In this episode, I dig into the unique challenges of marketing in the equine and pet photography industry compared to more mainstream areas like weddings and newborns. Unlike weddings and newborns, equine/pet photography lacks a natural demand, necessitating active client education.
I stress the importance of asking clients, "Why haven't you done this?" to spark interest and create a market for equine and pet photography. Personal conversations emerge as my most effective marketing tool, emphasizing the need to seek clients actively.
The episode concludes with a reminder to optimize existing clients and revenue before expanding marketing efforts. I encourage fellow photographers to diversify strategies, systematize efforts, and not overlook the value of persistent, consistent presence in marketing.
Tune in to discover practical insights and actionable strategies for effective equine and pet photography marketing.
Grab your seat for the very FIRST Equine Photography Virtual Summit, here! November 28 & 29, 2023
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
In this episode, I dig into the unique challenges of marketing in the equine and pet photography industry compared to more mainstream areas like weddings and newborns. Unlike weddings and newborns, equine/pet photography lacks a natural demand, necessitating active client education.
I stress the importance of asking clients, "Why haven't you done this?" to spark interest and create a market for equine and pet photography. Personal conversations emerge as my most effective marketing tool, emphasizing the need to seek clients actively.
The episode concludes with a reminder to optimize existing clients and revenue before expanding marketing efforts. I encourage fellow photographers to diversify strategies, systematize efforts, and not overlook the value of persistent, consistent presence in marketing.
Tune in to discover practical insights and actionable strategies for effective equine and pet photography marketing.
Grab your seat for the very FIRST Equine Photography Virtual Summit, here! November 28 & 29, 2023
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering their you guessed it mindset and money. Tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up a notch. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:It isn't very often that I come on the podcast and talk about something specifically related to equine or pet photographers, but today is your lucky day because I want to talk a little bit about why being an equine photographer or a pet photographer is different than other genres and really specifically why marketing is so much harder for us than other genres. I also wanted to share a little bit about a project I'm working on I guess it's not really a project, an event I'm working on and share that with y'all as well. I'll just spill the beans first. First things first. We are hosting an equine photographer virtual summit at the end of November and tickets will be available this week. Make sure that you head on over and grab your tickets to the event. It's going to be two days long as of right now. I say that because sometimes I just decide to make things longer because it feels like the right thing to do. Right now. It's going to be two days long. Who knows what it will end up being closer to time, there might be some extra things thrown in there. We're going to have lots of different topics, from portraits to horse shows to marketing, to mindset all kinds of different things. I really wanted to bring together a group of really amazing equine photographers to share and pour into all of you so that you can learn from the best of the best in the equine photography world. I think sometimes it feels a little bit like we have portrait things and we have general event things, but it's hard to find really great education from a group of people that are all horse photographers. I am incredibly excited about that.
Speaker 2:General admission tickets will be $10. We are raising money for candlelighters. Some of you probably know that in my portrait business I do raise money for candlelighters a few times a year. I decided we're just going to make this part of that. General admission tickets will be $10, which will go towards candlelighters and we will give them a check at the end for however much money we raise. The reason I donate to candlelighters is in memory of my husband's little sister that passed away from pediatric cancer. That organization supports families impacted by childhood cancer. It's a cause super near and dear to our hearts and it's really important for us to be able to give back to them. Your ticket, which reserves your seat for the live event, can be reserved on the webpage Then also to you if you want to upgrade to an all-access pass, you'll get lifetime access to the replays, as well as some incredible VIP bonuses from our speakers. Make sure you head on over and grab your seat for that. It's going to be amazing. I'm so incredibly excited. I think this is going to be a great thing for the equine photography world and hopefully it's going to bring some community, some education, just helping everybody step up their game. As a business owner in the equine photography space. I'm super excited for that. That leads us into today's episode and why I wanted to talk about this today as well, which is the whole idea that why being an equine photographer or a dog photographer is different than everything else, especially when it comes to marketing.
