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Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Behind the Scenes: How I Booked Out My Spring Mini Sessions
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Brooke Jefferson
In today's episode, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of how I booked out my most recent set of mini sessions. I want you to be able to take this exact strategy and use it in your photography business so that you can finally have mini sessions that are successful. So if you're ready, let's dive in. Welcome to the Book More Clients Photography podcast. You can stop spending hours on Google and YouTube because you just found your number one resource for growing a profitable and sustainable photography business. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mom at a 2 and Oklahoma family photographer. I left the classroom in 2018 to pursue my photography career full time. Now I'm here to help you do the same. In this podcast, we're covering the most asked about topics including pricing, marketing, client experience, and in all things systems and workflows. You won't find any fluff or BS here. Just tried and true strategy. Are you ready? Grab your kids some snacks and charge those camera batteries. It's time to jump in. Okay, let's take you behind the scenes of how I booked out my spring mini sessions. This is a process that I use over and over again. However, this particular set of mini sessions is different than the ones that I have been promoting and marketing for the last couple of years because this is a brand new mini session that I haven't done before and it is at a venue or a place that I've never photographed before. So the venue. This is their first year doing it. It's my first time being a photographer to go and do this particular type of mini session. So don't worry, I'm going to break it all down for you. I'm even going to share what the package is and everything that's included. This is literally your blueprint on how to book out your spring mini sessions. Now another thing that I want to say here is if you are a long term podcast listener or maybe you're new and you've started binging the podcast episodes and you have heard me talk about my fully booked blueprint program and you've thought to yourself, man, I absolutely want to jump into that program, but I can't because of finances or I'm just not sure. I'm fearful that it won't work for me. I want you to know that what I'm teaching you today, mini sessions, right? This is a great way to pay for the blueprint. So if it's something that you're eyeing and you're wondering, oh my goodness, how am I going to Come up with the money to be able to start this program or to cover it completely. This is your answer. If you will follow everything that I'm walking you through and you implement this in your own business, you can absolutely have the funds to get your ticket into the fully booked blueprint program. Come get coaching for an entire year with me and learn all my tips and tricks and strategies for how to have the best, most profitable photography business. All right, so let's dive in. First of all, what were my spring mini sessions and what was the package? So my spring mini sessions were are at the tulip fields and again, remember, the venue is brand new to doing this. This is their first year planting and back when they announced that they were going to do this, I initially reached out and said, are you guys planning on allowing photographers out there? And so that's initially how we started talking about it. And I got the exclusive first dibs at getting to choose the dates. So that's super exciting. I love the fact that I get to do a spring mini session at really highly sought after place in our community. So super pumped for that. So basically my mini sessions, I don't really go all out for these. I'm not trying to add in a bunch of props. I sometimes will bring like a piece of furniture. I would say the most creative or the most prop filled mini sessions that I do are Christmas minis. But the rest of my mini sessions are very basic. I just like to choose a beautiful location or a seasonal location. Like these tulip fields are only going to be there for maybe six weeks max and then it will pass. And so I wanted to bring families out here into these tulip fields and I knew it was going to be beautiful all by itself. So I'm not planning on adding anything. No furniture, nothing like that. We're just going to use the tulip fields. So here is the package that I decided to come up with. So I am doing 10 minute sessions. Now listen, I don't recommend you do 10 minutes. I recommend you give yourself 15 or 20 minutes. Probably 15 is a really good sweet spot. But once you get really good and comfortable and you can run a mini session with your eyes closed, then you can definitely challenge yourself to 10 minutes. I tried the 10 minute session out back in the fall when I did pumpkin minis and they worked out really well. There was only like maybe one client where we went a little bit over that, but we had plenty of sunlight for everybody and so I really wasn't worried about it. But for these spring tulip Fields, there's really nothing different that I can do. I mean, I. And I'm offering them five images. So. Yeah, sorry, let me get through this. I'm going on a tangent. Let me just tell you the package. It's a 10 minute session in the tulip field and they are going to get five digital images and each mini session spot is $150. Now this $150 is the lowest that I ever charge for a mini session. Typically I'm doing 200 to 250 for a mini session. But this is my first year shooting these and for my own confidence here and my own guaranteed quality, I felt most confident at $150. I need to get in there, I need to figure it out, I need to make sure that, you know, I really can knock it out of the park. And then next year when I do this again, if I do this again, and I love it, then I will raise this price to 200 and just keep going from there. So that is the package and how did I actually book these out? So spoiler alert, Obviously I booked every single one of these slots out. So what I did in the planning process was I knew I was going to want to do the tulip Minis, but I didn't really know, like, okay, when am I doing this? Am I doing these at sunset? If I do them at sunset, do I only get an hour? Am I going to push further than an hour? Like, what does that look like? So I just started thinking about this and I knew that, okay, obviously the sun is still going to be like full blown. There's not any shade. I'm going to have to get really creative with my camera settings and it's just going to push me a little bit out of my, my comfort zone just depending on what the weather is like that day. And so I felt most comfortable with pushing it about an hour and 15 minutes prior to the sun