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- [00:00]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Hello, my friends. Do I have a treat for you today. Welcome to the month of March. It's a new month. It is a new theme, and we're doing something different than we've ever done before on the podcast this month in that you have a new host. So our new theme is called March Marketing Madness.
- [00:25]
Dana Schoff
And.
- [00:26]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And our host is Dana, who many of you know from the Consistency Club. She's my co host over there, and she's also been the marketing director at this Can't Be that Hard now for five years. So when we decided that March was going to be our marketing theme, it made perfect sense to me that Dana would take over and actually guide us through this month's podcast. Right. This is a woman who thinks and lives and eats and breathes and sleeps marketing strategy in a way that so many of us love and respect. Right? It's smart, it's sane, and. And she has honestly put so much effort into putting together a month of content that is so actionable and useful, especially at this time of year. I know that for many of us, we're kind of finally coming out of the slow season fog. We're feeling motivated to, like, hit the ground running for the year, getting our businesses seen and booked, and she has amazing stuff planned. So without any further ado, I'm going to cue the music and we are going to let the madness begin.
- [01:36]
Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Anna Mi Tonkin, and I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it, and I can show you how.
- [02:06]
Automi.
- [02:07]
Dana Schoff
Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard.
- [02:09]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Why, thank you, Dana. It is so fun and novel to be on the other side of the introduction, and I'm so honored to have, like, taken this month over to bring
- [02:20]
Dana Schoff
our Marketing Madness month to this Can't Be that Hard. And thanks for coming on and being my banter buddy.
- [02:27]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Oh, my gosh, the honor is mine. I am very excited to. To hand over the reins and there are no more capable hands than yours to hand them over to. I, you know, we were talking about the podcast theme for the month of March and when, you know, when we determined this is going to be all about marketing, I was like, great, I think you should take over this month and I am so excited for what you have planned. It's going to be a really great month. I feel like we're taking all this love that we put into the consistency club year round and, like, distilling some of my favorite things into the month of March, which is a great month for marketing. Yeah.
- [03:08]
Dana Schoff
And so if you, you know, haven't been listening for the last couple of weeks or, you know, maybe you're just new to this, can't be that. This year we are doing sort of themes, and they're kind of lining up with the months, but not always.
- [03:18]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Exactly.
- [03:19]
Dana Schoff
And we started at the beginning of the month with, like, organization and systems, and now we're moving into marketing because this is the time of year where, you know, it's in the northern hemisphere, at least it's spring. Things are, like, starting to wake up in your business, and, you know, this is when you need to start getting your, you know, mind around again. Okay, I need to start marketing my business. Right. And I think that lined up just kind of when we realized that, we were like, oh, this lines up with March, and it's basketball season, and so we love alliteration around here, in case you weren't aware of that.
- [03:54]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah.
- [03:56]
Dana Schoff
So hence March Marketing Madness month was born.
- [03:59]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right. So say that five times fast. No, but when we were talking about March marketing, and of course, I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where, like, two of the biggest basketball teams in the country are based. And so I live and breathe March Madness in my hometown here. So it felt fun and sort of like a theme party to bring it to the podcast for our marketing month. And we are hoping to pump you up, like, a couple of really great coaches.
- [04:31]
Dana Schoff
Yeah. And gamify it, like, why, you know,
- [04:33]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I love a game.
- [04:34]
Dana Schoff
So on that note, I think, like, let's talk about what we hear often from photographers when they're talking about marketing. Right. Like, what are the struggles that we're often hearing?
