Recorded: Welcome to the ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers to uniquely brand, profitably price, and confidently sell their best work. Allison has been doing just that for the last 15 years, and she’s proven that it’s possible to create unforgettable art and run a portrait business that supports your family and your dreams. All it takes is a little ReWork. Episodes will include interviews with experts from in and outside of the photo industry, many workshops, and behind-the-scenes secrets that Allison uses in her portrait studio every single day. She will challenge your thinking and inspire your confidence to create a profitable, sustainable portrait business you love through continually refining and reworking your business. Let’s do the ReWork.
Allison Tyler Jones: Hi friends, and welcome back to The ReWork, and a welcome especially to the 100th episode of the ReWork podcast. It’s really exciting to have made it this far, and I have you, our listeners, to thank for listening and our many guests for lending their expertise. It’s been a crazy two years of crafting information with one goal in mind. That is to help portrait photographers uniquely brand, profitably price, and confidently sell your best work. So with that in mind, I wanted our 100th episode to be dedicated to you, our listeners, and one of our very most requested topics is of course, comes as no surprise, it’s marketing. It is the shiny new thing that we all love to chase. We love to hear about new ways to get our message out. Social media tricks, marketing funnels, SEO optimization. The list is endless. And we know the methods change with technology, but the core principles of what we’re putting into that marketing remain the same, because we’re all human beings talking to other human beings. We all want to get noticed and get our name out there.
Allison Tyler Jones: What I hear most often from photographers is, “I just need more clients,” or, “I need new clients.” If we’re really smart, we know we need to get noticed by the right people, the best people for our particular business. And in today’s episode, 100th episode, I’m going to talk about how to do just that. I’m going to share 10 ways to 10x your marketing, and last time I checked, 10 times 10 equals 100, so that’s math that even I can do. 10 marketing ideas that have changed my marketing from a spray and pray attempt to get anyone and everyone, to a targeted intentional effort that speaks to and attracts the very best clients for my business. So, we’re going to start with number 10 and we’re going to count it down.
Allison Tyler Jones: Number 10 is clarity and communication. I’m going to quote my friend Ann Handley. She said, “Words matter. Your words, what you say and the style, how you say it, are your most cherished and yet undervalued assets.” And I couldn’t agree more because every written communication that you have with a client is marketing, and it’s either supporting your brand or it’s it. Dashing off texts and email without proofreading it first is a recipe for disaster. We misspell our clients’ names, we’re doing voice to text that don’t make any sense. Not thinking through and making sure that each message is as clear and concise as possible is doing damage. Now, I’m sure many of you have heard about the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors. The very first part of that Hippocratic Oath is first, do no harm.
Allison Tyler Jones: That really means something like less is more. Let the body heal itself. Maybe we don’t need to go in there poking with a knife or a needle or whatever if the body can heal itself, and marketing is no different. Slowing down, taking a minute to check a message before you send it or an ad or a social media post and asking yourself, “Am I communicating what I really want to say?” Maybe you’re having a fraught communication with a difficult client and you get a little bit snippy in your communication. Is that really what you want to communicate? So when you do this right, when you communicate clearly and concisely, what you’re saying to your clients is, “We’ve got this. We know what we’re doing, and we’ve got you. We’re not going to waste your time. It’s clear what we do and what we don’t do,” so this might be something like text on your website, social media posts about anything from behind the scenes to an installation, whatever it is that you’re putting out there. It’s clear what you do and what you don’t do.
Allison Tyler Jones: Communicating clearly also builds trust and eliminates worry in your clients’ minds when you’re asking higher prices. Your clients feel that their trust is well-placed, that they’re in good hands with a photographer who has a process for how all of this is going to work. Now, not all of us are writers, and if you aren’t a good writer or you worry about your spelling, there are resources available to help you, and I’m going to give you some of those, some of my very favorites. My number one favorite book about writing is by Ann Handley. That’s H-A-N-D-L-E-Y, Ann Handley, and it’s Everybody Writes by Ann Handley. And she just came out with a revised edition that has a lot more great information in it, but that is one of my very, very favorite books. If you only read one book about writing, read Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes. I’m going to link to this in the show notes.
