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Instagram Tips with GT Marketing
95 Plays3 years ago
Greg is an operational marketer that helps wedding pros and creative entrepreneurs with digital marketing strategies. He is also host of the 15 Minute Marketing with GT Podcast.
He also helps his wife Cece run her mega floral business Cece Designs https://cecedesignsllc.com/
GT is the most down to earth guy even though he has powerhouse clients like https://davidtutera.com/
We have a real convo about creating content and not burning out while doing it.
Consistency is the key to online success Social media marketing is important, but it shouldn’t consume you Use social media to vet clients so you don’t waste time with clients that are not a fit for what you provide
Check out his freebie!
5 SEO Tips You Can Implement Today
https://greg-todd-82b9.mykajabi.com/5SEOTips
www.gtmarketingandconsulting.com
www.Instagram.com/gtmarketingandconsulting
www.Facebook.com/gtmarketingandconsulting
You can find me here.
https://www.instagram.com/carissawoo
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Thanks for listening to my podcast. If you're loving it, please subscribe and leave me a review. Today I chat with GT from GT Marketing. I call him President GT because if he wasn't a marketing expert, he would be a writer for the president.
Carissa's Background & Podcast Mission
00:00:14
Speaker
He also runs a high-end floral company with his wife called CC Designs. They are a crazy power couple. I learned so much in this episode about marketing and social media. I hope you learn a lot too. Enjoy!
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.
Topics: Business, Mindset, and Self-love
00:00:51
Speaker
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,
00:00:59
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.
GT's Marketing Expertise & Personal Insights
00:01:21
Speaker
Hey everyone, it's Carissa. As you know, I'm here with my new friend GT, Greg Todd. I'll tell you a little intro about him.
00:01:29
Speaker
Greg Todd is a marketing and consultant and social media educator for wedding pros. He helps them with digital strategies and operations. He's also the host of a 15 minute marketing, the 50 minute marketing with GT podcast and you have to check it out. I'm obsessed. He's a dad of four kids, which is crazy and also has a wedding event design and floral business with his beautiful wife and she's hilarious.
00:01:53
Speaker
and his approach is much different than other agencies. So we're gonna hear all about it. So welcome, GT. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, so I just wanted to first ask you the question, like, tell me a little bit about your podcast before we get to know you a
Podcast Evolution & Family Dynamics
00:02:10
Speaker
little bit.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, so it focuses mainly on marketing tips, some easy to digest tips that you can get from every episode. And it started off the name is 15 minute marketing because I had been doing a 15 minute marketing Facebook group. I went in once a week and just did a 15 minute tip and everybody really seemed to like
00:02:32
Speaker
that easy on and off pretty quickly. And so I thought that this would be a good idea for a podcast too, until I decided to branch out and start having interviews like this one I'm doing with you. And then I realized it's very difficult to get anything in in 15 minutes when you've got two people. And so the interview episodes don't stick to 15 minutes, but the solo episodes that I do in between, I keep those to exactly 15 minutes just to make it make sense for the name. But the interview itself, I've had a bunch of people on there and we,
00:03:02
Speaker
we just look at marketing from their perspective as a entrepreneur or as a marketer. I've had both. And so it's just really, it's a good excuse for me to interview people that I'd like to learn more from. Yeah. I was just telling you, like I was listening to your last episode with your wife and she was cracking me up. You guys are polar opposites just like me and my husband.
High-End Floral Business Operations
00:03:22
Speaker
So she's a firecracker.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we've toyed with the idea of doing one long term together, but trying to get both of our schedules to make sense where we can both get in front of the microphone and be paying attention to what we need to be talking about is.
00:03:37
Speaker
seems to be more difficult than we expected, even though we share an office building. I mean, she's literally 15 feet from me right now in a different office right down the hall. But just because we're in the same building doesn't mean we're on the same schedule as far as what we have time to accomplish.
00:03:54
Speaker
Yeah, so she's a florist. Are you guys run like a design floral company? Yeah, yeah. So she does a weddings and special event florist only. So we're not a brick and mortar facility. We don't do daily order. So it's specifically luxury weddings and corporate events. And so she'll do anywhere from
00:04:14
Speaker
20 to 30 events per year. We used to do a lot more, but now she's kind of gotten into more of the luxury end. And those events, we just did one recently with a floral budget above $85,000 for just the flowers. And so those events take way much more planning. And so you can't really be having a wedding every weekend leading up to it and execute those well. So we've
00:04:37
Speaker
really trim down how many weddings we take per month, especially if we've got one of those big ones included somewhere in that 30 days. Yeah, I loved how she kept talking about like feeling forward and everything that you've gone through as a husband and wife team and raising four kids and I saw your family.
