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Book more brides with Kate Storey
124 Plays3 years ago
Wedding Pros, Do you want to book more brides? Say Amen. Kate Storey is here to the rescue.
She is a Wedding Business Marketing Guru.
She has the Winning Website Formula + blueprint for online success! You're an amazing wedding pro, and you've built a business that couples rave about for their wedding; but you know that word-of-mouth and referrals can only get you so far. To grow your business, stay competitive and bring in more of the couples you want to work with, you need a strong online presence...and you needed it yesterday. Today you will learn how to master the sales call and have a strategy in place to book more brides.Connect with Kate
https://www.instagram.com/katestorey/
https://www.instagram.com/bookmorebrides/
Connect with Carissa
https://www.instagram.com/carissawoo
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey guys, if you're loving my podcast, please subscribe and leave me a review. It's going to help me so much and help other wedding professionals get to know my podcast.
Meet Carissa and Kate: Wedding Industry Experts
00:00:10
Speaker
So today in this episode, I have an awesome conversation with Kate Story. She's a marketing specialist for wedding professionals and she owns a business called Book More Brides with her hubby. She talks about how to book more brides, something we all want to know. Enjoy this episode.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome to Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. I'm your host, Carissa, and I've been a Los Angeles wedding photographer for over a decade. I've traveled the world, built my team, and seen it all. I now coach wedding photographers hit 10K a month and build a thriving business. In this podcast, we are going to deep dive into how top wedding creatives get that heck yes from their dream clients. We are not holding back on the struggles of the business and how to push through the noise. Some healthy hustle, mindset shifts, up-leveling your money story,
00:00:58
Speaker
Time hacks because I'm a mom of two, a little bit of woo-woo, and most importantly, self-love and confidence are just a few of the many things we will talk about. I want to give you a genuine thank you for following along my journey. I hope to inspire you every Woo Wednesday so that you say heck yes to listening to this podcast. See you guys soon!
Book More Brides: The Journey and Mission
00:01:21
Speaker
Hey guys, it's Carissa Wu, as you know, and I'm here with a very special guest. Her name is Kate Story, and she is the co-founder of Book More Brides alongside her husband, Nick, where they help wedding business owners around the world to better understand how to identify their perfect clients, what to say to them, how to book, and how to create strategic online content that builds relationships and sales. Welcome, Kate. Thanks. Chris is so happy to be here and talk about all this with you today.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, I was like binge listening to your podcast today and it was so good and you're so good at speaking and you're so beautiful. So I'm so excited for you to be here. You can't wait to talk about all this.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, so I just gave you the listeners a little bit of bio about you, but you could tell everyone who you are and who you serve and what you do. Absolutely. With Bookmore Brides, we're actually the second owners of the business. We started out as students, just like many of our students now too, but we've always had a passion for marketing. My background is in marketing, writing,
00:02:29
Speaker
all of those things. My husband has always been very interested in sales, business strategy, all of those things. And the way that we actually came to become the owners of Book More Brides is, like I said, we were students. We had, and we still have, a wedding video alternative business that we offer, wedding video alternatives, and kind of DIY wedding video. It's really fun.
00:02:52
Speaker
But so we came to the original founders of Bookmore Brides, Stephanie and Jeff. If you've been in the wedding industry for a while, then you may have heard their names before. But we got connected with them to start talking about some of those more digital marketing topics, really making sure that their students were really well versed in all those things and teaching on those topics. And we came to learn that they were looking to move on to some different areas professionally.
00:03:21
Speaker
And so they just came to us whenever, like, you know, would you be interested in kind of carrying on the torch for them? So we're like, yeah, let's do this. So which is great because this has always been a community that, you know, being with other wedding pros has always been and to, you know, we've loved being in this community, but to be able to combine it with our passion for marketing, for sales, for business has just been really, really wonderful because we know that wedding pros are really most wedding pros are really great at what they do. Right.
00:03:51
Speaker
doesn't have anything to do with like how good they are or not, right? It has more to do and whether or not their business is as successful as they want it to be, a lot of times it comes down to having the right marketing systems in place, the right business strategies. And so that's where we come
The Importance of Marketing Strategies
00:04:08
Speaker
in. That's what we do is we help to really teach those tactics. We have a couple of different
00:04:12
Speaker
ways that we do that, memberships, kind of DIY, learn as you go, coaching, done for you services. A lot of things that we offer like that because people are at different places in their business, but really making sure that you get those fundamentals right because we know, we believe and we know, we've seen it so many times that when you get these things right, it just opens up this whole world because again, you're great at what you do. You just need more people to know about it, right?
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you're speaking my language because I've been doing wedding photography for about 12 years. And I started my coaching business like only during pandemic, so like a year, year and a half.
Weddio: From Regret to Business
00:04:50
Speaker
And what I've learned like throughout the year was to make a marketing plan.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah. So I never had one of these 10 years. You just do all the things. Right? Well, and that's the thing. You don't go into your wedding business usually because you're super pumped about creating a marketing plan, right? Or business plans or anything like that. You do it because you love photography. You love what you do for your couples.
