“When you’re targeting, I am of the opinion that you need to be more specific. Sometimes having a big target is not as good as having a more specific niche-type target. I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people do.”
Today’s guest is Chip Dizard of Chip Dizard Weddings. Chip is a wedding photographer and videographer based out of Baltimore, Maryland. He provides photo and video services to creative businesses in addition to offering mentoring and consulting.
One of the things that Chip consults on is Facebook advertising, and that’s what we’re chatting about in today’s episode. We chat specifically about the mistakes people commonly make, the different aspects of running Facebook ads, and some tips for getting the most out of the ads that you run.
Learn more about Chip at https://chipdizard.com/what-we-do/.
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The Transcript…
“[0:00:06.2] CD: When you’re targeting, I am of the opinion that you need to be more specific. Sometimes having a big target is not as good as having a more specific niche-type target. I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people do.”
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:24.9] DJ: Welcome to the Brands That Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I’m your host, Davey Jones.
[INTRO]
[0:00:35.9] DJ: Today’s guest is Chip Dizard of Chip Dizard Weddings. Chip is a wedding photographer and videographer based out of Baltimore, Maryland. He provides photo and video services to creative businesses in addition to offering mentoring and consulting. One of the things that Chip consults on is Facebook advertising. That’s what we’re chatting about in today’s episode. We chat specifically about the mistakes you see that people make, the different aspects of running Facebook ads and some tips for getting the most out of the ads that you run.
Be sure to check out the show notes at daveyandkrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. Today, there are a lot of them. I’d like to hear from you about what kind of content you would like to see on the Brands That Book Podcast as we move forward. I’d also like to know what episodes you’ve enjoyed so far and why. To leave your feedback, head on over to Davey and Krista Facebook page and send us a message.
Now, on to the episode.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:35.4] DJ: All right, sweet. Hey, well Chip, welcome to the Brands That Book Show. I’m so glad to have you on. Chip and I, we just met at Showit UNITED and I will say that Chip gave me a five-minute fuel, so on the main stage. Krista, it’s one of the ones that she remembered. When we talked about UNITED afterwards she’s like, “That was really good.” It was jam-packed full of really actionable things that you could do on your website to get people to convert. Super interesting stuff. Today, Chip is joining us. We’re going to be talking about Facebook Ads for wedding pros service-based businesses.
Welcome to the show, Chip.
[0:02:13.1] CD: Hey, thank you for having me. I’m glad that we met at UNITED. I had a great time in that conference. Yeah, five minutes of a little harrowing, but I got through it.
[0:02:22.7] DJ: Yeah, and not only did you get through it, you were one of the few that was actually five minutes, right?
[0:02:27.8] CD: I know. I know. I planned it. I practiced it. I try to stay in time. I’m a former teacher, but I tell you about that later. I knew when the bell rings, we have to end no matter what.
[0:02:39.3] DJ: Yeah. I mean, as a former teacher I appreciate and respect that. Chip, before Facebook ads and we’re going to hear a little bit about that right now. What’s your background? It sounds like you have some teaching experience. How did that lead into wedding photography and Facebook ads?
[0:02:53.0] CD: Yeah. I was teaching and I’m from Baltimore, Baltimore – you’re a Marylander as well, so –
[0:02:58.5] DJ: Yeah, that’s right. Go Ravens.
[0:03:00.6] CD: Baltimore City Public Schools for six years. I was teaching photography and videography at a high school level. Then I’ve always at the church, people asked me when I worked in the church part-time, the church asked me to do weddings and I said – No, this back in 2010, I want to say. I did a friend’s wedding. I said I would do it. I did some photos and it was just very basic.
Years later, I was still doing part-time and I said – other people asked me to do it. Other people from church asked me to do it. I said, “You know, maybe I should get some real training, trying to learn what I’m doing and actually see what’s going on.” Then it just evolved and evolved and evolved to get more business, like anything else when you’re first starting a business, Davey.
It’s about just referrals, right? You’re trying to get more referrals, more referrals. Then I said, you know what in 2015, I think I could do this full-time. I was teaching and I was starting to travel a little bit more. I was starting to speak a little bit more and going places. Even though I had first off, it was hard for me to get back to leave on a Friday flying somewhere, going somewhere and then coming right back on Monday. As you know as a teacher, you can’t really take days off.
[0:04:09.3] DJ: Yeah. You don’t get vacation days.
[0:04:10.8] CD: You don’t get vacation days. No. There’s only so many days you can have all, so before people start looking at you crazy in the subs and then your principal, so I had to make a decision. I just decided in August 2015, even though I love my school, I love my kids. I taught high school and a really good job. I said, “You know what? I’m going to follow my passion and really start to do this wedding.”
Subsequently, that’s how I got into Facebook ads, because I needed consistent business. I said, “How do I get consistent business other than the referrals?” I used up all the church referrals, so I need to get new business.