GT's Marketing Journey & Transition
00:04:56
Speaker
They're beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So how did you get into the marketing and consulting business?
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, so that that kind of grew out of her business. Now, I've got a minor in marketing. So I always knew that I like marketing. I've got a business management degree from Samford University here in Birmingham. And at the time that I went in the 90s, they didn't have marketing as a major, they just had management and accounting. And then you could take some business minors. And so I took marketing as my minor, and always knew I like figuring out this kind of the sales end. I've always I was a sales manager for
00:05:28
Speaker
Lowe's Home Improvement for a large retail mattress chain. I worked in sales for State Farm. So I've kind of always worked for large Fortune 500 companies originally doing marketing and sales. And then when I was running the mattress company here in
00:05:44
Speaker
Alabama is when CC Designs kind of started taking off. And I came home from work one day and CC... Oh, it's CC Designs? I know CC Designs. You guys are huge. Yeah, that's my wife. My wife is CC. Yeah, I didn't know that because I was trying to look through your website and I couldn't find it anywhere. Yeah, hers is CC Designs.
00:06:06
Speaker
Um, so she, she started kind of growing and I came home from work at the mattress company one day and she was just having a nervous breakdown and
Marketing Strategies: Retainers & Social Media
00:06:14
Speaker
said, I can't meet with the brides, order the flowers, design the wedding, take care of our daughter who at the time was like two.
00:06:23
Speaker
You know, take her to daycare, pick her up, fix dinner, you know, just a long laundry list of things. And she said, and then after all that's over, you want me to post on Facebook, post on Instagram. Everybody tells me I should be on Pinterest. And at the time, people were still doing Twitter. And so she was just like,
00:06:43
Speaker
breaking down. And I said, I can handle all of that stuff for you. Why don't you let me take that off your plate? I just kind of started doing it at night when I would get home from work and figuring it out. And I'm an Enneagram five. So I love research and kind of analytics into things. Yeah. And so I just kind of figured out
00:07:03
Speaker
how to do it and started taking YouTube classes and Hootsuite classes. And then eventually I rolled around and took the Business by Design course by James Wedmore. Yeah, me too. And really invested in figuring out. No, I took it too, it was amazing. Yeah, so it was awesome to figure that out. And so started doing that and she grew
00:07:23
Speaker
And then people started asking her, how in the world do you have time to be everywhere and run your business? And she said, I don't do any of that. My husband does. And they started asking, well, how does he do that? I wish my husband would do that for me. And she jokingly responded a couple of times. Why don't you have mine do it for you? And so I started getting these phone calls saying, Hey, how much would you charge me to do what you do for CC? And I'm like, I have no idea. I don't charge her. Like I had no concept as.
00:07:49
Speaker
what I should charge and what it'll be worth. But it kind of became the side hustle that I was doing on my days off or at night and sitting in a recliner every night, you know, figuring out marketing. And I had enough side hustle clients that I was making as much doing that as I was making a really good salary for a mattress company. And so as she grew, she needed my help also on the logistics end for the business. So driving the truck, loading the truck, building
00:08:19
Speaker
all these custom builds that we do for weddings. And so I needed Saturdays off. Well, Saturday is the busiest sales day for mattresses. And so it just wasn't a good fit anymore. Them wanted me to be in the store. She needed me at a wedding location. She was about to hire somebody full time to help her. And so we just decided I would quit the corporate world. We would keep that money that she was going to pay somebody else and pay me. And then it kind of grew from there.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, now you're working for your boss.
SEO & Blogging as Pillar Content
00:08:51
Speaker
I had to start my own company so I could still, you know, get back to her all day every day. So what is like the structure of your business? Do you do you have like marketing and social media packages for wedding professionals or creatives?
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah, wedding creatives. I've got three packages and then I'll custom build as well. So monthly retainer clients where I do just one platform, which typically is Instagram.
00:09:18
Speaker
all the way up to my top package, which will do up to four platforms and two blogs a month for them. So that kind of thing. That's that's my most popular package, even though it's the most expensive because it really lets them get back to just focusing on their business. They really have to be very hands off on the marketing once they drop everything into a Dropbox folder or Google Drive folder for me. I know how to talk weddings. I know how to talk most businesses with
00:09:46
Speaker
You know, like I said, insurance mattresses, home improvement store, I've kind of done a lot of different things. So regardless of who the client is, I can usually figure out pretty quickly what type of messaging they need to have to get it out to the world.