00:05:12
Speaker
So that's the thing is, is how do you get the information that you need to be able to handle that? Because the other side of it is you love what you do, but if you don't learn the marketing side, if you don't learn the business side, you're not going to be able to do more of what you love, right?
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's so crazy. Actually, there's so many questions I could ask you, but I wanted you to touch a little bit about what is the alternative video and how did you get started with that and how did you meet these people to buy their business? Yeah, yeah. So our business that we have is called Weddio. And we started that because when Nick and I got married, we were pretty young. We were 23 and 24.
00:05:52
Speaker
And, you know, Evie, we love at first sight, you know, met in college and, you know, we would have got married sooner. We're like, no, we're going to finish our degrees. We're going to try to do this. So, but we, you know, as soon as we could. Right. You know, so, you know, our parents helped us out with stuff like, you know, money budgets get tight and, you know, it's money starts going out to other areas. So we ended up not having a wedding video and it has been like the biggest regret.
00:06:16
Speaker
from our wedding, looking back because now we've been married for, um, actually this week we'll have been married 17 years and we have four kids and, you know, we've had family members that have passed, you know, that were at our wedding, but are no longer here anymore. And we would love to be able to show our kids like what those people were like on our wedding day, you know, all of the fun, like all the stories that we have, you know, we can't share all of them, I guess.
00:06:41
Speaker
But telling some of those stories from our wedding day, it's like we can show them our wedding album, our photos, but it's not the same, right? It doesn't tell the same story as being able to see the mannerisms of the people that were there and hearing the voices and all of that. So that's why we started, because we didn't want any other couples to have that same regret.
00:07:03
Speaker
And again, like, like you and like so many of your listeners, you know, we started that because we had that passion and that love and that desire for couples to not regret having that we didn't do it because we're like, Oh man, I can't wait to write emails. You know, I can't wait to get on sales conversations and like,
00:07:22
Speaker
try to work people through a funnel and everything. No, we did it because we wanted to help people. But if we don't have those things in place, you don't really have a business.
Cracking the Booking Code
00:07:31
Speaker
You have an expensive hobby, right? So that's where we came to Book More Brides because there were different programs that were offered and things like that. So we joined as members just to try to start learning those things on our own because we're just starting out. That seemed like a logical place.
00:07:48
Speaker
and so we did that and like we said we just kind of got connected through a couple of other members who knew the founders personally and you know to said hey these guys are like you know they've got a really strong background in marketing and sales maybe they could teach one of your monthly workshops you know your membership workshops
00:08:04
Speaker
shop. So that's how we started from there and off with them. And yeah, now here we are a couple years later, we're running the business full time and just loving it because like I said, now we can talk with people full time about this, help them see those transformations in their business. It's just, I love it. So happy.
00:08:21
Speaker
Oh, I love it. I mean, I'm going to learn so much from you, but I just wanted to know like, what's kind of like your niche for the book more brides. My niche is more like the lead magnet and getting on a vendor list and then the zoom sales call. But do you guys have like a framework?
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So we have a couple. We have the wedding business roadmap, just kind of an overall. Because a lot of what we do is we take kind of a holistic view of your wedding business, but through the lens of marketing and sales.
00:08:52
Speaker
So, um, what Nick is really great at is being able to sit down with our students and say, okay, like here's where you're at. Where do you want to be? Um, you know, what are your goals for your business? Oh, okay. Well, here's what you need to do to get through that. And then where I come in is saying, okay, so now we've got kind of that big picture of what where, where you want to be, how to get there.
00:09:14
Speaker
What is the on the ground stuff that we need to do now? Okay, how do we need to make sure your website is in good shape? And this is where we talk about, we call it cracking the booking code. And that's where you have to, when you bring in a couple, through whatever means that might be, you know, Google search, through paid ads, anything like that, we're just meeting them in person, referrals, all of that, right?
00:09:38
Speaker
But when a client comes into you, they need a couple of things. So the first thing they need is to like what they see. That when they come in, they need to like what they see. You need to be able to keep the conversation going. Make sure the fortune is in the follow-up, right? So making sure that you have the right systems in place to be able to continue that follow-up. And you need to be able to close them confidently. So that way, when you are on a sales call with them,
00:10:04
Speaker
You are feeling completely confident in offering your price. You're feeling confident in making sure that you're helping them to understand what makes you different, why you're the right choice for them. So a lot of it is kind of the groundwork that gets them to where some of the concepts and things that you teach on, that's kind of more our niches, working that groundwork of how to bring them in, how to make sure they like what they see, and then making sure that you're following up with them.
00:10:33
Speaker
So that way you can work, you know, help get them through those different steps to get to a sale. Okay, that's that's amazing. That sounds great. I just wanted to ask you this these two questions because for selfish purposes. First of all, how many photographers are you working with or are working with you and then like, how are you getting your leads?
