The Beginner Photography Podcast

Proven Marketing Strategies for New Photographers with Jeff Poole

• Raymond Hatfield

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#554 Jeff Poole is a professional photographer who transitioned from a career as a paramedic to running a highly successful photography business. Jeff recounts how photography became pivotal in his life following the birth of his first child and the supportive push from family that set him on a path to transform a hobby into a profitable venture. The episode emphasizes the necessity of proper pricing and marketing strategies in photography, particularly highlighting the struggles of starting out with competitive pricing that fails to be profitable in the long run.

KEY TOPICS COVERED

  1. Pricing and Profitability - Jeff shares the importance of pricing your services based on cost rather than competitors. He details the concept of cost-based pricing, aiming for 10-12% cost of goods to ensure profitability.
  2. Sales Systems - The importance of having a sales system to achieve desired average sales figures. Jeff discusses packaging strategies and the role of creating attractive, profitable packages.
  3. Marketing Strategies - Emphasis on building an email list using lead magnets and nurturing sequences as a form of marketing. Jeff explains how to keep a consistent flow of communication with potential clients, turning inquiries into bookings.

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS

  • Cost-Based Pricing: Pricing products based on production costs, ensuring a profit margin that supports business sustainability.
  • Nurture Sequence: A series of automated emails sent to potential clients to build a relationship and guide them towards a purchase.

DISCUSSION & REFLECTION QUESTIONS

  1. How has your understanding of pricing evolved after listening to Jeff’s insights on cost-based vs competitor-based pricing?
  2. What are some practical ways you can implement email marketing in your photography business today?

RESOURCES:
Visit Jeff Poole's Website - https://indigosilverstudio.com/
Check out Jeff's Education Platform - https://myphotoinsight.com/
Grow your business with HighLevel - https://www.gohighlevel.com/
Start using Kit for your email marketing today - https://kit.com/

Download your free copy of
46 Creative Photo Ideas to Get You Out of a Rut
at https://creativeimageideas.com/

Sign up for your free CloudSpot Account today at www.DeliverPhotos.com

Connect with Raymond!


Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Jeff Poole:

I think one of the biggest mistakes that I made back then was really focusing on what everybody else was charging and setting my prices appropriately. And I think that we see that a lot in the photography industry when someone's starting out. The first thing you do is inquire or, search other people's websites to find what they're charging. And then a lot of photographers have the same concept and idea that I had of, well, so and so is charging this. They've been in business a long time and I'm brand new, so I can't charge that. I have to charge a little bit less than that. And you're basing your prices off what everybody else is charging and without knowing if they're successful, without knowing if they're profitable, without knowing if they're even working. And so I think, that was one of the biggest mistakes that I made early on, is pricing my work based off everybody else's and not really understanding how to price my work based on my cost.

Raymond Hatfield:

Hey, welcome to the Beginner Photography Podcast. I'm your host, Raymond Hatfield, and today we're chatting with wedding headshot and boudoir photographer Jeff Poole about how to market and get clients. But first, the Beginner Photography Podcast is brought to you by Cloud Spot. Simplify your business with studio management. You can organize clients, send professional contracts, automate invoice payments and more. So keeping track of everything in your photography business just got a whole lot easier. You can grab your free forever account today over@deliverphotos.com and only upgrade when you are ready. So, Scott Widen Kivowitz introduced me to today's guest, Jeff, down at Imaging USA. Right away, it was super clear that this guy knew how to attract clients as a photographer. I mean, the guy operates a photography business with his wife where he shoots three totally different genres, whereas most photographers struggle to market just one. So if you have a photography business or you're thinking about turning your camera into a way to make a few extra dollars, then you're really going to love this interview. So today you're gonna learn the biggest pricing mistake that held Jeff back from earning a profit when starting his business, and how you're probably making that same mistake too. Why simply posting 27 times a day on social isn't gonna get inquiries coming in, and how to actually use social media to grow your income and not just followers. As well as the eight email sequence that you need to set up to turn people from simply interested to dying to work with you. So there is a lot here. But real quick, I just wanna say that I applaud you for taking the time to listen to the Beginner Photography podcast and, actually do something for yourself and your creativity and not just waste your time doom scrolling or watching TV or, just being bored. You're making the right choice towards being the person that you wanna become. So round of applause. Okay. Well, with that, let's go ahead and get on into today's interview with Jeff Poole. Jeff, I want to know when did you know that photography was gonna play an important role in your life?

Jeff Poole:

I think it's like a lot of photographers when I had my first child, I kind of always played around with cameras in college and I was that, that guy that always had a camera at all the frat parties, which thank god, social media wasn't a thing back then because I. I don't even know. I still have two roles of film in my fridge from college, and I'm terrified to, develop them. So, while it was big going through college, it was more of a hobby. And then when my first, child was born, I took some photos of her and everybody in my family. It's like, wow, these are amazing. Of course they did. They were horrible. I looked back at them, no offense, Mary Catherine, but, yeah, they were not great. But, the encouragement from my family pretty much put me down the track of like, oh, maybe I can do this as a side hustle.

Raymond Hatfield:

What did you go to college for?

Jeff Poole:

I, so, funny enough, my degree is in, pre-med biology, pre-med with a minor in chemistry, and I, um.

Raymond Hatfield:

opposite direction and

Jeff Poole:

Yeah, I had dreams of being a trauma surgeon, but I did not have the GPA to back it up,

Raymond Hatfield:

Uh.