- [04:46]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Well, I think the number one thing for a lot of photographers is just that they, you know, it's like they're happy to do whatever it takes to make their business work. Right. And everybody's told, like, you have to market your business. And they're like, great, sign me up for marketing. But when you start to get into it, you get, you know, a thousand different people telling you, do this, do that, do this, and. And you pick something and you try it. And there's this feeling that you put all this effort and time and work into something, and it feels like a gamble. And I would actually love to kick this off with a story from my own earlier photography business where I had this idea that I was. Anyway, I'm not going to get into the weeds too much about this, but I had this idea to do a project called Written and Illustrated where I was going to do not just the images for people, but also interview them and like, create these albums that were photos and words. And so I put together this marketing campaign for that. And I was at the time really super into letterpress. And I had a friend who had a letterpress, and I hired him to make these beautiful letterpress cards that I then paid to, like, send out to all these different people. I spent well over $1,000 between the letterpress and then, like, postage and all this stuff. And I never booked a single paid session. I did a few. I did a few things that were, that were. You know, I did them for one of my wedding clients and I did one for a family client, as you know, and I got some testimonials and all this other stuff, but it never really went anywhere. It never really got any traction. And in retrospect, the idea wasn't bad, the marketing strategy wasn't bad, but I just kind of put all my eggs in this one basket where I was like, this is what I'm going to do. And as soon as I didn't get. I had set myself up. I had spent so much time, effort, and in that case, money that, like, the. The lack of immediate return felt like, well, this was just a gamble. And that is what I hear from people all the time, where they're just like, ah, you know, I've tried whatever. I've tried blogging, I've tried email marketing. I've tried, you know, I continue to try social media. Nobody's responding, nobody's doing anything. So they just kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- [07:15]
Dana Schoff
Yep, I totally agree. And I think that, you know, people often feel like if I could just fix my marketing, then, like, everything would be better. And so then the pressure builds to, like, find the perfect thing. And then sometimes I think people will say, see someone, have success with something really random, like your letter press idea. Right. Which, by the way, when you tell these stories about these insane ideas that you did, I'm like, didn't you have two small children? How did you have time for this? Honestly?
- [07:49]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Oh, yeah. You know how you make time? You get a big exciting idea and you make the time. And I didn't have any budget for that at that point. Like, it felt like such a huge swing and then such a huge miss. And I just. Yeah, I actually am glad to bring that up. I'm sure I've talked about that somewhere in the past on the podcast, but it was. It's actually still hard for me to talk about because at the time, the biggest thing that I was feeling about it was embarrassment. Like, I had sort of, you know, I had talked it up with my friends and family. I had talked it up to myself and my clients and all this other stuff. And when nobody bit, I just. It was like the thing that I really wanted to do was just kind of retreat into my proverbial snail shell. I mean, like, never mind. I don't do anything. And. And I see that. I see it all the time. And the only way, you know, if you're listening to this and you're a newer photographer and you're like, well, you know, you can't listen to her. She knows everything. She's been doing this for a long time. She's obviously successful. I was successful as a photographer eventually, but that did not happen overnight, and it didn't happen in a linear way. Like, I. I had these big swings. You just have to kind of keep at it.
- [09:01]
Dana Schoff
And I think that's such a good point because this is like a big extreme example. But to your point, while I'll often hear people be like, oh, email marketing doesn't work for me because they've, you know, sent a few emails and nobody has responded or. But social is just a waste of my time, I never get any inquiries on social media. And as we were talking about today's episode, and, you know, the reason why March Madness came up is because what, you know, Anami and I were discussing behind the scene is that when marketing works well, it's never just one thing. It's never that you're an amazing blogger or you are incredible on social media, or your email marketing is, like, on point. It's actually always, in my opinion, a combination of all of those things working together. Because people come to you in different ways and then they, like, ping around and look at all of your different. You're looking at it as marketing. They're experiencing it as, you know, like sort of, you know, your marketing, but like advertising or they're getting to know you and it's so rare, you maybe never will have a client come to you and be like, oh, well, my cousin told me about you. And so then I went to your website and read your blog, which took me over to your Instagram, where I followed you for six months and liked an average of 1.3 posts. Like, they're not going to say that to you. Right?
- [10:23]
Anna Mi Tonkin
They don't even remember marketing is done. Well, they don't. They don't remember.
- [10:27]
Dana Schoff
Yeah, right. They're just like, I, you know, I have, I have become aware of this person and now I've decided that I want to work with them. So when your marketing is working well behind the scenes like that, it's like you're, you know, you have a long form blog post and a social media post and an email and a referral. Like it's all working together. And so that key brought us to the idea of brackets. Right. So since you're the resident expert on sports.