00:10:00
Speaker
And the thing that makes me a little different in that is I do all of that myself. And so whereas most agencies, you kind of have the face of the agency and then they pass it off to an intern or somebody else to kind of manage that. I don't. I have a VA that helps schedule some things, but I've written all the copy and done all the graphics and then they just schedule it. And then occasionally I'll have a freelance graphic designer when you're getting into more
00:10:28
Speaker
something more elaborate than Canva can do. I outsource that to someone else. But for the most part, I'm the one doing the work. And so I keep how many retainer clients I have per month pretty low so that I can give them that attention myself. Oh, awesome. So how do you I know you're a big SEO guy, but that's not our hot topic today. We're gonna talk about social media. But do you think blogging is not dead?
00:10:54
Speaker
Blogging is not dead. It's dead from the standpoint of a lot of people reading it. It's not dead from the standpoint of using it for social media. I think that's the problem that people have when they hear that you should still blog. They look at it as, well, nobody ever reads my blog. It's not for you. It's for Google.
Social Media Planning & Mental Health
00:11:11
Speaker
It's to get all of that information you need, all of those keywords and the backlinks to other places you've been featured back onto your site so that you get that credibility on your site so that you rank higher on the Google ranking. So it's all about SEO. I write all blogs based. I write them all like I'm talking to Google, not like I'm talking to me and you. It's really just a trick in your arsenal. And then the other thing you can use it for is kind of a pillar content. You know, you write your blog,
00:11:39
Speaker
And then all of your social media can filter out of that. You use a different picture on Instagram, but you push it back to your blog. You use a different picture on Facebook or a video. If you've got video content, you can share it over to YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google. And so they love that platform from an SEO standpoint, because you're using something that they own. And so it kind of works hand in hand with making sure you're being found by the biggest search engines.
00:12:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Interesting. Cause I used to be like all about my blog, but then once reels got popular, then I had no time and two, two babies, but I really love blogging, but I wasn't as good with the SEO, but maybe I could, I just downloaded your freebie, which I'll tell them later, but I'm going to read it tonight and try to figure it out. Yeah. It, it, that, that.
00:12:27
Speaker
five steps that you can implement today freebie is really good from the standpoint of if you just do those five things and try to blog twice a month. And I do all my clients blogs in one day. Like I just sit down and knock out blogs. That's crazy. You know, just lock schedule, get my mind on and sit down and you go through those five steps, make sure you've named the images, make sure you're doing all the little headline things so that you get found.
00:12:52
Speaker
And the thing that I've seen is that as you get consistent, all of my clients quickly move up the Google rankings by making no other changes, just simply following those five steps.
00:13:05
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I'm so excited. Okay, so I usually would ask this question like at the end, because I'm so curious. Can you tell me about like your presidential obsession? I have a pretty large presidential memorabilia collection. I've just always been fascinated with American history. Originally, when I was young, my dad was big into like World War Two history and Civil War history. So it started there as a kid. But as I've gotten older,
00:13:31
Speaker
Um, if I, if I had a dream job, it would be like chief of staff, head speech writer for the press, which is, which is why I think I do so well with Cece, you know, she loves being on stage. She's an Enneagram seven out there. Once the new, the biggest spotlight, the biggest stage she can find.
00:14:05
Speaker
any more pressure packed thing than being the president of the United States. And so I just love reading about how each one of them either did well or did poorly and why. And so and then I've got Pez dispensers here that you see that I've just become really easy to buy for. So a lot of people just know if you need to get Greg again. I was like, I'm going to send you something.
00:14:14
Speaker
I would much rather be the one making sure that all of her slides are correct.
00:14:30
Speaker
Presidential related is pretty simple and so that's the majority. I had always just kind of wanted a home office and so I spent all this time in the home that CC and I own making this really nice. I've got a like big nice presidential desk that looks a lot like the desk in the Oval Office and had
00:14:49
Speaker
decorated it on all four walls. And then we got this office that we actually go to that's out of our house. And so I basically just have this that's behind me for video purposes. I have probably three times this at the home office that never gets used anymore. It's nothing more than a place for my daughter to go down and do her gymnastics practice. Oh, crazy. This is a podcast episode with like Barack Obama's speech writer a long time ago, but it was interesting because I didn't even know they had a speech writer.