Jeff Poole:

so, so I ended up being a paramedic for 17 years, and thank goodness I got so tired of seeing people sick and dying every day. I thought, man, I'm glad I didn't dedicate, another 10 years of my life to be a surgeon, So, uh, yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

It takes a special kind of person. Like my wife is an rn and I

Jeff Poole:

Uhhuh.

Raymond Hatfield:

myself, just from the stories that she tells me, thank

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

people in the world like you.'cause I could never do

Jeff Poole:

I had,

Raymond Hatfield:

can't.

Jeff Poole:

yeah, I had a really bad call where a little girl got killed on her birthday at her birthday party, and the very next day I had a wedding. and my daughter was about the same age, and the flower girl at the wedding was about the same age. And you know, it's like I'm sitting here, here going home to my daughter and then going, from that call and then going to a wedding and I was like, that's it. I'm done. Yeah, I'm done. And all my supervisors were like, do you need to go to like stress debriefing? I'm like, no, no, I'm, no, it's not that. I'm, I'm just done. I'm done with all of it. And so I'm ready to be a photographer. So, yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

Okay. Well this is gonna be a hard transition or a hard segue rather, but, let's start talking about, kind of those earliest days in business for you. Can you tell me what did you decide to start focusing on and, I guess why.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. when I first started it was all weddings. Mostly weddings, because it was one of the easiest things to get into back then. especially in. In my area and the prices that I was charging, right? Because I didn't understand how to run a business. So weddings was one of the easiest and fastest things to get into. You go to a wedding show, you set up some images and you have a low enough price and everybody's gonna book you and you will be super busy. but the thing with that, I found out that is not profitable. So we started trying to do other types of photography and, again, weren't priced right? So we were busy, but we weren't profitable. So, I think weddings was probably my gateway drug into photography, and then it just kind of spiraled from there.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. I hear that a lot from others as well, especially in the beginner photography podcast community. so I guess having the experience that you have now, well, I guess to give us some context, kind of told us where you started.

Jeff Poole:

Uhhuh.

Raymond Hatfield:

us where your business is at today?'cause I think that that's gonna predicate, a lot of the information that you share,

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. Yeah. so today, and I'll kind of back up or we can either start now and go back. When I started, I just like, I like telling everybody this, my origin story kind of, because I think it, it sets the precedent of where we are today when we were, First starting out and we opened our first studio. We weren't priced profitably. I hear a lot of photographers talk about running a six figure studio and I just did a, a micro webinar yesterday on the six figure salary, not the six figure studio, because I hear a lot of photographers and educators talking about creating a six figure studio and. That's all well and fine, but your profit margins have to be there.

Raymond Hatfield:

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Poole:

I'm a perfect example of that because when we first were starting out, I was shooting a lot of weddings. Again, low price, not really profitable, shooting a lot of portraits, low price, not really profitable. And our studio was a six figure studio. But I ended up losing my house and having to move into the basement of that studio for three years because I didn't understand how to run a business. And the profit margins weren't there for me to be able to support my family. it was really tough time for me. So I think. that transition, will kind of help understand like, okay, once you're in that situation, a lot of photographers are, and they're hitting burnout because they're like, I'm shooting, I'm busy. I'm just don't have a lot of money. And so, I think a lot of that kind of helps with understanding where we are today because it's all because of proper pricing, proper marketing, proper, understanding how to run a business. And so today, we really focus on weddings, headshots and boudoir. I. I don't do as many weddings today. I shoot between seven and 10 weddings a year, but my average wedding is somewhere between 10 and$11,000. So I don't need to shoot a lot of weddings at this point. in order to make a, a decent living off of weddings. I photograph headshots. I do quite a few headshot. This will be my first full year actually promoting headshots. And already I've made more money this year with headshot than I made all of last year. So, because I actually put marketing behind it. I put money behind it. I built a website for it instead of just a page on my website. I built a dedicated headshot, website. And then my wife is a boudoir photographer and she crushes it. she photographs about 50 sessions a year, and she has about a$5,200 average sale for her boudoir sessions. she shoots twice a week. She shoots, one session a day. Shoot, edit itself same day. And she's absolutely crushing it with, with boudoir. So that's kind of where we are today. we run a multi six figure studio that brings us in a, beyond six figure salary. And in our area that we live at, that's a really good living because it's a sleepy little beach town. So we can pretty much do what we wanna do, work our own schedule and, live the life we wanna live with that,

Raymond Hatfield:

Wow. How inspiring is that,

Jeff Poole:

yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

to go from working this full-time job as a paramedics, like seeing these things that, humans should not be seeing right.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

now turning it around and living the life that you are today. I guess I want to know, my whole idea for this is. are wondering right now, like, okay, so how do I get to that point? So let's

Jeff Poole:

Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield:

to reverse engineer that because you didn't go to school to learn marketing,

Jeff Poole:

exactly.