- [10:57]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Nope, nope, definitely not. But I have camped out for basketball tickets many, many times.
- [11:03]
Dana Schoff
So break it down for us. Tell us how brackets work. What's March Madness all about?
- [11:08]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah. Okay, so most of us have seen some sort of sports bracket before, right? You've got in the middle, there's the two empty slots. They kind of look like trees on their side. So you've got like the main trunk is the, there's two trees facing away from each other. So the, the two trunks are like your final two teams. And then from two it branches to four. Right. Because like it starts with, in basketball, it's, you know, there's a whole bunch of teams on the periphery and each game that gets played between two teams, one team is the winner and they advance to the next round of the bracket. And that just keeps getting smaller and smaller until you've got those two final teams. So when we were talking about marketing, this made perfect sense because it's like you have all these different ways that someone could potentially find you and all these different paths that somebody could follow in order to get to you. And that's, you know, that's the part that feels really random. It's like, where's my next client going to come from? But if we had the ability to trace it back, it would look something like a bracket where, you know, that final winning, whatever it was that brought them to you, if you traced it out, they would have started in one place. So the trick is that if you're gambling all of your marketing energy in just, you know, one or two strategies, and there's God knows how many thousands of strategies out there or thousands of ways that somebody could find you. If you're only focusing on a couple, then you're just gonna, your odds go down. You're gonna miss out on all these people out there who may have found you some other way.
- [12:55]
Dana Schoff
Yeah. So envision. I don't know if this is true for basketball, but we were sort of envisioning the bracket with four corners, right? Let's, let's say you've got and anime and I have talked about this before, but you've got like your big, we call them rock marketing. Those might be your like in person events or your like collaborations. Right? Like that's one corner of your br. Then another corner of your bracket might be like your blog posts or you know, if you, you have any, like, if you ever go on like a podcast or you do like any kind of like, I don't know, maybe you're like in a school publication or something. And then you've got your email marketing in one corner and your social media marketing in one corner. So you've got these like four quadrants of marketing, right? And so what we are saying is you have to invest at least a little bit of time in all of the quadrants because you don't know where your client, which quadrant your client is going to find you in.
- [13:48]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right.
- [13:48]
Dana Schoff
And what is eventually going to be the winning, you know, matchup there that is going to make them go from knowing that you exist to booking with you.
- [13:58]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And the fact of the matter is, obviously we're not just looking for one client to book with us. Right. We are playing this bracket game every day, all the time, where we need people to come to us. So again, the way that we get better at this and this doesn't happen all at once, I understand that, like we are all, most of us working independently. We don't have big marketing teams who can like be doing all of the things all the time. Obviously we're not talking about a thousand different marketing strategies, but you do want to diversify. You want to put some eggs in one basket, some eggs in another. So we, and it does work this way in basketball there are four quadrants. So I love that. You know, we have forever been teaching that rock pebble, sand, water strategy for layering in and it works in the bracket sort of metaphor as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [14:54]
Dana Schoff
So, okay, let's talk about what's in each of those buckets. Let's like give some people some ideas. So the first one we, we have called for a long time your rock marketing. These are like your bigger list, Right?
- [15:06]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right. So the focus of rock marketing is growth and visibility. So this is really opportunities that you take and they usually involve more planning. They're sort of higher energy but also higher impact marketing actions that you can take that get you in front of new people and ideally get you physically in front of new people where you're like meeting people in your community. You are get, maybe you're teaching a class or hosting a workshop or you are collaborating with a local business or you are running a set of mini sessions in conjunction with your kids preschool so that other parents at the preschool see you and see you in that position as a photographer. They don't all involve actually being like stepping into that photographer role. It's just getting out there in the community and making sure that people kind of are aware of you and start to see you as, you know, this person in the community that they know like and trust.
- [16:12]
Dana Schoff
Yeah, I'm gonna say the word everybody hates. It's networking.
- [16:15]
Anna Mi Tonkin
It is networking and it can be photography specific or not, but, but you're getting out there in the world so that people see you. And we've talked a lot recently about how we feel like this is a really important component and it's getting more and more component. It's getting more and more important. As the sort of online world gets more saturated, people are starting to, you know, really question everything that they're seeing on social media because of AI and you know, so it's like this is the one and only way that you can connect with people in a way that is 100% unquestionably you. Yep.