00:15:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, they have a whole team. The president has a team of speechwriters. And then there's usually one that kind of understands the president's voice the best. And so they typically pick one that they think is their favorite and everything kind of runs through them. But
00:15:34
Speaker
There'll be a team of people that write, depending on what the topic is, that have specialties in that. And unfortunately, you almost have to be a lawyer to want to go and do that because I went through a divorce at one point and I thought, I'm just going to go do what I've always wanted to do. And then you start looking into it and you're like, oh, so I need to go past the...
Client Targeting & Brand Consistency
00:15:55
Speaker
interest exam to law school, become a lawyer, get out and be successful enough that somebody on a campaign would want to hire me. And then elected before I could actually do the job. I didn't really want to be like, you know, local, local politics, I wanted to go just jump straight to the big time. And that's just not reality. So here, here I am doing marketing for wedding pros instead.
00:16:19
Speaker
I love it. I'm going to call you President GT for this podcast. President GT, what is your biggest business accomplishment?
00:16:28
Speaker
Biggest accomplishment is probably getting Cece to all of the things she wants to do. She's a keynote speaker now at Wedding MBA. Oh, no way. She just recently spoke at the David Tutera experience, was the head floral educator there. And so really just getting to do that that I've always wanted to do is kind of that chief of staff speech writer role.
00:16:52
Speaker
And now I'm branching out and doing that for others as well. David Tutera is now a client. I have about five wedding planners that are clients, a couple of photographers. So really just getting to do that dream job that I've always wanted to do for others. Yeah, that's so interesting. And people, the thing that I think is my biggest success is that my best clients, nobody ever knows that they've hired someone to do it for them.
00:17:17
Speaker
Oh, I make the voice sound like whoever that client is. So that unless they tell them, most people, and that's been a hard thing for me, because it's hard to get new clients when nobody knows who your current clients are. Yeah. So thankfully, my clients have liked enough that I'm starting to get a lot of word of mouth referrals. But I don't tout who my clients are typically on my social media, because I want people to assume they're doing it themselves.
00:17:47
Speaker
Oh my God, that's so cool. So I'm like buzzing with energy. Can you coach me for speaking engagements? Absolutely. Okay, cool. Yeah, my parents have always been a Toastmasters like president and I've always been like that kid that came along and I have a common bond with like the David Tuteri thing because I was on one of the weddings and I was on TV. So he's amazing, but that's crazy that you are doing speeches for him. Yeah.
00:18:13
Speaker
Oh my God, this conversation could go like many different ways, but we have to get into our hot topic. So take me away like what the hot topic is and why you chose it.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, so the hot topic is just how to be consistent with your social media. And I think the consistency, the reason I wanted to go this route is I don't hear many people talking, you hear a lot of people talking about consistency, but not in the vein that I like to bring it up. And that is, consistency is not the same for everyone. And I think there's this kind of
00:18:48
Speaker
comparison mentality out there on social media now that you get everybody's got to be doing it the same way and that's just not accurate like what how many times a week you can post and take care of your daughters and be involved in all the other things you want to do may look very different than what i do for some of my clients or what
00:19:10
Speaker
you know, somebody that has three or four people working under them and has a bunch of interns and how many times they can post. Consistency is finding the groove that you can do and sticking to it so that your audience
00:19:23
Speaker
consistently finds you when you're doing it. So whether that's twice a week or whether that's two times a day, that doesn't really matter. The consistency, the way everybody you hear all these negative terms about the algorithm and the algorithms against me, and I don't know how the algorithm is working nowadays. The algorithm simply is a mathematical formula to put as many of your followers in front of your content when they interact with it.
00:19:49
Speaker
So the more consistent you can be with people who actually like what you're putting out, the more you're going to get shown to other people like that. And so that's once a week or 50 times a week. As long as you can do that and replicate it week over week, that's the more important thing.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, and it also builds trust when you kind of know that person's going to show up once a week or twice a week or every day. Because if it's consistent, it gets a little confusing. It is. And Instagram has made it even easier not to have to be as frequent, you know, so people can people confuse consistency with frequency. And that's
Luxury Wedding Marketing Strategies
00:20:25
Speaker
their two different two different things. And so for the longest time, we posted daily for CC for myself, for most of my clients, what you're seeing now and even
00:20:35
Speaker
watched an interview with the CEO of Instagram recently talking about the algorithm is still showing your content 36 to 48 hours after you post it. So it it gets interrupted if you're posting more frequently than that. And so you want that post to get in front of the most people, then you want to let let your postings go to where it's every other day or early one day and late the following day before you post again so that you're not cutting off
00:21:06
Speaker
opportunities for people to see the content that you posted the day before. And so it's really made it easier for us as content creators to not need as much content. Now on the flip side, if you want to be effective on stories, that's multiple stories, three to five of them per day.
