S14E08 | Co-hosting a super-charged event for a $6k mini-session day
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Do you always here that one of the best marketing avenues is to attend dog-friendly events to get in front of the right audience.. But, there aren’t any around you.. Or not enough? Then tune in to today’s episode to hear how our guest created her own dog day out, and it wasn’t even as overwhelming as that sounds!
WE COVERED:
Why Kelly got into pet photography
What the event was about
The logistics of hosting an event of this size
The importance, or not, of a business name
AND IN THE MEMBERS-ONLY EXTENDED EPISODE:
How the event was branded
Marketing the event
Charging for mini session spots
Upselling digitals
MENTIONED LINKS
Www.kschulzphotography.com
Www.instagram.com/kschulzphotography
The flower wall: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcPDU6ND5rq/
Kelly Loeffler
I’m the owner photographer behind K Schulz Photography
I specialize in pets and their people and do primarily outdoor nature photography in Minnesota. Embracing the elements of Mother Nature
Transcript
Do you always hear that one of the best marketing avenues is to attend dog friendly events to get in front of the right audience, but there aren't actually any events around you, or maybe there's not enough or the next one is too far away. Then you are A, probably not alone, and B, you're in luck because today's guest just went ahead and created her own dog day out, and I mean like a proper dog, day out.
Quite a big scale with vendors at a brewery. Like completely went above and beyond, but it was not as overwhelming as it. So if you are l looking for a new marketing strategy to to kickstart some bookings, then tune in to this episode.
Welcome to the Pet Photographer's Club. Tune in as experts share their insights to help grow your business with higher sales, creative marketing, and kick our business strateg. Now onto the show.
Hello and welcome back to the Pet Photographer's Club. As you guys know, I'm Kirsty McConnell, and today I'm chatting with Kelly Loeffler of Kay Schultz Photography. Welcome to the Club Kelly. Hi. Well,
happy to be here.
So you are a long time listener. I think you're still a member today. You, we always see you popping off at like different workshops and events and stuff.
It's always nice to have You know, somebody who gets involved in the community on the podcast as a guest. So thank you very much for joining us. As you know, what spiked or perked my interest in getting you as as a guest on the, on the show was that you are doing these or you did last year. This dog mum day.
In collaboration with a bunch of other businesses. So I want to get into all of that. But before we do, maybe for the listener who maybe hasn't met you at one of these events before, hasn't seen you in the member zone, can you just give a little backstory who you are, where you're based in the world, and what it is that you offer.
Sure. I am Kelly, I'm a photographer for pets and their people primarily. I started in wedding photography and baby photography and finally got into pets and now it's, it's everything I do. I am based in Minnesota, in the United States. I've moved around the United States several times, and this is finally where we call.
And I'm a mom to two kids, two dogs, two cats. So we're a well-rounded house of chaos. Keeping you busy, that's for sure. Always. That's pretty much about me. I do mostly outdoor natural light photography and stick to my sunrises and sunset.
Nice. Nice. Okay, so when did you switch or do that transition from weddings and kids and stuff to really deciding to focus your marketing efforts on pets?
Was that pretty recently, Kelly? When
I, when I went full-time pets was pretty recently. I just stopped really doing weddings this past year. But I started in pets after we'd moved away from Illinois and I was just trying to find something to do before my business really started booming, and I volunteered at a shelter.
And started doing photography for the shelter, and that's kind of how everything went into place. People started asking for pet photography and I started loving that more. I'll take a hyper dog over a bride any day, but you and me both. But yeah, so now it's just, I never really thought I could get full into pep photography and not have weddings as my bread and butter, but now it's definitely switched and I.
Ah, that's awesome because I was just thinking when you're talking, like, when was it that we were chatting and you were saying that, you know, pats is on the side. I reckon it must have been the conference last year or the year before.
Probably the year before. I think by this past year I was finally, weddings were like a side gig.
Nice, nice. Pats were full.
Oh, well, great. You, it's I know like you know, weddings being booked so far in advance, it's sometimes hard. For photographers to make that switch. You know, it's like the security kind of being removed a little bit, but the passion is is what you've gotta
follow, huh?
Yeah. Well, and it got to the point where I didn't have any weekends free to do pet photography for people that needed weekends. And so I was like, and three hour pet session beats a 10 hour wedding. Any.
For sure and no mother of the bride to deal with. Yes. So, okay. So for the last what year then, I guess you've been, you know, focusing entirely on pets.
And I know, as I mentioned earlier, one of the things that really helped you other than the. Working with the rescues, as you mentioned earlier, was this particular marketing strategy that you implemented last year around dog mom day. So can we go into that a little bit? Just for somebody that has like no idea, what does that even mean?
What is it that you put together? How did it all work? Let's get into like the nitty gritty of that.
Sure. So obviously I'll do some minis here and there that are very specific to something and we decided it would be really fun to do a dog mom day mini. I have a friend who has a bow tie and bandana business, and we decided to collaborate.