- [16:58]
Dana Schoff
And I just want to give, I'm going to tell a quick story here. I'm in the process of buying a house and you know, one thing you have to do is pick a mortgage lender and you know, they're going to get all of your sensitive information. They're like pretty important in the whole process. And you know, we had had the person that we'd worked with before, we had had like a random person that our real estate agent sent us. And then there was a person that I met in real life because he came to the open house of our house and I also met him at our Halloween party and he was our neighbor and I had met him in real life.
- [17:30]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah.
- [17:31]
Dana Schoff
And so that connection of like meeting him in real life gave me that extra. I didn't meet him in any kind of real estate capacity before this, but just because I knew that he, you know, was a real person who was my neighbor gave me that extra sense of trust to be like, that's the person I'm going to quote hire in this situation. So it's just like, I think especially right now, you know, in a post Covid rise of AI world, people are really looking for that know, like, and trust factor. And that is really something that you build in person. That can be done at the school pickup line. That can be done while you're playing a tennis game out of, you know, at a, you know, volunteering for a shelter like that. You might not always be there as like, I am a photographer. You're just like, right.
- [18:18]
Anna Mi Tonkin
But it comes up being a person in the world.
- [18:20]
Dana Schoff
Yes.
- [18:20]
Anna Mi Tonkin
It always comes up because people are talking and, oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm a photographer. That can be. That's the only seed that you may drop in that conversation. But then it's going to lead, you know, for the right person who needs a photographer or who thinks like, oh, yeah, where have I? Cause again, I love the fact that you met him at your Halloween party. I know. Because obviously, like, you weren't shopping for a mortgage lender at that point. But then when you were, and he also showed up at an open house, like, what a perfect.
- [18:54]
Dana Schoff
Yes.
- [18:54]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Kind of cross pollination of like, oh, wait, we know each other.
- [18:58]
Dana Schoff
Yes, exactly. So, okay, those are your rocks. It's like usually in person there are events that, you know, might not happen every single day. You often have to put the energy into making them happen. But the payout is usually. The energy is high, but also the payout is usually really high.
- [19:15]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right, right, right. Okay. So which brings us to Pebbles. So, yes, without going into the whole metaphor, you can kind of see where this metaphor comes from. Right. Like, rocks are big, pebbles are slightly smaller. So our focus with our pebble marketing is authority. So we've found some growth and visibility. Then there's authority. Now if somebody finds out that you're a photographer and then they are like, I need a photographer. Oh, there's that woman that I met at the Halloween party. I'm gonna. What was her name again? Oh, it's Dana Schoff. I'm gonna search for her website. And they find your website. If your website's a hot mess, like, that's where, that's where the end. That's where the road is. They're like, she was nice, but I'm gonna find a different photographer. If they go to your website and it looks great and they like your photos and then, you know, they start poking around or they go to your Instagram or whatever. The Pebbles level of marketing really has to do with building authority. And we talk about pebble marketing as building authority, not just with the humans that are visiting your website, but these days also with search engines and LLMs, AI based search functions that are searching, crawling your website. Right. And looking for evidence that you know what you are doing in this particular field. So that if someone is searching for, you know, a Chapel Hill family photographer, either in Google or they're talking about that with ChatGPT or Claude or they are in, you know, searching on Instagram, the bots say this person's website is the most authoritative. This person really seems like they know what they're doing. So I'm going to draw from that to give the first answer to this person. And that is huge when it comes to getting new eyes on your business and reassuring the people who are coming there that you're like a trustworthy person to work with.
- [21:17]
Dana Schoff
Yep. So in the Pebbles corner, obviously we've got blogging, but this could also be things like Google reviews. When you're like asking your clients to leave you testimonials. It could be your own testimonials that you post on your own website or again on your social media. If you ever work with vendors and like, you know, maybe they mention you on their website or they, you know, have you in like a little business card thing in the store. These are all pebble marketing and ideas.
