133: The Big Mistake You’re Making With Marketing

Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhardt. Here, I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing business, motherhood, and life. Myself, along with my guests, will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there.

If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too. The shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.

Welcome back to the shoot it straight podcast. My friends today, I’m going to give you like a quick marketing tip. This is something that I see most of the women I coach making this mistake. And to be quite honest, I definitely made this mistake at one point or another in my business as well. And I want to dive into it today because if you don’t do anything else different with your marketing, this one thing is going to make a massive, massive difference.

So you’ve probably heard stories or maybe you’ve seen competitors online about, you know, so and so photographer, they launch an offer and then they very quickly turn around and say that it’s sold out. Maybe it sold out in an hour or a day, whatever the time frame, it sold out real fast. And you think to yourself, God, that never happens to me.

And you feel maybe frustrated, maybe it makes you feel like you’re not as popular. Your work is not as good. Maybe you worry it’s your pricing. It kind of sends you into this comparison tailspin, which side note comparison is a whole nother discussion for a whole nother day, but you are left feeling, why does this not happen to me?

Why can’t I sell out my offers like this? When I coach women through my one to one clients and also through the mastermind, this thing I’m going to tell you today, this mistake that you are making with your marketing is very often the reason why you’re not able to sell out your offers quickly. In fact, uh, several times the women that I have coached through this change in their marketing when they get on the other side of making this change, they do sell out of offers very quickly.

And so they see that this works. So I’m going to give you a quick rundown of what this mistake is and how you can fix it. But do know that if this is something that you want to know more about. It is part of what I teach inside my marketing course, marketing that attracts. I am going to have the course linked in the show notes and you can check it out if you need more marketing support.

But today on the podcast, it’s going to be kind of a loose overview of what this is. Here’s the thing that you’re doing wrong. Are you ready? You’re not leading into your sales long enough. You are not talking about your offer long enough. You are not preparing your audience long enough. What I see so often is that photographers have this offer.

Let’s say it’s motherhood sessions or personality portraits or fall mini sessions or fill in the blank with your special offer. They have this offer and they think they simply need to create a waitlist and then send an email and then share about it on social media and bam, their offer is going to sell out.

And my friend that doesn’t cut it, that doesn’t cut it anymore. We are so overwhelmed with media and consuming of information from our inboxes to our phones. To social media and all these things, we are bombarded with stuff and seeing something one time just doesn’t cut it. You know, there used to be the marketing rule of seven where you had to hear about something seven times before you would make an investment in that thing.

I’ve heard nowadays with all of the media and and everything that we are bombarded with that is actually closer to 20 times. Okay, so let that sit a minute. Yes, I’m telling you that your audience may need to hear you talk about something 20 times before they are ready to purchase. That’s a ton. The other thing I want you to know is that your audience is not seeing or reading or hearing about this thing every time you talk about it.

So if you’re thinking to yourself, okay, well I’ll just put 20 touch points. I’ll just put, you know, 20 emails or 20 social media posts or whatever, and that’s going to be enough. That’s still not enough because they’re not seeing everything. You need to talk about this thing, this offer that you have coming so long before you even start selling it before you even start selling it again.

This whole, Hey guys, my motherhood sessions are open. You can book now. That doesn’t cut it. You need to be talking about this example of motherhood sessions for weeks before they go for sale. Let that sit for a minute. You need to be talking for something for a long time. And, and why, why is that you need to get your audience in the mood?

You need to get them in the mood for this thing so that by the time your offer is available for sale, of course they are grabbing a spot immediately when the doors open because they’re so dang ready for you to drop that offer. You’re probably wondering how do I do this again? I’m doing a very loose overview of this today, so I’m not going to go super deep into it, but just to give you an example with the motherhood thing.

You can talk about motherhood for a couple of weeks before your motherhood sessions go up for sale. You can talk about it in a zillion different ways and you’re probably overthinking it. I don’t want you to talk about your motherhood offer for a few weeks. I want you to talk about motherhood for a few weeks.

Remember, you’re getting them in the mood. You’re not just constantly bombarding them with motherhood sessions are coming. Motherhood sessions are coming. Motherhood sessions are coming. Because my friend, if you do that, if that’s your idea of leading into an offer, what’s going to happen is that is falling on deaf ears.

Because now you’ve become spam and people are immediately swiping when they see something in your feed. They’re immediately deleting your email because all you’re doing is talking about a way that they can buy from you. You’re spam now. Okay. You’re actually hurting yourself when you do that. No, no. I want you to talk about motherhood.

Get them in the mood. Talk about your stories of motherhood. Talk about your childhood with your mom. Talk about what motherhood images mean to you. Talk about stories of clients of motherhood that you’ve witnessed. Talk about things related to motherhood, all of that stuff. Get them in the mood. You’re talking about the subject without making the offer for sale.

And that may not feel intuitive to you because you’re probably have not been doing it. But trust me, this works. I want to interrupt this episode to tell you about a totally free 21 day challenge that is starting very soon. So one of the questions I get asked the most as a business coach is about marketing.