00:21:23
Speaker
And so, so that's so on the feed on the Instagram feed, I've gone to all of my clients every other day, and and stories three to five of them per day. So that's where you put your focus. But even those you can batch, you know, what people think they're like, I don't have time to do three to five. Sit down for a couple of hours on a Monday and make that be your task where you plot out what your stories for the week are going to be and you go ahead and knock them out. And then you just have them pre scheduled. Or you have a reminder on your phone telling you when it's time to post them.
00:21:53
Speaker
But you've already created the content. And so yeah, I mean, something I realized, like for my mental health is to do later grams, like not post in real time, just try to be present with the kids. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there's so many things out there with later and planally and hood suite. And then even the creator studio inside of Facebook. Now, you can do all of your pre scheduling using a desktop, you don't even have to use your phone if you don't want to. So for the people that
00:22:21
Speaker
grew up kind of more on the laptop or desktop and kinda used to that. They've made that so easy to do now. So there's too many options out there to pre-schedule for anybody to be trying to still do it.
00:22:37
Speaker
on a whim every day on their own. Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, a little funny story on Saturday. It's kind of embarrassing, but I had posted for National Daughters Day. And I posted like a bunch of photos because I've been waiting to post this cute shoot of me and my daughters and then my social media manager, she also posted a bunch of photos and my sister was just like, what the hell like you're like posted like 20 of your face.
00:23:00
Speaker
She's like, why are you posting so much? And I looked at it, I was like, oh my god. There's like many stories on my face. Yeah, that's one of those where the creative and the social media manager did not communicate back and forth with each other. Yeah, we have that happen. Cece and I have that happen a lot where she's gotten big into reels. It even happened I think yesterday or the day before. I had just posted a static
Personal Branding & Strategic Marketing
00:23:25
Speaker
feed post and 20 minutes later she posted a reel to the grid. I called her and I'm like,
00:23:30
Speaker
Hello, like you have to look and see if I've posted something before you just go willy-nilly deciding that you want to do a reel today. And so I just went in and archived what I had posted and I'll bring it back out another day this week. But it's just funny, you know, I could not post for a week and she would not do a reel, but the minute I post something, it's going to be time for her to
00:23:53
Speaker
you know, get a wild crazy hair that, hey, this is a topic that would make a good real and I have time to do it right now. I love it. Oh my God. I'm all about reals and I know brand new cars too. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Number one was be consistent on social media. And then what is your tip number two?
00:24:11
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:24:55
Speaker
Tip number two is make sure that you understand the ideal client that you're looking to attract so that you're posting the right type of content. So that's different for everybody. And so you have to identify, as I kind of mentioned earlier with Cece, who her client is for the wedding business has dramatically changed from when we opened. When we opened, it was lower budget brides that
00:25:23
Speaker
that probably didn't have a planner, didn't know what flowers they wanted to use. And we were taking kind of the Walmart approach. We'll take 10 weddings a month if we have to, to make the income we want to make. Whereas now we've moved more into, no, this is more my style. She knows now where they shop, what they wear, what they do.
00:25:44
Speaker
And so really identifying who you want your clients to be. And I think that when you're doing something like this in a podcast scenario, what can you take away from this that you're listening to? And I think all the listeners can figure out if you don't know who you want your client to be, then it's going to be very hard for your client to find you. And your client isn't everybody, regardless of what you're selling. If you're trying to sell to everybody, you're selling to nobody because everybody wants to feel like you're selling to them.
Reflections on Corporate to Entrepreneur Journey
00:26:12
Speaker
Or good selling is
00:26:14
Speaker
They don't realize you're selling to them. They just feels like oh, I need that or I want to work with them And so that ultimately is the biggest thing Yeah, I mean I've been doing this for 12 years, but this floral this know this wedding planner told me she's like, can I give you some like advice or just comment and I'll like sure she's like it seems like you just take like any client like any type of client and
00:26:40
Speaker
like poor rich style. And I was like, damn, she's like, it's not a bad thing. She's like, it's just what I see as an audience. So I was like, okay, I got to work on my client avatar. Yeah. And it's, it's
00:26:59
Speaker
I don't think that it gets down to like, not everybody has to know like, where do they like some people take it to a big extreme, you know, like, she's blonde, and she carries this designer purse, and she wears these shoes and shops at this place. That's all great if you can get that specific. But I'm more talking about just like, who the best thing to do is take your current clients, list them all out. Okay, mark out beside them.