- [21:47]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yes. And I love that you bring up vendor referrals there because that's another example where it's like, that's good for humans. Right. If you're talking to your, I don't know, neighbor and your neighbor says this person's straight, that's really important. But also when the bots are searching your website and searching the Internet at large, if they see a lot of inbound high quality links to your website, that also increases your sort of trust factor with those search engines.
- [22:18]
Dana Schoff
And I think that the important thing about pebble marketing is it has the potential to, it has the potential to really shorten the cycle between somebody finding you and booking you. Like, if I am looking around, I'm like going, you know, and see there see a bunch of good, positive Google reviews. I read a blog post, I'm like, they know what they're talking about. I'm like, and I've met them, you know, maybe I met them at something. I'm like, all right, I feel pretty good about my decision to hire this person. Right? Yeah.
- [22:50]
Anna Mi Tonkin
It's almost like a shortcut where I mean again that in that person to person referral can take somebody from like, I'm going to do 10 hours of Internet research and just sort of like circle the drain to, oh, you have somebody that you really like go to their website. Yep. I like their photos done that. I mean, it is, it's a massive shortcut if you can start to build more of those kinds of connections.
- [23:17]
Dana Schoff
Awesome. So then let's talk about the last two quadrants which are going to be sand and water. As you guys can see, we're just getting smaller and smaller. Sand is your email marketing. And so, you know, we teach and recommend that you send two emails a month to your email list. I know a lot of people are like, I don't want to bug people. I only email when I have availability. I'd like to push back on that and say, actually you're being more annoying by only sending an email when you want people to buy something.
- [23:48]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right.
- [23:48]
Dana Schoff
Versus being better about your email marketing and being a, you know, a person who they can build a connection with. And if you're doing a great job at your email marketing, you might be offering them, you know, like, you might be like, this is a great book I'm reading. This is like a, you know, this is what I'm cooking this month. Or like, I went to this amazing, you know, event that was free and you should go next time that it's there. That's how you build a relationship with people on your email list versus just being like, buy this, it's time. Like that to me feels actually more annoying and more bothersome than somebody who consistently shows up in my inbox offering value.
- [24:28]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I mean, like, relate that to the people that you know in the world. There are those acquaintances that you have who literally are only reaching out to you when they're like, oh, hey, I was wondering if you could help me with xyz. Could you watch my dog? Could you recommend a blog? Drive me to the airport, drive me to the airport. Help me move whatever the case may be versus that, you know, friend your friends who are checking in or like inviting you over for fun and oh, hey, I thought of you because I saw this, you know, recipe and I know that you're gluten free and this is great, whatever. That's exactly the difference. And you know that when the person, their number comes up in your phone, who they only call when they need something, you're like, decline, decline. Yeah, I'm not here right now. Versus your friend who's there all the time. Generally speaking, by the time somebody's on your email list, they have some sense of they know who you are, they know what you offer, they like you, all that sort of thing. Email marketing is permission based, right? So they have given you permission to email them if you're only showing up when you need something, which is for somebody to book. That it. It. You know, that it doesn't. It doesn't mean that they won't hire you. But it's not the best look. I feel like it's a conversation, and email gives you the opportunity to just be sort of, you know, gently reminding them all the time that, like, hey, photography, this is a great season for photos.
- [25:54]
Dana Schoff
Yeah. And the other thing I'll say about email marketing is if you feel like, yeah, but I send my emails and nobody ever opens them. Okay. One of my very best friends sends me an email every two weeks about her business, and I almost never open them, but I think about her every single time that she emails me because her name comes into my inbox, and so it's like a little billboard for her business. Even though I'm in marketing, so I know I should open her emails and I don't. I just archive them. It's like I. Her email is still doing the job. So even if people are not opening your emails, they are seeing your name in their inbox, and that is doing your marketing right there. So don't get super, like, obsessed about open rates or even click rates. Like, really, it's about being consistent and. And reaching out to people, you know, so you're not just being that friend who's like, can you drive me to the airport?
