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The WordPress Photography Podcast
The WordPress Photography Podcast
Episode 71 - Sticky Clients, Like Glue w/ Nate Grahek







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nate-grahek

Nate is a photographer, educator, marketing technology nerd, and entrepreneur, He is passionate about helping others do more of what they love. After seeing his own portrait clients reaction to the custom mobile apps he was building for them, Nate founded Sticky Marketing Tools to make it easy for all photographers to create custom branded mobile apps for each of their clients. Sticky is now helping thousands of photographers around the world grow their word-of-mouth referrals, generate leads and much more. From watching Nate’s new products and features, it’s obvious he has a commitment to helping all photographers build stronger businesses.

News:

What we discuss:

  • How to use email automation to book more clients
  • Should lead magnets always be downloadable or is email ok
  • How can someone create a lead magnet easily
  • Strategy to stronger lead booking conversions
  • Should photographers be using video in their marketing
  • How to be sticky in their client's mind before, during and after their sessions

Where to find Nate:

Referenced Links:

To register for a Free Trial to StickyEmail & Get Access to the free course inside of StickAcademy: How to Clone Yourself with a Welcome Video. Click Here to Create your Free Account.

Transcription:

Transcription was done by Temi.com which means it's an AI generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.

Scott: Welcome to episode 71. My name is Scott Wyden Kivowitz and I'm joined by my guest Nate. Grow. Heck Hey, how's it going?

Nate: Oh, so good. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me here. I'm just an honor.

Scott: I was just on yours. So. Hey, you know, whatever. Um, so, so as a reminder, at the end of the show, Nate will have an opportunity to ask you a question. You'll be able to answer that question on the episode page on the Youtube Channel and facebook wherever you would like. So a quick introduction to Nate. He is a photographer and educator, a marketing technology nerd like myself and ended entrepreneur. He is passionate about helping others do more of what they love. And after seeing his own portrait clients a reaction to the custom mobile apps that he was building for them. Nate founded sticky marketing tools, which did it start with sticky, sticky, sticky, sticky

Nate: albums was the. Yep. Yep. And now we've evolved into a lot more things.

Scott: Yeah. So, so neat. Latest project, the latest product, the product that he's put out him, he and his team is called sticky emails and it is fantastic. I've talked about sticking email I think a couple times on the show. I talk about it in my lead generation course and whenever somebody says I need an easy tool for this task, that's what I recommend. So, uh, we will be talking about its benefits and a little bit more about this whole concept of lead generation and other things related. Um, but before we get to that, I want to share one quick thing of WordPress related news WordPress 5.0, is out with brand new block editor. Yes. Um, they, if you recall in the last episode of the show, I said to install the Gutenberg plugin, that Beta Plugin, I'm oddly enough, WordPress 5.0.

Scott: Oh, came out that day. So it's been a very busy week watching the ups and downs of WordPress 5.0. Oh, but it is a, it is the future of WordPress is this block editor and Matt Mullenweg Just did his state of the word at WordCamp us. And he talks about what's coming in phase two, three and four of, of this whole block editor system. And there's a lot of positive things to come. So I'm excited about it. Um, I will link to the news piece from the WordPress.org site talking about this. You can read all about what's new in WordPress 5.0, I'm now Nate. What is going on with you? What's new in your world?

Nate: Oh Man. It's always changing, right? I think it's a good reminder that there's all kinds of benefits to any platform. You bet on a. But we're never insulated from change. I think that I was when I was first getting into technology, I would get, I remember how excited I would get one a new apple come out or new phone, a new something to tinker with. And now that I have a business and a family, I'm almost 40 years old. I never. Age doesn't matter. But I feel like now that for like my late thirties, I would forget how old I was a lot. I was like, where's a nice 36 or 37? But now I'm 39. It's like a good milestone in any way. I feel older. I know it's not old age is just an attitude, but we're busy and I've feel myself becoming a curmudgeon when things change nonstop.

Nate: Like, oh, I just want one thing to stay still and something I don't have to worry about check checking and it's just, there's always something. But I think it's, it's a good reminder of how much we need to invest in automation because all of the old stuff we used to do doesn't work as well as it used to. We're all busier are the people's whose, whose attention we're trying to get. They're busier and our lives are busier so we need to rely on, on, on systems and automation. And I love finding new ways to do that. We can talk about some of my favorites today.

Scott: Cool. Cool. Yeah, you know, so, uh, that is kind of where part of what our topic is going to be today. I'm basically, we're going to talk about how to stay sticky in your client's mind before, during, after session, and all the components that make up that, that, uh, that whole concept, so to, to get the ball rolling. Um, you feel that, uh, and I've heard you talk about this numerous times, that a lot of photographer's websites are broken, right? Then they're, they're not doing their main job. So what, what do you, what is, what in your mind is the most important job of a photographer's website?

Nate: Oh, so fun. I love talking about jobs. What's, what's really matters at the end of the day, right? Um, I think too, to back it up one more, one step. I think that it's important to think about as many of us are solo entrepreneurs, especially when I was starting my photography business. A lot of you have to do all of it. Marketing, sales, Admin, it, shooting at everything, right? It all depends on your shoulders. And I like to think about all of the software and the tools we get to use it. I think it's helpful to think of them as your team. So you're, you're giving kind of like hiring somebody, you're hiring your website to do a job for you, but typical of a lot of mistakes I've made, I think we've all made it as an hiring and growing a team is you ended up giving one thing or one person too many jobs.

