Plug-and-play marketing solutions for pet photographers
I’m a big fan of plug-and-play marketing solutions. We even offer a few on the site, especially for pet photographers.
Over the last few weeks, I trialled a new marketing strategy. It was the Facebook register-to-win strategy following the steps laid out in the fabulous free challenge by The Fully Booked Photographer. If you were in Ina's webinar recently you would have heard her mention that she's been using their marketing engine.
I do this kind of thing from time to time as a bit of a test for you all! This time it was a great reminder that plug-and-play solutions are a really good starting point, but if they don't work at first, you might just need to make a small change to suit you better.
This is what happened:
Using the phone call framework provided in the challenge, I called the first few leads as soon as possible in order to convert them to bookings.
It didn't work, but not because the framework is bad.
I was uncomfortable and I made my leads feel that too.
The problem was, I didn’t have confidence in my system. My leads were surprised that they'd spend money and I felt slimey about it.
The thing is, I’ve done many enter-to-win competitions over the years, and never did I have an issue with it. So why this time?
I realised that I felt like I wasn’t transparent enough up front. These leads had never been on my website, and likely never even on my socials.
An ad appeared in their feed to win a photoshoot; when they clicked it, they simply filled out the form. Soon after they received a call from me.
And that made the call really hard.
I had to rely entirely on building a relationship, which I did do well, but then I felt that trust was broken when I said "okay so this is what's included and this is what it will get you but you'll probably spend an extra €500-€1000".
I'm sure many of you are now nodding your head, having experienced something similar for yourself.
I was giving what I consider to be "low price brackets" but these potential clients had not yet seen anything that would set any expectation that I am a professional. That the products I offer, are beautiful. To them, I was a nice person on the other end of the phone, who had initially dangled in front of them the idea of a free photoshoot (the ad) and they had assumed as most people do these days, that they'd get all the digitals too. Instead, they were hearing, "You'll drop a month's paycheck on this..".
Needless to say, those calls all ended in some kind of "I need to talk to my husband".
After three of these, I knew that with this system, there was no way I could create the appropriate perceived value needed in order to convert these leads into bookings. Perhaps a sales genius can, but I can't.
So my options were:
a.) Turn off the ad (aka. give up)
b.) Recognise the problem, and implement change.
I went with B and created a quick landing page to:
Introduce myself
Show a quick behind-the-scenes video,
Build trust with testimonials
Lay out the steps involved
and, introduce my product range (without prices)
Then, I added a step to the conversion process, I started sending a Whatsapp (this is Europe after all!), to all the leads I hadn't yet called. I asked them to let me know the best time to call tomorrow (my excuse for messaging), and in the meantime, check out the landing page.
About half the people didn't reply so If I needed high volume, I would find another way to increase my conversion rate since I’m sure I’ve lost some great leads through this process. But I only need a few per month and, the other half did reply. I had lovely conversations with all of them, and, they were all totally fine when I mentioned that they'd spend more than the voucher includes. Almost all of those calls have booked a photoshoot.
It took me 30 minutes to put this extra step in place, but I've saved myself countless 20-minute phone calls with people who would never book.
I haven't had the shoots yet so let's see if many cancel, and what the average spend is. But for now, I am much more confident making these calls, and I am excited to photograph these clients.
The next time you implement a plug-and-play strategy that doesn't work for you, look over the process- perhaps there's just a small change that needs to be made.
Author
Kirstie McConnell |
Founder
The Pet Photographers Club
When Kirstie launched her pet photography business in Australia in 2012, the genre was barely a thing. She spent the next years at the forefront of this niche, marketing not just her own business, but the concept of pet photography. Each year she photographed around 100 dogs, cats and horses per year to create wall art and albums for pet-parents.
Now based in Italy, she continues to offer pet photography to her clients back in Australia on return trips, but otherwise spends her energy helping other pet photographers build a business which will allow them to follow their dreams.
Internationally recognized as a leader in the industry, she hosts the podcast, workshops, courses and business events for The Pet Photographers Club which she co-founded.
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