[0:04:46.1] DJ: Yeah, that’s awesome. I started out as a teacher myself. Taught high school English and economics, coached, really did enjoy my time as a teacher and a coach. When I joined Krista full-time at the time she was running the photography business, my first year I decided I wanted to try to teach and do that with her full-time. Everything you’re saying is speaking to what I was suffering throughout the time, which is working Monday through Friday, then basically working the weekend to do photography and not having any time off.
I did say teachers get no vacation days, I guess they do get the summer, but you don’t get – especially Krista, she had the flexibility to travel in the winter if she wanted to, or in the spring, or the fall. If it’s the school year, you’re really relegated to the days the students have off if you want to do any traveling. That was tough. Eventually, after a year of doing that I was like, “No, I got to commit to one or the other.” I decided to go full-time with Krista.
[0:05:42.8] CD: That’s great.
[0:05:43.4] DJ: Which I’m really, really glad that I did. I’m excited to dig in here with you about the power of Facebook advertising. Facebook advertisement is something that we do for own business, something that we do for our clients. I think that people get all sorts of stuck then when it comes to Facebook advertising. I think a lot of people think that paid advertising isn’t really worth it. Can you can you speak to what some of the benefits are of advertising on Facebook?
[0:06:09.6] CD: Yeah. I just think for me and for anybody, especially I’m talking about service-based businesses. It’s not really that we sell products, because we think of advertisers, well I have to sell a product, some type of e-book or something like that. I think for service-based businesses, it gets us out in the marketplace. As we know with Instagram and Facebook, the algorithms if you have a business page, because you can only advertise on your business, really you will not get any reach. I mean, it’s just that simple.
Years ago as you know, we used to be able to get reached from my business pages without paying a dime, but that changed as soon as things started happening and more people came on board. I think one of the big benefits is to reach people that you normally would not reach. There are some people that I would never reach, unless I put an ad up. Unless, they saw me. Unless, I had an impression on them.
Like I said before, when I was doing this part-time prior to 2015, or 2014 I realized, I said, “I need to pay for ads.” I didn’t want to pay for advertising. It was one of those things that if I make a decision to leave my job and all my referrals are pretty much in one area and I saw my business and I’m business coaching at the time and I said – so all my referrals in one area of the state and the one jurisdiction, I said, “You know what? I need to expand. I need to go to Atlanta. I need to go to New York.”
I’ve done weddings in California. I did destination weddings, you know what I mean? I think it was really for the demographics for me. For anybody who wants to expand it, even if you want to get out of your jurisdiction, get out your local city, people need to know where you are and know that you can travel and know your work.
[0:07:50.8] DJ: Yeah, for sure. I think that’s a really interesting point that you bring up, because word of mouth, referrals are great in serving the people that you know in your local market. For you, it sounded like it was a lot of referrals from church. When Krista and I got into – when we started our photography business, we are at the age where all of our friends and their friends were getting married, right? We’re not at that age anymore. Most of our friends are already married. They’re in the age of having kids and things like that.
I just think that, so those word-of-mouth referrals were great, especially for that season of life. I’m not saying that they dried up necessarily or anything like that, but we couldn’t necessarily rely on friends of friends anymore, or even friends of those old clients because they had moved past maybe that season of life, where one is typically getting married. Just even having some other presence, whether it’s through paid advertising, or whether it’s through search engine optimization or something like that can be so important and give you some relief, so you’re not constantly hustling for that word-of-mouth referral.
[0:08:52.0] CD: Yeah. That’s so important, because I think that word of mouth is really good, but I think at the end of the day if we can always cultivate and have – it’s like my presentation at UNITED. I equate it to a funnel. Anybody knows about sales processes and you know about funnels. I used to be at sales too before I got to teaching, so I know outside sales. My boss is like, “Well, where is the prospect in the funnel?”
Photographers, we don’t really think about that stuff. We think about the creative, the pretty. If I ask most photographers where are the prospects, where are your prospects in your funnel? Top of the funnel, middle, bottom? They wouldn’t even know what that is. I think that we need to really – that’s something, we have to change our mindset as marketers. Yes, we are photographers always, but then in this competitive market, we have to be marketers.
[0:09:40.2] DJ: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Could you real quick walk us through the funnel and then can we dive into a little bit on where people end up getting stuck with Facebook ads and start moving through that?
[0:09:51.2] CD: Yeah, yeah. My funnel is really an awareness funnel. I’m going to send this to you in your show notes.
[0:09:56.1] DJ: Awesome.
[0:09:56.9] CD: You can have my PDF handout that I talked about. The top of the funnel I have, Davey, is the awareness stage. I know about Davey and Krista, I know about what you all have done. This is actually what even happened when I bought your Black Friday product. I’m telling you, what could happen? I know about it. I got the e-mail, I received it, so I know that there was a sale going on to your Black Friday.