00:27:26
Speaker
would definitely want to work with more people like them, might want to work with somebody like them if I could change this, this, and this, or no, I don't want a client like this ever again. And when you organize those, then that first column is where you really want to go to. You'll still take the second column because you've got to pay bills.
00:27:48
Speaker
So there's sometimes that somebody's not going to align perfectly, but you need their money because we got to keep the lights on. You still want to record the podcast every week, that type of thing. But you really try to start with eliminating the third column. The people you don't want to work with again, don't take a client that you can tell is going to be like one of the ones that was listed in that column. No matter how bad you need the money, because what will happen is as you eliminate those, more and more opportunities will come in the first two columns.
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the coolest thing that has happened to me ever since I became a coach like a year and a half ago is I could be more discerning about my weddings and more selective. But yeah, before I was, it was like how I fed, fed myself like these weddings. It would be like
00:28:33
Speaker
3,500 or zero, you know, sometimes you just take it. So yeah. And I'd be like, no, I'm good. Yeah. And I think the biggest thing is even when you take those that don't brand a line, you just don't talk a lot about those in your, in your social media.
00:28:49
Speaker
You know, Cece jokes all the time that we still do weddings where we need to use carnations or some other flowers that she doesn't necessarily love. But you're never gonna see those on our page. So another tip that wasn't one of my three, but a tip you can do is almost any event that you're doing, if you're a wedding pro especially, there's something in that day that would brand a line.
00:29:16
Speaker
And so find that one thing and kind of know ahead of time, you know, if that maybe the bouquet is perfect, or maybe the it's going to be a touching first look, or whatever that is, there's something that would still look good on your page. And that'd be the only thing you show from that. You still, I totally agree. Like when I first started and I had the shitty venues, I would go like to Griffith Observatory or like
00:29:41
Speaker
a cool venue or like downtown LA and just take photos and post only those photos because I'm not going to post like that. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And if you look, you can go back and look through any of my wedding clients pages and if you only see like a bouquet or you only see a flat lay from that wedding, that's because the only thing that was pretty was the flat lay that the planner and the photographer got together and kind of
00:30:07
Speaker
pre-planned out. There wasn't anything that fit the brand per se for that client to post and so you can still post all you could post that venue and give a little you know credit to them and your client like on your stories that day kind of behind the scenes stuff because they're going to disappear in 24 hours and you're not going to add them to highlights but anything that goes to your feed I look at your Instagram feed and your Facebook feed as an extension of your website
00:30:36
Speaker
So think of it, if I wouldn't put it on my website, it doesn't go on my feed. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I gotta be more disturbing. Okay, so you have already three tips. Consistency, you don't have to do everything the same way as everyone else. Number two, make sure you know your ideal client, your
00:30:57
Speaker
client avatar, and number three, any event, there's always something special that you could post, even if it's not a whole wedding, there's always something. And then you have one last tip. You want to remind me where I was going with that one? Because I've totally forgotten. I've gotten so into these. Where was I going with my last one? I think the last one you're going, we were talking about the client avatar, but then you said something like this may be a tip, and you said, any event,
00:31:27
Speaker
there. Oh, I know. Because I said I post all different weddings. So someone told me like, I just do, like, photography for any bride. Yeah, ideal client. So you're like, there's always something that you get to find that one thing and find what makes your posting pattern consistent, too. So find a rhythm in your post. And so for us, for us, like you hear about the top nine at the end of every year, right? Like, what was your top nine photos?
00:31:56
Speaker
Where that came from, most people don't realize where that exists from, but top nine just came because at the time that came out, nine pictures would fit on an iPhone. The size of an iPhone at the time, you could fit three rows of three on Instagram. And so if you tame this, that's your top nine. So I try to look at my scrolling nine for all of my clients. And does it have the brand elements in those nine pictures that I want?
00:32:22
Speaker
So for all of my wedding clients, that's going to be some kind of intimate shot, whether that be just a bride in the groom looking at each other, a bouquet shot, a ceremony shot, an overall room shot in the reception, and then a face picture of who the face of the brand is. So for you, that would be your face. If there's brands out there listening to this that say, well, I don't really want to be the face of my brand, then that would be a picture of your logo or something that is brand representative.