Allison Tyler Jones: Her other book, Content Rules, How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, eBooks, Webinars and More That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business, also great, but start with Everybody Writes. That’s the core. Another resource that I love, I discovered a few years ago, is grammarly.com. So that’s G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L y.com. Grammarly.com. It’s a resource for writers, and it’s a plugin basically that you can plug into your Google Docs or anything that you’re writing on your computer, and it doesn’t just spell-check your work, but it suggests grammar fixes and also cleans up and makes your writing more concise, so that if you’re using a lot of articles or in-between words that are just too long and too confusing, it will clean that up for you. Highly recommend grammarly.com. I will link to that as well.
Allison Tyler Jones: Another great tool that is new on the scene and there’s a big buzz about is the AI, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT. And I’ve heard friends and people talking about, “Oh yeah, I’m just doing my blog post with ChatGPT. It’s so much easier. I just put in a topic and it writes the blog post for me.” I don’t think it’s quite that great yet, but what I find really helpful with ChatGPT is that as a creative, I can go down all kinds of rabbit holes and I love to get a deep dive in one particular topic, but it’s harder for me to come up with a structure. So you can go into ChatGPT and say, “Write a blog post for a portrait photographer about how to take better holiday photos,” and literally in two seconds, it will come up with an outline for you and it will be very general, but I find that it’s so much easier to start with an outline, the skeleton, if you will, and be able to put some meat on the bones rather than to start from the very beginning.
Allison Tyler Jones: So ChatGPT is great for you could say, “Make an Instagram caption about behind the scenes of photographing children,” and just see what it comes up with. And then you can just keep asking it different things to make it better and better and better, but it will at least give you a starting point. So, Everybody Writes, grammarly.com, ChatGPT. Those are three really great resources for cleaning up your writing, making it concise, making you a better writer.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now, number nine, I want you to define more. So when you say, “I want more clients, I need more clients, I need more new clients,” what is more? We need to be setting specific goals for our marketing so that we know if we’re being successful or not. Instead of I need more or I need new clients, can we be more specific? Not knowing your numbers are a sure way to keep us feeling defeated and as though we’re not making any progress. More is not a number. So how many new clients do you want this year? How many new clients can you even serve this year? How many of your existing clients are going to return? Have you looked at that number? I would highly suggest that you do. Look at last year’s calendar and see how many sessions did you photograph. Do you know how many of those were returned clients? Most of us aren’t high -volume businesses, so this is something that you could do very quickly. How many of the clients were new? And do the math and get a percentage.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I stopped writing this outline and I went, and what I did is I went onto the folder onto my server that has all of our client image files in it, and I just counted how many clients there were. And I deducted the free pro bono sessions, deducted the files in there that weren’t actual clients, and it took me 20 minutes. I looked at the client folders, counted how many sessions we did, and then I added up, put them into two columns, the new versus the existing clients. So what I found is that return clients comprise 75% of our business in 2022. I did 2022. And that’s up from a few years ago. I think we were running right about 60% return clients, and the new clients were 25%. So with an average of 100 clients per year, which is what we generally just stay, right at 100 clients per year, that’s 75 return clients and 25 new clients.
Allison Tyler Jones: So my marketing, in my business, is number one focus on bringing back existing clients, because these are people who are gold. They already love us, they’ve exchanged their value, their hard-earned money, with our value, for portraits of their portraits in their beautiful home, and they are part of the ATJ family. So these clients get first dibs on our calendar. They get first choice of anything new that we’re doing. When we run a promotion, they get the notice first. I absolutely hate it when I support a business and they give all the love to only new clients. It’s a huge mistake to chase after new clients and it actually repels good, loyal customers. If you don’t have something in place for them. If they don’t feel the love that their loyalty and their coming back again and again is not appreciated, they’re going to go elsewhere or they’re simply not going to feel the love from you.
