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The Photography Sales Funnel Part Two: Generating Leads At The Front Of Your Funnel

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In part one of this series on the Sales Funnel, I related my story of how a photographer needs to look at the entire sales cycle in order to give it strength and work to grow a successful company over time.

The sales funnel is a systematic marketing process where you filter your prospects into customers, then refine them into raving fans that refer you again and again. But before you can build your base of raving fans, you have to attract high quality prospects at the top  of the funnel. This is where your marketing can really shine.

See You At The Top

The top of your sales funnel is the one area that requires the most experimentation. It’s the area where you can try different things, achieve different results, tweak it, and start all over again. There are limitless possibilities when it comes to how you can attract quality prospects, limited only by your imagination and your resources.

For many photographers, they immediately start with the more traditional ways of marketing: business cards, sales brochures, postcards, phone books, magazines, newspapers, etc. You can also dip into the higher priced marketing methods, such as expos, tradeshows, displays, billboards, etc

Thanks to the Internet, you can also find many methods to market and capture leads in the online world. Many people stay with the “free” concept, which can work. Things like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter can all work well if you have the time. Yet the Internet is filled with opportunities – most of which are a lot less expensive than traditional methods. Banner ads, ezine placements, pay per click advertising, blogging, podcasting, guest posting and many other Web 2.0 tools.

The method you use to drive prospects is optional. Yet your ultimate goal is to attract and qualify people that may at some point purchase from you further down the road – down your sales funnel. At this stage, you goal is to drop as many people as you can into the funnel, then use other mechanisms to qualify them and continue them down the path. [Read more...]

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The Photographers Sales Funnel

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Fundamental to the success of your photography business is the concept of the sales funnel. The sales funnel is key in defining the strategies needed to find prospects and turn them into clients over time. It also defines an effective referral program that keeps people coming in at all levels of your business.

Basic Sales Funnel Structure

When you are building your marketing and sales strategies, your ultimate goal is to bring in paying customers. Yet in order to do so, you have various steps in order to accomplish your goal.

The sales funnel begins by capturing the attention of prospects out in the marketplace looking for what you have to offer. Some are intrigued and want to learn more. Some are just starting the process and have no expectations. Some are ready to book and become clients. And a little of everything in between. The purpose of the sales funnel is to allow a prospect to “drop” in at whatever level they are currently at and provide them with what they need to go to the next step.

By the end of the process the funnel has successfully captured the ultra-responsive customers who have purchased from you again and again, love what you do, and enjoy sending you other clients as well. This is where great businesses make the majority of their profits – they find raving customers that love what they do and are willing to promote you to everyone they know.

Let me show you how it works.

The Sales Funnel

If you’ve been online for awhile, or even studied marketing, you have probably heard of the sales funnel. It has a variety of ways of looking at it, depending on your industry and how you wish to attract clients.

When we first started our business, we knew we had to reach out to clients in a variety of methods. With wedding photography, very few brides and grooms think about wedding photography until the moment they become engaged; then they are thrown head first into a whirlwind of planning.

The top of the funnel isn’t meant to sell to a prospective couple; instead its meant to educate them. Websites are the perfect marketing tool because you can provide as much content as you can and leave it up to the couple to decide how much they need. Some will spend 10 minutes going through 10 pages; some will spend 10 hours going through hundreds of pages.

While photographs are great – you are a photographer, what else would a prospective client want to see – remember they are in it for the education as well. A prospective wedding client has never planned a wedding before. They might not be thinking about sunset times for their 7pm wedding in October – and how you really can’t capture detail when the ceremony is outside in the dark. That’s a perfect thing to educate them on.

Or how long it truly takes to photograph formals. If they have large families and want a lot of groupings, it will take far longer than if they rely solely on photojournalism to capture the moments. [Read more...]

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Get Creative With Your Marketing: How Others Are Using Pinterest

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Pinterest is definitely looking like it will be the social media darling of 2012 if the first month of the year is any indication. Not only has it found its way into the top 10 websites in the social media category, its also scoring over 40 times the number of total visits in had just six months ago.

