Skip to main content

Cross Promotion

Lesson 4 from: High School Senior Photography Marketing Plan

Alycia White

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

4. Cross Promotion

Lesson Info

Cross Promotion

What the red program had started to do really well, was they started tio they found other people to market their business for them, right? Which is a great idea because you can't do it all yourself. Well, I guess you could, but maybe you wouldn't be so, so they started finding other people, but they found high school seniors are high school juniors, and these high schoolers have no marketing experience at all. And so so what I started thinking about how how could I take that and turn that into something that could actually really, really work? And I started that I realized that if I started reaching out to local businesses that had a similar target market or client base that I did, that we could work together, I could I could benefit their business, they could benefit mine, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine type of deal. So, um, the thing with this is like, like social media, you have to find where your client base likes to go, so if you go into chuck e cheese is or and taylor a...

nd you say, hey, you guys want to do a special cross promotion deal and and have a lot of fun, and you're going to get a whole bunch of five year olds and a whole bunch of that age range that one of these points I'm going to say something that's going to get me into a lot of trouble season thank you very much so my client my client base okay so let me let me tell you that this varies in every market and every location this is going to vary in your market and location then then it will in mine um for seniors in my market they're hanging out and I would say honestly this is probably very similar all across the board may be different genres of photography but seniors I think that you could like hit it big if you contacted these places like I have local movie theaters local coffee shops clothing boutiques and prom dress it stops time for weddings if you also shoot weddings you could contact dress shops wedding vendors jewelry stores and bridal expos and then for families and this is I do this as well for my family's I contact school's charity auctions vacation resorts which is huge vacation resort there is a lot there that is your client that's your client base right there and then and then restaurants local restaurants so what is it for you in your market give a couple minutes to think about that not now but later just make a note okay so yes sir you have been hossam flanders we got a couple questions coming about the model called I'd like to ask you know absolutely perfect from ginny marie she says how do you make sure that the juniors are following your facebook or instagram? I've posted model called type ads but no enquiries because I don't have them following me absolutely get them to see me okay so two ideas are first of all you have to build somewhat of a client base so I'll tell you what our I'm sorry a following on your instagram what I did was I hired a high school girl teo take over my instagram account I gave her the passwords and I said if you can grow my instagram account to over a thousand in a week I'll give you seventy five bucks that's what I did because if you're going to fix your car you hire mechanic if you're going to fix your roof, you hire a contractor and if you're going to do anything on social media you hire a high school girl genius that's the first time I've heard anyone say that and she'll love it she did it in four days so I hired her s o so that's one way to do it is to just and honestly what she did was she went through all of her friends and she followed all of them and then she went through all of her friends, friends and she followed all of them and all of the like a good portion of those people just followed me back immediately and that's tell you, build your unless you're going to use a ton of hash tags, which you can do to on dh that'll work as well, but that is a little bit more attracting clients in your area. Great. So, yeah, um, and then darkroom junkie and one others are wondering how many models didn't take ten? Yeah, I did have ten and so it came back. Okay, uh, those were really quick carry huff and one other do you ask the junior for their parents, email or phone number? Then how does that work? How do you contact the family? I have, I guess maybe that would be a really good idea to dio I've asked that if if I'm sensing that there are questions or if she's saying my mom has a question about this and I say, hey, can I just grab your mom's phone number and I'll give her a call so I will do that but it's really hard to do that for all ten people, and it takes a good portion of time. So that's kind of what I do, saying that they need to bring a parent with them, and then I connect with the parent at the photo shoot uh, we got god, what did they show up without the parent? I can't photograph them or I photograph them, but I won't give them any images, and then I'll send the parent and model release over email, but I won't be able to give them any of the images or use them for my marketing until I get a signature. Yeah, and they can just sign a sign it on the, like, printed outside and scan it back to me, but yeah, I'm not willing to get sued over it now, possibly including the on the because there is a release that's needed from a parent or guardian, including a contact number for the person that I authorized, that might be an opportunity. Sure, what are you saying? Like having them put their contact information on them? Yes, absolutely. Sure, theo, the question that I had done, what does lo rez mean? So can you talk a little bit about the files just absolutely so high rez or a full rez images, images going to be print quality? They're going to be able to take that image and go print it at costco or walmart or wherever they would like, but it's not going to be a good quality or as good. Quality as it would be in your studio ah, low res image is a web file so they can on ly posted on the web and it will look good okay, so if they try to get that printed if I give them a low res file that's this big that's gonna look great on the web but if they try to print in eight by ten or an eleven by fourteen out of it it's going to look horrible so I save all of the high res images for me oh what's the numbers for as faras the resolution so anything print is going to be three hundred d p I and anything web is going to be two hundred seventy two dp I so there's a big difference in that and that's a whole nother that there's a lot more involved in that thank you for clearing absolutely one more quick one before you move on always improving wonders do you allow outfit