Nate: And what happens when any of us have had too many jobs. We do all of them poorly, right? Instead of doing one thing really great and I had this cool. I've been talking about that idea for a long time. So what are some of the too many jobs we give our website, it's a, it's to educate is to show off our portfolio. It's sometimes people are using it to show off like several different brands at once with multiple pages. It's got to be a blog, it's got to be portfolio, it's got to be about me and there's got to be ways to contact you to schedule sometimes talk about pricing information and sometimes it's delivery. Like you're all, like brand new visitors are, are, have to sort through all of these possible doors, including one door which is intended just for people who you've already, like you've already worked with, you're going to deliver their, their online gallery, et Cetera, and they got to log in somewhere.

Nate: So there's all of these things going on and it means that the more we're adding, I would argue that the most important job that your website has is making a, an amazing first impression to brand new strangers. Um, and there's this idea, I think it was having a conversation with you and other experts in our industry about this feeling that our websites aren't working. I like, is something broken. Like when we, when I first set up my website for my portrait business, I would see all of this traffic, right? I think the front of the first pain point is you see people visiting your page, but you're not getting any calls. You're not getting any of your contact form. You've tested it like 10 times it's working, but nobody else is submitting anything on it. What is going on? And I had this Aha moment in thinking about, um, just this different stages we go through when, especially early on in starting a photography business.

Nate: And I think it's that first phase, our photography website doesn't really have to do that much because most of our client base, when you think of your first 50 customers or your first 10 customers, most of them have come from your inner circle or from people that know you, or at least people that know your friends and you've. There's a really solid, trustworthy referral that's gotten new. Your first handful of clients and they, maybe they've sent people to your website and then they've submitted a contact form and then they then reached out to you. Right? Well that doesn't really mean that your website is working. And I think as time goes on and you've got, man, I've got all these visitors on my site, but I'm not getting. I'm not getting any inquires anymore. What's going on? How come people aren't reaching out? And it's making this leap from that.

Nate: That's the challenge of really any business when it's first getting started. It's one thing to get business from your, your inner market, your inner circle or the like the or friends of friends. Right, and making that leap, whether it's in six months or six years, you've got to make the leap into how can you sell and market your business to total strangers. How are you consistently and predictably turning total strangers into clients and this is where I see not just our business, right, but so many businesses fail. They go out of business. Eighty five percent of of portrait photographers go out of business in three years because they can't solve for this really hard challenge. Like have you ever been hit up Scott by a like investment a retirement bankers or whatever, like I don't want to name names, but like some of the Ameriprise or something.

Nate: I don't even know a lot about them, but have you ever been hit up by friends of friends that way? No, I have not so many of you guys listening may have. I just want to articulate that. That is a business model. I'm a business model nerd where they. Those companies are targeting kids fresh out of college who don't have any experience. Do you have any experience building relationships with strangers and they don't come get a job and all they're hoping is that they're gonna feel pressure to reach out to all of their friends and family. It kind of reminds me of like an Mlm, like when you're anybody who's decent at sales and marketing just a little bit, they put themselves out there to their friends and family and they're able to get clients that way. Right? But that whole system, that whole business model is designed to just chew, chew people up because they know less than one percent of those fresh out of college grads are going to turn into really effective salespeople that can actually go out and sell to strangers.

Nate: They're just designed. Come in, bring in 10 to 20 of the, of the people in your network that, you know, using really sleazy, really manipulative tactics. And then that's it. And then see you later. Um, so anyway, I digress. It's, it's. The point is it's a hard. I want to empathize with photographers out there that making this leap from selling to people who know you or are or know your friends or know your circle of friends and family. I'm making that leap is really difficult and so it don't feel like all of a sudden your website is broken. When you reached this milestone in your business, know that your website probably never really was capable of doing this enormous lift. This lift from total, this total stranger who just discovered your work from a google search or maybe from a referral or a referral or some other partnership. You've got a stranger who's never heard of you or doesn't know who you are. Lands on your website.

Scott: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so, so at that point, right, so now we, we were talking about taking these people who don't know who you are and letting them get to know you, but also letting them potentially fall in love with who you are and and what you can offer for them. And this is where things that were going to be talking about lead magnets come in and now we've talked about lead magnets. Many times people probably heard the phrase, what is, what would be your simplest definition of a lead magnet?

Nate: I love it. So there's like lead bang it, there's lead generator and all those different names for it. It's something that your target market wants to learn more about, something that they care about, learning about and something they're willing to, um, they want bad enough that they're willing to give you their lead or their email address. It's become the most common standard way that all businesses are marketing online. It really is the founder of most valuable thing. Any thriving company, big or small. It's what we call like a leading indicator. Like a lot of businesses, they don't look at their, uh, their revenue this month to know where they're going to end up. Like they're looking at how many leads are they generated? How many leads did they have? Because they know consistently how many customers they can get or turn convert from lead into customer

Scott: and go ahead and lead. Lead magnets are a will. We're going to get into a what lead magnets can do and how they can be structured for photographers. But I'm lead magnets can be something as simple as I will give you a discount coupon to use in exchange for email addresses. It's net old navy. Does ll bean does. Even the Bruce Lee Foundation does for them, for their online store. Like it's everybody. Yeah. Everybody. This is, this is. It's so common. Um, so

