How A Strategy Could Revolutionize Your Business
I’ve already established why you should not be “getting your name out there”. Getting your name out there targets no one in particular and is incredibly ineffective. It’s the same thing as the “spray and pray” technique where you blast your marketing to anyone with a pulse and a bank account. Not only is this ineffective, it wastes your time and your money and it’s going to leave you feeling frustrated.
You know that you need a strategy, but what does an effective strategy look like?
In order to illustrate what this looks like in action I interviewed wedding photographer Ross Dean about his strategy.
Ross was one of the first people to go through my Book More Weddings Academy, which is now part of The Wedding Business Collective. Over the years he has made a lot of progress and has really honed his strategy and his thinking about how to market to his ideal client.
How did you market your business when you first started?
My very first approach, like I think many others starting off was to try and just get as much work as possible. This was usually in the form of misplaced offers and low prices, which at the time seemed like the right thing to do, but in my experience it just meant that although the amount of leads that it invited was healthy, it was with all the wrong people and so the end result wasn’t profitable for my business at all. It just left me feeling like I was doing a ton of work for little or no return.
When did you make the shift from spray and pray marketing to having a strategy?
I suppose the shift came after looking at the results that I had achieved the previous year. Although I believed that my actual work was strong, the numbers were not aligning the right way and so I knew that I needed some guidance around some tried and tested ways that I could start again from scratch, to enable me to dig in to the research and create processes that gave me a profitable strategy.
Who is your ideal client?
A large part of the remodeling was constructing an accurate picture of my ideal client. For me, as someone who is very visual, I decided to create a picture of my ideal client. From their name, right down to their pastimes and likes and dislikes, I created this persona of my ideal client. From this I knew that I could refer any future marketing opportunity or idea to this picture in order to ask myself “would this person be interested in this?”. This approach gave me (and still does give me) an immediate yes or no to all the ideas or opportunities that have come my way and so it saves me a ton of time and money.
What do you do to attract your ideal clients?
The mistakes I made in the early days really just came down to me thinking too much like a photographer and not like my ideal client. I found that in order to successfully market to and generate leads that actually were my ideal clients, I needed to not just market my photography but also the lifestyle that would be aspirational and appealing to those I wanted to attract. For me today, some of my most effective marketing comes in the form of:
-Blog posts that give advice or information on non-photography topics, that compliment my brand (E.g “Things for couples to do in New York”)
-Creating shareable content. Another identifiable aspect of my ideal clients persona is that they are aspirational, go-getter types and so love to share positive messages via their social media. I connect to this by creating shareable quotes and images, which work really well.
When it comes to channels, I’m most active on Instagram and Facebook because according to my ideal client profile, that is where my ideal client hands out. I create graphics for my posts in Canva and share them with Post Planner. Post Planner allows me to make my posts evergreen by sharing them continuously at intervals that I’ve set. This is important because a person’s feed moves so fast, it’s almost certain that not everyone saw it the first time.
How did you come to decide to focus on these marketing activities?
After I had created the profile of my ideal client, the types of marketing activities really just became apparent. Of course, the law of averages says that all the ideas won’t work and so it’s been trial and error. It’s important that you go through that trial and error, not just in the beginning but throughout the life your business. You need to keep evolving.
What is your goal with these marketing activities?
They say that your brand needs to be seen by a prospective client around 7 or 8 times before they associate, build trust and get in touch when the time is right. I ensure that my marketing is a mix of things that attract potential clients in general and those that have a more specific focused goal.
Once you attract people and they come to your website, what happens next in your strategy?
Any marketing where the goal is to bring them back to the website will usually have a specific landing page that is tailored to the offer in the marketing. The main aim for me at this point is to gather a name and email address so that I can continue to market effectively and personally to their needs.
What do you do once people have signed up to your email list?
It depends on the type of lead, as I shoot both portrait and wedding work. In most instances a dedicated autoresponder email series kicks that has a specific schedule so that I can start to share helpful dedicated content that I feel will enhance the lead’s experience with me.
What is your strategy for turning interested potential clients into actual booked clients?
Just offering value. I am a big believer in that if you always go above and beyond with value to the prospective client, you’ll always be top of mind when the time is right for them to take the next step.
What advice would you give someone who is overwhelmed by their marketing options?
Block out an afternoon in your schedule, go to your nearest coffee shop with a pad and pen and start to sketch out the persona of your ideal client. I really believe that once this is done, down to every detail, the fog will lift and you’ll be so much more clear. Then, all the ideas and opportunities that come your way can be put up against this profile and you’ll immediately know if each one is a good fit.
Is there anything that has made the process of putting your strategy together easier?
Yes, giving yourself the time to focus. Focus on one thing, finish it, then move on to the next. I really believe that multitasking is a myth and for me, if I want to get the best out of my time, I need to make a concentrated effort working on each task or idea with my complete attention.
How do you feel about marketing your business now that you have a strategy in place?
I believe that putting the time in at the beginning will pay dividends in the future. I’m in a place now where I’m excited about how I can connect to awesome new clients, safe in the knowledge that the majority of the people I connect with going forward will be a great fit for my business.
There you have it! That’s what a strategy looks like as you create it and once you put it in place in your business. As you can see, it can really change things for you.