Raymond Hatfield:

all that stuff. You had to kind of figure that out on your own. So let's go back to those earliest days, and I guess let's take that back. Let's those who are in their earliest days right now. and tell me what are some of the mistakes that you made when starting out so that those who are in that same position now, don't make

Jeff Poole:

sure. I think one of the biggest mistakes that I made back then was really focusing on what everybody else was charging and setting my prices appropriately. And I think that we see that a lot in the photography industry when someone's starting out. And I'm guilty, I did the same thing. the first thing you do is inquire or, search other people's websites to find what they're charging. And then a lot of photographers have the same concept and idea that I had of, well, so and so is charging this. They've been in business a long time and I'm brand new, so I can't charge that. I have to charge a little bit less than that, and then, by the time I'm in, in business for a year, maybe you come into the scene and you look at my website and be like, well, Jeff's been around for a while and he's charging this, so I need to charge that. And you're basing your prices off what everybody else is charging and without knowing if they're successful, without knowing if they're profitable, without knowing if they're even working. And so I think, that was one of the biggest mistakes that I made early on, is pricing my work based off everybody else's and not really understanding how to price my work based on my cost. so that I have the profit margins and be able to support my family.

Raymond Hatfield:

So, today, what sorts of costs would you look at to determine what your pricing should be?

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. And that's a loaded question because there's a lot, right? You know, there's, there's a lot of educators that say, look at how much all of your bills cost, and then break it down and figure out how many sessions you wanna shoot. And that's definitely one way to go. but we take a more simpler approach to it. we look at how we price our products. Based on retail 1 0 1, right? we just look completely outside of the photography world and look at how big box stores, big manufacturers, price their work or their products. And for us, everything needs to be between a 10 to 12% cost of goods, 15, maybe 20, at the absolute highest cost of goods. So when I'm looking at a product and it costs a hundred dollars. In my mind, I've got a thousand dollars price tag on it. That's what I'm gonna retell it for, you know, because our price, our products that we're buying from our labs, they're at wholesale cost. So, something that costs a hundred dollars for us, I'm retelling it for a thousand dollars. That gives me a 10% cost of goods. And so with looking at cost of goods, at cost space, pricing, now you're looking at it, it doesn't have anything to do with your skill or your talent or your. place in the market in your industry or your neighborhood or your town. The only thing that's coming into effect is how much does it cost you to produce that product versus how much you can sell it for. And if you are less than 20%, you have enough profit margin there to be able to support a salary for yourself and all the bills of your studio. and our target for our studio is between 10 and 12%. But on some really high ticket items, like I have some, I, some of my fine art wedding albums, they might cost me six or$700. I'm willing to go up to 20% cost of goods on those, just to keep the price in line with what my clients will pay. Because the real world dollar profit there is, is significant when you price that up. so I would recommend to people that when you're building your a la carte price list, the first thing you need to do is look at the product and say, can I sell this for 10 to 15% cost of goods? that's what you should be selling it for. And then know that if you do wanna offer any discounts, you need to mark it up a little bit more than that. So when you mark it down, you're still at that 10 to 15% cost of goods. And that should give you a plenty profit margin to be able to support your family, support your studio, pay your bills, and bring a paycheck home. Which is the most important thing.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. Yeah. that's a very important thing. Yeah. To be able to, to feed the kids and whatnot. So,

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

can hear listeners right now saying, okay, I charge, let's just say$75 for a session. How in the world am I gonna charge even a hundred dollars just for an eight by 10?

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

how we get to the, like, do we just today 10% to 12% cost to goods for all of our,

Jeff Poole:

W

Raymond Hatfield:

Or is that something that we work up to?

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. it depends on where you are, right? If you are still working a day job that you have income coming in to support your family, what I would say do is rip that bandaid off and charge appropriately from day one. And just understand that you're gonna hear a lot of nos before you hear yeses. and that's just part of it. because what happens is if you start out like we did. You start attracting all the cheaper clients that want cheaper prices, people run in the same demographics. Right? So I had a client base of probably two or three years worth of clients I was working with. And when we decided, that's it, we're raising our prices and we just ripped a bandaid off and we went straight up. We didn't try to tear it up or anything, we ripped the bandaid off. And what would happen is if I photographed your wedding for$1,500. Now you loved me, you five star review. You told your friends and family, you referred me, and then all of a sudden you refer me your best friend, and they come in and now my prices are$5,000. Now what happens is that person has gotten their hopes up that they're gonna get to work with me based off of your reviews and your images. And when I tell'em my prices are$5,000, they're gonna say, well, wait a minute. Raymond told me you photographed their wedding for 1500 last year. And I'm like, well, yeah, but my prices have now changed and this is the price. Well, I. That person gets upset because they were getting their hopes up that they were gonna work with me. They go back and tell you, Hey dude, your guy's crazy. He's charging$5,000. There's no way I'm paying$5,000. Well now you stop referring me and that referral engine breaks and you gotta build a new client's hell from scratch. And that's hard. And it's scary because now all the people that referring you beyond now, at the current time. All of their friends are probably in the same demographic, financially, demographic, field that they are, and they're not gonna be able to afford that jump. So it's better to start with your prices where you wanna be, and build the audience that you, that will afford and respect you instead of trying to change two years in, because that's hard to try to make that change, that referral engine just breaks.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. Okay. So, then real quick for those, how did you get over that?

Jeff Poole:

Um.

Raymond Hatfield:

you deal with that, that break in the referral engine? I.