Allison Tyler Jones: I know that none of you want that, but that’s what happens when we’re continually just chasing after new or this nebulous more. However, we know that we need a constant stream of new clients coming in to keep our businesses healthy. We need that certain percentage of new, so how do we define that number? Well, for my business, it’s 25 new clients per year, and that’s much easier to get my head around than just more. I would add that I also want those 25 clients to be well-qualified. I don’t want just any 25 clients. These are people that are going to become part of the ATJ family. We are going to spend a lot of time together during the creation of their wall art, so I want them to be a good fit so that I’m happy and they’re happy, that everybody in the experience is well-informed and having a great time and super excited to work the way that we work. So instead of just 25 new clients, I want 25 well-qualified, new family portrait clients. That’s more specific, isn’t it? So who are these 25 clients and how do we magically get them?
Allison Tyler Jones: That takes us to marketing idea number eight, speak to someone. Okay, so when you are writing an ad or when you are posting something on social media, I want you to be thinking about those 25 clients that you want to bring into your world, that you’re thinking of a specific person. Remember, we want 25 well-qualified people who want family portraits. I know that the quality of my business is only as good as the quality of my clients. So after a lot of experience, I’ve learned who that person is and who she’s not. Who she’s not is a do-it-yourselfer who’s looking for a bunch of digital files so that she can do all the work. And who she’s also not is someone who’s focused solely on price. Now, everybody’s focused on price to a degree. I don’t care how much money you have. But if that is the number one, two, three, four, top 10 concerns, then I’m not going to be a good fit because there are cheaper ways that somebody can get imagery of their family then coming to me.
Allison Tyler Jones: What those top 25 ideal clients are looking for is they want somebody who has a process, that’s got this figured out for them. They are busy and time starved, so they’re running their kids to 55 different lessons. They are busy, busy, busy. They don’t have time to be doing it themselves. They want an amazing experience. They want the whole thing handled beginning to end, and they want a relationship with a photographer that’s going to capture their family over a period of time, conceptualize what we’re doing this year, but also have a plan going forward. My best client wants wall art for her home, even though she might not know this yet. So when she’s a new client, she doesn’t know what she wants yet. So I don’t have people magically coming to me saying, “Oh my gosh, I want big wall art for my wall.” They don’t always know that.
Allison Tyler Jones: They just know that they’re busy. They want their kids documented. They’re irrationally in love with their kids. They love them, they love design, and they want something more elevated and interesting and cool of their kids. She loves her family. She really sees their personality and the differences between her kids, and she wants those things captured. And like I said before, she’s into design, likes to decorate and spend money on her home. So when I’m creating a marketing message, again, whether it’s a social media post or an actual formal ad going in a print magazine or something like that, I am talking to this specific person. Each and every message is geared to her. So I’m not just talking about pretty images and how they’re captured. I’m talking about where those images are going to hang in her home or where they will live in an album.
Allison Tyler Jones: My ideal client is busy with kids and family. She knows that time is flying by and she wants to capture every moment she can. She loves pictures, her words, and wants art of her family on the walls of her home, but in an elevated way, not what everyone else has. She wants it handled, doesn’t want to deal with the details of what to capture each year and where it will go. She doesn’t actually know though that she needs this until we meet or she reads about it on my Instagram feed. But when she sees that solution to the problem she didn’t even know she had, she knows where to get it, with me. So before you dash off your next social media post, think about who you’re talking to, a specific person, that ideal client we all hear about, and speak to her. Her needs, her problems, her dreams, the dreams that she didn’t even know that she had.
Allison Tyler Jones: My next idea is what to do with that information about your clients or leads once you collect it, and that’s idea number seven is to create a database. So before your eyes glaze over, because now we’re talking about non-sexy things, stay with me. Your database of clients is your business. That is the value of your business. That is the golden goose of your business is your database. Collecting this information allows you to know things like, where are my best clients coming from? So you can do more of that. Where are the not a good fit for us clients coming from? So you can do less of that. And your database can be a CRM, customer relationship management software, or it can be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet.