Nate: for photographers, I want to start to start here. So before we go into what a lead magnet is, and I've got all kinds of, you're not going to love ranting about different types of how to make them and the pros and cons. But let's stop here. I think there's a, there's a point where we need to make a case for that. It's even though it's like everybody's doing it well, the counter argument, you might be thinking to yourself as well, is it too late? Should I still do it? And here's why I think you still should, um, number one, if we go back to it's your website cannot book you clients if there's no website out there on the planet that can consistently turn a total stranger and turn them into a booking tool that just doesn't happen. And back in the day we weren't busy, you wouldn't be where you wade, remember things and we would bookmark things and all of this stuff, all of these ways to like come back to a site that we will be loved.

Nate: That just doesn't happen anymore, right? We're too bombarded or too overwhelmed. And so even when you're lucky enough to get a visitor on your site, they are not ready to book you. I like to make this analogy. We should always be going back to our roots. Going back to what, how did marketing and business and all of the communication work before the Internet? Because when we act like we would in person online on our websites, that's what works. And we should always use that as a guide. Don't ever do something on your website that you wouldn't do in person. So for example, if you're meeting a stranger at a networking event or you're at like a a kid's birthday party and another parent asks you, Oh, well you're a photographer, you do family photography. Like, yeah, yeah, it's cool. It shows the more you would never leave.

Nate: Go to leave that kid's birthday party and be like, oh, hey, would you like to book a session here? Let's, let's like you just wouldn't ever do that. But our website's do. And rema and when you're. Whenever you're discouraged about people not entering their information into your contact form, don't get discouraged because here's what I have to say about that. Number one, you probably have way too many questions too many too soon. The more questions you have on your contact form drastically hurts. How many people will take the time to submit it. And I would argue that most of the people who will fill out your contact form, they, the only reason they will fill it out is because they've likely already decided they want to hire you. Right? And so that's just one tiny little sliver over percent. They've decided some other way or they've they've, maybe it was their third or fourth visit to your website, but what about everybody else?

Nate: What about those strangers who it's the first time they've met you the first time they have any idea about what you do and that is who we need to start skewing our website design and strategies towards because that's 95 percent of the visitors on your site are first time visitors are strangers and they just want to learn more about what you do and a lot of them don't really understand what it is. What does it mean to hire a photographer and for better or worse? I think that being. Well, this is one of the hardest parts of being a portrait photographer. We compare our job to say a car salesman or some other commodity, right? Like most customers go into the other, the other places to buy something where they know exactly what they want. They don't need a person. They don't need to interact with a human anymore at all.

Nate: It's all just like, go to Amazon. I know what I want. Stopped talking to me right. Tests. Whereas, yeah, there you go. Exactly. It totally eliminated it, right? But in photography it's so different and people, we need to remind ourselves that most consumers have no idea what has happened in our industry over the last 10 years, what products are available, how the pricing structure, how you do pricing different than anybody else, just for the sake that you are 100 percent unique compared to any other photographer means that it's really hard to figure out how to choose a photographer and we need to, instead of being annoyed by it, we need to empathize with our visitors on our sites and get and helping them understand our world, knowing that they can. There's no way they can understand everything. You know, in the three minutes they're on your site, you've got to break it up. You've got to give them just a little bit of taste. Something that they can learn a little bit about you and then spread it out over time. All right, sorry for, that's the ramp. So now that's why you need to offer any like a lead magnet. Right? And the last point, why do you think people should still, why is it still worthwhile? I mean, is it too late? Our inboxes are full. Everything's going to the Promo Tab. Why do we still try to do email marketing?

Scott: Yeah. So, um, you know, people with, especially with something like a lead magnet for a photographer, if they're filling it out, they want to know what you're going to give them. So, um, by getting in there in their inbox, they're going to be looking out for, unlike, you know, you go to old navy, you get the coupon code and then they're going to be spamming you with tons of, Hey, we've got a sale today and the sale the next day and the sale the next day people are going to start unsubscribing in deleting and whatnot. But when it's a photographer, when it's something that they know that they want a way more than they want the next pair of jeans from old navy, they're going to open that email in the inbox. Right? Right. So, so when it comes to the email lead, magnets can either be sending a document that the person can download, there were, it could be a series of emails or it could be something else, it could be a Webinar, it could be a bunch of things. What do you think is the most effective? The, the best way to stay in here? It's

Nate: my favorite one. My, my two cents to why still eat? Like to your point, yes. This channel is getting full. Yes. We will rely on more stuff is coming into our inbox. Right? But it's still the best channel. It's still where we want to communicate with maybe we've moved our, our closest connections, like our friends and family to messenger, whether it's facebook or uh, or what's apple's messenger, whatever, like Messenger. That's where we do really close, personal, like we would. I don't really want a company to message me like I read all my messages right. That's for my brother, my wife, my family, my mom. That's super, super tight circle. Right. I still really want to communicate with the brands. I respect the educators, I respect the leaders in our industry. I want to went up when I choose to go into my promo tab or to go into my inbox and consume content from the ones I care about.