Jeff Poole:

It was scary, you know, like, and my wife and I were just like, we'd go back and forth. I'd be like, all right, we're gonna be at McDonald's next month. You know, uh, we're flipping burgers, and she was like, no, we won't. It'll work out because the clients that are booking us are gonna pay more than the clients that say no. and she was right. we ended up photographing less that year. We made more money and we actually had a profit, so it's scary. and I'm working with a client that I'm coaching with right now. It's going through the exact same thing and I'm trying to tell her like, look, you're photographing six sessions a week and half of those are canceling, and the other half of those are pretty low sales, but. If you just raise your prices and you start, educating these people on what to expect before they come in. You might not book six sessions a week. You might only book one a week, but that one a week's gonna spend more than the three that actually got into your studio that photographed and you're gonna make more money, you're gonna work less, and it's gonna be scary. it's gonna be scary to hear no all the time, but just understand when that one person says yes, they're gonna spend more. Then probably all of those nos before them, and it's gonna make you feel better because you're actually gonna make a big sale. And now when you make that big sale with this person that said, yes, baby them, take care of them. Give them a little something extra wow them and make them fall in love with you. So they refer their friends because their friends are in the same financial demographic that they are. And now that's how you start building up that audience. And so it's kind of scary to do, but that's basically the way we did it. We just pulled the bandaid off and just took a leap of faith and we're like. We're gonna hear No, but eventually we're gonna hear a yes. And that's gonna start the, that new referral engine coming in?

Raymond Hatfield:

That's great. I know that a lot of listeners are gonna appreciate that.'cause again, that's where they're at.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

we've figured out, kind of how to price a lot of our products, our tangible products. Now let's talk about, actually getting butts in seats, as they say, right? Like, let's talk about getting inquiries,

Jeff Poole:

Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield:

that's step one.

Jeff Poole:

it is. It is.

Raymond Hatfield:

start?

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. just before we start talking about that, I, I do wanna circle back about when you have your a la carte prices. one thing that I recommend to every photographer do is PPA has a, free tool. It's called Square one. And once you have your prices for your individual products, you should be setting what you want your average sale per genre to be. The PPA Square one tool will allow you to say, I wanna make this much money for my salary at the end of the year. And then you can plug in the types of, sessions that you can, that you shoot. So in our case, weddings, headshots, and boudoir. And then you can put in how many sessions you want at a Target average sale. It'll show you how many you have to shoot in order to be able to make that, let's say 75 or a hundred thousand dollars that you wanna bring home. It'll show you how many sessions you need to shoot at what average to get a gross studio sales in order to be able to pay yourself 75,000. So it's an awesome tool if you just Google PPA square one and, just follow, it's really intuitive. Follow that. Because the next step from there is once you have that average sale, is to build a price list and a sale system to get you to that average sale. So let's say for example, you want to do$3,500 weddings, right? And that's the average sale that you need to hit in order to be able to, to be able to make the salary you wanna make. Well now you gotta build a price list to be able to get you to that$3,500 average sale. And then once you have that price list, then you start marketing to get people in, because if you get a whole bunch of people in and you don't have a sales system to get you to an average sale that you wanna be at. Then it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall because all these people are gonna come in, but they're not following a sales system. So you'll have very inconsistent sales. It's very hard to forecast your income when you have inconsistent sales, and one person might be a no sale or a couple of hundred dollars and the next person might spend two or 3000. It's really hard to, to forecast income, off of that. So those would be the steps that I would take is, is figure out how many sessions you need to shoot it while average. Then build a price list to get you to that average. And then start the marketing, if that makes sense.

Raymond Hatfield:

it does. I want to go back though and talk about this sales system.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield:

I think we kind of glossed over that a little

Jeff Poole:

yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

think that new photographers are thinking, well, what e what exactly does that mean?

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

that a little bit?

Jeff Poole:

Sure. So a sales system, for example, let's say we have, we want to have a$3,500 average wedding for average sale for weddings. There's a couple of ways to do it. You can say, I'm gonna be packages, and my bottom package is gonna be, 20, let's say$2,000, and then my middle package is gonna be$3,500, and then my top package is gonna be$4,500. People have a tendency to gravitate toward the middle of anything. And so when your middle package is at your average sale of where you wanna be, some people will book your low. Some people will book your high, some people will book your middle. But at the end of the year, when you run your numbers and you say, well, I shot, a hundred weddings, or let's say 10 weddings at$120,000 or$90,000, divide those 10 divided by gross sales that will give you your average. That's where you're gonna land. So when you start building your systems, start figuring out, like that middle package should be about where you want your average sale to be, and most people will gravitate toward it. if you are, like a create your own collection, then you need to have a, a series of products that will, people will just naturally go down in order to be able to get to that average sale. And that. That takes a little bit more practice when you have a create your own collection or a a la carte menu to figure out what products to offer at what prices in order to yield, an average sale. So packages make it easier because you can put your target sales number in the middle and then some people will book your big package, some will book your little, but it all averages out to be about that middle package of where it's gonna be. So, that's the way I would recommend doing it. And. it's different than a la carte, right? A la carte. People come in and they can just buy whatever they want off of your menu and you really don't have a way to control the low end of that sale, right? Where with packages you can control the low end. but unfortunately you also control the high end, but you can guarantee that you're gonna make a certain number of money per wedding if you have packages. So I hope that made sense of like, it's basically just a way for when people come in that you can kind of guarantee that you're gonna have a range, from the low end to the high end of what people are gonna spend that averages out to be what you want that average sale to be.

Raymond Hatfield:

No, that does make sense. appreciate that. I took a, a very similar but slightly different approach when shooting weddings, is that when I figured out what my average sale needed to be,

Jeff Poole:

Mm-hmm.

