175: Marketing Doesn’t Have To Be Hard with Brooke Jefferson

Sabrina: On today’s episode of the Shoot It Straight podcast, I’ve got another replay for you this time. It was an interview earlier this year with my friend Brooke Jefferson of the book More Photography Clients podcast, and we were talking about how marketing doesn’t have to be all that hard. This was such a great interview and it was really, really meaty.

It was one of the most beefed up episodes that I’ve ever done. It really was like a masterclass in marketing, and so if you are hoping to do a better job at marketing your business in 2026. This is really a great interview. Let’s dive in.

Welcome to the Shoot It Straight podcast, where honesty meets heart and real talk actually means something. I’m your host, Sabrina Gehart, and each week we get vulnerable, practical, and just a little bit bold so you can feel seen, supported, and ready to take the next step in your photography journey.

Let’s go.

Brooke: You are gonna love today’s interview. I sat down with Sabrina Ebhart, who is a lifestyle photographer of more than 14 years based out of Fort Worth, Texas. She’s also a business coach to photographers and creative entrepreneurs, and she brought some fire. I know you guys love my no BS way of coaching, and I’m here to tell you that Sabrina brought the fire.

She is the exact same way. And she’s breaking down common mistakes that she sees. Things that are missing from your marketing that you could be doing so much better so that you can convert more clients from your marketing channels, whether that is through email marketing or social media. You guys are going to love Sabrina.

A couple other fun facts about her. She’s married to her college sweetheart. She has three kids and two dogs. She loves caffeine, emojis, color, and reading. Anything she can get her hands on. She is a strong Enneagram three who really does have to force herself to sit still. But over the years she has learned that her business and her sanity benefit from slowing down.

All right guys. Here is my conversation with Sabrina. Sabrina, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I am super excited for this topic. Before we dive in, can you let the listeners know who you are and what you do, just in case they don’t know who you are?

Sabrina: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me back. Okay, so, uh, my name’s Sabrina Ebhart.

I am a photographer that lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and I’ve been in business for 14 years. And I’m also a business coach. I have, I kind of dabble in all the things I’ve got, kind of like you, you know, like a mastermind, a membership, a podcast. I speak at conferences, all the things. And at this point in my business, I’m definitely doing more coaching than photography, but I’m still in the thick of it.

Just like my students. Uh, I still get inquiries through Google. I still get nervous when I wanna book a client, so I’m right there in it with you.

Brooke: Yes. Okay. I love that we both have our hands in both sides. And I think it’s such a gift to be able to say that we are still photographers, we’re still in the industry.

We know what it’s like. I constantly am pulling from things that I’m doing to share it with photographers, which has always been the intention behind this podcast. So I love that you can relate to still doing a little bit of everything. The topic that we are going to be diving into is like, what’s missing when it comes to marketing?

Every time I say marketing, I think there are many panic attacks happening out there in the audience, and it’s the number one requested topic, and I think it’s for a couple of reasons. One, I think when we say marketing, it could mean so many different things. And so people hear that word and they might be immediately overwhelmed thinking, I can’t even touch that topic.

And then other people might have had different experiences with certain marketing methods that they’re using, and so they, they feel a certain type of way about it. So I would love to hear your perspective when it comes to marketing in the photography industry. What are some insights you’re seeing, and then why are people so scared to talk about marketing and then to do it right?

Sabrina: Well, to answer that question, I think, well, I know from what I’ve heard from students over and over again, and anytime I talk about marketing on Instagram or the podcast, my dms just blow up. Marketing feels overwhelming to people. It feels like it is this huge thing. I mean, it’s an entire career path. You know, it’s an entire major in college.

It is a really big animal, and so people get so overwhelmed with it just feels like this huge thing. The other part of that is what I hear so often is many photographers hear marketing and they immediately think Instagram like, like I am marketing my business on Instagram. And Instagram doesn’t always feel like it’s working for me.

It feels like I’m yelling into the void and nothing’s happening. And so then they’re frustrated. So it’s this, I’m overwhelmed and I’m frustrated. And then that’s when they just hit paralysis and they’re like, nevermind, I’m just not gonna do it. I’m gonna hope that I get some Google inquiries. I’m gonna hope my repeat clients come back, and otherwise I don’t wanna market myself.

And I think that’s what I see the most. So when it comes to marketing, I have a really unique perspective because my life, before I was a photographer, before I was a mom, I was in retail. So I worked for a big nationwide retailer, and I have like, I have a degree in this, I have a master’s degree in this.

And so I understand business and selling more than the general public, but that is from a corporation’s standpoint. And when you’re a personal brand, marketing is very different. Okay. When people say, you know, they hear the term personal brand and they’re like, but wait, I’m not an influencer. It doesn’t matter.

You are a solopreneur. You are a personal brand. It is what it is. You don’t have to be an influencer. Your brand is your face. It’s your personality. It’s who you are. It’s your vision on your work. You are a personal brand. And so we can’t sell the same way as major corporations and businesses do. And that also trips people up because that’s how, that’s how we’re sold to constantly.

You know, in 2025, we are sold to by personal brands now, but most of what we see is big brands, retailers selling to us and marketing Your photography business is not the same.

Brooke: I love that you come into the marketing conversation. Having a background in retail that’s very unique and I’m sure there’s parallels you can make, and then there’s also lessons you can learn from the way corporate did it versus how personal brands are supposed to do it.

When you think of a photographer marketing their business, if we were gonna tell a kindergartner what that means, how would you tell a five-year-old?