Photographers are constantly asking me how to get more inquiries from ideal clients. How to make social media actually work for them and how to feel more effective and consistent in their marketing. And while they’re asking these questions, I often hear the same frustrations. Marketing feels tedious.

Nothing seems to work. I can’t. Stay consistent. It’s overwhelming. My friend, if that sounds familiar, I have something so exciting to share. I’m hosting a free 21 day marketing challenge in March called magical momentum. And I want you to join us. Here’s how it works. You’ll get 21 days of fresh done for you.

Marketing prompts designed to help you show up with ease. Connect with your ideal clients and get out of that marketing rut. And the best part, you won’t be doing it alone because we will have a group Instagram chat where you can cheer each other on, share your wins, stay motivated and ask questions. If you’re ready to build momentum, make marketing feel fun again and connect with your ideal clients in just 21 days.

Join the challenge at sabrinagebhart. com. Let’s make marketing magic together this March. The next thing that you need to be doing is you need to be pushing people to email. I want you to stop relying on social media. I’m not saying disappear from social media because I do think that it is really, really important.

However, we need to push everyone from social media to your email. Why? Because emails will land in their inbox. You can’t guarantee that they will see what you share on social media on a good day. Your social media is probably seen by about 10 percent of your followers on a good day. That’s when the algorithm is playing nice.

Okay, so let that sit with you. And let’s also remember that of that 10 percent it’s probably your most frequent people, your friends, maybe your top clients, your family. That’s who’s guaranteed to see it. The rest of your followers, they’re probably not. The only thing that you can do it to guarantee that they will hear from you and see what you are talking about is pushing them to email.

So whether you create a wait list for this offer, or you create a freebie related to this offer, or you’re just pushing them to your general email list, push them to email leading into your offer, try and grow your email list as much as you can. And then After you have talked about this subject for several weeks, and I will say if this is an offer that you have launched before, if you do motherhood sessions every single year, then you could probably get away with talking about it for about two weeks.

If this is an offer that you have never launched before, it is brand new to your business and your audience. You need to talk about it for closer to a month. You need to educate your clients. They don’t know what the heck this is. You need to prepare them. So after you’ve done that, after you have prepared them and talked about it and gotten them in the mood for your offer, when the cart opens, when they are available to book a session, you need to sell for at least a week, at least again, we’re not just dropping a link or sending one email and saying, okay, you can book your motherhood spots.

That doesn’t cut it. That doesn’t cut it. You need to plan for a week of emails every day or every other day. You could, if it’s a bigger, higher ticket offer, you could sell for two weeks. But you need to sell, sell, sell very intentionally for at least a week via email and also on social media. And then a good rule of thumb that I like to say is that by the time you are finished leading into this launch and then selling this offer, if you are not bored out of your mind from talking about this thing, you didn’t talk about it enough.

If you’re not so sick of talking about this topic and this offer, by the time you’re done, you didn’t do it enough. And here’s what I want to just lovingly remind you, you’re going to be bored of this topic. Your audience is not because again, they’re not seeing everything. They’re not seeing every single social media post for a month.

They’re not opening every single email. Okay. They’re not seeing everything. So don’t worry about them being sick of it. You’re the only one that sees 100 percent of the content you put out. You should be absolutely bored out of your mind on this topic by the time you’re done. And then here’s the thing.

I’m going to leave you with one last little bonus tip here for you. I know this was fast and furious. One last bonus tip. When you are done with this launching period, again, we’re doing the motherhood example. You’ve talked about motherhood for a couple of weeks and then you open the doors for people to book and you sold for a solid week.

So you’ve been doing motherhood prep and selling for three weeks total. On the other side of that, you need to give yourself several weeks or maybe even a month where you are not selling or promoting anything. Let it be a palate cleanse. I do not want you to stop showing up. I don’t want you to stop sending emails.

I don’t want you to stop showing up on social media. I want you to use that time to show up, but to focus on connecting with your audience, relationship building with your audience, having fun with your marketing again and taking a break from the selling. Okay. Again, we don’t want to be spam. We don’t want to constantly sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing.

Let’s give it a little bit of a palate cleanse in between so that we can really build those relationships and connect with our audience. I would love to hear from you. If you heard this episode and a huge light bulb went off for you and you’re realizing, Oh yeah, that’s probably the problem. I’ve never done it that way.

Send me a DM, send me a DM on Instagram at Sabrina Gebhardt photography, and let me know what landed with you. I would love to hear it. And again, if you need more marketing support, if you’re listening to this episode and the light bulbs went off and your mind is blown and you’re ready to take this and run with it, but you want more.

My course marketing that attracts might be something you’re interested in. Again, it’s linked in the show notes. My friends, that is it for today. We’ll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at sabrinagebhart.

com backslash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram. At Sabrina Gebhardt photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review until next time, my friends shoot it straight.