Dig Deeper: How To Boost Your Photography Business With Pinterest

The site is perfect for photographers because its target market user group is women between the ages of 25 and 44, and it’s a visual media form. Early users of this site were brides to be, as they could develop numerous pinboards for every aspect of their wedding, from planning the decorations to choosing wedding attire. Now we’re seeing a wide variety of visual businesses use Pinterest on a regular basis, from photographers to graphic designers and other artisans. If you are in a visual field, Pinterest is the place to be.

Pinterest is all about eye candy. Its about creating things in such a way that people are attracted to it and like or pin it themselves – over and over again. The more likes or pins, the more traffic.

The first step is creating your Pin Boards. Be creatively descriptive when designing your boards:

Think visual – how do you want to showcase different ideas within your business?

Tell the story – as a photographer, you can share ideas from beginning to end. Tell stories all the time and let your followers discover more depth to what you have to offer.

Stretch to show your expertise – its not all about you. When you discover other sites, resources, images that convey your ideas, don’t be afraid to share them.

Consistency is the key – just like every other social site you ever used, you have to be consistent both in your posting schedule and with what you are posting.

The second step is pinning to your boards: [Read more...]

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Photography Is Emotional: Make Them Laugh, Make Them Cry

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People hate being sold to. But they love to buy.

People don’t buy with their heads; they buy with their hearts. All decisions are based on emotion. If you use emotion to sell what people want – not what you think they want – you’ll have success every time.

Yes, all of this is actually true. And in reality it’s the heart of being an entrepreneur; master this thought process and you’ll run a successful business.

We all fundamentally make our decisions based on emotion. We don’t NEED the new pair of pants or the new television for the living room. Yet when emotion kicks in, we can talk ourselves into anything.

“I’m going to interview for the new job and my old pants are worn out. This pair will make me feel more professional, and more importantly, look more professional. I HAVE to have them to get this job.”

Yep, its all down hill from there. Once your emotions start kicking in and you begin reasoning with yourself on why you need something, you may as well hand over the credit card.

While I’m sure you can think of dozens of examples where you played the emotion game with yourself, its not something you alone play. Its actually one of the greatest strategies a sales person can learn. If a business owner markets without emotion, he will undoubtedly fail every time. But when you learn to develop just a few methods of selling with emotion, you’re sales rate will increase. And you’ll have a lot more fun in your business. [Read more...]

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8 DIY Publicity Tasks You Must Do Now

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If you are in business for yourself, you must do every task necessary for your business. That includes everything from photographing your clients to taking out the trash. You don’t get to pick and choose what you want to do; instead everything is equally important when it comes to building a success business.

Which means every business owner must be a self promoter too – unless you have the ability to pay someone else to do it. If that’s not you, spreading the word is your task. Not to be confused with marketing, publicity gets others talking about you. And while many people think publicity comes with age – only the more established, more profitable companies need to worry about publicity – in fact its great to build your PR plan as early as possible.

Here are some ideas to help you develop a strong publicity program.

1. Choose what media outlets you would like to be featured in

What do you want out of your publicity? Are you trying to prove your expertise? Or are you trying to attract new clients? People look to articles in magazines as more authoritative than those that place ads. If you’re in an article, you must have something to say. Find a few sources where you would like to be featured and start gathering contact information. In order to pitch an article, you’ll need either a writer/reporter or the editor, depending on the size of the publication. Make sure you get contact information: names, email, addresses, web addresses. In many cases if you head online, you’ll find specific information for submitting ideas. I keep an excel file filled with this information, so its easy to create things and get them into the appropriate hands immediately.

2. Use resources like HARO

Want a great way to get to reporters looking for you? Try out a service like HARO – Help A Reporter Out. Sign up for their free service and you’ll be put on the mailing list in which you’ll receive emails three times a day listing opportunities. Follow up on the ones that you connect with and will bring you in potential exposure to your client base. While you can start with their free service – I’ve been using it for years – they also have pay models in which you can build profiles, filter your alert and even get a head start on responding. [Read more...]