Raymond Hatfield:

my lowest package

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

My middle package was a little bit higher. It wasn't much higher'cause

Jeff Poole:

Mm-hmm.

Raymond Hatfield:

to make that jump. But then my largest package was, I don't wanna say it was outta reach, but that was like swinging for the fences. That was a grand slam.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

and pretty much I think over the 10 years I only had like four people book that largest

Jeff Poole:

Mm-hmm.

Raymond Hatfield:

that was kind of the idea, that at least I knew that if I made almost any bookings that I would be, that I'd be set. So, I

Jeff Poole:

and that's a great idea too. just set your bottom at your average, but a lot of times if you, photographers are scared to do that because

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah.

Jeff Poole:

that is too high of a ceiling and you're afraid to say that you're gonna hear a lot of nos. but yeah. Yeah, that's a perfect way to do it too, depending on what you want your average to be. one additional way to do it is what I do now. Is, I just have one base commission. I don't have packages at all. I just have one base commission and that is my, what I consider my get out of bed on Saturday rate, it's$6,200 and if you want me for six hours and digital only, I. Then that's what you're gonna pay. And then if you want albums, I give you incentives. Like if you book your wedding with me, and you, you add an album when you book, then you get an extra incentive, like you get an additional 10 pages, in that album. or if you, book an engagement session, then you get a free curve medal, but you still gotta buy everything else, right? so that allows me to say, okay, I know I'm gonna make at least six grand. That's, I'm fine with that. And I know that. there's gonna be a good amount of people that are gonna buy album. They're gonna buy wall art, they're gonna buy post wedding day collection. So that pushes me above that 10,000 that I wanna be at for a wedding

Raymond Hatfield:

Hmm.

Jeff Poole:

and it works really well to start. And then just say if you want anything else, you can buy and incentivize those purchases along the way.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah, I have a different name. Instead of calling it the Get Outta bed on Saturday Price, it's the, what would it cost for me to miss my favorite concert price?

Jeff Poole:

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

similar, like, you know, what would it take? So, okay, so we talked about pricing. We talked about, building packages as well. Now. Let's get onto the marketing aspect.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

the number one question that I hear from new photographers is how do I find clients? And

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

of the hardest things. But this is something that you have a lot of experience in.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

I guess you also have a lot of experience educating photographers. So when you look at new photographers who are starting in the business journey of their photography business, what mistakes are they making and how do you get them to turn that around?

Jeff Poole:

So I think a lot of mistakes that people make early on with marketing is that they rely solely on social media. You know, they think that, if I post 27 times a day on social media that my phone's gonna start ringing. I. The truth is, is that they're not, they don't own their audience. When you're just posting on social media, you're just hoping that that Zuckerberg and whoever is gonna promote you. To the best of your, their ability. And they're really not. they're not gonna promote you. organic reach is down across almost every platform. they want that almighty dollar. They wanna get paid for advertising. And so if the only way that you're advertising is posting on social media, that becomes a really tough road. I see a lot of boudoir photographers that their account gets shut down because they violate. Zuckerberg's rule of nipples, right? or butt crack. And so, I see a lot of them, their pages are getting shut down and they're like, well, how do I market? And I'm like, well, you should kind of own your audience already. And so one thing that I would recommend is figure out a way to build your email list, because when you build your email list, that's virtually free marketing that you can do year round. a big thing that we do in our studio to grow our list is lead magnets. if you go to any of our websites, you see that, you know that we have guides on there for, Top seven things to look for before booking a boudoir photographer or eight tips to planning a stress-free wedding day or head shots versus personal branding, which is right for me. and we've got some that we run direct paid ads too, right? We run ads directly to landing pages on Facebook, but you don't need to, you can just put them on your website and then organic People will find those and download them, and that's a good way to start getting a lot of people on your email list because once you have a big email list, now when you get ready to market something, you just blast it out to your email list and you can convert a bunch of people just by that. Because if you're only relying on social media. And Social media shuts down your account or they get banned, like TikTok is supposed to get banned or might get banned. Who knows? that Marketing Avenue is now gone for you. So use those social media platforms to get people on your mailing list. And once you have'em there, then marketing becomes a whole lot easier.

Raymond Hatfield:

so this is something that I struggled with'cause I never implemented the email marketing

Jeff Poole:

Uhhuh.

Raymond Hatfield:

photography business. I do it for the podcast as well, and I, I can about how effective it is,

Jeff Poole:

Uh huh.

Raymond Hatfield:

one of the things that held me up when it came to marketing, my photography business is what do I talk about, like to

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

what do I talk about to these people?

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. So, there's two types of, autoresponders that I suggest that any photographer have in their system. So once someone inquires with you or they download your lead magnet. You should have what, what we call a transactional email sequence, and that transactional email sequence should be plain text. No frills, no logos, buttons, graphics, images, just plain text. like if you inquired with me and then I sit down at my computer and go, Hey Raymond, thank you so much for reaching out to me about wedding photography. I'd love to chat with you more, hear some basic information. If everything sounds good, let's hop on a call. Click here and let's schedule it. Plain text. The link for hopping on a call is a blue hyperlink, right? Just ugly. Nothing pretty about it. But what that transactional sequence does is it puts the human factor in it. It feels like even if it's automated, it feels like I responded to you. Then a few days later, I'll respond back and be like, Hey, Raymond, a couple days ago you inquired, I've, left you a message or I sent you a text, whatever your verbiage wants to be, hoping that we can hop on a call and discuss your vision for your wedding day. is there a chance that we can meet maybe sometime a day or tomorrow? Click here and view my calendar and let's hop on a call. again, plain text, right? This is your transactional. This is you as the photographer, as a human responding back to them. But then you have your nurture sequence, and this is where a lot of people kind of get stuck with the email marketing and like, what to say.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah.