Speaker 2:I think that, as somebody that came from the wedding and the newborn photography world, I got to experience how easy and simple it is to just have people come knocking down your door, because when brides get married, what do they do? They say, oh, I need a wedding photographer. They go to Google, they ask their friends, they go to their wedding venue. Their wedding venue says here's some great photographers we recommend. It's easy. People come knocking down your door all the time. We need to photograph babies Same things. The Google enquiries rolled in 24 seven. There was always somebody having a baby and always somebody that needed a newborn photographer.
Speaker 2:But when I switched to horses, I was like whoa, this is different. There aren't people knocking down my door. There aren't people just showing up like, hey, I have a horse, I need pictures. People needed to be told that they needed pictures with their horse. People needed to be educated on the fact that they needed pictures with their horse. People needed to know that getting portraits done with your horse was a normal and ordinary thing and that everyone was doing it. However, that wasn't the case. People didn't think it was normal and ordinary. People didn't think that everyone was doing it. People weren't waking up and, like Google, searching horse photographer. It just wasn't a thing, especially like now, seven years ago, when I started my equine photography brand. It's becoming more of a thing now.
Speaker 2:I will admit the industry has come a long way in the last, probably five years specifically, but it is different and it is harder. This is why, a lot of times, I feel like when you are an equine or a pet photographer, you're in all these groups and you're learning from these educators that do things that are normal and ordinary that people do every day and the marketing and the strategy doesn't work. And it doesn't work because it isn't the same, because people aren't waking up thinking I need this in my life. So, as equine photographers and as pet photographers, we have a steeper curve when it comes to our marketing and I genuinely believe we have to work a lot harder. And as somebody that was in the wedding in the newborn space and did a bunch of seniors did all the things, I can tell you from experience that this is 100% true. It is harder. We have to work harder. I have to market a lot smarter.
Speaker 2:It was when I switched to equine photography that I quickly realized I don't know what I'm doing. I need to figure out how to market. Something is missing, something is not working, and what I realized is that I had to be showing up a lot more, a lot more in my marketing. Like I probably market three times harder now than I did when I photographed weddings and babies. I have to show up a lot. I have to show up often, everywhere my clients are, but, most importantly, I have to be asking my clients the magical question, which is why have you done this?
Speaker 2:Why haven't you booked the session. Why haven't you had portraits done with your horse or your dog, or whatever it might be? Because the thing is is that people think to themselves only in why haven't I gotten family pictures? Why haven't I had pictures done of my new baby? Why haven't I had a nice headshot that's updated recently, cause I look way different? But people aren't asking themselves why haven't I had pictures of my horse? Why haven't I had pictures of my dog? Why haven't I had a picture of just my horse or just my dog? Even better, right, it is up to us to ask them that question and to present them with that opportunity. So when was the last time you asked somebody? Why haven't you done it? Why haven't you had the portraits done with your horse? Why haven't you had the portraits done with your dog? Why not? Why haven't you done it? If you're not asking that question, you're leaving a ton of money on the table and you're leaving people walking past you every single day, day in and day out, not even knowing that they need what you're selling.
Speaker 2:The thing is is that we have to create our own market when we're in something that isn't like a no brainer thing for people to do, and I'll even say that from speaking with photographers in other countries outside of America, this is something that you're gonna face even more and even stronger, because I think in America it's normalized a little bit more to do this, whereas in other countries it hasn't become quite as normal. So you're gonna have to work even harder, especially when it comes to normalizing things like wall art in giant pictures of your animals on your wall. It is up to us to educate, to inform and to normalize that people do it and they do it all the time. It's up to us to normalize and to educate our clients on the fact that people spend thousands of dollars on portraits of their animals all the time. It's up to us to present them with the opportunity to think about why they haven't done the thing. So you're probably like that's great, corinda, okay. So I need to ask people why haven't they done this? I need to show up, I need to educate them, I need to share. But how do I do that?