Then the second part of the funnel is the consideration part. I consider that and I say, “You know what? I do need this. I have a show-up website. I need a landing page. Let me consider it. Let me see what it does. I just launched the show at site.” Then the last thing is converting. I convert it. Once I knew, I saw the template, I knew I could work and show it and I convert it.
Then there’s a monetization and retention that I love. That’s when the bottom of the funnel, where that it’s easier to create clients that already are our clients, to get repeat business and to get new businesses. We know the cost of getting new business and cold traffic, it’s very expensive, as you know that, right? We want warm leads, people that know and trust us.
It’s really awareness, consideration, conversion and then the monetization, the retention and then the love. That’s really when I look at that funnel and how I position the ads, I always want to know where people are. Of course, we’ll talk about just cold traffic and warm traffic and other stuff like that a little bit later, but I want to make sure that people know, you should know where people are in your sales funnel.
[0:11:26.5] DJ: Yeah, so many good tips there, especially around acquiring new customers, also repeat customers generally cost less, right, to get a repeat customer than it does to acquire an old customer. Why things if you’re a photographer or something that I always tell people is man, if I can go back in time and restart my photography business from the beginning, I would offer more things like prints and albums and stuff like that that just continues to optimize that customer’s value, right? We have so much to dive into as far as Facebook ads go. Real quick, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people make when it comes to Facebook advertising?
[0:12:05.9] CD: Wow, a few of them – one is that everybody I talk to and consult with, Davey, is always targeting. They do not know what to target. They put so many things in the detail interest. There’s a box that when you target, you’ll put 15 things. You don’t really know what works and what doesn’t work. When you’re targeting, I am of the opinion that you need to be more specific. Sometimes having a big target is not as good as having a more specific niche-type target. I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people will do.
A second thing they do is they don’t clearly communicate really the who, what, when, where and why. You’re a English teacher, so you know the how. What you’re doing, who you are, what you do, we know you’re a photographer, but is there a special – what are you doing and then why. We just really need to communicate that, because we take pretty pictures, we take great videos, but then we just expect those to sell. Sometimes you’d have some text and some call to actions that really get people to buy. I think that’s what it is.
Sometimes it’s not really about buying, it’s about more awareness as it takes a lot of touch points for a customer to become a customer. Just like I tell us with the funnel, some photographers just think they run one app for $15 and they should get 10 sales. Yeah, that just doesn’t work, right? It doesn’t work. I think we have to manage expectations and think like I said, like a marketer, write clearly, target strategically. When I say target, I’m talking about well, I’m looking for high school, so I was talking to a young lady photographer the other day and she’s in the Atlanta area. She wanted to do more senior sessions. We’re targeting specific high schools in that area. The parents of people in that area who are interested in not photography, but just in family stuff.
We are just targeting those and she’s actually put a list of the top high schools in the area and started getting some leads. It’s up to us to convert the leads. That’s not really – I really believe those few things. There’s a lot more, but I think the targeting and then the clarity on the message are one of the big things.
[0:14:18.1] DJ: Yeah. I would love to impact some of the targeting stuff with you real quick, because I like what you said about that photographer, she’s down in Atlanta, she’s trying to do more senior sessions, right? You specifically didn’t target people who are interested in photography, right? I mean, even – because people, they’re interested in cherishing those memories. That doesn’t necessarily make them interested in photography as a skill, or a craft, right? I thought that was interesting nuance for people.
Then you also talked about how it was up to them to convert that lead. Through that, I’m assuming that you collected their e-mail through those Facebook ads. Then was really up to that photographer to nurture that, because like you said, it’s not like you see one ad and then drop hundreds of dollars right away on expensive photography baggage.
[0:15:08.2] CD: No you don’t. I think that’s so important. I think we’re in a society, unfortunately right now, we’re in a microwave society. I guess, we want everything quickly, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. I think we have to learn that this is an oven, we have to bake it and we have to make sure that we nurture these people, because unless you’re offering an unbelievable deal with Black Friday or something like everybody else was offering during Black Friday, you can get those quick sales and those no-brainer, and especially if it’s under a certain price point. People will just – will buy.
When we’re talking about thousands of dollars, we’re talking about a senior session or it could cost whatever, $600, $800 or whatever, and then we’re talking about prints and upsale. We’re talking about wedding packages in the thousands; four, five, six, seven thousand dollars. People are not going to buy those off of one ad. They’re just not. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe they do for you, but not for me.
[0:16:05.6] DJ: No, no. I mean, maybe that happens occasionally somewhere, but that would definitely be an outlier, I think. More than often, I think one of the most powerful things about Facebook ads, right, is that if someone comes to your site, when they leave if they haven’t given you your e-mail address at that point, you really don’t have a great way to follow up. People get busy and they forget about you.
I don’t want to dive too much into this if you’re probably planning on talking about this, but the Facebook pixel, just a simple line of code, it’s a couple of lines, but some code that you can install on your site, so that when people come to your website, they’re pixeled and then you can serve ads to those people so that you’re getting in front of them again.