Jeff Poole:

And in our studio, everything's pre-written. we write this stuff ahead of time and it becomes our newsletter. And there are eight core emails. That should be in your nurture sequence. Now, these core emails can be duplicated as many times as you want, but the core framework should be eight simple emails. and I'll go through those. Email number one is, like right, and it follows the like, no trust. So email number one is like. They should like you as a photographer. So you want to talk about, you as a, as a photographer talk about, how you work on a wedding day. talk about things that interest you. They have to like you before they're gonna book you. They have to feel like they can be in a room with you. For eight hours on a wedding day or maybe, a portrait session, they might want to be able to make sure that they can kind of relate to you on a human level, personal level before they're gonna book you. So, email one, talk about yourself, talk about a little bit about how you got into photography, what drives you, what you love about it. Email number two should be no. And this follows more of your business. They need to know and understand your business. So if you give a certain number, a certain percentage back to charity or if you have any other community partners that you work with or, anything about your business, right? Lifetime guarantee on products, we have those. So anything that's about your business that gives them value should go in that. No email. And then trust. Obviously everybody knows trust. It's social proof. You want to have testimonials, put testimonials from clients in there. If you have video testimonials, you can link to link to those. But those first three emails are like no trust, and it kind of gets them to know who you are, what you do, and a little bit more about your business. And like no, trust is always, we hear people talk about like no trust all the time, but it's huge in converting people. And then one of the next ones, and there, these are in no specific order, but one is called Challenge and Convert. So we all know. Objections that we hear every day, right? Especially in the portrait world. I just need to lose some weight or I need to wait until I get a tan. Or, in the wedding world, well I just want digitals like there's all these objections so we know what those are. So in your challenging Convert emails. Tackle one of those objections and tell'em why that their belief, in that is wrong and why that shouldn't stop them from booking now, or it shouldn't stop them from investing in photography now. So figure out what that challenge and convert is. Put that in an email and send it out. The next is is called benefit of the Benefit and, That should be how photography can change their everyday life. Right. So my wife's a boudoir photographer, and when people are thinking about coming in for a boudoir, they think of boudoir. A lot of people think it's all about sex appeal. It's all about getting a gift for a partner. and a lot of times it is. But the real thing is, is when a woman comes in for a boudoir session with Lori, 10 times outta 10, they're gonna leave feeling better about themselves. I. So they may feel more comfortable wearing a two-piece to the beach. They may feel more comfortable about their intimate relationship with their partner, right? because they see themselves, they see their body differently than what they had envisioned it in their mind when they see it in photographs. So it fundamentally changes the quality of their life after the session. So figure out a way that you can weave in like, yeah, you're gonna get amazing photos, you're gonna be able to get a gift for your partner, or you're gonna have beautiful wedding day images, or you're gonna have beautiful images of your children hanging on the wall. But the benefit of that is that now when your child sees that image hanging on the wall, they're gonna feel part of the family unit when they see their images hanging on the wall, and it's gonna give them confidence that they can carry in through the rest of their life, right? So figure out that benefit of the benefit. of what comes after the session, how it changes their life after the session. Put that into an email and you can have multiple of these, right? And then, featured sessions are good. you can put a featured session link back to a blog post with a featured session. Featured products are always good to have in an email. talk about your products, link back to a gallery of products. And then finally, the eighth one is called your Evergreen, highlight. And so if you are someone that. Partners with a charity and you give 10% back to, a charity every year, highlight that in an email. If you have a 40 over 40 campaign, highlight that in an email because most of the time those run, year round. And so those core emails, those Core eight, kind of frameworks set the stage to you to be able to write dozens and dozens of emails that can go into a long-term nurture sequence that once you get someone's email, just automate it. Send it out and start every two to three days and then move it to every week, and then move it to every two weeks, and then move it finally to once a month. And if you write 30 or 40 or 50 of these emails and chat, GPT is amazing at this by the way. now you can automate this and you can have a year long nurture sequence that when someone opts in to download your lead magnet or they inquire about weddings or portraits, you move them into the appropriate long-term nurture sequence that is genre specific. And a lot of your conversions happen over time because when someone inquires with us and they don't book, we immediately think that, oh, well they went with someone else. They didn't like my work. My prices are too high. When in reality it could be that they were just in that mindset to shop for photographers today, but they're going on vacation tomorrow and they're gonna be gone for two weeks. So we need to figure out a way to stay top of mind long term. Right, so that they fall in love with us long term, and they will eventually end up booking us.

Raymond Hatfield:

That was, so helpful. That alone, right there could have been a whole masterclass on how to get started in email marketing for

Jeff Poole:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the abbreviated, that's the CliffNotes version of it.

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah.