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna give you my biggest secret in my business, the biggest marketing tool that I have, that is just having conversations, getting out of my house, getting out from behind my computer and talking to people. Every day, everywhere I'm at, I'm always looking for the opportunity to have a conversation with somebody. Every day, I'm always like, ooh, could this person be my client? Could this person be the next person? I ask? Oh, my gosh, you have a horse, you have a dog. Have you done pictures? Why not? Oh, my goodness, we need to get this scheduled. Let's do it. Let me tell you how amazing it is. Let me tell you why everyone's doing it. Let me tell you how normal it is to plaster giant pictures of your animals on your walls. That's my job and, honestly, the best thing you can do for your business is just to start to learn to have those conversations in your day-to-day life.
Speaker 2:And if your day-to-day life looks like sitting behind a computer all the time and not getting out of your house, then this is gonna be my challenge to you. My challenge to you is that you have to get out. You have to put your face in front of people. You have to talk to people. Sitting there, expecting people to contact you from social media or to come through your website is truly 110%. I'm telling you right now it is not enough. You are being the person sitting in the corner that's saying I'm not getting any clients. I don't know why I'm posting on social media. I have a website where all my clients are. Your clients are out there. You're just not going out there and finding them.
Speaker 2:And our coaching program, our marketing course, is actually called Go and Find your Money. Because the thing is is that unless you're willing to go out there and find your clients, until you're really freaking good, until you're really freaking established and until people know who you are and you're a household name and known for what you do, you're gonna have to work and that means that you're gonna have to go out there and you're gonna have to find your clients. So what are you doing to actually go out there and find your clients? If you're not doing anything to go out there and find them, they're not going to come to you. You cannot expect people to bang down your door. It just isn't the reality of the industry we're in. It isn't the reality as an equine or a pet photographer, that people are just going to bang down your door each and every day and you're just going to like, sit there and be like Ta-da here, my clients are.
Speaker 2:But if you put in the work and you do the work strategically for years and you create the relationships and the connections and the brain awareness and the marketing strategy that builds up brain awareness. Then one day you get to be a little bit lazy. I will tell you there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a day when you get to be a little bit lazier. There was a day when I would sit at horse shows and talk to people Every single person I could talk to. There was a day when I would sit there handing out sangria every single afternoon, just hoping that someone would stop and talk to me. There was a day when I would bring donuts and bribed people to talk to me. Literally, I was like sitting out there, like peddling whatever I could to get people to stop and talk to me. But now I get to just show up and hang out. I don't have to work so hard. I've built the relationships. I know the people, the inquiries do now kind of come knocking down my doors. I don't have to do a lot of that anymore, but I'm still there, I'm still present. I just get to be a little bit lazier. So I don't want you to think like that's great, karina, I hear what you're saying, but like, I don't want to do that forever. You don't have to do it forever, but if you do it in the beginning and you build a really strong, solid foundation, you're gonna get to take a break later on and get to enjoy the fruits of your labor from those early years.
Speaker 2:So let's talk a little bit more about what this looks like in the whole sense of your marketing strategy. Everybody always says, like, Karinda, we talk about marketing and I'm like, yes, I know you don't want to hear about marketing, but it's a lot. To give you some context of how much marketing is a lot, our course for photographers are go and find your money course. That's inside of our coaching program is over 20 hours worth of content solely on marketing. Okay, we spend hours breaking down each area in each way. I mark up my business and I give the specifics on what that looks like. But for today I want to just kind of talk about this on a higher level. So you kind of understand, marketing is really truly about showing up in front of the right people, educating people on who you are, what you do, the value and what you provide, the process, the experience, all of those things and it is about calling them to action.
Speaker 2:Marketing is not just posting pretty photos on Facebook. Marketing is not just having the most gorgeous Instagram feed. It is the words that go with those portraits you're sharing. It is the messaging that goes with what you're sharing. That is the marketing part of it, and all too often photographers fall into this trap of being like well, I'm sharing my work on social media, but that's not enough. You need to be educating. You need to be showing the value in what you do. You need to be telling people about the process, the experience, why they need you. You need to be calling them to action, and I left one little piece off here for the end.
