10 Ways to Improve Your Business

10 Ways to Improve Your Business During COVID

August 2, 2020

10 Ways to Improve Your Business

In this article, you will find a list of 10 ways you can work on your business at home. This list is great to check off during COVID, while business may be a little slower than usual.

This is written primarily for wedding photographers and videographers, but the information here would be handy for any small business owner.

 

 

1. Update Your Price & Info Guide.

Your Price and Info Guide should always be up to date.

By Leelou have Price and Information Guides beautifully designed, complete with copy and ready to customise. These guides are a great base and come with comprehensive support, including a video tutorial and a pdf on editing the document.

10 Ways to Improve Your Business During COVID

Already have your own Price and Info Guide? PERFECT!

Check out the below tips to keep your price guide up to date.

REFRESH YOUR COLOUR PALETTE
Giving your price and information guide a design refresh can be as simple as changing the colours of the guide.

A quick way to create a palette that compliments your photography is by using IColourpalette. Screenshot your Instagram feed (which will likely have your most recent work). Then upload it to the site, and IColourpalette will generate 47 colours for you to create a palette quickly.

Here is an example of converting my Instagram into a matching palette.

10 Ways to Improve Your Business During COVID
*If you change the colours in your price guide, don’t forget to bring these colour changes into the rest of your business. Consistency throughout your brand creates trust.

REFRESH YOUR PHOTOS
Your price and information guide should show your best photos. Don’t feel the need to show everything you have ever shot or a diverse range. Instead, show the best images you have and make sure they all work together in the document. Choose photos that compliment each other with the colour and mood of the imagery.

The photos in your price guide should be the same, if not very similar, as the photos on your website.

This tip might seem obvious, but I often see photographers placing images in their price guide that doesn’t match their style. It may be because these people have fallen into the trap of using images that directly relate to the copy, or they have gotten the idea that showing the same photos is boring. Keeping consistency in the images on your site, Instagram, and your price guide will create trust in your product. This consistency will reassure your clients about your style. They love your style so much they have enquired with you, so showcase those photos they have already seen and love on your Instagram and website.

UPDATE YOUR COPY
If you read over your copy and cringe, chances are your clients will too. Don’t let your copy sit and grow old. You and your business will continue to grow, develop and change, so don’t be afraid to update your copy to reflect that.

There are so many copywriters out there to help you, so don’t feel you have to do it alone. If you are on a budget, I recommend writing skeleton text and having a copywriter look over it to fix it up. If you are looking for a copywriter, click here for a 10% off code for Peperstorm Media.

ADD MORE PAGES
The pages I recommend in a Price and Information document are:
– About
– Business Philosophy
– Price Packages
– Travel (if you want to encourage bookings for destination weddings)
– Extras (such as extra hours, rush fee, travel etc.)
– Albums (if you offer them)
– Engagement Shoots (if you offer them)
– Second Shooters (if you provide that)
– Call to Action / How to Book Page

SPLIT YOUR DIFFERENT SERVICES
People book what they see you produce. Let me say that again.

People book what they see you produce!

Remember this, as it’s an important part of gaining the clients/wedding you want to shoot.

If someone enquires about a family photoshoot and you send them a price guide geared to wedding photography, it’s not very inspiring to book.

Split up your price and info guides. If you want to shoot destination weddings, have a price guide solely for those enquiries. This price and information guide should show destinations wedding photography (if you haven’t shot many destination weddings, you can use photos that look like destination weddings, aka mountain landscapes and beach settings). The copy should be altered to these specific enquiries too.

Some ideas of different price and information guides you can have are – ‘Weddings’, ‘Destination Weddings’, ‘Elopements’, ‘Family’, ‘Maternity’, ‘Engagements’, ‘Pre-wedding Shoots’. There is no need to have all of these but if you would love more bookings in any of the above areas, have an extra price guide geared specifically to these enquiries.

DELETE PAGES
Sometimes less is more, and for price packages, this is very true. If you have more than 4 packages, consider reshaping them to just three. You want your clients to feel as though they have the flexibility of choice, but also you don’t want to overwhelm them with a million different package combos. The sweet spot for pricing options is three. Now that you know 3 is the perfect amount of choices to have, you may begin to notice how many online subscription providers abide by this rule.

2. Get Those Reviews

Wanna improve your SEO? Wanna show how trustworthy and great your business is to potential clients? Get those Google reviews bb!

It’s as easy as sending out a BBC email. Reach out to past clients and let them know how much a little review would mean to you.

3. Start a Blog

A blog is a great way to help your business rank in Google, and it also provides handy content for your potential clients. Providing your clients with helpful info adds value to your business and shows how knowledgeable you are in your profession.

Though don’t take my word for it. This article is my first blog post, so I’m in no position to preach its benefits. Instead, check out the avid blogger Jai’s article on the subject. It’s a great read about the benefits of blogging and will help you to start blogging today!

4. Refresh Your Website

Do you not love your website? Do you feel it is ugly, flat, dull and/or not a reflection of your business and product? In this day and age, with the endless amount of beautifully designed templates at affordable prices, there is no reason to have an ugly plain website that you don’t love. We create website templates made explicitly for wedding photographers and videographers. You can check out our web templates here.

If there isn’t something that quite fits your business in our collection, there are many others to choose from online. One of my fav ways to search for beautifully designed products such as web templates is via Pinterest.

10 Ways to Improve Your Business During COVID
Our template website collection

 

5. Start a Newsletter

A newsletter is an excellent way for you to connect with your audience. As a wedding photographer or videographer, you may wonder if this is worthwhile as you don’t have repeat customers. But having a newsletter is a great way to sell albums, prints and promote holiday spending to your clients while also helping your business connect to future potential clients.

I use Mailchimp for my newsletters. It is great for creating quick email campaigns, but it takes a bit of work to design visually pleasing emails.
Flodesk is another email creation platform I recently discovered. It looks to provide a more intuitive space to create stunningly designed email campaigns. 

6. Get your Insta on Point

PLAN YOUR GRID

I like to use Planoly to plan out my content and make sure my images work well together. In this app, you can also prewrite your captions and schedule posts. There are rumours that scheduled posts can hinder the visibility of your posts, so I like to lay my grid out in this app and then post directly from my image library on my phone. I use the free version, but there are benefits such as analytics for the paid subscription.

If you are low on content due to not photographing anything lately, don’t be afraid to go through the archives. There is no shame in re-editing to suit your current photography editing style if you love a photo.

 

GAIN FOLLOWERS AND IMPROVE YOUR ENGAGEMENT

Now is a perfect time to run a competition as more people are on Instagram due to being home. You can quickly grow your following and increase your engagement by running a competition.

A simple competition entry caption is:
1. Follow this account (and others, if you are collaborating with other businesses)
2. Tag a friend
3. Like this post

There are plenty of online platforms that will help you randomly choose a winner. This one is free and allows you to adjust the setting to suit the rules of your competition.

Here are some competition prize ideas:
– Home decor prints (this one is great as people are at home inspired to refresh their decor right now).
– An engagement shoot.
– A wedding shoot.
– Family shoot.
– Team up with other wedding vendors to create a huge wedding vendor prize.
– Team up with local vendors with products families would love and have your family shoot in the prize pool.

Teaming up with other businesses (especially ones that have a larger following than you) is a great way to get your competition out there and seen by more people. This means you will likely gain more followers than running a competition on your own.

*Tip: When figuring out your prize and your competition marketing (such as how the insta post looks), think about what your dream client would like to win. This will help you gain your ideal following from your competition.

 

7. Show Your Packaging

I often see wedding photographers and videographers hiding their beautiful packaging. You have spent all this money on it, though, so why hide it? Generally, you don’t have repeat clients. If you only show your packaging to clients who have already used your services and don’t intend on booking you again, you are not utilizing your packagings marketing potential. Instead, show off your packaging on your website!

Having beautiful packaging displays that you have a premium product and created desire. Let potential clients know how special it will be to receive their wedding photos. Let them imagine that moment of receiving that beautiful package…sell them the experience.

So get out that camera and take some beautiful product shots of everything your clients will receive.

10 Ways to Improve Your Business During COVID
Free the birds packaging shown on the website

 

8. Create an Email Signature

An email signature is an easy way to instantly show your clients’ professionalism when they inquire over email. Despite knowing this for years, I neglected this part of my business. I always typed out my email signature. It looked ugly, and as a designer, this hurt. I knew it also conveyed incompetency and made me look like an amateur.

Why did I put it off? Well, I knew that to set the email up correctly, I would have to contact a developer, and this extra step just seemed to throw me.

If you are unsure why I had to contact a developer to “set up the signature correctly,” well, your images in your signature, aka your logo, photo and icons, should all be embedded links. If you upload your images directly into your signature, they will become attachments because they are not embedded anywhere online. This means that these images won’t load most of the time, and it’s also likely the signature will scramble on different browsers.

I recently stumbled upon this FREE email generator, it was so simple to use, and its templates are beautiful.

When creating your signature and uploading your images to your google drive or dropbox, make sure you have changed your image settings to allow anyone with the link to view the image.

*I recommend NOT USING template 3 as this is the only one that seems to scramble on mobile.

Here is mine that I created

Email Signature

9. Submit Your Work to Get Published

There are sooo many publications on and offline looking for content. Put yourself out there and submit your photos to be featured. Don’t be afraid to reach out to publications and introduce yourself. Ask them what content they are looking for and if they require a certain file setup.

Having your work featured doesn’t just feel great. It helps your site rank in Google. Dylan M Howell’s is a master of SEO, and he has written an article on submitting to blogs.

Here’s a list of 100 WEDDING BLOGS you could be submitting too!

10. Work on Your Mindset

Your mindset is arguably your biggest asset when running your own business. Having a positive open & abundant mindset will allow you to see opportunities when they arise and provide you with the ability to make lemonade out of lemons. There are so many books, podcasts, films, and webinars to help you shape your mind. Set time aside each day/week to fill your head with positive resources. This is especially valuable to do while business may be a little slow. Doing this will help you keep positive and motivated.

One of my favourite books is ‘You Are a Badass at Making Money’- I hate the name haha…its pretty cringe, but move past that and get your hands on this read. Whenever I read this book, I become so inspired, and my mind opens up to the many possibilities in my business.

Just as you should make an effort to digest positive content, it’s equally important to be aware of content that impacts you negatively. With our lives being on social media, we constantly have friends, families, and strangers showing up on our doorstep, showing us their wins. I love celebrating other people’s successes, but some days/weeks, it is more hindering than inspiring.

Ever wished you could block content from your feed without unfollowing? Say hello to the mute button on Instagram! This button allows you to mute people’s content from your Insta feed and stories.

This little trick is such a lifesaver to my mental health. I am personally more inspired with my head down, focusing on my own path than looking at others. Sometimes it’s inspiring, but other times it’s overwhelming seeing everything that everyone is creating/doing. This is why I love the mute button. It is seriously a life (or maybe more so mind) saver!

And it is as simple as…

10 Ways to Improve Your Business During COVID
I have used my husband Jai’s page as an example.  🙂

 

 

AUTHOR:

Leelou Leniart

This article was written by me Leelou. I have gained my knowledge of the wedding industry first hand through photographing weddings for over 8 years. With a Bachelor in Communication Design, I now use my photography experience to create brands, websites and digital resources for wedding photographers and videographers.

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  1. Alys says:

    Love this thanks Leelou