00:10:58
Speaker
Uh, for our, our particular business. Yeah. So there's, um, so because book more brides has been around for awhile and everything, um, we have a very strong SEO presence. That is something that we do teach as well as making sure that you are, um, you have a strong SEO presence. You have a good amount of keywords, um, making sure they're the right keywords.
00:11:17
Speaker
But also we are trying to make sure that we are, you know, using some of the other methods that, you know, we also talk about the fast versus the slow methods of bringing in leads, right? And fast methods are like paid ads, social media posts, those kinds of things that are kind of bringing people in. You're getting out in front of them quickly and you're bringing them through to kind of move them through the funnel. But the slow way is like SEO, blogging.
00:11:44
Speaker
tons of blogs built up on our website. And we continue to add to now with the podcast, we're bringing people through that. So there's a lot of different ways that we're bringing people in. Photographers are definitely I do work we do work with a lot of photographers, but we help anybody in the wedding industry. So I don't know if I could put like a number on it because we have a
00:12:08
Speaker
several different ways that we work with people, either through, like I said, you know, done for you services, like I do one on one copywriting for clients, we have an acceleration membership, which is like our monthly workshop, we offer monthly workshops, and it's it's very affordable, learn as you go style. And then we also have group coaching. So I would say probably everything is probably about 30%. Like, you know, we have
00:12:34
Speaker
venue owners, you know, DJs. Oh, I love it. I'm just trying to like, I'm just really inspired by you because I'm kind of more of the new Cypher coach. So it just gives me chills when I see someone like just making it happen. That's so cool. You are making it happen. That's the other thing you you are great at what you do. Again, you are great at what you do. There's a reason why you went into this. And it's not only because you love your business, but because you love the people you work with, right? Like, so yeah, this is you are gonna rock it. You're doing great.
00:13:04
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Okay, I have to ask this question because it's a name on my podcast. And you can speak to like your book more brides business or just in general, but what's like your biggest sales technique? How do you get that heck yes from your dream clients? Or how do you help your clients get that heck? Yes.
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, again, part of it is laying that groundwork right. We truly believe that if you set the groundwork through your marketing materials, through your website, through your emails, your social posts, all those kinds of things, the way that you are speaking to your clients, the visuals that you are putting out there,
00:13:43
Speaker
when you can clearly demonstrate why you're the right wedding pro for them, why you're the right photographer, why you're the right coach, even anything like that, when you can clearly demonstrate that in your words and your images, then you're going to get like 80% of the work done so that by the time they get to that sales call, they're already warmed up. They're already like, yeah, pretty sure this is the one.
00:14:08
Speaker
And all they need to know is, do you have my data available? And really, how much is it, truly? And is this the right program? Which one is the right one for me? So getting that heck yes involves so much of the groundwork that you have to set up beforehand and making sure you have those things in place. But then talking about the sales conversation itself, getting to that heck yes is really making sure that you are
00:14:38
Speaker
echoing back to them and saying to them what it is that you know that they really want. So talking about the photographers, for example, when you are a photographer, you're working with couples who obviously want beautiful pictures of their wedding day, right?
00:14:56
Speaker
but that's so different for every type of photographer, right? So I'll give you two examples of two different students that we've had in recent, you know, in the past year for sure. So one of them is a husband and wife team in Chicago and their photography style is very artistic. It's, you know, the colors are deep and saturated and, you know, the angles are very unique and their whole goal
00:15:25
Speaker
And what their clients really want is they want their wedding photos to look like works of art, like it should be in a gallery somewhere, right? That is the type of photography that they deliver. So they need to talk about that for their clients, okay? But then a different client that we have is she's a photographer in Seattle.
00:15:47
Speaker
And she is more on the light, bright, airy style of things. She does light posing, you know, but mostly does a lot of, you know, she helps them to feel comfortable, you know, because these are people don't necessarily feel real comfortable in front of the camera. So they just want to look their best on their wedding day, right? So she the work that she does not only in her her photography, but in the way that she works with the couple on their wedding day that she guides them, right helps them to feel comfortable. Those that's part of what she does.
00:16:17
Speaker
Now, with those two very different styles in mind, think about if this artistic gallery style type of photography was on the website of the light, bright, airy photographer with her pictures too. You've got both of those going. It's super confusing because you're like, which one are they doing? What is it that they really do?
00:16:40
Speaker
But not only that we're not getting to that deeper why. Of what it is not really confusing them with the visual images but we're not speaking to that deeper why of what it is. So with that that chicago couple. Would they had to we worked with them to it so they could clearly communicate.
00:16:58
Speaker
like that their couples want this artistic salary say like you know you're gonna you're gonna have these photos that like everybody's gonna single oh my gosh i can't believe that you guys that's incredible wow that should be displayed somewhere right.