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Spending Millions To Promote A Dying Industry

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Last night we were watching a little TV and a commercial came on I couldn’t help but notice.

It was for a major yellow pages business. They were advertising their services, stating they could help a variety of buisnesses in many manners. They could provide you with a host of advertising methods, including the hard copy phone book and online resources. What really caught my eye was the industries they were targeting: weddings. They were speaking directly to people within the wedding industry, venues, planners, photographers, etc, stating they could help you reach out to your potential customers and give you top results with the people who are looking for you.

Really?

I’m sure a ton of people buy into this. I know they do; I meet them all the time.

Yet if you take the time to think about it, you can quickly see why this is a complete waste of money and time.

Lets start with a target market. If you are targeting weddings, predominately you are targeting people 20-ish to 40-ish. 20 somethings grew up with computers and utilize technology every day. Even 40 somethings have spent most of their adult lives using technology and probably have a good understanding of how to capture information.

I seriously doubt if most of this audience has a phone book in their homes. And I also doubt if they head online, and go to the yellow pages directory to find what they are looking for. They Google what they want and rely on natural search results.

Which brings me to my next point. The yellow pages company offers online services in the form of pay per clicks. They will offer you a great package deal in which you get a listing in the phone book, a custom site they control, and lots of traffic they buy using pay per click technology. If you pay, you get the traffic. If you don’t, its gone immediately. And even if you do pay, its in the form of sponsored ads – yep, those great little ads you see on the side of your search results. Do people click on them? Yes. But in a lot less frequency then they do a great position on the natural placement.

So are you better off spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on advertising with old, traditional methods that don’t have much weight in your target community?

Or are you better off spending time learning how to capture natural placement, spending a small amount of money increasing your understanding of online marketing?

Before you jump into any type of advertising, think first. Make sure your clientele uses whatever you are thinking about investing in. Make sure they rely on it as a resource. If you’re not sure, ask.

Then make a smart, informed decision. Go to where your audience is. Never expect them to come to you.

The more you give them what they want, the more business you will attract.

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3 Trends You Should Be Using In Your Own Sales Techniques

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Its no secret that people are less accepting of more traditional types of sales methods and marketing. How many people truly use a yellow pages anymore, or trust an ad they see in a newspaper? The percentages are dwindling rapidly.

But one thing will always remain true.

People hate being sold to. But they love to buy.

Because they hate being sold to, its more important than ever to use current marketing methods that will give your potential customers exactly what they want; without feeling like they’ve been speaking with a used car salesperson.

Attract in great numbers, then focus on filtering

When you’re in business for yourself, its easy to fall into the trap of wanting to “book” every person you talk with. Yet that isn’t reality. If you book every person you talk with, you’re actually doing things wrong. You’re prices are definitely way too low. And you probably haven’t defined your product enough to make it exclusive so that you attract a certain kind of clientele.

Yet through all of your marketing methods, it is good to drive a large amount of traffic to your business, then selectively choose the ones that are right for you. Its called funneling your prospects.

Dig Deeper: The Photographers Marketing Funnel

Funneling can actually work in two ways.

First, through all of your marketing, you can drive customers into a marketing pattern in which they learn more about you. It may be through a marketing campaign in which you mail out postcards regularly, or online as a part of a drip campaign with email marketing. Only a select few will really like what you do, calling you to book a session.

Second, once you have customers in your business as a paying client, you can funnel them to other areas of your business. A business portrait client can turn into a baby portrait client, and from there a family portrait client. You simply move them from one part of your business to another by keeping them in the know of what you do.

In either case, its all about focus. Bring people in; then focus on how to convert them into clients. Again and again. [Read more...]

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Why You Should Not Be SEOing Your Website

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If you have an active blog for your photography business, chances are you’ve read all you can about SEO. If you’re going to write day after day to try and attract new clientele, you might as well make sure the search engines love it, right?