Allison Tyler Jones: Now, in episode 81 of our podcast, Selling and Streamlining with Software, that’s a really good episode talking about different CRM software, how they work, what might be best for your portrait studio. So if you’re in the middle of trying to select a CRM software, maybe you’re thinking about changing your CRM software. Episode 81 is a great one to listen to for a deep dive on that topic. But regardless of the method that you use, and we use both methods – we use a CRM software called Stratus or Studio Plus, and then we also use Excel spreadsheets – we want to collect as much information about our clients as we can and keep that current. We use this database all year long and we keep track of our clients and contact them for any current promotions or to schedule their sessions for the year.
Allison Tyler Jones: Another resource I have for you in this area is the book, The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz. I will link in the show notes. He has a free resource on his website, which is the Pumpkin Plan Spreadsheet, and it’s an Excel spreadsheet and it grades your clients. It allows you to grade your clients, and this is regardless of the business that you have. I know some people are listening to this podcast who have businesses that are not portrait photographers. But specifically, for those of us who are, it allows you to rate your clients in interesting ways. Rather than just by the top-line revenue of how much money they’re bringing in, it allows you to rate them on how easy they are to deal with, how often they refer others to you, and you put a grade to each of these areas. There’s a lot of them. And then you sort it and it gives you a really, really good view of your top clients.
Allison Tyler Jones: When I look at that list and I look at that top 20 people, those are the clients that I want to build my entire business around, that if I am thinking of a new product or I’m thinking of a promotion, I’m thinking, will these 20 people like it? Because if they like it, then everybody else is going to love it, but this is going to be spoiling and making sure that we’re taking care of our very best clients. But unless we know who they are, unless we have a database that tells us who those people are, we’re shooting in the dark, which brings us to number six.
Allison Tyler Jones: Follow up using your database. So this means the services we offer, any promotions or new products are considered with our best clients in mind. So that is a different way of working than just adding a paragraph to your already too-long contract, another paragraph about something that some client did that made you mad. So rather than trying to come up with policies to put people who have wronged you in a box and make them not wrong you or protect yourself, put down the fence, put down the policies, and instead pick up your database. Rate those clients. Look at who your best clients are, and scheme and dream amazing new things for them.
Allison Tyler Jones: A much more fun way of doing business is what would my best clients love? Rather than how can I make sure this bad thing that just happened with this client never happens again, what would my best clients love? Maybe they’d like a family session each year for the holidays, but a cool spring session concept for just their kids and their pets. When you see a new product at a trade show and think about how cute those acrylic blocks would be in the bookcases of your best client’s home library, that’s the kind of thing that you need to be thinking about is thinking about those specific people and what they would love, because you’ve listened to them and you’ve heard what they’re saying. You get the idea.
Allison Tyler Jones: We also use our database to book our calendar. If we waited for our clients to call us, our calendar would be pretty sparse because our clients are busy and they rely on us to tell them when it’s time to come back and why, and what the concept will be, and where this next session’s portraits will hang in the overall plan in their home. So before we were actively calling our clients, our calendar was feast or famine. We’d have long spaces of no one and nothing, and then suddenly in October, the phone would start to ring and we’d try to figure out how to fit everyone in November and still get them what they needed for Christmas. And we were running around way too busy, not able to give each client an individualized and really great experience, so we were shooting ourselves in the foot. It was too crazy because we weren’t planning ahead.
Allison Tyler Jones: If you’re a portrait photographer, you know the next few months are going to be crazy. This is our busy season, and how to make the most of that busy season is to make sure that our client communication is in order, that we are not having clients showing up with the wrong clothing, that we are not having clients shocked in our sales appointments by our pricing and needing to go home and measure or going home and asking their husband, and then sales burning down and our clients not getting what they need and we not being able to build a sustainable business. So how are we going to make sure that this season is the most successful that it possibly can be?