Speaker 2:The last thing you need to be doing is you need to be speaking to your client's heart and soul, speaking to what matters to them, speaking to what's deep down inside of them. Just talking about the weather isn't going to do it. But talking about the ooey gooey stories, the emotions, the feelings, those lines that your clients read, and as soon as they read them on your website or your social media, they're like she gets me, that's me, she understands it, she feels my soul. Those are the things that are really powerful in your marketing. There's a balance here and there's a way to do the education, the connection of your client's heart, the calling them to action. There's a way to do that in all of your aspects of marketing, from your social media to your website, to showing up in person, to blogging, and those are four methods I just mentioned. Those are the four kind of most common things you see people using.
Speaker 2:But I'm a big believer that you need to be marketing your business in eight different ways. So if you sit down right now and you're saying like I'm having trouble marketing, I'm not getting clients to the door, I want you to do this for me. I want you to take a piece of paper and I want you to write down every method you're using to market your business. And if you don't have eight methods you're using to market your business, you're falling short somewhere and that's probably a good indicator of why you're not getting the clients you think you need. But also, I want you to ask yourself this am I going out and finding the clients or am I just counting on the things to work for me and bring clients to the door? Am I having the conversations? Am I talking to people? Am I asking the question. If you're not, then that's another problem. And there's a caveat I want to share here because I don't want to talk too much about marketing without reminding you of this.
Speaker 2:Marketing before having a good, solid business and a good system, where clients that are coming through your door are investing appropriately with you, is like putting the cart before the horse. If you are marketing to get more clients through your door that are crappy, low quality, not spending any money, you're not doing any good for yourself and your business. So, before you dive too far into the marketing bandwagon, I want you to make sure that you have a solid business, a solid plan, solid pricing, solid client experience and you know, without a doubt, when somebody does come through your door, they're going to spend enough money to make it worth your time. More clients is not always the answer, especially in the beginning. Normally the answer is optimizing the clients you have coming through your door and making as much money as possible from those clients. Then, once you've mastered that, then ramping up your marketing and getting more clients through your door, because we don't want to put the cart before the horse.
Speaker 2:It is a lot of work to get a client through the door. I'm not going to lie. It takes a lot, it takes a big strategy or it takes really putting yourself out there and having some real serious conversations with people in the wild and calling them to action. But wouldn't you rather have to get one client through your door that spends like $5,000, then 10 clients through your door spending $500? Let's just think about that. What is easier? I'm telling you right now, it is easier to make more money from the clients you have than it is to go get 10 crappy clients. That's just me being brutally honest.
Speaker 2:There was a time in my business where I was stuck at that like $2,000 to $3,000 sale average and I kept saying I need more clients, I need more clients. It did finally take somebody saying to me like you don't need more clients, you need to figure out how to make more money for those clients you have. You're leaving money on the table. That was really important for me. That was really powerful for me when I stopped and I said you know what? That's right, let me take a step back. Let's figure out how to make those clients spend more money, or get those clients spend more money. We're not making them, they don't have to spend anything. I did that and made such a huge difference in my business A wild amount of difference in my business because instead of just running the hamster wheel like where are the more people, where are the more people to get in my door, I was instead making more money not doing a whole lot more work and really enjoying working with those clients that were spending more money with me.
Speaker 2:I really want you to consider and weigh these things. What we talked about marketing is do I really need to market right now or do I really need to actually focus on optimizing the clients I already have? I'll say, if you're at less than $2,000, $3,000 an average client or if you're at that $2,000, $3,000 an average client, there's so much more opportunity out there of what you could be doing and what you could be making from your clients Without tapping into that first. You're just continuing to leave money on the table Whenever it comes to this whole like, oh, you're a horse photographer, oh, you're a dog photographer, and you're at friends or shooting weddings and families and all those things and like, oh, that's so amazing, and you're sitting there saying like, no, it's hard, it is hard. I just want to really truly acknowledge that today and just tell you that you are not alone, that it is different and it is harder to get clients in the door in that space. But please, please, just know that with the right tools and with the right strategy of educating your clients on why they need you and also calling them to action by saying have you done this, why not, let's talk, let's do it, things will start to change for you and your marketing will become easier. I also want to encourage you to diversify your marketing.