Nate: That's still where we. We as consumers want to interact with companies and with service companies. Right, and to your point, yeah, I don't. I'm just going to gloss over coupons from old navy, but when it's somebody in my city, when it's a person that I've said, yeah, I want you to teach me something, I'm going to read that email. I care to have it in email. Okay, so do you. You've got a good offer. I'm like, it's somebody. What if this is used? One example, I think that that, that works well across several portrait niches. There's one is like how to choose seven tips for how to choose x photographer, or you could do seven tips for taking better pictures with your smartphone. So there's the, all of the benefits around you being positioning yourself as an, as an expert, so because they're not really in the market today to hire a photographer, but you just become sticky on their mind and when they do decide when they are in the market to hire a pro where they have a friend who is, you are the one they think of because.

Nate: Because guess what happens is every time they go to take a picture of their kids, they're thinking of what you taught them. Oh yeah, composure. Oh yeah, let's not stick them in front of the sun. Let's flip around and have the sun at our backs. Uh, it's such a good tip. I pictures looked so great and it's when you can embed yourself in your client's mind, your potential client's minds like that. They aren't even reading an email from you right now. They're just taking a picture of their kid, but some tiny part of their brain is thinking about you and the this gratitude. Like, oh my gosh, I'm smarter. I'm doing better because of this, this awesome photographer. And they're teaching their friends. Like, Hey, look at this cool trick. I love how often as photographers we all get asked, um, and, and, and I would just volunteer when I'm out traveling and everybody's wants cool pictures.

Nate: My wife's like, fine, go help them. Like I'll go take the picture and I'll, and I'll go, I'll take like a bunch of pictures. I think Deacon, they're like, did you take it already? And they're like, what do you mean? Was like, what? We didn't see? You hit the shutter button. It's like, no, no, no. The volume down on an iphone is the shutter. And you're like, what? I can push volume down and take a fiction. It's these little things that you know, that you don't think are important that literally blow people's minds and win more. You're having that experience that you're sharing your wisdom. That is the type of marketing that grows. Okay? So you've got a cool content, cool wisdom. We've convinced you that you have something that have that your potential target clients, ideal clients that they care about learning more about.

Nate: All right, so now we've convinced you of that. Now what? How do you deliver this education? Um, when they give you an email, you have an autoresponder setup that delivers either a video of you teaching about it, maybe a pdf or an ebook or dun dun dun, a email sequence. So let me get super nerdy right now. This is where it is. I actually learned this from one of my mentors, um, who founded a huge online marketing company. Um, so here's the difference is when you are getting their attention with your, with your form or your pop up or whatever it is, it says, hey, would you like seven free tips on how to take better pictures with your smartphone? And I'll send you this ebook. Think about it, and you guys have all felt this way. Subconsciously. I want to bring it to consciousness.

Nate: Somebody's gotten your intention for like seven awesome ways to edit your photos in lightroom or improve your workshop. Like, Oh, you're like, yeah, I want to learn those. You've got my attention. I want to learn that, but why do I need to give you my email address? It's a pdf. Just give me the darn link. Like I just link me to the thing you've got my attention about. It feels very bait and switchy. There's a lot of reasons why we call it lead magnet a lot of. For many years it was called lead bait and I don't know the number one that feels kind of weird that like why do you, you don't necessarily need it, but here's where it starts to get even worse is you're like, fine, here's my email address. Your customers would do this to like find, here's my email address. And then they go check their inbox.

Nate: They download the pdf and then lego. Cool. Here's some negatives that we scan websites, we don't read them, we scan ebooks, we don't really read them all that content dumped at once. They're going to scan it once and forget about it. They're not ever going to come back to it again because they're always busy and having it, having that pdf is like this big tension relief. And so they're like, oh cool, I have it in 10 maybe to come back to it, but most of them never do. Um, but now some marketers and maybe you want to continue to nurture and to tow to build rapport with this potential client, right? With which this lead, so you want to send not just one email but multiple emails, but the problem is you didn't earn permission. Seth Goden talks a lot about permission based marketing. This is it right here is you've earned permission to send them a pdf.

Nate: You have not, unless you make it super, super explicit and have them opt in and say, hey, would you also like to get added to my newsletter where I'm going to send you weekly tips or monthly tips like this? And they're like, yeah, I would. Okay, that's different. But a lot of marketers don't. They just, Oh, how are you liking the pdf? And it's like seven emails later. That is what I would call span where you're not earning the permission to send those additional followup emails. All right, now let's talk about the better way. And to be honest, for many years, any photographer who had that first strategy I just talked about in place, crushing it so much better than not having anything. Right. Just having that one email lead like totally powerful. Now let's go to the holy grail. When you get their attention with an email course, that's only thing you're changing and you say, hey, would you like to download my free seven day email course on how to take better pictures with your smartphone?

Nate: People are like, oh yeah, that sounds cool. I want. I want that information. I want to learn from you. Okay, cool. It looks like you're an expert. That picture looks cool. I want to do that. Oh, it's an email. Of course that means you need my email address like it doesn't it? It handles that subtle difference of like, it's a pdf. Just give me the link, like, no, no, no. It's an email course that I'm going to drip to. I'm going to send it to you one a day over seven days. Perfect. Totally. In alignment, I could go on a huge tangent about how we build trust, that huge gap between their stranger and a booking, closing that giant chasm that's all about trust, so one way we rebuild trust it so that they can actually feel comfortable hiring us is by being credible, by showing that you're an expert by giving awesome wisdom and information by doing what you say you're going to do and just delivering them the information like that, but it's these subtle little consistencies like when we can't, when we meet somebody in person, we're always subconsciously looking at are there words matching their body language, but we don't have that online.