Jeff Poole:

Uh,

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah. And still I feel like, even I, as somebody who's been doing this for a long time, got a lot of great information there specifically on, the nurture sequence and what emails to send out. And I definitely know that I'm gonna be changing up some of my emails as

Jeff Poole:

yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

to match some of that. So I really appreciate that. but let's take a step back, because I understand the importance of the email list, getting people on the email list, getting people on the email list. As a photographer, should my one goal in all of my socials simply be to have a link to the email list, or should it be contact me today? Like how do we balance that

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

action?

Jeff Poole:

I think a, a healthy balance is what's needed. obviously, a lead magnet or a newsletter sign up is gonna be amazing, right? It's gonna be, that's kind of the pot at the end of the rainbow. But you gotta figure out a way to get people to it without just saying, sign up for my newsletter.'cause no one really wants to sign up for a newsletter, right? Let's be real. it's good to have that. And occasionally we will get people to sign up for a newsletter, but when you create a guide. That is kind of the, the give get. Right? there was one marketer that we follow, and I can't remember if it was Alex or Mozy or if it was, man, the StoryBrand guy. I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but yes, Donald Miller. there was one marketer that we follow. That basically said that an email address is worth about$20 today, right? So if I want your email address, I need to give you something of value, that's about$20. And so, a guide is phenomenal. If you're a wedding photographer, you can go to chat GPT and type in, I'm a wedding photographer, here's my website, review my business and ask me questions until you understand my business. And then generate three lead magnet ideas to help me generate leads. Chat, GPT will sit there and ask you questions. You can have a conversation with it, and once it feels like it has enough information, it will generate lead magnet ideas. And then you can say, great. Now populate those into 300 word articles for me, and it will write those for you. and then you just go into Canva and design it into something pretty. Now, put that on your website where people can go and download it. If they're organic on your website, they're just Googling and they find you, that's there in their face that they can download that guide and it drops them into your transactional and nurture sequence. but also, you can run ads to directly to landing pages for those. That works really well Also, if you're targeting people that are engaged on Facebook and you say. Hey, congratulations on your engagement. Download my guide. Top eight Tips to Planning a Stress-Free Wedding Day. That has nothing to do with photography. Right? But it really does because when they download it, all the images are mine, links are mine. it's like, it puts me as the professional in my industry. And so when they download it now they, they, whether they have a photographer or not, they're on my my list. So you can go to chat GPT and have it write these articles for you. But that's only one part of it. But again, featured sessions, anytime you photograph a session, you should. Scatter that all over social media. Linking back to a blog post and again blogging. A lot of photographers think blogging is dead. Blogging is still great for getting people on your list because now when we take and we blog a session and we point back to it from all the different social media posts, guess what's at the bottom of that blog? Our lead magnets. So,

Raymond Hatfield:

Mm.

Jeff Poole:

right in the middle of some of those blogs is the thing we say, download this guide. Interested in boudoir, interested in weddings? Download this guide. And it's all geared to driving people back to the website or to that blog post only for the sole reason of like, they, we want them to see our imagery, but we also wanna tempt them with that lead magnet so that we get them on their, on the list. So those are fantastic ways to u you know, places to put your lead magnet. so when you're thinking of a broader, goal for social media. social media is great, but your goal for social media is to get them on your list. So if you are posting images, don't just post an image on social media, post an image with a little blurb and link'em back to a blog post or a gallery page. To say, see more of this session and link'em back there, and on that page have a guide that they can download so they can get on your list, and that we call those transitional call to actions because when people are shopping around, they may not be ready to contact you right now. They may just be shopping for style, price, all these things. They may not be ready to take a full formal call to action and contact you. They will take a transitional call to action and download a guide, and now when we've got'em on the guide, we've got'em in our nurture sequence. We make them fall in love with us over time, and that increases conversions.

Raymond Hatfield:

So, you said something there, that really stood out to me that, the goal of social media is to get people on your list, which is crazy because so many people think that the goal of social media is just to grow as many followers as humanly possible.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

that's a great mindset shift there. And I remember just a few months ago. There was like an Instagram outage or something like that, and I don't remember what company it was, so the story doesn't have any legs to stand on, but there was some company that had lost like$180,000 in just like the two hours,

Jeff Poole:

Oh yeah,

Raymond Hatfield:

that it was down because their entire business was ran on Instagram and they relied on it. They had no other ways of communicating with, customers.

Jeff Poole:

absolutely.

Raymond Hatfield:

As a

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

like you're not gonna be making 180,000 in, in two hours worth of bookings.

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

that's a solid, clear warning sign that, hey, these places you don't own this audience. Have a place where you can continue to reach out to people and, stay in contact with them. So that was, I. That was great. so again, I really appreciate that. I know one of the hardest things, for photographers is, staying consistent in marketing,

Jeff Poole:

Mm-hmm.

Raymond Hatfield:

That was definitely my biggest issue. I would come up with this campaign idea and I would knock it outta the park. It would go great, and I would do that once a year. But then like the other, you know, 11 months was crickets. what tips do you have, for staying for easy ways to stay consistent in marketing for photographers?