[0:16:46.5] CD: Yeah. That’s so important to know that Facebook pixel, a lot of photographers and you can put in your Showit site, you can put it in your WordPress site, your Squarespace site, your Wix site, all these sites, right? I’m just going on and on and on. It’s so easy to do. You can just Google the instructions pretty much and figure out how to do it. They show you. I think that’s important, because we need to retarget.
When I teach this, I tell people I say, “Hey, you ever go on B&H and then you see the same thing? You look on a B&H in your newsfeed, or you see it in somewhere else on another site?” They have this thing called the audience network, where you’ll be on a site, like a news station, you’ll see a ad. It’s like, “Wait a sec, I just searched for that on Amazon.” That’s what the Facebook pixel is at least talking about doing. I think that’s a powerful thing. I think that that’s called retargeting, so people don’t know what that is, Davey.
As retargeting, so when we’re searching for something and when we’re looking for something, but we don’t make a decision, I can always see your ads and come back. I say, “Man, I always see Davey and Krista. I always see them.” That’s another impression. Therefore, I may make that sale.
[0:17:51.1] DJ: Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. For people who are willing to be patient, all right? Like you said, we live in a microwave culture, right, where people want – they want to spend $15 and make a thousand, right? That’s not necessarily how things are going to go down. People who are willing to take the time to dig into Facebook ads a little bit, have some patience, be willing to see big picture, because like you said, if you’re selling a product that’s a – or a service that’s a thousands of dollars, like a wedding collection on Facebook, would you be willing to spend a $100, $200, $500 on a $3,500 service? Probably, right? People start seeing that number climb and they think, “Oh, no. I haven’t converted somebody yet.” Then they shut it down.
For people who are willing to – you have some patience there, what tips do you see, or what tips do you have for people to get the most out of Facebook Ads? I guess, where should they even start?
[0:18:46.1] CD: Yeah. I’m really looking at – now, I love what Facebook doing is with slide shows. I think that we have – if you’re doing first of all, targeting first. Of course, we looking at targeting, what’s your market? Then I’m looking at your creative copy and I’m looking at your creativeness, because we need to do stuff that stops people from scrolling. What Facebook advertising really is and Instagram as well, I could say one and the same is that it’s really, you’re not looking for wedding collections a lot of times, but they know that you are engaged, right? We can target people who are newly engaged.
It needs to be something that stops the scroll. I call it a scroll stopper. If you’re on your phone, or swipe stopper. It needs to be an engaging image. Slideshows work real well, because it may get your attention. Or video even works better too. Also, I always look at what other people are running. I see what people like creativeLIVE are running. I see what other photographers run from time to time. I save those to my collections and I look at it and I see what’s important to them, let’s see if I can target – not really target like that, but really craft my ads like that.
[0:19:53.9] DJ: When you’re getting started with targeting, what are some of the exercises that you have people go through, or that you go through yourself to make sure you have your targeting zeroed in?
[0:20:02.9] CD: Yeah. One of the things I tell everybody is to know where your market is. You need to know your ideal bride. We call it avatar. You’ve heard of this before, marketing of course. Your customer avatar; where does she or he like to shop? Do they go to Saks Fifth Avenue? Do they go to Nordstrom’s? They go to Neiman Marcus, or do they go to Target? Do they like Elton John? Do they like whoever? I don’t know, just whoever they like.
If I know that, as a particular, a lot of my brides like a particular brand. I’m trying to think of one off the top of my head. I know a lot of brides like these shoes called Badgley Mischkas, okay? I just know those shoes, because I see them at time, right? Then I look at people who liked that Badgley Mischka page and target people who like that and who are newly engaged.
I see where my brides are, or where your ideal client hangs out, your avatar. Then you have to build your advertising campaign targeting around that. Of course, your local area; you need to know if you’re going to be in the Atlanta area, or in the DC area, or Detroit, or wherever you are, you want to make sure that you look at that area.
[0:21:13.4] DJ: Because you can target a local area in Facebook.
[0:21:16.2] CD: You can. Zip code. Zip codes and areas. I really like targeting local areas and cities way more than states and way more than – I just really think that cities are where it’s at. Especially outskirts of cities. If you’re in Atlanta, there’s a good influx of people that may have need for your services in Alpharetta, Georgia. Or if you’re in Detroit, I’m talking with somebody in Detroit now, they’re right in Auburn Hills. Something on suburbs, like Baltimore, Annapolis, you know what I mean? Or Columbia, where I am.
It’s not just really in the city, but you can move the radius out 25 miles. You know the little slider on the ad, you can move that radius out to 25, 30 miles. You never know, sometimes it may overlap. Then also, another pro tip I also say, so let’s say if you’re in the area and you can target people who are traveling to the area. Let’s say during the holidays and they check in somewhere in that area. They’re checking into a Chicago area and they’re in that area and you can target people that don’t live there, but just are traveling in there. If you’re doing a pop-up, there’s a lot of photographers do these pop-up photo sessions and stuff like that and you can target people in the area that they’re traveling to.