Allison Tyler Jones: Well, it starts by getting on the same page with your clients so that nothing is left to chance. And how I’ve done this is that I’ve spent the last 13 years revising my own internal consultation form, which by the way, you can download the consultation form that I use in my business absolutely free. But I realized, after tweaking that form for about 13 years, that I needed something more, and it wasn’t just a pretty brochure and it wasn’t a price list with no context. Because we all know you can send a price list to somebody and they’re still shocked by the price because they never looked at it or they have no idea what those prices even mean. It’s happened to all of us.
Allison Tyler Jones: What I realized is I needed a single printed piece for my client to take away with them that would leave nothing to chance and that it would allow me to educate my clients about the price range of my products. It would help them to understand what we would and wouldn’t be shooting for during their portrait session, like actually creating a game plan for what is it that we’re actually going to be shooting for and let’s prioritize that. And then also something that would allow the clients to feel confident about selecting the clothing for their session, and a printed piece that would allow them to share with their spouse and be able to put together the game plan for their session.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I needed it to be part brochure, part getting ready guide, part last-minute checklist, and part consultation form, because my consultation form was internal. I was keeping that form, but I wanted this printed piece to go with my clients and I wanted it to be sexy and good-looking and that they felt completely and totally cared for. So I wanted all of this in a single booklet that the client would take with them at the end of their consultation. Now, I’ve been using this, I created about five years ago. It’s called the ATJ Game Plan Booklet, and I started off by using it in my studio and I’ve been revising it for the last five years. And now for the first time ever, I’m offering it to the ReWork community to use in your portrait studio.
Allison Tyler Jones: So, what’s included in that? In this course, it’s a little mini course, not a big long course, there’s a video lesson with me on how to use the game plan booklet in your consultation. You will also have a video recording of an actual client consultation with me and a client using the booklet in real time. And then you’ll have layered PSD files of the game plan booklet that we use in our studio every day as well as a PDF version of the latest and greatest ATJ consultation form.
Allison Tyler Jones: So all of that is included for just a one-time payment of 295. Just 295 to completely change the way that you interact with your clients, the information that they have, how taken care of they feel by making things transparent to them, putting together the game plan for the session so that everybody’s on the same page. We all know what we’re shooting for, we know how much it’s going to cost, they know what to wear. Everybody’s on the same page. This is the document, this is the booklet, that has changed my business, and I want you to have it too if it works for you. So go to dotherework.com/gameplan, that’s dotherework.com/gameplan, and download that booklet and start using it in your business this busy season. I know that the game plan booklet will be a game-changer for your business.
Allison Tyler Jones: Which brings us to number five, is to create a plan. I would suggest scheduling marketing time into every week. And I don’t love discipline. I don’t love consistency. I’m just like you, probably undiagnosed ADD and always chasing the shiny thing. But I find that if I schedule some marketing time into every week, even if it’s just an hour, to think about my best clients and what they need, I use that time to maybe gather data just like that 20-minute exercise I just told you about. Like, “Hey, I wonder how many of our clients last year were new versus how many were existing.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And I thought I knew, I thought that it was about 60%, but it was actually more. It was 75% were existing. That doesn’t take that long to do. It’s really back of the napkin math. You can do it with a simple calculator and you can get the data that you need and then make some decisions going forward. You can set up your database. You can make contact with other businesses that you’ve been wanting to co-market with. You can create or schedule blog posts or social media posts. I find that my marketing time is often spent looking at my client list, and really thinking about each of those people as individuals and what they need. So thinking about, okay, last year with the Wepfer Family, they did jewel-toned clothes. It was very, very dressy, and we did dark and moody portraits.
Allison Tyler Jones: So what are we going to do this year? What’s going to be fun for them this year, that’s going to look good on their wall, that will coordinate with what we already have? And then what’s the concept for the holiday card? So those are the kinds of things that I’m thinking about. And then I’m texting them saying, “This is what I’m thinking about. This is what I think we should be doing, and let’s go ahead and get you booked for August so that it’s done before the busy season starts.”