Nate: There's no body language, there's no. There's just words and when you say, Hey, would you like this free thing? Give me your email address and I'll mail you a pdf. Like that's not aligned. That's not perfectly aligned. There's this tiny little road bump that's very subtle and sometimes mostly unconscious, but it really matters. Okay. You've got them excited to get your email course. Now on the back end they've said, yes, I want to get it, so now they go check their email and they love, they consume it, and then you tell them, okay, tomorrow I'm going to do this. They're expecting it and you've earned permission. You've told them up front that this is a seven day email course. They so they know they're going to get those emails and all those seven emails are not going to get. I'm going to get read if you're breaking it down over time, right? There's all of these tiny little benefits that really add up into huge value. So you just, uh, briefly touched on something that I want to make note of that I want to make sure that everybody heard that

Scott: at the end of the first email, right? And the end of the second email and so on. You specifically say, tomorrow I'm going to send you an talk. We're going to talk about this, right? You're saying on this day, right? Tomorrow or in two days you're going to get another email or something like that. You're telling people you're putting a date on something that you, that they know, okay, I know to check my email again tomorrow or whenever was just told to me. Right? You're, you're, you're making sure that now not only did you teach somebody something, give them something of immense value, but you're telling them you're giving you even more value on so-and-so day. So, um, I want to make sure that it's usable. Realize.

Nate: Yeah, I think that what is, what is hard about learning online marketing like this is all of these tiny details there. We aren't even really conscious of these tactics when we're going through it. Again, it's been years, we've all been opting into these things and subscribing to newsletters and getting pdf. We've been doing this for years, but we're not really conscious of the little things that work in the little things that don't, um, because it's, most of our purchasing decisions are happening in the unconscious, right? So you really have to slow down and break apart all these little tiny details. Um, and it's like, to your point, just the simple detail of saying, hey, in the next email, look, watch out for this and on, and on one hand it's, it's building anticipation and they're at, maybe they are consciously looking forward and I'm going to go look for the email. Even if they're not, that's okay. At the foundation it's earning permission. You're not a, you always want to be breaking things down like old way, new way, spam engagement like spam versus like a gift or an authentic value. You want to send people right and interruption of spam out of the blue that is not going to work. And it's actually becoming illegal in many parts of the world. I'm really good stuff. Okay, what else should we go from here? So you're sending emails then what?

Scott: Yeah, so I, I wanna I wanna, uh, bring in something that is another piece of technology that you and I love in this and talking about video, right? How can we incorporate video into this whole concept? And I have, I have my ideas, but I want to hear from you, which I'll chime in after you do your field. I love it.

Nate: So I get excited. Everybody knows I founded sticky email. I'm A. I have a software company. Of course there's cool things. I love about that, but it's funny. This last year I've been more excited to talk about loom or use loom or soapbox Wistia's tool. I've been more excited to talk about these tools and anything else. Like I go to dinner parties with my wife and I'm asking everybody, have you heard of these video tools yet? Talking about, oh my God, there's no. Here's my big dramatic like lead in is as a technologist, a huge nerd. I'm always trying new things and new tools, new tactics and new way to use old tools. There has never been something that has changed my, my life, my personal life and my business life of what my day to day looks like. More than that has not. Usually we just make these little incremental things like I haven't had like a really disruptive change in how I do work at ever really, so that is the big overly dramatic lead in and it's, it's using one to one video messages or one to really short, unedited, really raw, just quick turn on my webcam like five minutes or less, one to many video messages where I'm sharing my face, I'm sharing my screen and I'm sharing my voice and I could do a whole.

Nate: I have done full courses about multiple different ways you can use it, but let's zero back in and talk about how you can use a very simple video message to make an amazing first impression to strangers on your website. So what is the most common request if it's not for a booking, Scott, what's the most common requests that you and you think other photographers are getting from strangers that are just maybe reaching out? So how much is it going to be? Can I get the digitals? Why do I. Why is by 10 so expensive? Why can't I get to skip? The digital is one of your prices because we talked at the beginning. They don't know exactly what they want. They don't know what's available and what happens in an industry when we're making a purchasing decision about things we don't really know about. Number one, we rely on referrals.

Nate: I show a lot. We were like, this is this. This is confusing. I don't want to learn it. I don't want understand it. Who's somebody that can refer me so I don't have to do any of this stuff. Somebody I trust says, Yep, it's cool. It's reasonable. It's a good value. Okay, here I am, let's do it, but if they don't have that, where do we go? Price. Price is always this common denominator of I don't know what else to compare you to other photographers by because I don't understand anything else, but I know I understand price and so that is why everybody asks that and I think that you and I both have seen unfortunately in public and in private facebook groups and we're everywhere else. Photographers really frustrated with this reality really because it's. It's offending. I mean I can. I, I've been there like, it's so demoralizing to feel like we've put ourselves out there as artists saying I am good enough, darn it, like I've put in hours and years of blood, sweat and tears and learning to perfect my craft.