00:17:10
Speaker
Whereas what do the couples of the Seattle photographer, what do they want? And furthermore, what do they want their family and friends to say? They want them to see these and say, I can't believe that's you guys. Look at the setting. Look at, oh, you guys look just so happy and in love. Do you see how there's two different
00:17:30
Speaker
intentions. Totally different messaging, I hear you. The work that we have to do is to get deeper on what it is that our couples really want and then being able to clearly describe that in the words on our website, in our sales messaging, our conversations back and forth.
00:17:50
Speaker
Going back to the sales conversation that's where we started with this right is making sure that when you're in that conversation with them you're gonna say things like hey so you know so tell me tell me about what you want on your wedding day they're gonna likely say they're gonna start with the generics right oh yeah beautiful photography you know maybe
00:18:08
Speaker
you know, catching some really cool moments and everything like, yeah, because you know, how do you want, you know, how do you want people to like react to they see the pictures, and they're gonna say that and you just repeat it back. Oh, yeah. So you want, you want people to be like blown away by your wedding photos, right? You want them to be like totally. Yeah. Yes. Yes, I do. And you're repeating back to them. So they're like, Yeah, we're on the same page, right?
00:18:33
Speaker
Oh, you're giving me a chair now. I'm still in psychology. It's seriously so much of it is psychology and it's really not that it's not difficult once you learn these techniques. Once you learn them, you're like, yeah, I can do this. Like building confidence and that it's, it's, it's easy to do. You just got to practice it, right? But then the other side of it is then echoing back what they don't want. So asking them like,
00:18:55
Speaker
So what's going to happen? How are you going to feel if you don't get those gorgeous gallery-worthy images? How's that going to make you feel? How would you? They're going to die. Right? And they're going to be like, yeah, oh my gosh. It's like, this is going to be the worst thing ever because this is our one day. We can never do this again. Every time we see those pictures on our wall, we're going to feel disappointed. We're not even going to want to put them up, right? Yeah. You can see things like that. And you're like, yeah.
00:19:21
Speaker
Who would want that? Why would you spend all this money on the biggest day of your life and not get something that you're going to be proud to put on your
Types of Wedding Clients: Buy Now vs Buy Later
00:19:30
Speaker
walls, right? And say, yeah, exactly. Yeah, OK. So it's getting them to basically, it's echoing back what they're saying, but also helping them to see what they're going to gain by working with you, but also what's at stake if they don't.
00:19:45
Speaker
Oh, I love that. Once they know this, once you're you're kind of saying this and everything like that, it is so much easier for them to say heck yes to you because now they're like, they get me. Oh my gosh, they get me. Yes, how to take my money, right? Like, it's like, I love the process so much easier.
00:20:05
Speaker
I think I was teaching that too, but you went kind of more deeper with it. I always ask the question, like, have you been in like weddings before? You know, most people have and what have you liked or disliked about the wedding photographer, but I think thinking of like, what would happen if you don't have these? And, you know, as me and you were veterans, so we know how many people have been very upset about their wedding photos to the point where they can't even look at the gallery. They said, Oh, they looked at it for like two seconds. And then they're just like, I won't even check it again.
00:20:33
Speaker
I mean, how sad is that? So that's, yes. Yeah, that's the biggest thing. Help them understand this. And furthermore, and then to demonstrate some like, you don't have to worry about that with me. I'm not going to let you down like that.
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That's so good. Okay. So Kate, you should have your own talk show. I mean, you have your own podcast, but maybe like, you could probably talk for days because you're so knowledgeable and articulate, but we have to get into our hot topic. So tell me your hot topic and why you chose it. Yes. So what I really want to talk about is the difference between buy now and buy later couples. And I really, oh my gosh, you guys, if you can take this to heart and learn about this,
00:21:14
Speaker
and apply it into your business, I know you're going to see huge results. So most of the time we as wedding professionals focus on the buy now couples. And what I mean by that are couples who are, they know they need wedding photography. They've kind of put it off a little too long or whatever reason. So that way when they learn about you,
00:21:36
Speaker
Basically, they go on your website, they're super excited, they reach out for a consultation, you have your call and they're like, yep, sounds good, send me over the contract and let's do this, right? Those are the buy now clients. But here's the thing, that amount of clients is really only about 3% of your local market.
00:21:56
Speaker
It is so small. And if you are only focused on that tiny little percentage of your market and don't do anything to serve the rest of your market, which I'll get to in a minute, you are losing out on so much business. And secondly, you're going to end up as a business owner, you're going to end up frustrated because you're like, why isn't my business growing?
00:22:19
Speaker
Why am I struggling to get clients every month? Why am I not able to meet my bills? All these kinds of things, these frustrations that we come into as business owners when our business isn't operating the way that we need it to. So what's the solution?