00:32:49
Speaker
colors, a graphic where you're talking about a quote or review from one of your clients, and you use your branding colors. So every nine pictures should have those elements involved. Okay, cool. That's awesome. I love these tips. Okay, we're gonna go into rapid fire questions. And I'm so excited for these. These are actually like not for my listeners, but for myself. Yeah, I'm very curious. Okay, so for me as a coach, I have a coaching program. Where do you think I should
00:33:19
Speaker
find my future potential clients. So I'm on Instagram, you know, I have this podcast, I am creating a masterclass, which is not out. But do you think, I know you do like so many speaking events and emailing like wedding pros or what do you think I should be focusing on?
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah. So I think your, your initial lead generator is going to be this podcast because that's going to give you the brightest, the broadest spectrum, you know, initially. So here, this would be your hub and then anything to do with wedding pros or creative entrepreneurs, Instagram is kind of your main hub right now. And so I would focus most of my energy on being good at reels and stories on Instagram because as a coach,
00:34:06
Speaker
Your feed is important because that's going to prove your credibility. So use the post to build your credibility with reviews, tips, tricks, and true.
00:34:18
Speaker
what you would be coaching on in the captions. But they use stories and reels to let people see your personality, how they're going to interact with you. Because people don't book people based on their knowledge, they book people based on the fact that they think they will get along with them, or they see I want to be more like her, or I want the results that she's provided for other clients. And so that can come across so much better.
00:34:43
Speaker
And as a former TV advertising guy, I did that in a former life. Like it, this is so much better. Like we hear so much negative about social media, but there's no middleman. You can pick up your phone, record a video and post it. And there's
00:34:58
Speaker
you're not having to pay somebody for air time. And well, I want to be in the seven o'clock show. And you put me in the five p.m. show. Well, you didn't pay enough to be at the seven p.m. show. So the ratings are higher in that show, that kind of thing. Whereas with this, you have control over who hears your message, what the message is, how quickly you can get it out. Okay, take advantage of that. Well, thank you, because I was getting confused, because that's what I've been doing, like the podcast, Instagram,
00:35:26
Speaker
But I'm kind of branching out a little bit like you like doing SEO and Pinterest and blogging for people so I was getting a little confused like yeah whole like do I should I like start emailing like wedding pros and Email marketing still works from the standpoint It's good to have that list because you never know I mean Instagram might not be the darling that it is tomorrow that it is today and so you don't want to build your entire strategy around a social media platform because you don't own it but
00:35:53
Speaker
Right now, I'm telling all my clients to ride the Instagram wave for as long as it exists. And then be ready to move to whatever that next thing is after. Okay, got it. Thank you, President. Okay, so I'm a hopeless romantic. I'm a lover of love. That's why I've been in the game for so long and obsessed. But tell me your love story with CC.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, so we actually met at a bar that I was working in at the time. This is this is pre CC designs, pre GT marketing and consulting. So we had both gone through fairly ugly divorces and were against love at the time. And so neither one of us were looking for anything didn't think we would ever get remarried. I was working as the kitchen manager slash part time bartender.
00:36:46
Speaker
And she was coming in twice a week to sing karaoke. She's got an amazing singing voice. Oh, crazy. Recorded an album back in the early 2000s. And so can just sing like crazy. So she was coming in just to have something to do a couple of nights a week. She requested a song when I was playing the music one night and I bought her a drink and the rest is history. How many years now?
00:37:14
Speaker
So we're about to celebrate our nine year anniversary. So you have to do a big 10 year. Yeah. Yeah. We're hoping to do some kind of cruise or some kind of destination for the 10 year because we didn't really do much of a big.
00:37:32
Speaker
She wasn't working at the time when we got married, so we didn't have a ton of money. And so our honeymoon was just going to the beach where my in-laws have a beach house here in Alabama. So it was fun. It was great. We had a great time, but it was just a four hour drive right down the coast where we live. So we're looking to definitely do something a little bit more elaborate for the 10 year celebration. I love it. I love it. Okay. Next question.
00:37:59
Speaker
You have a ton, but your favorite sales technique, how do you get that heck yes from your dream client? Yeah, I think the biggest thing there is making sure that the people that you're interacting with are an ideal client. So the getting the heck yes is eliminating the people that would give you the heck no. And so that is making sure that you're only attracting the people that will give you a yes by being your true self on all of your social platforms and making sure that they
00:38:29
Speaker
they're the ones that are attracted to what you're doing. Oh, interesting. Okay, I love that. Let's see, how did you go from like normal weddings to these crazy, high budget, like celebrity weddings?