Nate: So much so that I believe I can start a business and do a business, taking pictures and doing all of this work for people and when somebody is like, how much do you cost? It's just like a kick in the gut, right? It's so hard to stay strong and confident and feel like you're valuable and worth all of it. When you're. Most of the messaging you're ever getting from acquiring people is why are you so expensive? I don't get, I don't, I don't see the value. So if you're frustrated with this value, here's one of the big reasons I'm going to go list a lot of benefits of using this tactic, but I think emotionally it's important that you create systems that buffer, um, yourself as an artist from that, from things that emotionally drain you. Like we need to create healthy boundaries so that you don't know about you.

Nate: Every time I would get one of those emails, here's what would happen. I would go, oh shit. It's like I'm in the middle of dinner with my kids and my family. I like. I was like, Oh, I got a reply to this because if I don't reply right now, I'm going to lose out on this opportunity. And then I started going through old emails. I'm trying to copy and paste and I'm like, how can I see it night like this way again? And I want to express like the real value that I bring to the table and it takes me 20, 30 minutes to write this email out. All for them to never answer, never reply ever again. Or to come back and complained. Like, what? Why are you so expensive? And that experience is so emotionally depleted because it rips us out every time it comes in.

Nate: It rips us out of our whatever we are working, whatever we happen to be doing in that given moment. Um, and it depends a sound and you could have, you could have saved all the time that you were looking for email and trying to copy and paste and, and, and, and reply with something that has no emotion behind it too. Just looking at your phone and recording a quick video to the person and sending it as a rope. No, totally. So, um, so then we get, we'll get too stuck in the weeds. That's me. If it's okay. Um, I've got an actual free course that goes step by step through this strategy. I'll give the link, it's totally free. Check it out and I give links to the tools to use. They're all free. I'll give you a copy to use what to say and how to say it on camera.

Nate: I know you're scared to do it, but I promise you it's gonna. Change Your Business, change your life the way I've seen it changed mine and so many others. So let's talk about what I believe it. We, we've, we've made it so far on this, like this awesome holy grail of marketing on your site is you can say, hey, would you thanks for checking us out. Thanks for visiting a day. Would you like our free guide or free email, seven day email course on how to take better pictures with your smartphone. So that's, that's like one notch up. So let's do a cherry on top and it's one tiny little tweak to this optin form. And you combine the value. So Gary Vaynerchuk, we've talked about this idea that all marketing needs to start with a gift is Jab, Jab, Jab, it's give, give, give, give your wisdom, give things that are free, that scale that don't drain you.

Nate: All of these things, right? So let's combine this offer with the thing we know they want. They want to see your pricing right and stop resisting this. Stop being discouraged and angry and whatever you want to be like, and just give them a sneak peek. Um, so, I mean I'm going to come back to the details in a second. So the big, big picture as you say, want to see, okay, hey, you want to get our free download or a free seven day email course along with our 2019 pricing guide or investment guide. So it's this great value you're earning, you're getting their attention with two awesome things, you know, they care about your pricing information, all they're always going to ask for anyway and some cool tips, but your wisdom and so that's going to convert more traffic to lead. More people are going to take that offer because of this sandwich effect.

Nate: You're giving two awesome things and now you're earning permission again to send them your tips and to send them your pricing information. Okay, so now let's talk about how should you deliver pricing information? Uh, again, I've got an ax to grind here. Uh, I think typically we've, there's like, um, I, I did this the same journey that I see my myself and so many photographers take. Version one is a bunch of emails and it's like you're copying and pasting and storing them and it's answering a thousand different ways. Version two is we finally buckled down and create a PDF guide, right? And that's a really important milestone because when I think what happens is going to photographers finally stick their neck out and say, you know what, I am worth it. Here is my price, here is, here's how I'm going to make a living at this and actually make a reasonable hourly wage so that I can save for retirement, et Cetera, et Cetera, right in that moment is huge and I want to celebrate it for everybody that's accomplished it and he was striving to get there.

Nate: Um, however, as soon as we've created this document, whether it's a pdf or something beautiful, there's a lot of templates out there. I know aglow and others make beautiful. They're designed to be like printed, printed magazines that you can sit with your clients and go through all of your packages and all of your beautiful products, right? But oftentimes, number one, they're probably not very beautiful unless you've got a really great design well designed template. Number two, the file is probably huge and it's not going to be formatted well on a mobile device where most people are going to be trying to read it, um, and it's going to have a lot of your detailed size material and price and we're talking about an inquiring client who's never met you before. They are never going to understand the value of a 24 or 36 by 24 canvas and why it should cost a thousand dollars, like they're just going to see size number and go what?

Nate: Like they will never understand that. So I think this is the biggest, the next biggest mistake photographers are making is they're answering these questions with an email, with an attachment to their complete pdf pricing guide. Nobody that just the same way. Um, you need to take it off your website. I think we missed that step. Some people do put their, all of their detail pricing on their websites, like, no, no, people are just going to look at it and then peace out because they're not going to see the value associated with sizes and materials that they don't understand. Same thing's gonna happen if you deliver it via a pdf and for many years what's been taught by the best thriving photographers is you, you kind of keep this close to your chest and you just get an inquiry and then you'll only talk about it over the phone or in person.

