calling all photographers!

join me for my FREE masterclass: HOW TO UPLEVEL YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS USING VIDEO
***EVERYTHING*** you need to know about integrating **video into your photography biz** without buying new equipment, getting super techy, or wasting your precious time!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

Online marketing for creative business in 2022

psssttt…

join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

join now!

Online marketing for creative business in 2022

Hellloooo and welcome back to the Montana Diaries Podcast, on today’s episode I’m going to be talking allll about online marketing for creative entrepreneurs in 2022. I get asked about this topic allll the freaking time, but this episode is a special shout out to Whitney Jones, who suggested this topic in the Montana Diaries Podcast Facebook Group! Soooo here’s your reminder to join the group — you can post about anything related to business or creativity, and also ask questions that will be turned into episodes.

WHY I THINK SEO AND MARKETING ARE IMPORTANT/A CONSTANT CONVERSATION IN THE CREATIVE BUSINESS SPACE

Ahhhh, marketing for creative business. Listen, I know it’s easily the sexiest and most fun thing about creative business — everyone wants to try allll of the tips and tricks when it comes to marketing because it’s fun and it feels like a needle mover, but let me encourage you right at the top of this episode to dedicate yourself to figuring out what it would take to be SUCCESSFUL with marketing.

Becauseeeee I feel like a lot of creative business owners make marketing their jobs. Like, every day. And let the actual business things fall to the side.

I also know that social media strategy dominates the marketing conversation but here’s one hard truth: likes and followers and comments don’t move the needle forward in your business. Followers are not clients.

PEOPLE LOVE TALKING ABOUT MARKETING BUT NOT ABOUT SELLING LOL

People love talking about marketing, but not so much about selling. I’ve heard it all — that selling feels icky, that you don’t want to bug people, that it’s rude.

Can we please just act like a business and make money a simpleeeee math equation for a second? How much is your main offer? How much money do you need to make in a year? How many sales is it to reach that amount? Perf, that’s how many people you need to convert into clients or buyers. Everyone wants 10,000 followers but you don’t freaking need 10,000 clients — hopefully just being armed with the knowledge of what your real number is can empower you to serve those people. Now let’s get into my marketing suggestions for you to implement in 2022.

Now, to the actual selling bit: We have to get it out of our heads that selling is icky — you have a produce or service with value. Presenting your offer is valuable to the buyers who need or want your product. Good marketing will get your product or service in front of the people who want to buy it.

Here’s an example: When I was looking for a lifestyle photographer to photograph my newborn in our home, I could not freaking find one. I was searching hashtags like #missoulanewbornlifestyle #missoulalifestylephotographer and #missoulanewbornphotographer and nobodyyyyy was blatantly advertising what I was looking for. I feel like in-home lifestyle photographers have to exist, but they weren’t selling to me. It wouldn’t have been icky or salesy for them to figure out how to get in front of me — it would have been HELPFUL to me.

So what the heck are these lifestyle photographers doing? Slapping up random IG or Facebook posts every day without ever taking the time to talk about their offers? Where is the strategy to get in front of me? Maybe they’re marketing every day, but are they strategizing? Are they selling?