There’s so many options. It’s almost scary how many options there are. I think that’s where we get with Facebook, because it’s analysis by paralysis, right? It’s paralysis by analysis, I’m sorry, because there’s so many options. When you have so many options, you put them all on the table and then you don’t know what works. My thing is to start small and don’t be scared to micro-target.
I mean, I’ve had some of my best success with ads that reach under 1,200 people, but they’ve been very targeted. Then I’ve had bad success where it has 400,000 people. I mean, I haven’t had any success. I think that when we see that little red thing go down, or we go in the middle we’re like, “Oh, we got it.” It’s really about being very strategic.
We didn’t even talk about this. We can go on and on about what type of ad you want. Do you want to do traffic, which I think that is really good? By bringing people to your site, do you want a lead generation? One of my favorite ones too is video views. I think that video views, like I said, video is awesome. I think if we could do slideshows and we could do videos, I even – you can even retarget and repost a Facebook Live that you’ve done and make that an ad.
We’re not talking about professionally made videos. We’re talking with a cellphone, if you’re given some great tips, say you’ve been given 10 tips that you should do for your makeup for your wedding day, and you just make that as a Facebook ad, Facebook Live and you boost that, or you make it as a ad, you just never know what could happen, because you’re seen as an expert.
I just want people to get in the mindset that you can do a lot more than just a traditional ad, where I have to have one photo. I want people to get out of the mindset. Think like a carousel, think slideshow, think video.
[0:24:17.9] DJ: Like you said, I mean, they’re not difficult to setup. As far as I get – a video sounds like it’s difficult to set, but some of the best performing video ads are just – it’s a person with their cellphone. It’s not like a person hiring a videography team. I want to talk about video views here just a couple takeaways from what you were saying with targeting, which I thought were interesting. Where one, you have more success with the more targeting you got, especially when it came to local ads; targeting cities, instead of states.
For Maryland, maybe you have some success with a state like Maryland, because it’s not huge, right? We can get to the other end of it relatively quickly. If you’re in Texas, I think it’s going to be even more important to target local markets and not just target the entire state.
[0:25:02.4] CD: State, yeah. Because you couldn’t get in a – I think, you can be in Houston and then go to Dallas, has three four hours, but then you can go all the way on the West Texas and just be a nightmare trying to get – driving over there. Yeah, I think local, hyper local, super local is always the best. I really, really like neighborhood targeting. If you know the demographics of the neighborhood – There’s an area in Maryland that where I know a lot of my clients come from. I know that I can target that area, you know what I mean?
If you just know a suburb, or subdivision, or like what I said, Atlanta, there’s Alpharetta, there’s Mableton, there there’s different places that you can super target and put things right in that area. People in that area will get it and really respond to your ad.
[0:25:52.9] DJ: Yeah. You’re right, you brought me back to really the very beginning. Targeting is really, really step two. Step one would be choosing what kind of ad that you want to run. I want to talk a little bit about video views and what you do with video views, because I do think that people are finding success running video ads to cold traffic, then retargeting people who have viewed those videos for a specific amount of time.
All that means is I’m running a video ad to people who are unaware of me, who maybe have not heard of me, but anybody who interacts or views that video, I can then run another ad to that maybe is more specific to the type of service, or to my business and maybe asking them for an e-mail or something like that. What success have you had with video view ads?
[0:26:40.1] CD: What I really like about video view ads is when I said prior, I think that if you want to be an expert in your field, I think that selling is people don’t want to be sold these days, especially be given a huge thousands of dollar product. They want to know and trust you, they want just information. For instance, I would tell you I had a PDF a couple years ago and then I made into a video, a live video where I said 10 questions. I’m big on numbers if you know me. Big on numbers is the teacher at me, but 10 questions you should ask every wedding vendor, including me.
Then I went to those 10 questions on a video and then and I said, “Hey, you want more information about what I do? Hey, view my site, chipdizardwedding.com/whatever,” my URL that I have there, that landing page. I think you can use that. It was not a professionally made video, even though I could do it. It was just me on my cellphone having it there and then just repurposing it, because if I have that as a title, people may be interested, especially if you’re in the market to hire a bride and groom, you want to know what questions to ask.
Most people on their first marriage and they say, they don’t know what to ask. I’m just, you need to come across as an expert. A lot of times, we want to come across as well, I got to sell, sell, sell. It’s a whole thing that we do with that. Internet marketers do all the time, they call these sales lead magnets, Davey. You know about this all the time; lead magnet.