Speaker 2:Remember I said I like to think of at least eight different ways to market your business. Think about it like this Marketing is kind of like a spider web. So if you're a spider and you only have, let's say, four pieces of your web built, there's a chance of a strong gust of wind comes or an animal comes and walks through you. You're going to be destroyed. But if you're a spider web and you have a lot of pieces of your web built, aka your marketing web, and the wind blows or things change or a pandemic happens or whatever it might be, I want you to know that you're still going to be okay, you're still going to be secure, you're still going to be strong because you have all of these other pieces of your marketing strategy that are still there to support you and to hold on to you. So please, please, please, start to diversify, start to create a plan, and I'm going to tell you that oftentimes, marketing can be overwhelming. It can feel like you have all these things to do and it can feel like it's never ending.
Speaker 2:But, just like everything else, your marketing can be systematized. Your marketing can have a solid strategy. Your marketing can have a system that works for you. To some extent, your social media should have a system. Your blogging should have a system. Your client-generating activities you do like your events, your giveaways, your silent auctions, things like that should have a system. When systems are created in your marketing, you are going to be able to show up and build a really strong web and you're going to know that you're safe and secure when the wind blows.
Speaker 2:So do not feel like, oh my gosh, this is too much, I can't do it. Instead, focus on how can I make a system? You should not be on social media every day posting a social media post. That is not good. There's no reason for me to be doing that. Your social media can be scheduled in advance. It can have a plan and a strategy and it can take you an hour or two a month to babysit and to update and then you don't have to deal with it the rest of the time. Honestly, how would that feel to know, like my, social media has a plan and a strategy and it's relatively easy. It takes a couple hours every month to update. Maybe somebody else can actually go in and update it for me.
Speaker 2:My blog my blog has a system. It has a strategy, it has a way things are written and way things are put into it, and it is a system that anybody can do. I don't have to do it myself. It could be one of those $15 an hour tasks that I'm outsourcing to somebody. It doesn't have to be hard.
Speaker 2:But all too often we think like, oh, I have to be doing that myself. I have to be, you know, manually crafting this amazing post that's going to take me an hour to create. No, that's not what marketing is about, as you have to say the right things. But the thing is is that, especially when it comes to social media, people don't really read. Think about how much you actually read on social media. You're scrolling, you're skimming. There is no reason. You need to spend hours crafting social media posts. Have a system that allows you to spend 60 seconds. You write it, you're done, it's out there. It doesn't have to be the most beautifully crafted, curated thing in the world, it just has to be out there. You have to be showing up.
Speaker 2:The other thing I want to encourage you as well is to not put your ideas to waste when it comes to your marketing. A lot of times when it comes to marketing and this is something I saw in the early days of my businesses that I was showing up, putting stuff out there, creating content, doing blogging, all this stuff I would just put it out there once and then I would die. Don't let your content, your ideas, your images die. You might be thinking I haven't photographed enough sessions to share on social media that much. So what? Share the same five sessions over and over and over again. It's fine, no one's going to judge you. No one's going to be like, oh, she's sharing the same five sessions. I went back and counted there was only five clients on her social media. Nobody's going to care. Share your work, put it out there, recycle it. Don't let your good ideas and your good content that you've worked on, go out there and die.
Speaker 2:Think about how many posts you put out there on social media in the last year or two or five years. Have you ever revisited that stuff and reused it? Have you ever recycled it? Or are you just sitting there working your butt off trying to make new stuff every single day and like, what am I going to post about today? Also, if you're sitting there thinking, what should I be posting about today, that is a question that should never pop into your mind, because you should have a strategy to know what you need to be posting each and every day.