Allison Tyler Jones: Which brings me to idea number four, is to anticipate your client’s needs. So in every interaction with your clients, whether it’s the first phone call, that consultation, during the portrait session itself, during the sales appointment, during your delivery or installation process, any interaction with a client, listen to what they are and observe what they are not saying. What do they constantly complain about? What is hard for them but easy for you? So things like selecting outfits, getting that coordinated, getting dad or the boys on board, worry about difficult kids. Are their kids going to behave? Worry about hair and makeup. Where can they get that done? About, “Well, I don’t even know what I want to document this year. I don’t know what our concept is for this year. My kids are driving me crazy. They’re in their awkward phase. They aren’t really that cute anymore, so then should I even bother?” Or, “It’s hard to get everybody together. The younger kids are at home, but the older kids are away. Should we even bother?”
Allison Tyler Jones: And then to the other questions of, “I’m running out of wall space. What do I do now? Where are these going to go?” I find that our best clients are willing to pay money to save time, so they will pay to have their kids documented as art in their home, to preserve their kids’ childhood, to save the aggravation of having to figure it all out for themselves. And in a very real way, we are the keepers of our clients’ memories and the keeper of the family gallery, and where those images are going to hang now and where they’re going to hang later. Each year in our studio, I want to brainstorm how to add something positive to their experience with us, however small, that will make their lives easier and more enjoyable. And so what I want to encourage you when I’m talking about this is those of you who might be newer in your business and you’re thinking, oh my gosh, there’s just so many things that I need to do. I’m so overwhelmed. You don’t have to do everything all at once. You could every year just add something new.
Allison Tyler Jones: So one of the early things that we added, I had this great candy jar that a client gave me that had. We put bubblegum balls in the top of it and suckers, and it turned around and everybody loved that. It became like this signature thing. And then a couple of years later, I have this shelf in the front office and we added candy jars to one shelf, and then a couple of years later, I added another shelf. And then I started thinking about, okay, what do I want to do for kids that are a little bit older? And so we started coming up with ideas of, okay, if they didn’t want candy, what would they want? And it just went from there. So now when you walk into my studio and we have all of these layers of experience from a VIP parking sign to a handwritten chalkboard sign with the kids’ names on it, to candy, to all of these things, you might look at that and go, oh my gosh, I’m overwhelmed. I couldn’t possibly come up with all of that.
Allison Tyler Jones: But every year, if you just add one new little thing, it doesn’t have to be a big thing, it makes their experience richer and it gives them something to look forward to every year. I think of Drake Buse in Salt Lake City. He has this lovely outdoor shooting area, and he has an employee who loves to garden. And so every year they add just one little area with some new little garden feature that they can shoot on. And over the years, they have this amazing garden shooting area. Now, they didn’t do all of that all at once. They just added a little bit over time, and it becomes exponentially more exciting and more valuable as an experience to a client. So it’s not one big thing that you do once and then it’s done. It’s the constant iteration, the constant attention to your best clients’ needs.
Allison Tyler Jones: And all those things, all those little things, add up to a rock solid brand of care and trust, which brings us to number three, your brand filter. So before you do anything in your business, now that we’ve talked about seven things, before you do anything, you want to run it through your brand filter. In my course, The Art of Selling Art, we have an entire module on creating your unique brand filter based on your style, how you work, what you want out of your business and your life, and what your best clients need. So before you put up a social media post, before you offer a new product, before you do any of the things that I’ve mentioned in these earlier ideas, it’s important to run this through your brand filter first. In other words, everything you’re doing needs to be intentional and on purpose. You aren’t running a promo just because someone else did and it looked interesting.
Allison Tyler Jones: You’re thinking about the why behind everything and the kind of experience that you want your client to have when they interact with that. Just remember, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it. If selling digital files doesn’t fit your brand, then don’t do it. If mini sessions doesn’t fit your brand, then don’t do it. If the new product the lab just released doesn’t perfectly suit your work or your brand, don’t do it. We recently had Gregory and Lisa Daniel on the podcast again in episode 97, and they had some great examples about how they run ideas through their own brand filter, and that’s episode 97 called Erasing the Board. Highly recommend. If you haven’t listened to that, go back and listen to that. So running ideas through your brand filter requires you to know who you are, but also to know what your client really needs.