I’m thinking that if you could give something away for free, high-quality, high-tech, it doesn’t cost you a lot, okay. Doesn’t cost you a lot to do a video, doesn’t cost you a lot to do a PDF, a guide. Then when you put them in your funnel, like we talked about before with the video, you can send them another video maybe. Let’s send them one more.
I have a series of e-mails that go through that once people come in my funnel, that by the time that they finish it, they’re like, “Wow Chip.” Over a two and a half week period they’re like, they’re ready to sign up. Now, all of them of course do not, but I get them from the video first, then they get in my funnel, get the e-mail address and then I put them in my Mailchimp and it sends them a sequence of e-mails.
[0:28:38.2] DJ: Yeah, and that’s great. Again, I think he goes back to that whole point where once you get that lead from Facebook, it’s your job to that nurture that lead and convert them. There was another great podcast episode with Nate from StickyEmail. If you go back to that episode, he talks all about e-mail marketing. We dive into sequences and just different ways to nurture prospective clients.
With these video views, so the video that you set up for instance that you had a lot of success with, just recorded on your cellphone; what I love about what you did was that you repurposed old content. I’m sure you didn’t have to create something from scratch, new, anything like that, you just went with –
[0:29:15.2] CD: That was evergreen. It’s evergreen too.
[0:29:17.2] DJ: Yeah. Those are questions that are going to be just as relevant today as they were back when you recorded that video. You talked about the carousels and slideshows and things like that, one of the ways that Facebook makes it easy, right, is that you can create a video out of a series of images just by uploading those images to Facebook and then it plays it as a video, even though they’re static images, which is nice and just makes this a little bit easier to do. What else have you been seeing on the Facebook front?
I guess we’ve talked about choosing a type of ad. We’ve talked a little bit about targeting. Maybe we should talk about creative and copy. What are some tips that you have for people in creating, as you called them earlier, they’re swipe stoppers, in terms of creating images or video and copy that gets people to stop.
[0:30:06.5] CD: I really want people to think about combining your copy with complimentary visuals. I’m working with a florist and she’s at the mercy of the photographer that gives her visuals. She gave me 10 photos. I said, “Okay.” These are photos that work well, because I think if I just show pictures of bouquets, that’s not going to stop anyone. I need to see a human being with a bouquet and a smiling face, something that is very swipe stopping.
We’re combining our complimentary copy with the video. Instead of hey, I want you to book, like you said, just a floral, just find more information about it. I think those headlines are really important. The description, the headline, the URL work together to deliver the story, you know what I mean? We don’t want users just like the ad, we want them to take an action, because it’s easy for people to just hit the light button, people want to learn more.
Then another thing I want people to learn is that I want them to know where they are. We talked about funnels before, but where they are in the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. The different ads for different types of placements in the sales funnel. A warm audience would need to get to know you as well, as a cold audience. Of course, cold traffic is going to cost a little bit more.
When I talk about cold traffic, just for people don’t know, it’s people who do not know you at all. It’s people that have not been exposed to your brand at all. They just know they’re looking for a wedding photographer. They may have heard of you and may have done some stuff, done their research, okay.
Then the last thing I want to talk about is people need to extend their brand voice to their copy and to their ads. I think that you have to be authentically you. I think that that’s where I’ve had success with ads, what I am on live, what I am on stage is how I am in person. When you meet me, it’s no different – differentiation. I think that you may be uniquely you, whatever that is. I was talking somebody at Showit UNITED conference in Arizona, talking to a photographer and she has a thing where she does the wobble dance with everybody she films in. I said, “Hey, why don’t you just make that into an ad? A little ad, like every – hire me and I’ll be –” She’s a photographer and just with 15 seconds, not even a professional video. She uses cellphone and she has four videos with her during a wobble, with wobble dance with four different brides and grooms.
She said, “You know what, Chip? I never thought about doing something like that.” It’s like, oh, my God. That’s authentically you. That’s your voice. Own that and people will hire you, because she’s not only a good photographer, but she likes to party and have fun with us. You understand what I’m saying, Davey? I want people to own their voice and own their brand.
[0:32:52.3] DJ: Yeah. I mean, I really like that. Also really like how you’ve come back to understanding where people are in the funnel. For somebody who has never heard of you, if you just try to sell them right off the bat, they’re likely not going to convert. People don’t like being sold to. If you give them something free, this lead magnet you were talking about, give them high-quality content for free and lead them down the funnel, then when they know you putting a sale in front of them. I like how you keep coming back to that as well.
One of the other – the last piece of the puzzle that I want to talk about a little bit is some of the other things that need to be set up in order for your ad to be successful, because it really is just one piece of the puzzle. We talked, you had mentioned a couple of these things such as an e-mail sequence. I mean, even talking about things like a landing page. What are some of the other things that we need to make sure are put together well in order for an ad to be successful?