And we got a dog friendly brewery involved. They let us use their space. It's a huge event space that's got great natural light. And we from there started seeing if other vendors wanted to join us. It was a very last minute thing last year. And I think, you know, in May it starts to become vendor shows a lot.
But we got a handful of awesome vendors to work with us. We decided to get a rescue involved. And they were happy to have an event to bring their dogs to, and it just kind of spiraled into this big event. I had 30 slots for minis and they got all sold out in 24 hours. And then anybody who obviously came to the vent who wasn't there for photos had a brewery to enjoy that we had a selfie station.
And there was several vendors that they could get things from. We got a live art digital artist to come. It turned out to be quite the event that people were talking about, so it's definitely something we were gonna do again this year. But,
so wait a minute, wait a minute. Basically, you and a friend who makes dog bow ties came together and just decided, hey, let's create this full blown dog day out event.
Yep. Pretty much. Okay,
so, Let me get this right. Somebody buys a ticket to come or anybody can come and there's no, there's no cost to arrive.
So anybody could come. The only things you had to purchase is we did a dog mom yoga. And if you wanted to come to that, you had to purchase tickets for that. And if you wanted to do a mini-session, you had to do that pre-purchase ahead of time.
Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Sorry. It's an open day event. Basically anyone can come. It's hosted at a local brewery. There are stalls, from what I'm getting the idea of here, that cover a range of different things as well as activities. Is it right?
Yes. And it, we did, so there's the National Dog Mom Day, which last year was the week after Mother's Day.
I believe this year it is the day before mother's. Okay. And last year we decided to do it on dog Mom day.
Nice. Nice. Okay. So this is great because often like I'm always telling like students at business in my business foundations challenge or just, you know, anywhere basically that, you know, one of the best ways to market is to get yourself in front of the people that you want to work with, right?
And who you wanted to be as clients. One of like, my best avenues was attending events. So like in Australia we have Million Paws Walk, so it's like this big charity walk. I think you have the equivalent in different places and there's like this event that you just described basically. And I would book a stall and be part of it.
Other times, you know, like I've done, we've had like a doggy. Day at the beach event or pups at the pub, like all these different events that are hosted by somebody else that I've joined. But for the photographer that maybe wants extra events to attend or does, there aren't any events already in your city or town.
Well, you've just gone and created your own, so that means everybody else can as well. So this is great. I wanna get into like the logistics cuz I imagine it was. Quite a lot to put together. Is that, is that true? Yeah,
I think a lot of it fell into place nicely, so it wasn't as chaotic as it could have been.
But yeah, at the beginning the logistics was a little crazy just in deciding who we wanted to reach out to and then going from there. But obviously we had a few vendors in mind, or venues in mind, but the brewery that we, that was our top pick, obvious. Was happy to have us. So that was awesome. And then after that, that's when we decided, okay, let's make this less than just a mini's event and more of a full blown event.
So we had to go to the brewery and kind of space out how many vendors we could invite, and then figuring out which vendors to invite, because obviously, you know, everyone and their brother seems to have a, a bandana. Which is awesome, but we didn't want multiple bandana companies. Mm-hmm. Just like we didn't want multiple homemade treat companies.
So we would pick a person that we either knew personally or we knew the business of, and then we'd contact them and wait to hear back from them before picking somebody else that way we had a very unique grouping of vendors.
Yeah. Beautiful. Okay, so sorry, Kelly. Was the entire event a fundraiser at all, or it was just like a dog a day out with your dog?
Yeah, we actually decided, since we got the rescue involved, we did a little bit of a fundraiser. Each vendor donated a 20 to $25 item to the a raffle. We let the rescue be in charge of the raffle so that they could take in all donations and they priced it. I think it's $5 for a ticket, and I think we raised about $500 for them.
We could have done more into that advertising, but that was more of a last minute idea. I think this year we'll push that a little more.
That's great to hear though, because we often, like when we host this kind of events or this kind of thing, our default as pet photographers, because we're always talking about it, is to straight away make it some kind of a fundraiser and to hear that you ran this.
Successfully without branding it as like, oh, and this is to raise money for X, Y, and Z. That's really interesting. I think so. Okay. So the vendors to participate or to come along had to donate this 20 or $25 item for the raffle. Did they have to do anything else? Was there a store holder fee? Was there like I don't know.
Was there any other conditions
for them? Since this was our first event, we decided. We would just keep it open and not charge a fee. Obviously, if it becomes bigger in the future and it becomes more of a people applying, we might try and do just a small fee and that could also go to rescue. But for now it was just the, the entry level was being able to donate to the raffle.
Yep. Okay, nice. So that's great because that means that you could really select the businesses that you wanted to work closely with, that you wanted to support and everybody could afford to come. It wasn't like, oh, there's this brand new business just down the road, but they can't afford it because it's a hundred dollars stall fee, for example.
I mean, there was, you know, they should, they can all afford to come as long as they have time. Yeah. Mm. Okay. That's beautiful. Okay, so did you kind of pick the store holders based on. Businesses that you know? Or was it like a bit more strategic than that? Was it like, okay, at one point I would like this dog bed company to be like a commercial client of my photography, so I'm going to get them involved.