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, so a lot of that was just making sure that the content that we put out was bringing in the type of client that we want. So like we alluded to earlier, not showing the things that just pay the bills. The other thing that we had to do early on was invest. You know, a lot of people look at like,
00:39:01
Speaker
advertising and photo shoots as an expense. We both looked at it as as an investment. And so we we invested in a regional magazine here is called Alabama weddings magazine. And that's where all of your best wedding vendors were. Even though print as a whole is not a huge medium anymore for a regionalized magazine.
00:39:24
Speaker
It's still very huge here for the when a bride gets engaged, she's going to go and find that that publication. And so we invested in that because it gave you a editorial photo shoot to be in that magazine. Oh, that's cool. And we we paid way more than we than most people do to do a shoot to prove that CC could do the type of work she wanted to do. So we use that as an opportunity to go in the hole
00:39:51
Speaker
quote unquote, on your ledger, you know, that was a big investment for us. But the very first over the top head table that we did in that magazine, we booked eight of them the following wedding season. So when you booked eight of those, it by far paid for the investment you made in that initial photo shoot. So yeah, go big or go home. Either get the type of weddings that you want, or if that's not an option, then you've got to go out and create ways to prove you can do that type of work that you want to do.
00:40:22
Speaker
Oh my God, so good. And it's good that it was both you, the husband and wife, like in it together. So you guys could support each other with that big investment. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it, it was hard because at the time, I mean, we're just now to the point to where GT marketing is bringing in an equivalent amount of money to CC designs. At that time, CC designs was
00:40:44
Speaker
basically fully paying for all of our household bills because I had quit corporate America and come home to help her grow that business, but we kind of did that out of faith. The money wasn't there to justify that decision at the time. There was a lot of people looking at us crazy saying, what are you doing leaving this great corporate job with insurance and a company car and a company cell phone to go and run this wedding business? But here we are 10 years later and loving life.
00:41:11
Speaker
Oh, so good. So good. Okay, so you're a podcaster. Can you ask me a question? I'll ask you my favorite one. So I do some some favorite questions at the end of my podcast, kind of like everyone, like you're doing here with the rapid questions. And my favorite one is, if you were stuck on a deserted island, and somehow a record player survived the crash that you were in, and only one album could survive, what album could you be okay with having to listen to on loop forever?
00:41:41
Speaker
Oh my god. I'm like a not the hugest music person. I'm very like Spotify all day. Okay. But it would probably be like Alicia Keys.
00:41:52
Speaker
It's a good one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she give you a wide range of emotions. Good and good and bad. So that's that would be a good one to have. That's that's I always look at it when I'm thinking about this for myself, because I've had a lot of people answer great, great answers over over the years. And it always reevaluate mine. And mine is the Eagles. That's my favorite band. But, you know, fast songs, slow songs, happy, sad, it's gonna give you that full range of emotion. And if you're gonna be stuck there forever, you want to be able to go through all of those.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, I have been listening to Olivia Rodrigo all the time, and then the Cinderella Camilla Cabello soundtrack over and over again. So that really gives me a wide range of emotions.
00:42:34
Speaker
My daughter loves Olivia Rodrigo. It's on in my car constantly taking her to and from school. I know. My four-year-old's like, I'm so fucking blah, blah. I was like, oh, no. Yeah. I don't worry about that kind of stuff. I kind of fall into the, if you follow Gary Vee at all, you know, the words are just words. They don't make who you are. And so we've never worried too much about that. So Isabella Jean came home from her.
00:43:03
Speaker
she came home from preschool singing uptown punk you up and she didn't she didn't pronounce her ends at the time so yeah that's so funny yes no we had a lot of fun with that those videos pop up every year on your memories and we give her a hard time but she doesn't sound that cute anymore i know like little simba princess cool so tell everyone about the freebie one more time and then where everyone could find you and how they could work with you
00:43:29
Speaker
Yeah, so GT marketing and consulting.com or all social media. I'm just at GT marketing and consulting all spelled out. And the freebie that she's referring to is the five SEO tips that you can implement today as a business owner. And you can just find that right there on my homepage at GT marketing and consulting.com. Also, as she mentioned earlier, come and enjoy the 15 minute marketing with GT the podcast available on Apple, Spotify and iHeartRadio wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:43:59
Speaker
Ooh, I love it. I love this conversation, so stick around, but I'm going to end recording. Bye, GT. Bye-bye. 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.