00:22:34
Speaker
the high leader market. I also just want to set this. It's always so important to say that you're never going to have 100% of your local market because you don't have everybody around you isn't getting married right now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not in our 20s. I mean, you look really young, but you have four kids. I'm assuming. Yeah, not that young. Not at all. But that's the thing. It's
00:22:59
Speaker
You're never going to have 100% of your market, so that's the first thing that's important to understand because that's, again, we can beat ourselves up as wedding pros. It's like, why are I getting more leads? Well, remember, you're not going to have everybody in your town. They're not all going to be interested in what you have to offer.
00:23:14
Speaker
So what we have to do is we have to absolutely have things in place through calls to action buttons on our website to be able to serve those buy now couples when they come our way, because they will still come your way. Just a very small amount. But you also need to have a follow up sequence in place. And I am a huge, huge advocate for email because we don't own Instagram, right? We don't own the algorithm. Yeah.
00:23:37
Speaker
I don't have, you know, Pinterest, anything like that. We do not went down for that day. We all freaked out. Seriously, that was like the biggest example of like how we don't own these things or they could just they could change the game on us in terms of how they run, who they're getting in front of. Facebook was a great example of this.
00:23:53
Speaker
But basically, so we need to have a way to be able to stay in touch with our couples, because one of the biggest things we hear from our students is, I'm getting ghosted all the time. I'm getting ghosted by my clients. These people reach out to me. They're super excited. But then I don't hear from them again.
00:24:10
Speaker
Well, really, if you don't have a follow up sequence in place for those biliter couples, which those are biliter couples, most more likely than not, you are actually ghosting them not the other way around.
Email Marketing Strategies for Client Engagement
00:24:21
Speaker
Oh, that gave me that's a mic drop moment.
00:24:25
Speaker
Again, we have to go from their perspective. If a couple gets engaged and they're super excited and they reach out to you because they just want to gather all their information, but their wedding's not for another year, year and a half, two years. They're not looking to spend all their money on every single vendor right away. They're going to go in order. They're going to put down their deposit on their venue first. They're going to do this. They're going to do that.
00:24:50
Speaker
we need to be there for them when they are ready to book us and when they're ready to make that decision on a photographer, but we can't do that if we don't stay in touch with them. Okay, so one follow up question. So how many emails the nurture sequence and what are you saying and like kind of the timeframe, do you send it like every month?
00:25:11
Speaker
the week or three-day sequence. So what I always advocate for and what we have found to be the most successful for our students is for them to send once a week, emails once a week. You follow a method that we prescribe called the going give, give, ask, the give, give, ask method. That means that you're giving twice as much information
00:25:30
Speaker
helpful information without asking for them to call you or look at your packages and pricing or anything that's going to benefit you. This is all about them. Giving them useful information that is helping them to make a decision about your business, about hiring a photographer.
00:25:47
Speaker
or whatever your business may be. You need to give them information that's going to help them make those decisions, but then not forgetting to ask them for the sale. Because we find that a lot of times people will go one or the other. They're like, I'll give all the time and never ask for a sale. Or they're constant ask, ask, get on a call, get on a call, check out my packages and pricing, do this.
00:26:09
Speaker
And then it becomes, because what we're fighting against also is the like bad actors in like sales conversations where basically they are, we've all been burned at some point, right? By like a sleazy salesperson, which we're all afraid of being. And let me just reassure all of you that you, if you're worried about being sleazy, a sleazy salesperson, you're not okay. Like if you're worried about it, you're not. It means you're actually thinking about it and you're not being sleazy. But so the thing is though,
00:26:38
Speaker
We're all afraid of asking and being rejected, right? But if we don't ask, we can't move them towards a sale. But like I said, the problem is a lot of times we will give them information, and then we'll ask for a sale. And if we don't keep going until they do one of three things, which I'll talk about in a minute, if we don't keep going, then we end up ghosting them, and we don't have the opportunity to turn them into those buy now clients. One more follow up question, just real fast.
00:27:07
Speaker
So, this nurture email sequence, is it when they just email you or do you have some sort of lead magnet to get them in the funnel or there's multiple ways? Super helpful to have a lead magnet, honestly. That is the best way to get people into your email sequence. I teach the same thing. Yeah. Because first of all, I think all of your listeners probably are young enough that they don't really do this, but signing up for my newsletter, that's not enough of a value add. Why are they going to do that?
00:27:35
Speaker
They need to have something like, it's an exchange of value, right? Their email address is valuable to them because they don't want to be dealing with pointless emails that are not going to help them out, right? And you are giving them value by giving them a download piece. So huge fan of that. Yes. Okay.
00:27:55
Speaker
So that was, I'm a little structured in this podcast and I really want to get to know you at the end. Oh no, so I just want to say like, so tip number one was nurturing them. And then let's do two more tips, but a little bit faster and then I want to get into like more about you.
00:28:12
Speaker
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00:28:40
Speaker
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00:28:55
Speaker
So, tip number two is make sure that you keep going until one of three things happens, until they tell you that they're no longer interested, like they've gone with somebody else, two, that they're already married, or there's some reason like, oh no, we're not interested, take me off your list, two, I'm already booked, I've got somebody for this, or three, they say yes, let's have a conversation. Until then, you keep going.