[0:33:46.7] CD: Yeah. I really think, not only the landing page, we talked about the copy, we talked about the targeting, but where do people go? Like I said, where are you sending your people? One of the mistakes a lot of photographers make, we send them to our home page. That is a terrible mistake. I said, never send people to your home page, because it’s like, I’m walking into your house and I have dinner, but you don’t tell me where to go.
Well, I know I need to go to the dining room, but where’s Thanksgiving dinner? It could be in the formal dining room, have a formal dining room, it could be in the kitchen where the table is, but you have to tell people, when you invite them to your house and your our house is our website, where exactly to go and what exactly to do.
I think that we have [inaudible 0:34:26.7]. That’s our teaching background, right? We call it rubrics, right? We know the steps. We have to say okay, step one, I need you to fill out the form. Step two, I need you to like me on Instagram or whatever. Step three, I need you to download the PDF. We see that all the time, but I think sometimes as photographers, we think that we don’t need to give people step-by-step instructions.
One funny thing I’ve learned about advertising, it seems like as soon as people open Facebook or social media, their IQ goes down immensely. As soon as they click on something, we have to say the number of the people get. We have to make sure that we tell them what to do, if it’s a contest, if it’s whatever, but we need to make sure that we tell people what to do and explicitly in our advertisers.
I talked about this in my five-minutes fuel is that with my thank you page is that I tell people what to do. When they get a thank you page, when they get an e-mail from us, make sure we lead them down the path and we just don’t leave them.
[0:35:27.3] DJ: Can you give us an example of what you do in that video? Because I got to see it – I guess I didn’t see the entire video, but I got to see an example of it as you spoke on stage. When people land on the thank you page, so they land on the landing page which is what we’re talking about. One of the big mistakes I see with landing pages is that it doesn’t look or sound or feel with what the ad was, right? There should be some cohesiveness between going from ad and then landing on a page that looks, sounds, feels similar.
Then beyond that if somebody actually puts in their e-mail address, because they want to hear more from you, you deliver them with a thank you page that has a video on it. Why do you do that?
[0:36:08.6] CD: Well, I just wanted to be different. I just wanted to separate myself, because I think that whenever you submit something, it’s like you don’t know people get it. It’s a weird thing. It’s like going to the abyss. You get the thank you page, but it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to hit this thank you page and hit the submit button. What’s going to happen?”
Of course, you always used to getting that confirmation e-mail, or something like that. We want to surprise and delight people. Whatever it can be, we want surprise. It’s just, I’m telling people thank you for submitting the form, I did get the form and I could send you the link to the video and the thank you page with no problem, and for your show notes. It’s just thanking them, saying that I received the form and I’ll be back to you at 24 to 48 hours, unless it’s a weekend. That’s all.
People just want to be assured that you’re listening to them, that you – we know you’re busy, but you’re important to us, even though it’s just a generic one. I think that’s what we need to do. Just surprise and delight. I think the more that we surprise and delight our clients, the happier clients that we’ll get.
[0:37:08.8] DJ: Yeah. Hopefully more referrals out of that for sure. I bet as well that just by you showing up on video and people actually be able to see your face and hear your voice, that takes a trust up a level as well.
[0:37:23.2] CD: It does. It does. People find us and saying, “Wow, I would just submit all my stuff, if I just see this and da, da, da, da.” I haven’t taken to a new level, where if you do an inquiry, a video for this, a video for that, I haven’t done all that stuff yet, but it’s just you can have just very basic, a short just doing things. It can even be a picture to say thank you. Or it can be a automated e-mail, or whatever it is. There’s so many technology, so many technology out here available to us. I just think that we have to separate ourselves to make sure that we stand out.
It’s a competitive field. There are new photographers coming here every day, every year someone’s picking up a camera. What are you going to do to stand out? I think it’s not going to be always just that you take better pictures. It’s going to be people who trust you. Like I said, we always know that know, like and trust. They trust Chip, they trust Davey, they trust Krista to do a good job. Only because we know they do a good job, I trust you with the biggest day of my life, or with my kids, or with my family, or whatever, because you’re preserving those memories.
I think that if we go from that, I think those and I know where to talk about advertising, but I’m really passionate about moving people and trust and letting them know that we are experts in our field, instead of just service providers that can just do a one-off service. That’s how you have customers for life.
[0:38:40.6] DJ: Yeah, yeah. I think if you do a good job of that, then you move people out of this mindset for shopping for things like price. Once people realize that you’re about those things that you just mentioned, then all the sudden, price isn’t a thing anymore. They’re not thinking like, “Oh, they’re not trying to compare photographers based on price,” because they know that you deliver this experience that’s so much larger than just pictures being taken.
One other thing that I wanted to just ask you about before you get off here is that you said you use MailChimp, or you use MailChimp for nurturing people. What do you like about MailChimp, for I think it’s a great thing for people to use especially when they’re getting started, because it’s free, right, up to a certain amount of subscribers?