Allison Tyler Jones: And in order to even see what those needs are brings us to idea number two, which is to slow down and make it special. Now, I know when you wear all the hats in your business, an interaction with a client can feel like just one more thing on a to-do list that needs to get checked off. But when you think about it from the client’s perspective, this is something special that they don’t do very often, and especially if it’s their first time with you, they might be unsure about how much it’s going to cost, unsure if they’re even going to look good in the photos. Do you even know what you’re doing? If their kids or husbands will behave? All the list of the things they’re worried about, we talked about when anticipating our client’s needs. So there’s a lot of worries, a lot of concerns. And no matter where you go, it seems like everyone is in a big fat hurry, and our clients are experiencing this hurried world as well.
Allison Tyler Jones: So how do we stand out? Well, we have to slow down. I like to think about if this was the only time this client was ever going to have their family photographed in their lives, how would you treat them? How would you explain the process to them? What kind of experience would you prepare for them? I think of a client that called with a devastating request. His wife had recently been diagnosed with end-stage liver cancer and wasn’t expected to live very long. She still had her hair, she had not started chemo yet, and he wanted to gift her and his children a last family portrait with her. Now, I get chills even talking about this or thinking about this. This was such an honor, such a sacred privilege to do this. That experience made me really slow down and look at these people and think, when she’s gone, what are they going to wish they had a portrait of? What are they going to wish they had?
Allison Tyler Jones: It was emotional in a really positive way, the session was. This family saw each other and were present with each other. That time in the studio was as much a gift to them as the artwork that resulted from it. And that experience made me realize that every session I photograph should have that feeling at the genesis of the concept for that session. Me as the creator fully present and helping each subject in the portraits feel connected to me and connected to each other. So think about every interaction you have with a client. Phone call, text consultation, session, sales appointment, delivery or installation. How can you slow down and be more present and make it special for them? Now, I don’t mean make the process slow and drawn out for them. I just mean take a beat and we don’t have to rush through. Be present, be there, engaged with them, and follow their lead.
Allison Tyler Jones: Sometimes that might mean actually picking up the pace. I shoot very quickly and busy dads love that. But sometimes I get a mom or a kid who is just reveling in the process of being photographed, and I want to actually give them a bit more time to feel that confidence and attention, so I’m going to shoot some extra frames. I know I’ve got it. I know I have what I need, but I’m going to let them do a few more things, a few more setups, and maybe they’ll want to get a different chair or do something a little bit different. They just need a little bit more time in front of the camera because they’re feeling it, and so I want to allow that to happen, allow that to develop. I don’t want to hurry them along. But I won’t know any of that, I won’t be able to see any of that, if I don’t slow down and pay attention and see the value in that person and the value that I’m bringing to that family.
Allison Tyler Jones: Which brings me to my number one idea, that undergirds all successful marketing and all successful businesses in my opinion, and that is making the value mind shift. If you don’t believe it, no one else will. I hope that after listening to all of these ideas and thinking about how you do business and how much you do in your business for your clients, it gives you a sense of the true value of what you bring to the table. We are in the business of bringing families together, of helping them see each other in new and positive ways. We are creating the artifacts that in future years will be the only things left of these people. We are creating pieces so valuable that they are the first things grabbed, after the people themselves, when someone is running out of a burning house. When most of us start thinking that we need to do some marketing, it’s because business has slowed down somewhat or we’re worried that we won’t have enough business.