00:29:21
Speaker
And then so that's, that's the second one. The third one is making sure that you go long enough in these conversations. So I don't want to freak anybody out, but the ideal amount of emails to have set up because you do this once and you're set, you're good. 26 to 52 emails.
00:29:41
Speaker
I don't want to scare you. I don't want to scare your listeners. But if you do this, that means that you'll be able to send 26 emails weekly content every six months. So yeah, this is where it's really helpful to know what your lead time is in terms of between when people will reach out for information and when they actually book.
Lead Magnets and CRM Tools
00:30:00
Speaker
So either weekly content for six months, weekly 52 weeks, you know, in a year or so, weekly content for a year for those longer lead times, right? Or you can do every other week if that's, you know, something that you feel, if you feel nervous about emailing every week, which you don't have to be, it's okay to email every week.
00:30:17
Speaker
but that way you could also stretch it out too. But again, once you put in the time and you do this, then it's done. And now you've got this working behind the scenes, moving people down the sales funnel and helping them get to know about you, why you're amazing at what you do, why you're going to be the right choice for them while you're at the same time serving those buy now couples that are coming to you. I mean, your business is going to absolutely grow.
00:30:42
Speaker
So do you have like for your course or your coaching or I know you offer a lot of services, but do you have like done for you or like templates for these emails? Yeah. So we, we don't, that's something that I'm putting together. Like I'm always looking for new opportunities to have like download pieces and everything like that. Cause I don't know how valuable it is. We actually are, our most popular download piece is the price shoppers guide. And that is how we offer tips. And we actually do have some email templates in there.
00:31:10
Speaker
to help you when couples reach out to you and their only question is, how much? Okay, well, how do you deal with that? How do you get them into a sales conversation? How do you respond to that? We've got a template on that and some tips on that, and that's at our website, bookmorebrides.com.
00:31:26
Speaker
Cool. So do you like Flowdesk or do you like MailChimp or what's your email? Yeah. So for ourselves, just because we have a large email list that we've been building over time for the past 10 plus years that the business has been around, we do use a higher octane ones called Entreport.
00:31:46
Speaker
Um, okay. Yeah. And it's like, that allows us to do a lot of other things that, that we do, which I don't, we don't really recommend that for smaller businesses. Cause it's just, it's, it's a beast. It's like having Salesforce or something. It's like big, but, um, and we actually, we have had several of our students that have been looking for some sort of a CRM, you know, with text messaging capabilities and everything. We actually created our own. We actually have a book. Wow.
00:32:10
Speaker
So yeah, because we knew that this is something and we do have template emails that are built into that already to be able to reach out that you could just customize text messaging templates, all that kind of stuff to make it easy.
00:32:22
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to recap a little bit so you can help me out here. So number one tip is the nurturing email. So nurture, nurture, nurture. And then the tip number two kind of goes in with tip number one, which was like, keep going. Don't give up. Absolutely. Don't give up every week. You're in their faces. In a good way. In a very valuable way. Yeah. And then tip number three was 26 to 52 weeks of email. Okay.
00:32:52
Speaker
Dude, I mean, I am teaching the same thing, but not, I do have the done for you, the magnet with like the three email sequences. But yeah, I need to keep going with it because you don't want them to forget you. That's exactly what it is because we're fighting against so much information that they have available to them, especially when they first get engaged. It's like everybody that they've ever known is like giving them suggestions. Oh, you should go with my photographer. You should get married at my venue.
00:33:20
Speaker
like they're bombarded with information. So we need to keep it clear, keep it simple, right? Just like you're saying before. And, and really making sure that we are standing out this way by really understanding that why and and staying in front of them. That's so good. Okay, so one more question before we go into rapid fire questions and learn more about you. But what are your favorite lead magnets for photographers or even wedding professionals? Now, do you mean for them to be able to give out to their clients, right?
00:33:51
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, exactly. City-specific, location-specific. Oh. Okay. And that girl from Chicago that I mentioned earlier, okay, they were brand new in their business. They had only booked a handful of weddings when they came to us, and they had big goals for their business. They wanted to both step away. They were both full-time employees, wanted to step away so they could have more flexibility, be with their kids, and to work together. They're both so gifted. Their work is just absolutely gorgeous.
00:34:20
Speaker
And so we worked with them to create a lead magnet about, I think it was like five or 10, I can't remember the exact number, engagement locations in the Chicagoland area.
00:34:34
Speaker
Wow. That's so good. Their email list exploded because they were so good about- Oh my God. I'm going to do that for Palisady. Seriously. You should do it. It's so good because the thing is you can get anything like, oh, how do outfit selection for your engagement photos or something like that. It's like good tips, good information, but you can get that from anywhere.
00:34:55
Speaker
They're going to get hyper specific and you know, it doesn't always have to be location based. That's a great one to start with. But even more specific on what you do, like how to, you know, thinking about that light, bright and airy one, like how to, how to do your makeup for the most natural looking wedding photos, you know, something like that, where it's really speaking specifically to that, that's what they want, right?