going down. So that's kind of the time range I decided to do with 10 minute intervals. And that's how I worked out that there would be six slots. So six 10 minute slots is what I decided. Okay. So I was not sure what the exact date would be because even now as I'm recording this, these have not happened. By the time you're hearing this, these have happened. And so I might do a follow up bonus episode just for those of you who are curious, like, oh my gosh, how did it go? Is she gonna do it again? I might do a follow up episode for you guys. Or a follow up post or something like that. But at the time of recording this, I'm one week out from the tentative date. Obviously we are on Mother Nature's time, not on Brooks time and not on the venue owner's time. And so we are guesstimating that March 15 is going to be around the time that they bloom. So that's what we're holding out for. But I constantly said in my marketing and like, even to the people who have booked, this is a tentative date and it could be pushed out so we could end up having to move the date. So everybody knows this. And so for those of you that are like, well, I've never, you know, what do you do if, like, you don't know, like with cherry blossoms or with tulips or flowers or whatever it is, you just, you market it tentatively. You just get as close as you possibly can and then you just let people know this could change. So I just wanted to give that caveat there. When I want you to start marketing and really planning for your mini sessions is about four to six weeks out from the date. I will be completely honest with you. I knew I was going to do these sessions all the way back in November, but I obviously had no clue when. They did not know when. I just knew. I, like marked it on the here's what I'm doing in 2025 list. But I didn't know exactly when these were going to happen. So when she finally got back to me and I kept checking in with her and she kept checking in with me, the venue owner, she finally told me, hey, listen, we're about a month out. We think it's going to be about a month. And I'm like, amazing. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to start a waitlist so that as soon as you tell me, yes, we think this is truly going to be the date, then I will start sending the booking link out. So my very first post for this wait list. So the date of my mini session, I want. I'm trying to keep everything straight for you. The. The day of the mini session that I was Advertising was Friday, March 14th. They were going to let me come the evening before they opened, before people started picking the tulips. Okay, so Friday, March 14, I started marketing exactly four weeks from the date of this mini session. So February 13 was the very first time I said anything about this publicly. Obviously, I told some people behind the scenes, like told my sister and, you know, my really, really close clients. I told them first and I Went ahead and had them add their name to the wait list. But then on February 13, I did my first post to add people to my wait list. So here is what I said. This is exactly what the post reads. I have some exciting news, especially for those of you who said you wanted minis. I'm hosting spring minis in the tulip fields at Sweet Pickens Pumpkin Patch. If you want to be added to the wait list for first dibs at these, when they announce the date for March, let me know below. That's it. And I had 18 people join the waitlist in the 24 hour period. So I knew that I only had six spots to sell, right? Only had six spots to book and I had 18 people join the waitlist. And I knew those were pretty good odds that even if I said nothing else, maybe I could book all of them up with 18 people. And I'm going to give you all these stats here in just a minute. So the next time that I said anything about the minis was I waited until February 27th. And I'm going to be honest, I would not normally wait this long to post. Like I probably would have done February 13th and then like five days later done something else and then done something else around the 20th. But instead I just waited because I knew I had a lot of people on the wait list and I knew all of these people were high quality. Like, I know that they would book. I know that they wouldn't blink at the price. Some of them were past clients. Some of them have been on my list for a long time. So I just knew that it was most likely going to almost book out with the waitlist. So then on February 27, I went to my personal Facebook page. And you know, personal Facebook page is not my photography business. This is just, you know, Brooke Jefferson Facebook page. And I said, this is your last chance to join my wait list if you're interested in Tulip Field Minis. Because I knew I was going to release them that Sunday on March 3, I think March 2, March 2 was the date that I knew I was going to release it. So that's February 27th. A couple people were added to the wait list or they commented interested or something like that. So then a few days later, four days later, I believe I released the wait list like the actual booking calendar to the wait list on Sunday afternoon, March 2nd. Here's how I released it. And I've never done this before, but I wanted to try it. I ended up releasing it through a text message, not an email. Not individually messaging people. I sent it individually to their phone number. So that's how I had them add themselves to my wait list. I just wanted to try it. I just wanted to see how it went. And I actually think that it went so much better than email because people have their phones, like attached to them. So this is just what I did for 18 people. I sent 18 texts, literally copied and pasted it and sent it to 18 people. And it worked out amazing. So then March 3rd came around. So the very next day is Monday and I had two spots left to post. Again, I'm gonna go over all this, but I'm just going over the marketing. So March 3rd, I made one more post on my personal Facebook page and it was a I have two spots left post. And I was fully booked by Tuesday, March 4th. So it only took me basically two days, three if you really want to count Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. But it pretty much took me Sunday and Monday and I was fully booked on Tuesday, March 4th. Now here's the crazy part that I didn't say that first date. There was so much interest that I added a second date and I booked those two. So technically I think I ended up booking 10 spots total for. I think it's 10. I should have gone back. I don't know why I don't have that. I just, I have all the other stats, but I believe it was 10 total spots is what I ended up booking for these minis. So the two spots left post was out of all of the 10. So I actually ended up booking eight on Sunday and Monday and then I booked the last two on that Tuesday, March 4th, and so that would