’re like well, I do weddings, but then I also do families or branding, and like trying to put branding and weddings on the same page can feel really awkward sometimes. So if you’re like I want to have this and I want to have this information, but now it feels like everything’s too long or too overwhelming, think about how you can split it up to kind of talk directly to that specific person that you want to book that service or anything like that, and that can be a good way to have it.

I think having some sort of pricing on your site is beneficial and can give people a way to kind of self-filter themselves so that they’re not getting on a call and having a little bit of price you know, price tag shock if it’s out of their budget or anything like that and it’s not kind of feeling like it’s wasting anybody’s time. So at least having some sort of like starting at price so people can see if this might be a fit for you, we tend to think of it as a good idea.

0:50:07 – Heidi Thompson
I totally agree with you on that, and something I’ve seen people do, I’ve encouraged some of my clients to do, is you know, okay, you have the services page and treat it as like kind of like a portal, like here is where you can get full planning information, here is where you can get partial planning, here is where you can get coordination, and then that takes you to those different destinations where you can actually go in-depth and you don’t feel like you have to talk in like vague ways about what it is that you’re providing.

0:50:41 – Jessie
Exactly and like even on our own site like that’s what we have.

We have a services page that lists out, you know, our rebrand, edit and then our blogging service, but then those have complete pages on their own where we can go into detail and talk about everything and not have to figure out a way to talk about rebranding your business, but then also we can write blog posts for you.

I know, sometimes it’s hard to kind of do it together, and even when we’re looking at, you know, weddings, people might be looking for different things. People might be looking for, you know, day of coordination versus full planning, or even elopement photography versus, you know, a full wedding or a wedding weekend or anything like that. So, having a way to kind of split things up where you can make it really quick and easy for people to kind of pick what like, almost like, choose your own adventure, where they want to go, and then give them all the information from there, so we’re not making anything too long, but we’re also not giving unnecessary information to people who don’t care about that specific service or aren’t looking for that specific service.

0:51:40 – Heidi Thompson
That makes sense and, like you said, every page, every post is also a different opportunity to rank, so you can optimize each for whatever you know, whatever keywords make sense. And I’m curious so you talked a little bit there about like, okay, different types of services.

When it comes to someone who has a lot of different things, like either a photographer that does you know, maybe weddings and branding and family, or it could even be like a venue and they do weddings and they do corporate and they do special events and nonprofits, do you have a preferred method of organizing that? Because I think sometimes what I’ve seen people fall into is having this like kind of unwieldy drop down.

0:52:29 – Jessie
Mm-hmm. I think the way we like to split it up is to kind of think about what that specific client is going to look for when they land on your site. And it’s not necessarily saying that your site can’t be focused on one person. So, for example, when we’re looking at wedding photographers, they might offer other services, they might have these other things.

But if you’re landing on a photographer site, you’re looking for a wedding photographer and everything is aimed towards family photography. You might look at it and be like, do they even offer wedding photography? Like it might feel hidden.

But if someone’s looking for a family photographer, they probably have it in their mind that this photographer is going to do more than just family. So if they see weddings they’re like, okay, I’m going to look for family and, you know, find my way here.

So we want to think about who we want to attract first off, that’s who we want to kind of target on our main pages and then talk to those individual, different types of clients on the main services pages. But then also think about what people are generally going to be booking together.

For photographers, having weddings and engagements on a single page makes sense, because most people who are getting wedding photography are also going to book an engagement session, or it might even be included in your package.

So like that’s totally okay to group. But then you can maybe put you know families and lifestyle photography in one and then maybe that like branding or commercial photography in another. If you’re looking at venues, like definitely want to make sure weddings is on its own page, because weddings is going to be a completely different type of event than any other event that you host. So having a whole page for weddings.

But then maybe corporate events and nonprofits can be on the same page because the general setup and flow of what people are going to get and expect for those events are going to be very similar. So you can think about the types of clients that are going to be and expect for those events are going to be very similar. So you can think about the types of clients that are going to be seeing each page, the different flows of your services and your process. If the process is completely different, it needs to be on a completely different page.

0:54:44 – Heidi Thompson
Okay, that’s helpful. That is really helpful to organize, because there are a lot of people that you know service a large swath of different types of people and I think sometimes it can feel, you know, just from your perspective, of putting the website together is just unwieldy and now you feel like you’re just talking about nothing and everything at the same time.

0:55:07 – Jessie
Yeah, it’s definitely a balance to figure out who you actually want to target. The kind of main thing to think about is what you ideally want to spend most of your time doing and that’s kind of the service and the audience that you want to talk to mainly because ideally those are the people that you want to draw in and then those kind of individual pages can give you a chance to talk, to target.

You know, say different things to these other groups that you that you work with and it we’ve seen it work really well. We have some photographers that do weddings but then they also do family and boudoir and branding and senior photos and you know regular couples lifestyle photos. They’re all on their website and they all work totally fine and they book all of them and it’s not confusing to people landing on it because they kind of know where to go and where to filter themselves.

0:55:59 – Heidi Thompson
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you, I appreciate that I could talk to you, too, for ages. I will respect your time and not do that, though, because I know you have things to get to, of course, but tell the listener if they want to learn more about you. You, you know, you design these amazing websites. You write blog posts for wedding pros. Tell us how they can find out more about you.

0:56:27 – Jessie
So you can find us online. Our website is inkpotcreative.com. You can also find us on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, basically all of the social media at Inkpot Creative. And if you’re looking for ways to kind of figure out what it is about your brand that stands out, we do have a brand superpower quiz that you can find at inkpotcreative.com/superpower.

That can kind of help you figure out things that you can feature and highlight to make sure that you’re putting your best foot forward with your brand. But definitely check us out If you have any questions. We are always open to answering things.

Send us a DM. We love talking about anything branding, web design, blogging so we’d be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

0:57:16 – Heidi Thompson
Thank you so much for having us. I’m really curious to know which of these strategies you are going to implement first. Which of these really stood out to you as a really good opportunity for you to turn more of the people who land on your website into actual leads and inquiries?

Shoot me a DM on Instagram and let me know, because I’m super nosy and I want to know this stuff. I am @evolveyourweddingbusiness over there. I will have everything we talked about linked up in the show notes over at evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/295.

You’ll be able to find all of that over there and I hope this has inspired you to take a small strategic action toward turning more of your website visitors into leads. Thank you again for tuning in my friend, and I will speak to you again very soon.

About KP and Jessie

KP and Jessie are the duo behind Inkpot Creative, a queer-led design studio building unconventional, impactful brand and website experiences for photographers and wedding professionals who are leading their industry by creating something different. They know exactly what it’s like to be the loud, bold, colorful outliers in their industry. That’s why they partner with creatives who aren’t afraid to express themselves loudly and go boldly against the grain. In a world where first impressions matter and attention spans are shortening by the day, they’re focused on building strategic, personal brands that people can’t look away from.

When they’re not brand-building or writing blog posts for their clients, they can be found working on their travel blog, road-tripping with their cat, Sheba, or hiking in a national park.

Website: www.inkpotcreative.com
Instagram: @inkpotcreative

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Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
Inkpot Creative Brand Superpower Quiz
Case study blog post example from my own business
37 Blog Post Ideas For Wedding Pros
Download my Testimonials That Sell templates

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