← Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
The 5 Mistakes Holding You Back from a Fully Booked Calendar
00:16:24
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Brooke Jefferson
You are trying so hard to get new, new, new all the time. You're too busy trying to get to 10k followers on Instagram. You're too busy trying to get new people in your community to take a look at you rather than utilizing the audience you already have. 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 photograph. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mama to two 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 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. Welcome back to the Book More Photography Clients Podcast. I am so happy that you are here, especially if you're listening to this in real time. During the summer, it can be so easy to want to just shut everything off, take your foot off the gas and just resume when it gets closer to the fall. So I am really excited that you you chose to hit the play button today. You are taking your business seriously and that is going to help you book more clients, which is exactly why you tuned into today's episode. Today I want to talk about five mistakes that are holding you back from a fully booked calendar. These are five mistakes that have been proven to be mistakes by hundreds, if not thousands of photographers. And I am going to point those out to you so you don't have to make those mistakes anymore. So let's dive in. The first mistake that is keeping you from more bookings is that you are not niching. I know I sound like a broken record. Brooke, seriously. We're going to talk about niching again? We are. Before we get to the next four mistakes, but I just really want to encourage you. Niching is not a trend. It's not a strategy that's going to be around for a while and then just disappear. Niching is a business strategy that is here to stay. You are not going to be the photographer that is going to be the right fit for everyone and every type of photography. There are certain types of photography that light you up and you're super passionate about it. There are other types of photography that make you feel insecure, intimidated, or just flat out resentful. That's just not the type of photography for you. And so the biggest way for you to stand out out from everybody else is to be really clear on what you do specifically what you specialize in and what category of photography you want to be known for. So I really want to encourage you, if you are still on the fence, you're just not sure you can't choose. I'm going to twist your arm and ask you to go all in with a niche, try it out. Six months, 12 months, watch what happens. I'm telling you, I will be the niche police until the end of my career because it works. Trust me. I've worked with photographers from all kinds of backgrounds and locations around the world. And the one thing that unites them all, the ones that are successful versus the ones that struggle, is this idea of niching. Okay, enough on that. I have entire podcast episodes that you can go back and listen to about this controversial topic of niching. The second mistake that is holding you back from more bookings is your unclear pricing and packages. So this might be the fact that you're not sure on what your pricing should be. You maybe don't have profitable pricing in the first place. You're just kind of winging it. And the other thing is, when you are sending your pricing and packages to potential clients, are you confusing them? Are you overwhelming them? And does it actually make sense? If it doesn't, you're losing so many of your bookings in this step of your process. You have to be 100% confident and clear on what it is you have to offer. So I want you to just kind of audit your pricing, audit your packages, send it to a non photographer, friend or family member and ask them if they are 100% clear on what you offer and what they get if they were to book you and pay you on your prices. Some mistakes that I see when it comes to pricing in particular are the most random weird numbers I have seen. Packages that are like $135, $358, $199, that's weird pricing. You don't want to do that when you can. You want your pricing to be very well rounded. You want it to be easy on the brain for easy math. And you don't want to sound like you are the cheap store, right? You're not the dollar store. Your pricing should not end in 99. I would recommend that your pricing be something like 350, 500, 475. Numbers like that. Okay, so fives or zeros when you can. This is proven by psychology. This is proven by experiments. Just trust me on this. Stop with the weird pricing and just rounded out. Also, make sure that you're profitable. I offer a free pricing for profit guide. You can go to brooke jefferson.com and you can find that pricing for profit guide. Go through it. It will make sure that you are charging what you need to be charging for your specific goals and your specific availability. So if you have unclear pricing or packages, you're not confident in this area. This is probably your biggest mistake. What is costing you clients? The third mistake is relying on social media alone. And this happens to so many of you, you're overwhelmed with other methods of marketing that you're not even willing to try. You hear email marketing and you're like, nope, that's another subscription. That's just more effort than I want to put in. Not going to do it. You hear local marketing and you don't know where to start. You're not confident. You think everybody already has a relationship with an existing photographer, so you just don't even put yourself out there. You hear SEO and you immediately shut down. Your brain says, absolutely not. Your website is pieced together. It looks like a second grader could have made your website. It's not appealing and it's actually doing you a disservice. So it's pushing your leads away from you rather than drawing them into you. If you're using social media alone, it can only take you so far. I recorded a podcast. I don't even know how long it's been at this point. Some sometimes I want to say, oh, it was a couple months ago and it actually was a couple years ago and vice versa. So I did record one completely on Do I think that photographers should use social media? And I still stick by that opinion today. The answer is yes. I think every single photographer should have social media in their back pocket. But it should not be their end all be all. Okay. That is the quickest way for you to stay not visible, interrupting this episode for just a minute to tell you about the fully booked method. Imagine if you were booking consistent, quality clients year round, not just during the busy fall season. Imagine if you were making enough money to