Nate: And I think that's great and I think that is the only time that somebody should ever see your complete pricing guide with all of your detailed everything, right? That's the only time is when you are there. Ideally sitting right next to them were you and your personality can explain and answer questions and in articulate why a metal print and they can see it on the wall and they go, oh, that's why I need something that big to fit over a couch. Like an eight by 10 isn't enough. Okay, now I get it. Your pdf guide will never communicate that. So that's the only time you should show them all the details. Um, what's the problem? Well, impersonal as of course, the, the, the most effective, the most powerful way to sell and market yourself and educate your potential clients. I think that we can all, I've heard numbers all over the place for every in person meeting or console you get, you should be converting at least eight to nine to 10 out of 10 meetings you have, right?

Nate: Huge high conversion rate. When you get face to face, you do great, right? If you're, if you're not converting like seven, least seven out of 10, that means that you're taking meetings with too many people that aren't your perfect client. You should be doing a little bit more education before you take that meeting. Um, but on the flip side, when it requires that you're meeting with somebody that has a limit, there's a finite limit on you and your time. So what can we do that scales better? And knowing that there's this really short window when somebody is on your website, they've got 8:20 tabs open with all of the wedding photographers in their city or family or whatever they're looking for, and they submit a form because they want to see pricing. There's like the clock's ticking, right? Um, you, you don't want them to have to wait to, for your phone call or foreign imperson console, they're just going to move on to somebody else who will just give it to them.

Nate: Now they're like, there's zero patients. They want it now. So how do we close this gap of something that scales so that they can consume it and they don't have to wait for you in person? Um, and something that, that starts to even scratch at the surface of, of showing why you are worth it and why your products you create are worth it. Video. So what you can do is instead of a pdf step one that I teach in this free course is I believe you want to create, whether it's another pdf or I think there's a lot of benefits of using. We've got a sticky folio pricing guide. It's a one page simple site. And it's so funny how every week we get somebody saying, nate, why can't I add more details? I want, I have eight packages and there's only room for me to add four packages.

Nate: Like dude, a, you don't need eight packages at the light and be like, oh joely, there's only room for like six products and I've got a bunch of products I want to show guys stopped trying to be that thorough. When this you're building something for a stranger. If you were meeting somebody for the first time in a coffee shop, you would never try to show them everything. Stop trying to show strangers everything right it, it's so turns people off and it's hurting your business. Instead you create a preview, a tiny little teaser there asking for your pricing. Just answer that question. They don't know what they're really asking for. They're not asking for every little detail. They just want to get a sense as this in my ballpark, is this person at all what I think they are. Just give me a sense, right? So that's all you need to answer.

Nate: It's a super stream down. We need to show number one, when we're all pissed off about inquiry saying, why can't I just get the digitals? Well, do you have any pictures of your products and the artwork you create in your marketing? You Fall, you're showing digital images, we can no longer be surprised if that's all of the type of client we are attracting because that's all you're showing, but if in your blog and your website and your pricing guides, you are showing your artwork on people's walls, and again, I'll shout out to design aglow glow. You can buy mockups if you don't have pictures of your work in people's homes yet. Go by these mockups that show artwork, show canvases and frames and metal prints, etc. In people's homes that you need to show what you sell. You don't. If you don't want to just sell digitals, you need to show your artwork in people's homes.

Nate: Okay? So that's the first thing you need to show in this teaser online guide. Um, and then just a little bit say packages. Start at this, our product. Start at this. You save a bunch of money when you buy a package, et cetera, et cetera. But to be honest, the best way to help you understand this as to schedule a quick phone call or in person consult where I can show you samples and we can talk about exactly what you need and what you want to create. Click the link below to schedule a phone call with me or come into the studio and see samples, right? Oh mY god. How much better is that? What would imagine that impression? That's just the document, the online like pricing guide, but here's comes the super like cherry on top with whip cream is you take a loom video, you turn on your webcam, you record your screen, and you record your voice and you inform minutes.

Nate: Share thIs intro online pricing guide and you say, hey, I'm made growing up photography. Thank you so much for taking the time to check us out. you know what? It's really hard to choose a family photographer today. There's so many different options and choices and everybody does things differently, which is why I made this guide for you. I'm going to share with you a little bit about it, but know that the best way to answer the questions as to meet face to face, but here's a quick intro. We really pride ourselves in of course having a blast on the shoot, but it's creating heirloom quality. Elbow comes for each in one of our clients so that you have all of the images from the shoot in this gorgeous ear loom that you can look at it anytime with your whole family and pass it on for generations to come.

Nate: Instead of doing something instead of you having to worry about designing it and getting it from some online vendor where the quality isn't quite as as as great. We do all the design for you and we print it on these amazing lay flat albums that are designed to last for generations. So that's me just improvising what you could say on a video and imagine that video floating on the page. So while they're scrolling down and looking at your pricing guide as if you were there shoulder to shoulder with them looking at it, you get to introduce yourself. Who get to share your why, why being a photographer is so powerful and you get to tease a little bit and say, I think the number one question you need to answer for them is our best clients love working with us because because of the experience you create and because of these products that we create in this artwork that we create for them as a reminder and click the link below to schedule a meeting with us. So if you guys, I'm hoping, I know this is a podcast and video. I'm hoping you can imagine that I'll have links. I can share examples of what this all looks like, but that, and I also have the link to the training that step-by-step shows you guys how to build this with any tool you have at your disposal today in all three tools. No editing, no. Um, no rendering things in like I movie and becoming a video editor. You don't need a nice camera to do the video. It's just right on your computer. Yeah,

Scott: yeah, we'll be sure to share that in the show notes. Um, sO, uh, we do have to wrap this up. So, uh, I have two things for you. The first is a, so a lot of photographers are not as tech savvy as we are that are not technology nerds like we are. Um, so the whole idea of lead generation and, and uh, what to write in the emails and, and, and things like that. It confuses them. A lot of photographers, it frustrates them. So, uh, if only there was a tool to make that whole process easier, is there a tool like that available?