Speaker 2:There is so much here that, like, literally, can make your life easier, and there's so much here that people aren't saying like, yeah, reuse your stuff, yeah, make a system, yeah, have a blogging strategy. Those are all things that are okay to have. Those are all things that you don't have to manually be able to set for the rest of your life, of your business. They're 100% the easiest things to hand over to other people and I know I got off on a tangent about social media and blogging and all those things and those are part of my marketing strategy, although they're a very small part of my marketing strategy. I would honestly say that they take a few hours a month to update and deal with and I have other people running them at different times of the year and, honestly, they're a part of the strategy, but that isn't where my inquiries are necessarily coming from.
Speaker 2:My inquiries and my clients that I'm booking are mostly happening from me just having conversations with people, from showing up in the right places, talking to people and being like, hey, have you done this? Why not, let's do it. That's where most of my portrait clients truly come from. So, yes, we have to show up. Yes, we have to do all those things. Yes, we need to be showing up in eight different places with our marketing, but in all reality, you will be able to identify that there are certain things that actually bring in clients and there are certain things that you just do because you need to show up and be in front of your clients. There are simply touch points.
Speaker 2:Like me, showing up on social media is me always being in front of my clients. It doesn't mean they're going to inquire through there all the time. Sometimes, yeah, but most of the time they're going to come from other places. And if you're hearing this and you're like that's crazy. Your clients don't come from social media. Like I don't get a lot of social media DMs like, hey, I want to book a session from time to time, yeah, I do, but most of the time, if people want to book a session, I'm either meeting them face to face or they're going through my website and booking a call with me through my website. Chances are, though, the people who I'm meeting at events, the people who are going to the website to book, they've been on my social media. They've been following me for a while. They've seen me showing up continually, over and over and over again, on their feed, and that is a piece of the puzzle that got them to finally book. But it is not that it'll be all in my business, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:I want to know, like how does this make you feel? Like I wanted to give you permission today. I wanted to just kind of share my story, my journey, my experience with y'all, and some thoughts on marketing as equine or pet photographers, because I know both of them fall underneath that same category of something that people don't wake up knowing that they need, and I just wanted to tell you and acknowledge that it is okay that marketing is harder for you than your friends that photograph weddings and families. It is okay that you have to market differently and it is okay if the marketing advice that you've been getting hasn't been working for you either. There's nothing wrong with that, because what you do is different, and I'm going to highly highly encourage you to learn marketing from people in your industry, to learn marketing from people who are doing the thing in your industry and to not just rely on like the next portrait photographer to be like oh yeah, this is how I market and get my clients. It works amazing because it's different. I just also wanted to tell you like there are good pieces there. There are good pieces that you can learn from the general portrait world and all that stuff, but sometimes it just hits differently when it comes from somebody that's in the same space as you. I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker 2:Guys, this podcast episode was one that I just wanted to come on and just kind of share. I didn't want to make it too structured or make it anything like that, so it's a little bit more just me pouring out from my heart what I felt like needed to be said. So I hope you've enjoyed this. Go ahead and check out the link in the show notes to grab your seat for our equine photographer virtual summit. It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 2:I'm super excited about this. Like I said, it's two days. There might be an extra like third day bonus something coming in there, especially for the VIP event holders, but I will update y'all closer to time, as we get closer, as we're still kind of finalizing all the details as I announced this. But go ahead and grab your seat. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be amazing $10 to grab your seat, which goes to charity, and then, if you want to upgrade to our Alexis pass, there's that option as well. I look forward to seeing y'all there and I cannot wait to create more magic with you in your business and hear how this helps you make more magic in your business.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please make sure you share it on social media or leave a rating and review. As always, you can check out the links and resources in the show notes over at masteryourmindmoneycom. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on Instagram at masteryourmindmoney and don't forget to join our free Facebook group photography business. Tune up with Corinne Decay. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.