[0:39:23.1] CD: Free, yeah. I was using MailChimp. Right now I’m using a service called – well MailChimp is the free service I use. I use another service called ActiveCampaign. You know ActiveCampaign before? It’s a little bit more advanced. It’s like, I call a baby Infusionsoft kind of situation. People may not know what Infusionsoft is, but it’s a more of a CRM. It’s a more relationship management tool. MailChimp is just a good starter, because it’s free and it’s a low barrier to entry and it’s easy and you can make a follow up e-mail, you can do sequences in MailChimp. That’s why I like using it.
Instead of – especially if you don’t want to pay for another paid services, just good to start. I just think that a lot of people just have a MailChimp account. They’ve been good and that’s their barrier to entry. When they advertise, it’s free, people get on there and then you can do what you do. Then if you like it more, you can upgrade. If not, you go to another service. I think that that’s why I like it, because it’s a low barrier entry and it’s easy, very user-friendly to use.
When you scale, I’m not too sure about it. I haven’t used it to scale with thousands and thousands of e-mails. I use it just for introductory stuff I’m testing and then I move them to my paid service once I do that. I don’t know, but you use MailChimp as well?
[0:40:37.2] DJ: No. We use ConvertKit, which similar to ActiveCampaign it’s just a more robust service than something like you would find with MailChimp. It’s also paid, so I think to get started with ConvertKit, you’re probably looking at $29, $30 a month if you’re just getting started with ConvertKit, but there’s no free option there.
Another good one though, and I actually, I haven’t used this before, but for somebody looking to make easy e-mail sequences and if you’re a photographer especially, this was made for photographers. If you’re not a photographer, this probably isn’t the best fit. Again, we had Nate from StickyEmail on a couple episodes ago. They basically built this MailChimp, but for photographers, right? Really easy to create follow-up sequences. I just think that’s so important. How you follow up with people after you get their information is just so important, I think.
Some of the tips that Chip gave you from starting with video, I really like, because it’s so easy to connect with people over video and sometimes people just don’t read text on a screen. If I see a thank you page, I read thank you and then I click off. Oftentimes if there’s other important information there, people just never see it.
[0:41:47.0] CD: They never see it. I think that like I said, we love advertising, but we know that it’s up to us to convert. Another thing that I also tell people to do, especially that have newer products, I was talking to someone who’s doing some type of new wedding elopement service. She’s a wedding planner and I told her, I said, “You know what? Instead of trying to get the couples to buy the elopement service that they don’t really understand, what about doing a advertisement and then leading them to a webinar?” What happened?
I mean, people I know are tired of webinars, going on webinar, on-demand webinar. I think that’s another thing that, or some type of webinar, or some type of thing. Because I think if you don’t know what the product is a lot or the service, if you’re curious about it, you need to hear about it live and then make a decision. I think getting – webinars still work. Free webinars, get people who want and they still convert. I don’t know about you, but I know that people are still doing them.
[0:42:40.8] DJ: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think webinars are still converting. I think to as the marquee gets a little bit more sophisticated, people understand that when you get on a webinar generally, you’re going to be sold to afterwards.
[0:42:51.1] CD: Exactly.
[0:42:52.7] DJ: I think video – video trainings, whether you call them webinars, you call them video trainings, or video explanations of these new services are still really effective like you said, for educating people around your services, what makes you different, the experience that you offer and so on.
Chip, I’m so glad I got an opportunity to sit down and chat with you today about this. We didn’t get a ton of opportunity at UNITED in part, because we were both teaching while we were there, but it was fun to interview a fellow Marylander and catch up a little bit about Facebook ads. I hope that for those the listening that you realize, I think maybe the most important thing, or one of the most important things that Chip said was because there’s so many options, we tend to get ourselves stuck, right?
You can make things simple. I think taking Chip’s advice of starting, I think there’s a reason just for the ads. You want to know what in your targeting for instance is working, right? Take it simple and just get up something off and running, that’s better than nothing and then test, test, test from there and be patient with it.
Where can people find out more about you, Chip? Where can people follow along?
[0:44:02.0] CD: You can find out more about me and what I’m doing and what I’m offering, especially for the listeners of this podcast. It’s chipdizardweddings.com/BTBShow. Again, chipdizardweddings.com/BTBShow.
[0:44:17.9] DJ: Yeah, that’s awesome. If you’re interested in following Chip along, head on over to his website, check out that URL in particular, because as you mentioned and you got to hear a little bit about during the show, he helps people with Facebook ads, specifically wedding pros service-based businesses. If you have a question, if you’re at the point where, “You know what? I can’t do this alone.” Make sure that you reach out to Chip, because he can help you get started and dial in those ads. Thanks again Chip for joining me on the show.
[0:44:48.1] CD: Hey, thanks for having me and I love talking about getting more business and using paid advertising and traffic to get more leads.
[0:44:56.3] DJ: Awesome. Thanks man.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:45:00.8] DJ: Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to daveyandkrista.com.
[END]
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