And while I agree SEO may still have a place in your overall business marketing model, if you’re doing it the “old school” way, you’re probably not having much success. Here’s why.

[If you’re just getting started with SEO, here’s a great place to start: Best SEO Practices and Tips For Your Photography Business.]

Traditional SEO

People that follow the “old school” method of SEO love to use keywords. They fill up their titles, meta tags, descriptions and content with as many keywords as they possibly can.

If you look at the title of their blog posts, they look something like this:

Wedding Photography California: Jim and Kelley – Engagement Photos at Laguna Beach

Or something along this line of thinking. Then if you hover over the photographs they’ve included in the post to see the meta tags, you’ll find something like this:

Jim and Kelley Engagement Photos in Laguna Beach California Wedding Photography Wedding Photographer John Smith with Smith Photography Inc Image 1

And of course as you read through the post, you’ll find those same keywords listed again and again. And again.

Its enough to make you back out as fast as you can. And its enough to make Google back away as well.

While this “old school” method of SEOing may have worked in the past, Google has been watching these sites for years. And they’ve decided that they have less value than a site that speaks directly to their audience. So they weight them differently, don’t give them top value, and throw the ranking down below those that are concentrating on quality rather than keyword stuffing.

What To Do Instead

Whether you’ve been doing this type of SEOing for months, or have recently read about it and were thinking of adopting this strategy this year, think again.

Instead, focus in on what you can do to make your content that much richer; that much more valuable to the people that want to read it.

Start with your domain name. If the word “photography” is already in your domain name, it will be a part of every page you create. And while you can use it as a keyword, its not necessary to over use it.

Create motivating titles. People like stories. So start the story with a great title.

A Fun Day At Laguna Beach Celebrating The Engagement of Jim and Kelley

Regulars to your blog will be instantly attracted to a title like that because it concentrates on what it is “engagement” and where “Laguna Beach”.

From there, you can really play it up.

How To Get Romantic: Jason and Crystal Showed Us How Its Done

and

Fun In The Sand: Did You Ever Think An Engagement Shoot Could Be Like This?

That’s where the interaction comes in. That’s where people come back to your blog again and again because they love what you have to say AND what you produce.

Tag your photos the right way. Then tag your photographs with an appropriate tag for the post. You don’t have to tag the photo with your name, the business name, unless it’s a photo of you. Instead, focus in on what it’s a photo of: [Read more...]

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Thinking of Updating Your Website? Ask These 3 Questions First

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What’s on your to-do list this year for your business? Have you decided to update your current website and give it a fresh new look?

Before you take any action, keep these three things in mind.

1. Who visits your website?

How did you design your current website? Chances are you found a designer ( or did it yourself), used a template or theme that was suggested to you, added your colors and style, and put information in much like everyone else does. In other words, your site probably looks like everyone else’s with little thought as to why it ended up that way.

Its an easy trap to fall into. And while it may seem logical to fill a website with information about you and conform with the industry standard, that may not be the best thing for your business.

Businesses have different goals and different clientele. They have different demographics and different ways of connecting with visitors. And without taking that into consideration when you design, you’re leaving out a lot of opportunity. [Read more...]

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The Worst Way To Start Your Presentations

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Have you ever thought of why you are closer to some people than others? Chances are it’s the way they interact with you.

Imagine you are out on a date. You sit down at a restaurant and order drinks. Then the conversation begins.

If your date starts out listing his good qualities, what he did today, what his goals are, “blah blah blah”. You’ll quickly find a way to bring this date to a close.

What makes a great date is the interaction and the equal care and concern for you as well. If the same person started with a question instead of listing his good qualities, you’ll be more engaged and more willing to open up and find out more about his person. “How was your day?” can go a long way.

When it comes to dating and building friendships, most people understand the rules of engagement. They understand the give and take concept.

But when it comes to the business world, it quickly falls apart. [Read more...]

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