Nate: I love it. For a long time I waS spending a ton of time. I love teaching email marketing. I was teaching it for the last several years and I think we've hit a cool spot in our industry where more and more photographers are caring and no knowing they need to do it. Um, but I was really getting discouraged when I would take on a mentoring other photographers in my city and I would see the two big places they got stuck was what the heck should I write? And then once I've, they made it past that enormous hurdle of sitting down and writing 10 emails, that's a huge ask for a creative to sit at a blank screen and just write something out. The second big challenge was what tools do I use for the form and how do I connect the form to this and how do I schedule the timing and all, how do I set it all up?

Nate: And my team, uh, convinced me to launch sticky email and solve those two problems because I didn't want to launch another email marketing platform. There are dozens, probably hundreds out there. Um, none of them have been built by and for photographers. And so if we were going to do it, I said we need to solve these two problems in a really unique way and we're doing that for photographers because we know and have connections with people like you and other amazing authors and writers. So we have prewritten email sequences. So when you sign up, you get access to a library by portrait genre, wedding, family, newborn, boire, et cetera. um, with like seven to 10 emails already written for you. And as we all know, it is so mUch easier to be an editor than an author. So we've got all that stuff done and then we connected automatically.

Nate: We can give you the forms to put on any website and we schedule and handle all of the, the email sending and timing and automation for you. Something I'm probably the most proud I've ever been of my team of creating something pretty amazing. I'll end here. I know I could go on and on and on. Thank you so much. But here's my last little thing. Why I, we bring it all the way back to the beginning about our busier lives are um, so now with seven years since I had that cool idea of custom mobile apps and then that turned into sticky albums and sticky folios with a bunch of cool marketing tactics and landing pages. Um, for many years we were helping photographers with their marketing, kind of like a gym, like a, a gym membership. We're photographers, we're getting value when they came to the gym, right?

Nate: It was working and helping them with their marketing when they used it. And we have amazing success stories and it's been an honor to be able to have this be my job, but I was always frustrated with how many people weren't able to make time to execute on some of the tactics that worked. Where I contrast that with the success we're seeing with sticky email is it's fully automated. You give me an hour to set it up and it's a totally different type of task where you're investing in a project that's going to give back to your business for years to come. If you, once you get it live, when you had a form live on your site, you don't have to log back in. If you forget to log into sticky for six months, that's okay because for a whole six months you're going to be converting traffic on your website, into leads. And the automated emails we're sending on your behalf are going to be nurturing those leads and turning them into real warm meetings and bookings. Uh, so it's something I'm really proud of and I

Scott: go ahead. Yeah. And now and now, not only our photographer is using your tool on a daily basis, whether the login or not, they're using on a daily basis, but you're also working for photographers now on a daily basis. It's like a nice circle of I'm just good, good going all around, you know, um, you created something so useful for photographers and you made it seriously the easiest I've ever seen something like this and I've tried a lot of email marketing tools. It doeSn't get an easier.

Nate: It means a lot. Scott, thank you so much. Um, it was a long road, uh, in. We've had a lot of versions of how we've approached us to where we, we've built. But I can't, I got to give past credit to my team, my lead designer and a creative and an interface and user design and how you use the software. Um, he's a wedding photographer, parttime. He crushes it is so amazing. So he knows what it's like. and he, when, when I told them we were going to build email marketing, he's like, really? I've never done that before. I was like, that's okay. That's good. I want You to design a software that works for you, for somebody who's never wanted to do email marketing before because it's been confusing. We're going to break the mold and do it in a simple, clean, professional way and he's just knocked it out of the park and I'm so lucky to have really talented people like that on my team.

Nate: Um, so I think 80 percent of my team have been or are still working photographers and it really shows in the products we built. So thank you scott for that. That compliment coming from a fellow tech nerd and marketing nerd, it really, really means a lot. So thank you so much for the opportunity to grow here. It was a blast. Yeah, totally. Um, so to, to wrap up, this is an opportunity for you to ask our listeners a question. So a fire away, what would you like to ask the podCast listeners? All right. I am a huge brooklyn. I go through phases of reading a bunch of business books and then I, it's hard to make time. Um, but I want to know what business book you've read ever, whether it's in the last six months or one you read when you first started, what had the most impact on your business?

Nate: Which book is it? I'd love to hear and I love to hike. I love to have you on this, my new show in the photography marketing mastermind and interview you aBout your favorite marketing book and how it impacted your business. So let me know in the comments. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with.

Scott: Awesome. Well thank you Nate for joining the show today. I'm very happy able to join a, you can find the show notes and where to find Nate and we'll link to everything that he's mentioned, loom soapbox and his, uh, his marketing courses and so on. Everything will be at imagely.com/podcast/ 71. And don't forget to subscribe to the show on apple, the apple podcast, spotify, google play, and everywhere. until next time.

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