Rapid-fire Questions with Kate
00:35:20
Speaker
I mean, I'm a mom too, so up to so I don't want to be really driving to Temecula or Malibu. Where do you live again? We're in Metro Detroit. Okay, cool. Okay, well, I'm gonna ask you some rapid fire questions to get to know you better. But let's see. First question, what is something that
00:35:41
Speaker
kind of about you that we don't know or like people on social media don't know about you, something kind of fun or funny or quirky. Oh, goodness. Yeah, I know. It's like, how much do you share? I love rap and R&B.
00:36:03
Speaker
Oh, and I bet you have a rap. I'm a 90s girl. I grew up in the 90s. So yeah, I love love that kind of music. And it's like I have to, you know, watch. Like I said, I've got four little kids can't always be blasting Dre in the background. So yeah, so that's my guilty pleasure after the kids go to bed is to to listen to a little bit of my old school 90s.
00:36:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah, when I'm at a wedding, it's all 90s hip hop. I'm just like, shoot, shoot. Yes, you gotta get back in touch with your like your pre mom self. So
00:36:37
Speaker
Oh, totally. I love that. Okay. This is definitely not a parenting podcast. But I still want to know what is your biggest parenting tip for me as a mom before be willing to demonstrate forgiveness to your kids. So like if you if
00:37:00
Speaker
like, if your kids are struggling to, you know, to get something right, or whatever, or like, and you, like, I find I have a, we have teenagers through a four year old. And, you know, teenager is full of hormones and everything. And so being able to come to her, like when she, she snips at me, it's like, I want her to come to me and say like, Hey, mom, I'm sorry that I talked that way. And but I need to demonstrate that too. So there are times when I
00:37:24
Speaker
I lose my patience with her or I lose my patience with my four-year-old or something like that and it's like to be able to come and say, hey, you know what? I shouldn't have done that. I should have said that in a nicer way. I'm really sorry about that. Just being able to demonstrate for them how to do that so that way they feel comfortable coming to you and saying that and showing them that, hey, we're all human and we all make mistakes and we all still love each other at the end of the day.
00:37:49
Speaker
Oh, I love that. Did you say like before we started recording, like you were going to WNBA? Are you
Future Plans and Podcasting's Role in Business Growth
00:37:55
Speaker
speaking? Oh, we're not going to be speaking this year, hopefully in the future, but this year we're just going to be exhibiting, but we will have a booth there. So yeah, I would love to see anybody. Oh, that's so cool. Where do you see your business? I usually say three months, but maybe like three months to six months.
00:38:11
Speaker
three to six months, I definitely see us getting out there more. We are working to grow our podcast, our YouTube channel, because those are just some ways that when the business was first started, they were way ahead of their time in terms of SEO and things like that. But now with the digital side and everything like that, so definitely having a stronger presence.
00:38:33
Speaker
and, and being able to, to reach more people online through some of these, these newer means. So, and I got it, man, I got to get better at Instagram. I love Instagram so much, but it's like, I get so busy with it. So like, so yes, being more consistent on Instagram. That's where I see myself in three to six months. That's another one.
00:38:52
Speaker
I love that. For me, I'm doing all the things, but where do you think I should focus my time on Instagram, my lead magnets, email marketing, podcasts? What do you think is the most important for me to get leads for my coaching business? Honestly, email list, 100% having that strong, but we are seeing huge benefits and returns from podcasting, honestly.
00:39:19
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Because it's so much more personal than even with Instagram. It's like, yeah, you can do some lives and even reels or anything like that. But it's like you get a chance to really have real conversations. And it doesn't feel so... I don't know. I feel like I get a lot of pressure from YouTube stuff. Because there's different angles because it has to be visually interesting too. Whereas with podcasting, you can kind of just focus
00:39:47
Speaker
on the person's voice and like connecting with them. So absolutely. Yeah. I'm definitely an audio learner. How do you, how do you advertise your podcast? I don't know how at all. Well, it's newer. So we, so we're, you know, we're, we're still kind of getting the word out about it, but I'm definitely email list. We share it on Instagram. We have a couple of like groups on Facebook and things like that. So we will share that on a regular basis too, just kind of helping to
00:40:11
Speaker
Um, you know, get, let people know about it. And plus with the different topics, it's not always like, Hey, did you know we have a podcast? It's like, you know, talking about whatever topic you were, you know, discussing in that episode, you know, and pull out like a nugget, just like to get people excited and be like, I know.