Or at one point I would like, I don't know, like to do a collaboration with this particular, you know, dog trainer and so them to come. Was it strategic like that or It was not really thinking that far. It was
less strategic. It was more who we knew in the community that we could reach out to. I did do a push on Instagram, just kind of asking people, cause I wanted some sort of a artist, whether it was live art or not.
And I didn't personally know anybody, so I did a post on Instagram and had a few people commenting the same person, so I reached out to them. But yeah, most of it was just people we knew in the community already. Mm-hmm. Nice. Like it was, we
worked with in the. Yeah. Nice. And because it was the first one, I guess I can imagine myself at least being like, okay, well we just need vendors.
You know, like preferably the better quality, I mean, best quality. But you know that sage are usually, I mean, at least me, maybe you're more confident than me, but I'd be freaking out like, is this event even gonna be successful? I just need people.
And did you have that? Yeah. Well, and sometimes the biggest worry for me is if they don't have to pay to be a vendor, there's no nothing keeping them from not showing up.
So that's one of the reasons we really wanted to pick people that we knew and trusted that would come. And then also because we knew them, all of them were helping with the social media promotion. We had like a group chat going. And I think that also helped the event that everybody was self promot.
And event promoting.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I was gonna ask you about the marketing and in fact, that is probably a nice place to wrap up the first half of the interview and we might save that goodness for the second half about marketing the event, branding it, how it actually became like a profitable thing for you as a photographer.
Like is it worth doing it? Well, it's obviously worth doing it again because you. But at the moment we've just spoken about this amazing day that you've created for pet parents, but my dog moms in particular, I suppose. But definitely, you know, getting into the details of, of why it was so great as a photographer is gonna be great cuz you've only really touched on.
The fact that you were selling these mini sessions and they sold out. So let's get into the details of those, but let's save that for the second half of the interview. Just before we do that though, Kelly, I just wanted to ask you real quick, because your business name is Kay Schultz Photography, which is your maiden name, and now your marriage and name is Kelly Leffler.
So, Has there been, cuz this is like, I know this is off topic, but this is something that I do see being discussed quite often around like the importance of business names and connections and stuff. So was there anything, like, any issue with that whatsoever for you or you? It's just nothing for you to even think about.
I haven't had anything professionally or business related that's been a problem. I think most people don't really always correlate it. They just assume, you know, business case shows photography. Every once in a while when I've given like a, a Christmas card from a client or, you know, thank you note I do notice some people will write Kelly Schultz or sometimes when I get a phone call, people will ask us, Kay.
But other than that, I've never seemed to really have an issue with it, especially now with the, with Instagram being a big thing in my business, I, I try to show up a lot there. So I think people know me and know who I am, and I think that helps with any of the confusion that there would be.
Mm-hmm. Or maybe just that as you know, when it's our business and we're in it, it's all we think about.
And well, not all, but you know, and you know, probably we're just overthinking it when we worry about business name changes and this kind of thing. I mean, the client probably never even sees your last name. I mean, you probably sign off on your emails, Kelly.
Yeah, I mean, and even if I do sign off Kelly Loeffler, I don't feel like anybody's super concerned about that.
Like, wait, is this the same person? Like, it's never, it's never come up as a concern for me, I guess.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, that's really nice to hear. I'm just think, I think reassuring, you know, because often we, whereas, or not just me, but like I say, these discussions all the time around people putting a lot of stress on choosing a business name.
My initial business name. Kirsty M Photography, and then I changed. I rebranded to bits of Bernard Photography and I wish I just took. Stood with the, stayed with the first one, but nothing to do with any kind of confusion or anything. Just I find bits of was quite a mouthful. And anyway, people would even write to me and say like hi Bitsa, which was like really funny.
But anyway, so I just think like stick with or whatever you're comfortable with. And other than that, don't put much emphasis on it. I mean, Mercedes is pronounced different in every country around the world, and they're still one of the most renowned brands in the world, so what's a problem? And same with, you know, Louis Vuitton and whoever else.
Yeah. So anyway, it was just interesting to hear your perspective because you are the one that actually is using, you know, a business name that's not. Your personal name anymore. Anyway, thanks for sharing and like I said before, we actually will wrap up part one of this interview now so that we can get into all the details in terms of marketing money and how come these events are really worth it as a photographer and why you should be hosting them.
So before we do that, Kelly, can you just let the listener know where the best place is to check out your.
So I'm most prevalent on Instagram at just at at k Schultz photography. You can also find me www k schultz photography.com and obviously Facebook as well. But my most current and up-to-date things are always on Instagram.
Okay, perfect. And as always, I'll put the links in the show notes to to both of those places. So if you miss anything, just head over to the pet photographers club.com/the-podcast and search Kelly. That is it for part one of this episode. If you are a member of the club, you can continue listening to part two in the Member Zone or via.
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