- [26:47]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And social media works much the same way. So that's your water marketing. And we call it water because you sort of spray it everywhere. Right? So social media posts are like, it's a low lift. You're just kind of showing up in stories and reels and posts and whatever, hopefully multiple times a week. They very rarely does one specific post make or break anything, really, in your business. You're just again, showing up, being that billboard for your business, building trust, building a relationship, showing a little bit of who you are and what you do and all that sort of stuff. And if you do that consistently, you get rewarded not only with people who, you know, have your name top of mind, but also with an algorithm that hopefully most of the time will cooperate with you and promote the things that you really want promoted. So.
- [27:45]
Dana Schoff
Yeah, sorry, yeah, and I was. No, and I was just gonna say, I think that social media works very similarly to, like, your website and blog posts where, you know, now I, you know, and I've talked about this in past episodes, people are using. I'm just gonna use Instagram. People are using Instagram as a search engine instead of Googling like Photographers in my area, people will go to Instagram and say, photographers in Phoenix.
- [28:10]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right, right.
- [28:11]
Dana Schoff
And so then it's. Then I'm gonna go to your Instagram, which is like kind of a mini website, and probably do a deep dive. And so if, again, to your point, if I meet you in real life and then I go to your Instagram and it's like crickets or, you know, nothing, then I'm like, oh, well, like not hiring this person versus if I go to your Instagram and it. And there's like, you know, some obviously beautiful photos, but then also, you know, some posts that are like, here's how to work with me, or, oh, your kid, your toddler is a terror. Don't worry. Yeah, I deal with that all the time.
- [28:45]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah.
- [28:45]
Dana Schoff
And you're like, you're like, taking care of how I feel. You're like, you know, okay, don't worry about this over here. And also, here's why I am a great photographer and here's all these beautiful photos, and here's a little of me as a real person so that you can see that, you know, you're hiring a person that you can know like, and trust. Right.
- [29:03]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And I recognize that the thought of sort of filling out an entire bracket is probably pretty overwhelming. Again, I want to come back to the fact that this does not happen in a day and it doesn't happen by chance. You do have to build systems that allow you to kind of do all these things, tag all these bases, be build out this whole big beautiful bracket in a way that is still doable with life and that, you know, again, Dana is my co host in the Consistency Club. We created the Consistency Club to take some of the burden out of doing all of this yourself and having to create all of it from scratch. And that whole, like, well, great, I want to email people twice a month, but what the heck do I say? What do I say? Yeah, so we get it. It's not necessarily easy, but I hope that what you're hearing here makes some sense. I mean, think about the way that you hire people or choose to hire people in the world, photographers, but other kinds of service providers as well. It usually isn't linear. You kind of bounce around. You see all these different things. So if you are putting all of your eggs in one basket, even if that basket is your kind of number one seed, Right. Like, I get all my bookings through social media, so I'm only going to do social media. You're still missing out. Unless you're. I mean, unless you're completely booked, which great. Like, then keep doing.
- [30:24]
Dana Schoff
But even if you are, but like, even if you are, you just never know because things change and shift all the time. So it is just smarter to make sure that you are spreading your energy into all four quadrants. And again, like, I'm just going to reiterate, that's part of why we created the consistency club is because we understand that's like a full time job in and of itself just hitting all four quadrants. Right. So in the consistency club, we take care of the water, the pebbles and the, and the sand. Right. We're helping you with blogs, emails and social to just like ease that burden. But yeah, you know, it, it's fine to be like, I am a social media girly. Like I get most of my leads, so I'm gonna put most of my energy into this, but I'm gonna utilize and put in place all of these systems that let me hit the other four quadrants as well. So that when somebody comes to my social media and then goes to my website, they, you know, dah, dah, dah. And then maybe I meet them in real life at an event or, you know, it really does. You really do need a cohesive marketing strategy in order for you to have a consistent booking rate and have people come in and feel like again, I keep using the word ecosystem. It's like once they're in your world, you want them to be able to bounce around between these four quadrants and then decide to hire you. Right. You don't want to be like losing people because you don't have a blog post or you know, you, they, they like you and they opt into something on your social media and then you never email them ever again. Yeah.