Jeff Poole:

come up with a marketing plan, right? and I know that that's easy or said than done, but whether your marketing plan is, is you're gonna run a promotion quarterly or you're gonna run one bimonthly, or you're gonna run one every month. Come up with a plan to say, I'm gonna run this campaign this month and then, on this month I'm gonna run this campaign. And build them out. I'm not sure if a lot of you guys are familiar with high level. High level is amazing. We use it for all of our front end marketing and lead generation. And what it allows you to do is build sales funnels for these individual, marketing campaigns. And the beauty of it is, is everything's in one place. So it's not like I'm building landing pages on WordPress or Squarespace, and I'm building out my email nurture on, flow Desk or MailChimp or anything. And then I'm using Calendly for my scheduling and I'm using something else for invoices. Like, it literally is everything. So from my websites to my sales funnels, to my lead generation, to my email nurtures, it's all done in high level. and it's a fantastic platform. And the beauty of it is, is once you build a marketing campaign, it's there and all you have to do is go to that folder, click on it, grab the link, turn it on, start promoting it, and now you're running that marketing campaign. So a lot of photographers struggle with building a marketing campaign'cause they're trying to reinvent the wheel every single time. Build a template for a marketing campaign for a funnel, like a landing page, a landing page, and a promotion. Now duplicate that and change the, the offer and the genre, right? So for weddings and headshots, we can have a discounted session fee or a gift with purchase campaign where if you buy, if you book now you get this extra gift, or if you book now you save 20% or whatever it may be. Now all I do is duplicate that entire funnel, change the images, change the text on it, and I'm ready to launch another campaign. So it makes, actually building these campaigns much easier. And you can just turn'em on and off. So if I wanna run a campaign for, a headshot flash sale next month, all I gotta do is turn it on, grab the link, go create the graphics in Canva, which I already have created. just spread'em out through social media. My email newsletter, if I wanna run ads to it, I can. And then when that campaign's over, turn it off, go to the next one. And it becomes this library of marketing campaigns that you have. And, in our business we have 20 some marketing campaigns for boudoir alone. I have like 19 for headshots, I have eight for weddings, so, It becomes really easy to market when you start collecting all of these different campaign types and you build'em, because once you build it, it's done. The only thing you have to do is turn the light switch on and start promoting it. Now, building them does take some time, but once you get the flow of it, it becomes very easy.

Raymond Hatfield:

That's funny. You described me exactly with all of those different tools

Jeff Poole:

Uhhuh.

Raymond Hatfield:

reinvent the wheel every time, and

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

definitely got burnt out from

Jeff Poole:

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield:

So I'm

Jeff Poole:

And then trying to figure out, moreover, trying to figure out when someone opts in on my WordPress website, how do I get them into my Squarespace list?

Raymond Hatfield:

Yeah.

Jeff Poole:

And if someone schedules with Acuity or Calendly, how do I move'em from this list to another list and then mark them as converted in my system? Like, you gotta use Zapier and you got 9,000 Zaps going on. I have zero zaps and my entire front end marketing runs with zero zaps. And it's beautiful, you know, so.

Raymond Hatfield:

man, I think I have 9,000 currently going on right now, so that's

Jeff Poole:

Yeah. Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield:

Well, Jeff, I feel like I could, chat with you for hours and hours. I would love to have you back on the podcast, but I know that we are out of time now. So, Jeff, why don't you let listeners know, where they can find out more about you online, as far

Jeff Poole:

sure.

Raymond Hatfield:

goes, and even your work.

Jeff Poole:

Okay. So for our work, you can visit us@indigosilverstudio.com. Just like the two colors, indigo silver studio.com. That's where you can find our, wedding headshot and boudoir work. one thing that I do ask, I've talked a lot about lead magnets and nurtures and autoresponders and things. Please, please, please do not opt into those. because it really messes up our conversion rates to have fake opt-ins. just to see how the auto responders work. If you really, really wanna learn how auto responders work and you wanna see how the marketing works, we have a website called My photo insight.com. That's our education brand. You can go there. every week we host a live free. Micro webinar on marketing and sales and pricing and all you have to do is just opt in for it. It's free. It's every Wednesday at 11:00 AM Eastern time. And we talk all about marketing. We talk all about drips. I show how all of our stuff works on the backend during those lives and it's absolutely free. So you can go to my photo insight.com and you'll be able to see how to get on our list there. Again, just get on our mailing list. Download one of our lead magnets that's on there. You'll be on our list. You'll get the invite for Momentum, our weekly live, micro webinars that we do.

Raymond Hatfield:

What did I tell you? If you want to start or grow a photography business and you didn't learn anything from Jeff, then you must have had the volume all the way down because you clearly were not listening. Today's action item where if you implement just one thing from today's interview that will move the needle forward in your photography is to start an email list. Jeff mentioned, a few tools. I use kit.com to collect email addresses, create landing pages, and deliver the lead magnets that Jeff mentioned that are so critical to growing his list and how you can get started. Again, that's kit.com, KIT, and you can get started for free. I think you're gonna have up to 10,000 email subscribers for free, which is wild. There's also a substack, which you can also use for free. I haven't used it, but I believe that they place ads in your emails, and that's why it's free on their part. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but again, you know, I've used kit.com for years and I love it. So point is sign up and create just the first three emails in that eight email sequence that Jeff had mentioned and then head over to chat, GBT to come up with some ideas for lead magnets based off of the information on your website, that you could deliver, then build them in Canva. Upload them to Kit, and now share that link everywhere from your Instagram bio, your Facebook page, TikTok videos, and then all over your website. And then just start watching people join your list and automatically be nurtured, to contact you to book. That's it. All right, so I hope that you enjoyed today's episode of The Beginner of Photography Podcast. Remember, the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. Talk soon.