pay your bills, cover groceries and save for that family vacation. Imagine if you are being referred by clients and raved about in your community. And imagine if you wake up each day thinking, I can't believe that this is my job. It's time to go from stressed out to booked out and I want to invite you to save your Spot on the wait list for the next round of the Fully Booked Method. This is my 8 week group coaching program that helps photographers clarify their brand with, optimize their marketing and double their bookings in 90 days. So if you're ready to book more clients and find out more information, head to Brooke jefferson.com/fullly booked and get your name on the waitlist. I'll see you in the next round. Social media is not what it used to be 10, 15, 20 years ago. And it will continue to change every, probably every year, to be honest with you. But every five to 10 years you can see this really big shift in the effectiveness of certain marketing platforms and social media. Unfortunately, it just, it's not in the best spot that it could be. Does it still work 100% because I am still booking clients from social media, but if I use social media alone and I'm putting all my eggs in that basket, I would not have a fully booked calendar. I want to be very clear. So yes, social media needs to be utilized. You need to learn the strategies to do it correctly and you need to learn that you don't have to be on it 24 7, but when you are on it, it's quality content over quantity content. So if you are relying again on social media alone, your Facebook, your Instagram, your TikTok, etc. And you're not putting enough effort into other marketing methods, you are losing clients. Mistake number four. This is a big one. In fact, this is the one that I am willing to bet 95% of photographers that I work with, this is a mistake that they have, that they are blending in rather than branding themselves and standing out from everyone else. I know you think you're boring. I know you think that there's just nothing special about you, but that is not true. And the biggest thing that I teach in my Fully Booked Method program is how to actually establish your brand. Not just, oh, get the logo here, do the colors. No, no, no. We talk about the psychology of branding. We talk about the emotional side, we talk about the physical things, the visual parts, we talk about all of it. Because if you don't know how to brand yourself and you don't even know what kind of client you're going after, then you will never know how to get in front of him or her. That is what is keeping so many of you stuck. You're wondering why so and so over there in your area is doing so much better than you. They probably have a better brand than you. They may not be more profitable than you, because again, you have no idea what's going on in another photographer's finances or if their business is actually profitable. You have no idea. But if they're getting the attention and they have sessions to show, then their branding is probably more on point than yours is. And I know it stinks. I'm being really blunt with you, but that's what the point of this podcast is, right? You're listening to me because I'm giving you the real, the blunt, the no bs. That's what you thrive on. That's what's actually going to get you results in your business. And that's the kind of coach that I am. The fifth and final mistake that so many of you are making is that you are trying so hard to get new, new, new all the time, that you're not spending time reactivating the clients and leads who have already put an interest in you. You're too busy trying to get to 10k followers on Instagram. You're too busy trying to get new people in your community to take a look at you rather than utilizing the audience you already have. Having 10k followers or having, you know, 150 clients or whatever it is you're trying to go for, that is not enough in and of itself. If you're not nurturing people, if you're not taking care of them, if you're not giving them a client experience that is worth talking about, raving about, leaving you a review about, if you're not doing those things, your business will grow at a snail's pace. How you speed it up and how you get more bookings outside of social media and email marketing. And all the things is by reactivating and taking care of your current leads and clients, you might be making one or, I'm willing to bet, more than one mistake in this list. And this is not to make you feel bad. It is to open your eyes. It's for me to take a little magnifying glass and show you here's why you don't have the business that you want. Here's why you're not as profitable or as visible or as booked as you want to be. And if you want those three things, then you need to get your name on the wait list for the next round of the fully booked method. And if you're listening to this again in real time, the doors open on July 15. For those on the wait list, you will have first dibs at signing up for this program. And in this program, I walk you through not only these five mistakes, but I walk you through how to do the opposite. How do you set yourself up to be the go to photographer? How do you utilize pricing and packages that are actually going to convert people rather than confuse them and send them running the other way? I teach you all the marketing methods that you need to know that will actually change your business. Social media, email marketing, local marketing, collaborations, word of mouth, reactivating your current and past clients. And I teach you how to create a solid brand for yourself. And then we round it all out on the last week where we go all in on redoing your website and giving you the SEO to put you on the first page of Google. And yes, that is not an empty promise. This is actually what one of my students has done. You're going to hear this and their upcoming interviews. You're going to hear the wins, how one person went from struggling to get bookings and they were just available all the time to now they booked out two and a half months worth of their clients. This is real. This is tried and true. I am never going to give you guys an empty promise. So if you are wanting to be more profitable, more visible and have more bookings, you need to go get your name on the wait list for the Fully booked method. Go to brookejefferson.com fullybooked. Check out all the details there. Be sure to sign up for the wait list. They have two incredible bonuses that you will find out what they are as soon as you join the wait list. You're going to get a series of four emails from me and we're breaking it all down for you. I'm so excited to work with you guys starting July 15th in the next round of the Fully Booked method. Go on, check it out. I can't wait to transform your business in just eight weeks.