00:40:29
Speaker
I saw that you did that. I really love it. And I would love to be on your podcast too. Yes, for sure. Oh, no, I am going to be honest. I just see someone who helps us with it. So yay, I can't wait. Yeah, Alyssa. So can you ask me a question? Yes, absolutely. Okay, so what do you find is the biggest struggle that would you find the biggest struggle that photographers are having right now post pandemic? Oh, you know,
00:40:59
Speaker
I have a lot of people call me and they say, Oh, everyone's posting like this wedding boom. And you know, I'm booked up, but what's going on with me? So I just have to help them like get the lead. So they're like, they're not hearing their phones aren't ringing. Like they're not getting the inquiries. They're not getting the DM. So and their work is, you know, pretty good. So are they finding that it's not like,
00:41:23
Speaker
methods they had before aren't working anymore for them? Is that what you're hearing most? Yeah, I think they just want to book more. I mean, book more brides. I'll have them reach out to you. But yeah, just the inquiries and people don't really, I mean, I think the newer people don't like to get on the phone with clients, but
00:41:43
Speaker
I'm all about the sales call and asking for the sale. Yeah. I know you do with the Zoom call and Zoom sales call and everything like that. What do you think, what is something that people don't do enough of in a Zoom sales call? I think
00:42:02
Speaker
They don't ask powerful questions. I get really deep with them. I think I learned this on like Kardashians. It was like Scott Disick. They had like some artists come like draw them naked or I forget what it was but he was like, what are what do you love most about each other and then
00:42:17
Speaker
It sounds kind of awkward like when you say it at first, but then I've been saying it for a long time. It's kind of a fun question and people like cry and like, you know, you break down walls and I just ask like genuine questions because you know, I'm really there to get to know them. Like this is no joke. Like we're in this industry because we're like hopeless romantics and that's why we, you know, we stayed in the business. So it's like that creating that connection, stuff like that.
00:42:41
Speaker
And I help people like get out of their fear because you could get all that free stuff on the podcast. But then when you're not working like you know one on one or group coaching like you're you maybe not take like the next steps to actually do it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What do you find are like some of the like
00:42:56
Speaker
the basic like action steps like that people need to like kind of get really good at like foundation like you know i was talking about like the you know they need to like what they see they need to follow up in all those kinds of things what do you find people need to do to like improve their sales process.
00:43:12
Speaker
I think I have like this whole framework, but I think you need to show like an album, your favorite album, ask the right questions, like see, have them see themselves in like your wedding. And then also, you know, tell them their why and you know why.
00:43:28
Speaker
you're doing this and a little bit about like some compliments you got from like you know the mom or past couple or like kind of how you stand out like you know sometimes I compare myself to other photographers and I don't like talk crap about anyone but I'm like you know I've seen this and you know I'm not like that so stuff like that like differentiators and stuff 100% yeah I think I think especially like I have one particular instance where like I was in a wedding and it was like the
00:43:58
Speaker
It's knowing whether or not like your style is gonna work for this couple and why, like being able to communicate that. Like I said, I was in this wedding and the photographer was so abrasive. And it was like she was barking orders, she was swearing at like wedding party members and everything. And I'm going, who is this girl? But then I realized, well, so my friend, the bride had hired her because she is like the sweetest, nicest person and she would not have felt comfortable
00:44:27
Speaker
like making everybody get over here like she didn't and she didn't want to be like that on her wedding day she wanted to just yeah you know and know that people are getting where they needed to and everything so i thought that was very wise like my friend i i don't know if the photographer you know told her this or like kind of sold her on this but i thought it was very wise that my friend knew to have someone who could fill in where she couldn't and it was like because i'm like jeez i would never hire someone like that because it's like i don't want somebody's talking to my my uh you know family members or my friends that way
00:44:57
Speaker
But the thing is, she needed that so that they could keep them in line. So yeah, I think that's, that's so funny. Okay, so this is such a great conversation. We could talk for days, but tell everyone like where to find you if you have any freebie or like how to work with you and then any like lasting advice to wedding photographers slash professionals.
00:45:16
Speaker
Absolutely. Bookmorebrides.com. You can find us on Instagram under the same name, Bookmorebrides. Reach out to us. Hello at Bookmorebrides.com. We practice what we preach about that email, right? But also,
Final Advice and Contact Information
00:45:29
Speaker
so in terms of your wedding business, just have confidence that you are amazing at what you do, that you just need more people to know about it and why you are worth every single penny. Do not let yourself get
00:45:43
Speaker
sucked into a price bidding war, you know, having to lower your prices. That's what our whole freebie on our website or download the price shoppers guide is going to help you so much with that. So yeah, don't let yourself get talked into lowering your prices because your words are not good enough. You are amazing and you should know you're worth every penny. Oh, I love that. That's going to be my little audiogram.
00:46:08
Speaker
Cool, cool. That's the greatest lasting advice ever. But thank you so much, Kate. I'm going to have you stop recording, but stick around and we'll chat some more. Yeah, yeah, perfect.
00:46:22
Speaker
Thanks for joining me this week on Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. Make sure to follow, subscribe, leave a review, or tell a friend about the show. Take a screenshot and post to IG. Tag me. Also, don't forget to download my free guide on how to become a lead generating machine. See you next time, wedding pros.