Allison Tyler Jones: What if we started marketing before that happened? What if we kept the fires burning all year long by realizing the value that we bring and realizing that our clients actually want to hear from us? They want us to remind them when it’s time to come in next. Have you ever run into a client you haven’t seen for a few years and silently judged for not coming back to you, pretty sure that they cheated on you with another photographer, only to have them say, “Oh my gosh, it’s been so long. We haven’t had our family photographed since we last saw you.” When this happens to me, I know I failed that client. I should have kept better tabs on them and reminded them to come back. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get into the mindset of, oh, well, they probably didn’t come back because they thought it was too expensive, or they’re probably cheating on me with another photographer, or fill in the blank of negative self-talk here.
Allison Tyler Jones: When we call them and let them know they have first dibs on our calendar, and if they need a session, we’d be happy to schedule it for them, they can always say no. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they say, “You know what? We were in Cabo and we had a quick session on the beach. We’re going to just use that for our holiday cards this year. We’ll see you next year.” Or, “We’re going to skip and do next year,” or, “We’re going to come in when the oldest is ready to graduate,” or whatever. But usually that’s what they’re saying. It’s those kinds of things. They’re letting you know why they aren’t coming in this time and when they want to come in next, so that’s valuable information to put in the database. So getting out of our own way of thinking negatively that we don’t have value and that our clients don’t want to hear from us is essential.
Allison Tyler Jones: They do want to hear from us. If they have voted for you, if they have exchanged their value for your value, then those are the golden people. Those are the people we need to be thinking about. Those are the people we need to have top of mind, that we need to be contacting year after year, and keeping on top of what it is that they need from us. And if we’ve done our job right, if they had a great experience the first time, then more often than not, they’re going to say yes. Even if it’s not for this year, it’s yes for, “We’ll come in next year.” So take a minute, take a breath, and look at your own marketing efforts. Are you being clear? Are you taking time to make sure that every communication is clear? You’re stripping out every extraneous word in that email or that text that you know people are just going to quickly scan? Are they going to be able to get the gist of the information with quickly scanned?
Allison Tyler Jones: Nine, can you define more by setting specific goals? How many new clients do you want to book this next year? How many existing clients do you want to bring back? Go and look at that data and figure out what you want to do. Number eight, speak to someone, the actual ideal client. Talk to a person. When you are posting on social media, in any ad, speak to that person and her needs. Number seven, create that database. Doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow up and work that database. Number six, look at those names over and over again. Dream up ideas for them. Have them as part of your family, your work family. These are the people that you’re working for, that you’re creating a dream for, that you’re creating work for over the lifetime of their family.
Allison Tyler Jones: Number five, schedule marketing time every week. This will keep your calendar full and keep you from marketing when you feel desperate, which is a very bad idea. You discount, you make stupid decisions, but if you’re marketing all year long and keeping these great clients in your mind, it’s so much more fun and it’s so much less reactive. It’s so much more proactive. Number four, anticipate your best clients’ needs. Dream and scheme, what she needs and what will make her life easier. Then, as you come up with those ideas, don’t forget to run it through your brand filter, number three. Make sure that everything you’re putting out there is cohesive, fits with your brand and how you do business, and meets the needs of your best clients.
Allison Tyler Jones: Number two, slow down. Make every interaction special. This will help you tune into the needs of your clients in a way that you never have before. And lastly, make the value mind shift. If you don’t believe it, no one else will. I know that what we do is valuable. I see the work that you are putting out there, the time and care and love. And as Kimberly Wiley puts it, “Parts of your soul are hanging on the walls of your clients’ homes in your town,” and that has value.
Allison Tyler Jones: Take a minute before you set up your marketing activities and run through each of these 10 ideas to make your marketing more impactful, more targeted, more focused, and more effective than ever before. I appreciate you being here. I love to hear what you’re doing in your marketing. DM me on Instagram at do.the.rework, or email me at support@dotherework.com, and let me know what you’re doing or any questions that you have that I can help with. If you have a minute and can give us a review, it makes a huge difference to us in getting the word out to help other portrait photographers. I appreciate you being here. What you do has value, and your friendship and attention is valuable to me, so thank you for helping us make it to 100 episodes. I appreciate you more than you know. Let’s do it. Let’s go do the ReWork.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com, and on Instagram at do.the.rework.