- [31:53]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And basically the whole goal of this month is like helping you figure out how to fill that bracket for yourself. Because when you have good teams in all four quadrants, you're just going to increase your odds of winning a booking, any given booking and more and more as that gets bigger and bigger. So yes, go ahead.
- [32:17]
Dana Schoff
I was gonna say. So of course we have created a Photographer's March Marketing Madness month bracket for you guys.
- [32:25]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah, it's like fantasy marketing, football, basketball. Just kidding.
- [32:31]
Dana Schoff
Gamifying this.
- [32:32]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah.
- [32:32]
Dana Schoff
So you're gonna see, you know, all four corners with the, the four quadrants that we just talked about and then a bunch of ideas in each of those areas. And so for the remainder of the month, for marketing month, we're gonna be interviewing people and replaying some conversations with different marketing ideas from Each one of these four quadrants to inspire you to really round out your, you know, marketing ecosystem this year. And as you're listening, you know, write down, like, that's a great idea that goes in my rocks. Or, you know, I really need to do this more. Let me put this over here in my Pebbles so that by the end of the month, we want you to feel like you have a bracket that is, like, filled out. And so, you know, you're like, stacking the. Mixing metaphors, but so many metaphors in your favor, right. So that you've got a team playing in all the quadrants so that, you know, you are almost guaranteed to win at the end of the day.
- [33:25]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah, totally.
- [33:26]
Dana Schoff
And it.
- [33:27]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I want to reiterate that, like, just like in basketball, it's not like the teams that go on to win the NCAA started playing in February, right? Like, they've been practicing since September, since August, probably for multiple years. And certainly all of them have been playing for multiple years. But the photographers who, you know, and I'm putting this in big air quotes, get lucky in the fall season, the busy season for most of us. They have been practicing, right? They have been working on their marketing for months beforehand. So now is a great time for you to really sort of map this out. I think the bracket, being able to download the bracket especially, I mean, all these ideas are really fun. And so I feel like if nothing else, you're going to want to download this for the. For the ideas. But the bracket itself really does give you a good visual way to see, like, is everything kind of lopsided? Is it, you know, am I stacking everything in this one quadrant, or do I have good strategies in all four quadrants? So I am excited not just for the bracket, but for this entire month of content that you have planned. Because, Dana, you've done an amazing job.
- [34:39]
Dana Schoff
Oh, thank you, Anime.
- [34:41]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Thanks so much for being on this.
- [34:42]
Dana Schoff
Can't be that hard. Why don't you tell our listeners where
- [34:45]
Anna Mi Tonkin
they can find you? You can find me exactly where they found this podcast. Um, yep, we are here all the time. But I am just to reiterate so excited, Dana, for you to be taking over this because our Consistency Club members know you obviously, you have been doing the marketing here at this campy that hard for five years almost. And. And we have been hosting the Consistency Club for three years together.
- [35:11]
Dana Schoff
And.
- [35:12]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And now having you do an entire month on the podcast is going to be, I think, a major gift to everybody who doesn't know you very well.
- [35:21]
Dana Schoff
Well, thanks very much. I'm really excited. So. Yeah. Right. So I will see you guys next week. We'll be talking about a little bit more about rock marketing. And in the meantime, head over to the Dark Room, download your bracket and get excited.
- [35:35]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yes. And just to reiterate, the Dark Room is our app that supports the podcast. So if you haven't joined yet, go to thiscan'tbethatheart.com darkroom sign up. It's totally free. You just go in there, you can it. There's all kinds of fun goodies in there for podcast related things, but it really is geared toward helping you take action on what you learn here in the podcast. So this is a really great month to dive in. Not only do we have this bracket, but we've got additional resources and things like that for you. So go dive in, poke around and send us your feedback. We'd love to hear from you.
- [36:12]
Dana Schoff
And I will see you guys next week.
- [36:14]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Sounds good. Have a great time.
- [36:16]
Dana Schoff
Bye.
- [36:18]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Well, that's it for this week's episode
- [36:20]
of this Can't Be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads@thiscantbethard.com learn. If you like the first podcast, be
- [36:36]
sure to hit the subscribe button.
- [36:38]
Even better, share the love by leaving a review in itunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.