HERE ARE MY SUGGESTIONS FOR OTHER CREATIVE BUSINESS OWNERS IN 2022

Define your offers really well so that you know exactly the types of buyers you’re trying to get in front of.
Don’t make your social strategy the be-all-end-all of your business — being active on social media is great, but you don’t own social media platforms and they can go away at any time. Instead, I suggest implementing a content marketing strategy that can be repurposed across platforms. I talk about this a tonnnn in the episode we just did on batching, so be sure to go check it out — the link is in the shownotes
SEO — Search engine optimization, bb. Soooo taking the steps to figure out how to make your offer as searchable as humanly possible — I do this with weekly blog posts packed with key words I’d like to rank for on Google. The most helpful way to this I’ve found involves video, so if you’d like a more in-depth explanation on that then pleaseeee feel free to snag my free resource at montanadiaries.com/learnvideo ! I can also do an episode on this strategy in the future if you want that, so let me know.
Referrals — Past clients + customers can be a huuugggeee asset, so serve the heck out of them and ASK for their reviews and for them to tell their friends about you. Sometimes an email or a text can get you leads right away — people want to support you, especially if you serve them well. On the other side of this, there could be other businesses that work well with your product or service. Do strategic collaborations or ask them how YOU CAN SERVE THEM in exchange for their referral.
Paid ads — I’ve always been a huge believer in Facebook ads, but I’m diving a bit deeper into TikTok and Pinterest in 2022. My thing with ads is that if they’re converting, then there really isn’t any amount of money that I wouldn’t spend on them.
Other — Other ideas I’ve heard of include getting your brochures or magazines into other businesses that make sense, a photographer in the Facebook group said she’s trying out putting her canvases in businesses in hospitals as displayed artwork, it’s always a good idea to show your face in your community so trade shows and pop ups are always a great idea. But I’m including this “other” category because I’d loovveee to hear from YOU about out of the box marketing strategies you’ve tried or you want to try, so go to the Facebook community and let us know what you’re cooking up and how it’s going!

WHAT I’M FOCUSING ON IN MY BUSINESS FOR MARKETING

Soooo, I thought it might be helpful and maybe a lil fun to take my business through the six steps I just covered so you can see what I’m focusing on marketing wise in 2022.

So, if number 1 is defining my offers — my main offer is elopement videography and photography, with my secondary offers being smaller multimedia sessions like couples and engagements and some branding work. I know how many elopements I need to reach my financial goals, so everything I do for content marketing is focused on serving my elopement audience and reaching that amount of sales. Butttt for my smaller offers, I’ll mostly engage on stories or ask friends in the areas I’m targeting to help me spread the word about specials. I’ll talk a bit more about this in a future episode because I have some segmented financial goals this year making me take on more random sessions. On the education side of the business, my main offer is my course Videography for Photographers and the mentorship calls for creative entrepreneurs.
Point two is where I said don’t make social media the entirety of your strategy, and so what I do is I make sure to have one piece of original content per week on my website that I then repurpose for social media — you can hear all about my content batching strategy in the last episode of the pod. I’ll link it in the show notes — buttt, basically, for the elopement side this might be a blog post about how to pick a destination location for your adventure elopement — soooo, then, I would make IG posts and TiKToks/Reels that steal points from the blog post that week. I might have a YouTube video that goes along with it that gets posted to YouTube, maybe I cut up that video for the other socials. I’ll have pinterest graphics that lead back to the blog post. See what I mean? Make one piece of original content that serves the overarching goal, which is serving potential buyers of your main offering. Strategy driven doesn’t have to mean complicated.
SEO — my SEO plan relies pretty heavily on my blog content and putting in words and phrases that I want to rank in search for. Northwest Montana, elopement videography, video education, Glacier National Park, photography course — these are all example. My biggest SEO tip that serves me well is integrating YouTube videos on my website that contain titles that I want to rank in search for, like Glacier National Park Elopement Videographer. Learn more about this strategy in a free class I host at montanadiaries.com/learnvideo!
4 is referrals and I’m lucky to have incredible couples on the service side of my business who do tend to tag me and talk me up to their friends. Honestly, though, it’s really my vendor relationships that do the most as far as referrals go and I take my vendor relationships really really seriously — I always always always come from a place of service with other vendors. I send them content from our shoots, I offer head shots when I see them on location, I try to gas them up on social media. On the education side of the business, I’m diligent about collecting reviews and using the heck out of those reviews in everything educational I do, like this podcast! I also run affiliate launches where affiliates get a commission for referring people to my paid offerings.
Paid ads — I would love to do a follow up on this point in a couple of months when I have some data to share, so let me know if that’s something you want! I’m going to be running TikTok ads and Pinterest ads for the education side of my business, but I can absolutely do the same thing for the photo/video side to test out some methods for you guys.
Number 6 was the “other” category, and while I don’t really do in-person markets as much anymore, I am testing out the “OPP” strategy with other people’s platforms — this basically just means pitching to get on other people’s podcasts as much as possible to expand our reach.