changes in the ten minute session? No, now they have to save outfit changes for their full session, which is a good reason to come back to me. Perfect. Okay, let's, keep going. All right sounds good. So cross promotion getting back to cross promotion? Well, I'm just going to tell you about one of the companies that I reached out tio okay, my my client base do you guys know about dutch brothers? Dutch bro's this pacific northwest? You okay? So dutch bro's is like a cult like a beautiful called to that high school seniors love and if you ever go get a coffee from dutch bro's, you walk up and without fail there's some super attractive young person making your coffee and they're always like, how you doing? Oh my gosh, it's so good to see! See you, vova, they're fun, they're charismatic. They connect with people and all of the high school students in my area go to dutch bro's none of them go to starbucks. They all go to dutch bro's, so eye contact contacted the marketing director of the dutch bro's in the chains in my area and I said, I'm going, I'm about to do something really big called senior week and I would love to feature your business on one of the days and senior week, and all I want to dio is I want to come and buy a couple of your gift certificates. I'm going to give them away as prizes during senior week, okay? And if you would, if you would, you don't have to, but if you would, I would love for you to promote my business. On that day when I'm doing that as well ok, so what that's doing is that's helping me reach all of the followers on social media that dutch bro's has okay and that's helping them reach all of the followers on instagram that I have so we're both created were both get we just doubled our reach, okay? Um don't ask for free stuff when you reach out to these companies I could tell when I when I first sent the email to this, the marketing director she was like, well, do you want us to like, give you the gift cards like donate them because businesses get hit up for free stuff all the time? Heck, no, I don't want you to donate them you guys are worth this, I'm I want to pay you what your product is worth because that's what I want people to do to me, okay? I want them to pay me for what I'm worth and so I'm not a friend of mine told me that a good way of, um a good way to call us or teo label this would be friend raising, not fundraising I'm trying teo create a create communication and connection that's going to be long lasting because next year I want to do this with dutch bro's again because it was very profitable it was it was a lot of fun so how am I, how how are we cross promoting each other? We're tagging each other in our social media, we're using each other's hashtag k, we're sending our followers to them and that's it it's not complicated, it's it's not hard at all for me, I want to go above and beyond when I'm cross promoting with these with these companies. So what I did with was I contacted one of the models that was going to be coming to one of the shoot days, and I asked her if she liked dutch pros, and she was like, oh, my gosh, I love dutch froze I was like, fantastic what's your favorite drink, I'm going to go get it for you. So on my way to the photo shoot, before I met all the girls, I grabbed a dutch bro string, and then I gave it to her when we got there and I did a couple of shots, she was the first shot for a shoot that I did that day, and I gave her the cup and I said, just go have fun. Well, drink your coffee, and I'm going to photograph you, and this showed off my work and it showed off their product, and then those were the images for the dutch bro's day that I used and I got a couple for her that we're not with the dutch bro's cup butt, but those were the ones that I used to promote dutch bro's they loved it um stay local it oh actually did I forget something? Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say I did forget that is they I sent this image to them directly and they posted it directly onto their onto their page, which that brought in like a significant increase in likes on instagram and our likes on facebook and followers on instagram um stay local for the companies that you reach out to but make sure that they have a big reach. So if you reach out to a brand new company who only has one hundred followers on instagram that's probably not going to bring you very much very many new followers so you want to look for companies that have a big reach and this was where are there any questions? Because I had a slide in here for questions, but if we covered him we can just move on she's got a question to that question here is to know with all of the social media and the followers and the likes and all of that have you have you seen a dramatic growth in your business from those followers or from those people and actual followers that are staying with you? Because, you know sometimes with the teenage girl situation, the followers will follow you for a little bit, and then they're like, oh, we're not gonna follow you anymore, so pickle, yeah, I'm curious, too, to know, do you do you have, ah, what's we're looking for, or have you kept up with that, like, I haven't, I don't not sure if there's any. If there's a way to, like, specifically target, like how many followers I have and how many sessions that I booked that year, maybe, um, I have noticed an increased is significantly, especially when I got the instagram account. I haven't had it for very long, but that was a huge increase, I would say honestly, the other thing was my studio downtown being right downtown, that really increased my business, but I did notice a huge, a huge increase, increasing your booking, yeah, from social media, yeah, for sure.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Client Personality Form
Link to Lite Posing Guide

Ratings and Reviews

Sandra Caldero
 

I really enjoyed her passion for photography, honestly, niche, and high energy to do what is necessary to run a successful business. Kudos to her! She had GREAT IDEAS! You don't have to implement them all. She gave us an OVERVIEW. So much involved when running a business it can be overwhelming. I feel she did a GREAT JOB to give us the tools necessary to survive and THRIVE in this photography world. Thank you!

Debby H
 

Absolutely fantastic. I'm already starting to think about what makes me different and how I can apply this information to my photography. In a competitive industry, Alycia is honest and shares a ton of wealth. Thank you for that.

user-2f7caa
 

My head has been swimming trying to come up with creative but simple and successful ways to market my senior business, and this class was perfect for me. Great ideas and not too complicated. Love it!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES