there are SO many photographers there with different stories and experiences. This is why I’m excited for my talk!  I’ve realized over the last 7 years that no matter what your business strategy is, EVERY single photography business has to incorporate personal marketing into their marketing strategy in some way, shape or form.  This is a PERSONAL service that we provide. We aren’t a image factory that just cranks out work without any relational representation!! We have actually found that the more PERSONAL we are in our marketing and our client experience, the better the OVERALL experience is for our clients.  The more our community of brides gets to know us, the stronger our reputation is! The stronger our reputation is, the more valuable our services are. So basically, the more personal you are, the more value you’re adding to your brand! I always tell people during their coaching sessions “You have to add YOU into your brand! If someone took Michael and I out of the wedding package we offer, we could probably only charge $3200!” Michael and I ARE THE EXPERIENCE…. and the images are an amazing and necessary product of that experience.

So! If you want to increase the value of your experience… whether you’re in portraits or weddings… you HAVE to know how to insert your personality into your marketing while STILL being professional! This is HARD to do!!! It’s actually a “give and take” kind of situation. The more PROFESSIONAL you are, the more freedom you have to share fun, personal aspects of your life. For example, say I didn’t have a strong online presence. My blog was just a standard Blogger site without any customization. The colors don’t REALLY match my logo and the layout of the site was difficult to navigate. If I had an online presence like that and I blogged about loving Gummy Bears, I would be a joke to a lot of people. However, if I had a professional presence online, I would already be taken seriously that would give me more freedom in my personal marketing!

Finding the happy medium between personal and professional marketing is the greatest balancing act of this generation of photographers! So! That’s my topic for WPPI!!!!!

Dueling Identities: Ten Steps to Balancing Personal and Professional Marketing

This balance happens with online marketing but it ALSO happens on the wedding day with how we interact and treat our clients! ATTENTION: Things are about to get CRAZY!!!! Ok, continue……We realized it’s hard to give photographers a clear picture of what a REAL, LIVE WEDDING DAY looks like with us…… but we’re actually going to give someone at WPPI the opportunity to experience it!!! For FREE! Like, we’re paying for their flights, their lodging AND they are going to accompany us on a wedding day to experience the most raw type of training! They are going to watch and learn from us during a REAL wedding day and while that makes me a little nervous… I’m SO excited about this because we know this person is going to learn so much about the client experience, posing, timeline management, location scouting, shooting details, our OCF approach, how we run family formals, etc. etc!!! So, here’s the deal……

• You can enter to win at ANY time leading up to our WPPI Platform talk that is taking place on SUNDAY MARCH 1st at 12pm in room 312-317!
• Use the giveaway entry form below to enter! You can increase your entries up to 5x by sharing and posting about the giveaway!
• YOU MUST BE PRESENT AT OUR WPPI PLATFORM TALK TO WIN! If we call your name out from the stage and you’re not there, it doesn’t matter if your BFF is there, you will be disqualified. You must be present to win! 
• Why share this like crazy with all of your WPPI buddies? Because if we reach 600 entries, we’re giving away TWO LIVE KJ LEARNING EXPERIENCES! That’s right, if you help us get 1,000 entries, we’re DOUBLING your chances to win!
• What if you don’t win?! Well, the good news is that we’re giving away FIVE $250 GIFTCARDS to The Collection as well! We will pull names from this entry and so again, you must be present at our talk to win if your name is selected.

 This is kind of crazy for us! It’s a BIG giveaway and we’re hoping that all of our WPPI friends will enter to win because we’d love to give you a FREE trip to Virginia AND a LIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE at a REAL wedding!!!!  Enter below! Sending good luck your way!!!
a Rafflecopter giveaway