Hey guys! Welcome back to the podcast. If you’re new around here, pull up a chair. You can definitely sit with me. I’m so excited that you’re here! I hope you love the podcast enough to subscribe. I’m here every Wednesday with a new episode & there’s plenty of past ones to binge on!

Life update #1: If you’re listening to this in real time, Brian & I are packing our bags to head out to San Antonio, TX for our official life coach graduation. Yep! We are getting our diplomas too! And we’re also sneaking in a few days at The Silos in Waco, TX. I’ll tell Joanna hey for y’all!

Life update #2: Our flip house is DONE! And it is on the market! This has been such a labor of love & we’ve learned so much. I’m making some notes for a podcast all about it & the lessons learned, because believe it or not, so many of them line right up with the mistakes I’ve already made over the years in my photography career. It’s so funny how you thought you had mastered something, but put a little twist on it, and those demons come right back! Seriously, it’s been a lot of fun though & a really good financial move for us.

You can see some of those things we are doing in our personal life outside of the photography world over on that instagram account.

Last week’s episode was jam packed on the topic of niching down! We talked about the pros & cons:

Cons:

Limited client base
Dependency on trends
Competitive market
Difficult to diversify
Seasonal demand

Pros:

Specialist over a generalist
Marketing is so much easier
Word of mouth referrals
Repeat business with siblings
Simplified workflow

We also talked about some limiting beliefs you may have to overcome before niching down:

The fear of missing out on opportunities
The fear of getting stuck in a rut
The fear of not enough clients to go around

And then we dove into how a true business boss would approach this decision:

Not from a place of fear.
Analyzing the market
Evaluating what you like & don’t like about each genre you shoot
Understanding the numbers
Getting expert advice & help
Embracing the risk

I know we’re talking about niching down here, but this applies to any business. With Brian & I moving into real estate investing, this is exactly how we’ve made these decisions. And boy, are we embracing the risk!!

Today I want to drill down on one of the biggest upsides to niching down because it’s a subject that photographers, well any business owner, is interested in. And that’s how to make marketing easier.

We all have a lot of different thoughts about marketing, right? I bet you are thinking of some right now.

Is that thought serving you? We have so many stories that we make mean things in our heads. And most of them are subconscious, but then we act on them. I’ll give you an example. Last week in Studio Secrets, we had our Action Groups call. This is where we break up into smaller groups & talk about a specific topic. On this particular call it turned out there were 2 main topics people wanted to talk about - marketing & pricing.

Well, I was with the pricing so that I could coach on some pretty detailed questions. When I pulled everyone back together I asked for some big takeaways from the marketing group. Please know I’m not picking on this lady, because I’ve said the exact same thing quite a few times over the years. But the first thing that was said is “marketing is hard” and of course, everyone started shaking their heads. I almost pulled a Jesus turning over the tables moment, but I didn’t!

Here was my question though. How is that thought helping you? Seriously, our thoughts can either serve us or hurt us. Thinking “marketing is hard” is gonna keep you stuck. Who wants to do something that’s hard? I don’t. I want to sit on my couch & watch HGTV.

So, one for sure way to make marketing easier is to change the way you think about it. If marketing can be fun, if it can be impactful, encouraging, inspiring, then it gets to be easy. Let me tell you, you will get a whole lot more marketing done when you change your thoughts (and actually believe them) from “marketing is hard” to “marketing can be fun & easy”.

Another way is by niching down or specializing in a certain area of photography, like seniors. This not only helps you stay focused, but it also helps you to stand out as an expert in your local area. When you are only talking to one type of client, it’s a whole lot easier than trying to make everyone hear what you have to say. Honestly, if you’re trying to do that, then your messaging is probably pretty watered down & may be confusing to your audience. One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, says “when you confuse, you lose”, and I am a big believer in that.

I know there’s a time in business when you have to shoot everything in order to know what you love. And I fully encourage that. You have to go through that testing phase, but once you know what lights you up, it’s time to specialize.

Be the one who’s bold enough to ditch all the things you’ve been doing just because it pays bills. Be the one who’s willing to go after what you’re truly passionate about. That’s where you will make your biggest impact & the biggest income.

Let’s get strategic. Another way to really simplify & make your marketing easier is to block time off your calendar & actually sit down to do the work. I know that sounds super simple, but that’s what it takes. Not the constant scrolling for ideas. It’s putting pen to paper & actually planning out your marketing.

And to take it one step further, you have to actually implement the plan. I used to really get tripped up here. I can plan with the best of them, but then I’d get so busy doing busy work that I forgot to work the plan. I’d get to the end of the month & wonder why I hadn’t booked many sessions. Then I would look back at my really pretty untouched plan & know exactly why.

This is one of the things I love to teach! If you’re ready for marketing to be fun & simple again & to know how to create a system for filling up your calendar, you need to get your hands on my new 2 day mini training called Booked Solid Without The Burnout.

DM me the word BOOKED on Instagram & we’ll send it right over to you.

So, let’s recap. In order to make marketing easier, you gotta do 3 things:

Change the way you think about marketing.
Niche down so that you can focus on one type of client.
Create a system for your marketing that’s easy to implement.

Ok, let me know that you were listening today. If you had any big aha moments, share them with me in my DMs or in your stories! I want to know what they were. As always, my goal is to help you & photographers just like you build more profitable, productive & purposeful businesses so that you can spend more time doing what you love with the ones you love. That begins right here on this podcast for so many, so thank you for sharing about what I do here.

Ok. Let's continue the conversation over on the Senior Studio Success Facebook Page. Or you can send me a DM over on Instagram. Have a great week y’all!