be the total 10. Okay, so that's what happened. So now let's talk about where did people convert? Like what actually worked? So I had a total of six people. Actually it was seven. I'm so sorry, seven people. But I'll tell you why I'm not counting the seventh person as the wait list. I had six people book from the wait list. The last one was due to a follow up. And I'm going to explain that in just a minute. But one of the seven people was actually the venue owner. So she went ahead and she booked a spot her child to do the spring family minis. And then I had three people that booked it straight from a Facebook post. Okay, so that's all I did. So all in all, I'm just looking at my notes here because I'm talking to you in real time. All in all, I did 1, 2, 3, 4. I did four total posts. That's it. That's all I did. That's all that I had to do. Now I realize I've been in the game for a while. I realize that I continue to grow my leads. I'm not saying that this can't happen for you, it can happen for you. But also have some grace for yourself. If you're not used to marketing like this, or you're not used to speaking to your audience in a certain way, or you think that your audience isn't paying attention to you, you have low engagement, things like that, don't count yourself out, but just have grace for yourself. You might need to build a few more people in your audience into your following to truly be able to book it out this quickly. But I have no doubt that you absolutely can book this out. I also didn't tell you that I did send an email out and I did not go look at the stats on that, but I did send an email out and I don't know, I don't think anyone booked directly from the email, but I know they clicked on it and got over to the booking calendar to see what the dates were. So from from my memory again, probably should have been a little more prepared for all of the details, but again, we're just doing this raw and real here. So let's talk about what I ended up texting to My wait list was it's time to book your mini at the Tulip Fields. Here are all the details and I've already told you what the details were. I just put all the details in a text message with a little tulip bouquet emoji and then I said book your spot here. The full payment is due at the time of booking. Thank you so much. And then I copied and pasted my Iris Works mini session booking calendar and that is how I booked it all out. This is the first time I have ever made people pay for a mini session in full upfront and I'm going to tell you I will never change this ever again. I used to just do the retainer and after this experience I will 1000% charge full price upfront from now on because I don't have to chase people down for money and I know everybody that booked is going to be 100% less likely to back out on me on the day of their mini session. So that's another little side rant rave there for you. But all in all, this is how I did it. I keep things so simple. I don't try to overcomplicate Things. Now, one other note that I want to make is that I did end up following up with a few people from the waitlist. So the day that I sent it out, some people have their text messages to where you can see that they read it and some people don't, that's totally fine. So I just went through and the people that were like, super interested to join the waitlist, I just followed up with them personally. And what I said was, hey, girl, I have one mini spot left, if you're still wanting one. And I really did it this time. This is how I booked that final spot. And so then they responded or they would tell me, I'm so sorry, like, I can't do it this time. And then finally, one of the families that joined my wait list originally, she ended up making things work when she thought it wasn't going to and they ended up booking the last spot. So don't be afraid to follow up with people because you're actually doing them a favor rather than bothering them. I just, again, I just keep it, like, super casual bald in their court. Hey, I just, I know you were interested in this. I don't want you to miss out. If it's something that you want to do and here's the information, just let me know. And for all the people that were like, oh, we're not going to, you know, we're going to be out of town, or we've already got plans that day, or I'm so sorry, I don't think I'm going to be able to do it this time. I just said, thank you so much for letting me know. I hope to see you at the next one. That's all you have to say? They don't think I'm being annoying. I don't think they're, you know, trying to be cheap or anything like that. It's just life. It's just how it goes. So that's it. That's the recap. It really is this simple. I just want to round it out with this. Number one, give yourself plenty of time to actually market and talk about your mini session again. I. This is my 11th year. I have done this since April of 2014, and it's just become like the back of my hand now. It takes time, especially because you have to constantly grow your audience and grow, like, really good, right people in your following. But once you have the people and you have the eyeballs, you will be able to book your mini sessions out in a day. I've had that happen to me as well. The second thing is, don't think that you're talking about it too much, because I still, every single time I run mini sessions and I market for it, I still get messages and comments of, oh, my goodness, how did I miss this? I can't believe we missed out. Or I didn't know you were doing these. I would have totally signed up. So don't count yourself out. Don't think that you're being annoying. Continue to post until you're booked out because not everyone is seeing your stuff. I promise you, barely anyone is seeing your stuff. Okay, last one. Keep an open mind. If many sessions have not worked for you in the past, it is most likely your strategy or your lack of visibility. It is not many sessions itself. Now, if you're someone that you truly like, you do not enjoy the 10, 15 minute quick sessions. And this is not for you. I'm gonna bet you didn't even listen to this episode. So I don't even know why I'm talking to you. But for those of you that are like, I desperately want mini sessions to work for me, I would love to do this, like two or three times a year. Then this is it. This is the strategy. So I hope you found this helpful. I would love to hear your biggest takeaway. Come over to Instagram dme. Tell me what your takeaway was. Tell me if you're going to try this. And then for those of you that actually use this to pay for your blueprint investment, please come tell me, because that would be absolutely amazing to know that you hustled your little booty off to get into the program so you could get coached by me for an entire year. All right, guys, that's it for this one. I will catch you on the next episode soon.