Sabrina: Let me verbally process that. If I’m telling a kindergartner what marketing your business is, it is putting a spotlight on your business in hopes of bringing in people that want your service product, whatever it’s.

That’s it.

Brooke: Yeah. Okay. That’s so good. And that’s so clear. And the reason I had you do that was because I think sometimes we make marketing way more complicated than it needs to be. Now, are there skills we need to learn? Yes, absolutely. Is it going to feel hard? Yes, it’s going to feel hard, but it can also be enjoyable and it can be fun, and it can be, you know, all about connection with people that you wanna work with.

But I like to bring it, strip it all down. At the end of the day, are you doing that right? Are you putting a spotlight on your business in hopes that you will get your target market to do business with you? That’s really what it is. And so when I hear photographers talk about. I need help marketing, or I’m just not getting leads, inquiries, and bookings.

Like, what am I doing wrong? It usually comes down to a couple of things, and I think marketing their business in the right way is one of them. So we’re gonna talk about things that are missing, and I think this is so juicy for photographers because they just wanna know like, can you just tell me what am I supposed to be doing and what am I doing wrong?

So when it comes to this problem. What are some of the, the mistakes you see or, um, the perspectives you have? The outside perspective, I should say, that you have of photographers marketing.

Sabrina: Yeah. So the biggest underlying thing that I think gets missed the most is photographers are missing this connection piece.

They’re like, here’s my packages, here’s my offers, here’s what’s included. Here’s what it costs, here’s what some of my photos look like. And that’s laying out facts that’s not actually connecting with anyone. And I love all of you listeners, but there are probably 15 photographers in your area that can take photos just as well as you that probably charge near your price or maybe less.

That work with the same kind of people. And if that’s your idea of marketing, you are not creating a reason for them to choose you over anyone else. And connection is the difference.

Brooke: The biggest difference for me, it took me a long time to really identify when people are like, well, but why does this work for you?

How can I make this work for me? I finally had a light bulb moment one day, and I was like, I literally think it’s the people. It’s the connection that I have with people. It’s the way I’m talking to them. It’s the way I’m describing and talking about them right from their sessions. So how can photographers who are like, I think I’m doing that, but maybe I’m not doing that.

What does that connection look like in marketing compared to them just saying what everybody else is saying? Right? Yeah. Like, here’s my session, 15 minutes, blah, blah, blah. Right. How do we actually bring in some flare to our marketing?

Sabrina: Yeah. So this is where the personal brand comes in. This is where the being brave enough to share things you’re interested in that have nothing to do with photography comes in.

It’s talking about you as a mom. It’s talking about your favorite Amazon finds. It’s talking about the vacation you went on, what you’re making for dinner. Those things, when I coach women on marketing, they cringe ’cause they’re like, oh, I mean, does anybody care? Nobody cares. That’s what everybody gets stuck on and I stop them and I think, and I, I, I literally asked them, when you are scrolling through Instagram or however you’re consuming content.

Do you stop and pay attention to those details from the people you follow? And a hundred percent they always say, well yeah, but those people are interesting. And I’m like, that’s the problem. You are interesting to other people and you’re not giving yourself enough credit. So it’s being willing to be personal.

So what do you talk about? How do you share about it? What would you talk about with somebody if you met them at a play date or, uh, any kind of event? Right. It’s the same thing. It is no different. And if you really need a clear cut answer of what do I talk about, A really simple exercise you can do is imagine all of the things you are interested in in a circle on one side, and then imagine all the things your ideal client is interested in over here in another circle, where do they overlap?

Kind of like a Venn diagram. Where’s the overlap? Do you all have kids under five? Do you all live in the same zip code? Do you all consider yourself foodies or book lovers or whatever? Those are the things that are really easy to talk about because you know you love them and so does your ideal client.

So share about that stuff because the goal, Brooke. Is for somebody to either be on your email list, read your blog, follow you on social media, and to quote unquote, fall in love with you before they work with you. The only way they can do that is if you’re sharing about things that drive connection as opposed to, like I said before, just the facts.

If all you ever do is share photos and opportunities to work with you and prices and blah, blah, blah. You are not connecting with anyone.

Brooke: Yeah. You’re falling on deaf ears and it’s a very hard place to be. Good news is you can crawl out of it. You can start today. Today can be your day one. I always say that we are in this era of a personal brand and it’s never going away.

Yeah. Like it’s only going to get deeper. Like, that’s why video is so big. And I think people have the saying, you know, con or video is king, right? It is. Because that’s the most intimate way for someone to hear your voice, see, you know, see your expressions and listen to what you have to say, and they feel close to you.

Like, I’m still like, man, why are photographers marketing behind their business photos and a logo like, that’s so 2010. Like, we’re so past that, you know? And so I know it’s, it feels so weird. You guys, one thing that kind of helped my mindset with this was. If I’m coming on Instagram stories to record a video or to share something, what would I send or text my best friend?

And that’s how you approach it and that’s how you, you just pretend, right? You’re not talking to 400 followers or 2000 followers. You’re talking to one person, which is your best friend, and watch how many dms you start to get. People love to share their opinion. People love to compliment you, they love to agree or disagree with you.

But you have to give them the opportunity. So I love that you said that, and it’s not just to be like the popular person, it’s really to make a connection and to stand out. Like that’s truly what keeps you top of mind with people. What are some other things you see that might be missing from, from marketing?

Sabrina: Yeah, so the other thing I see is selling too often. Again, they’re constantly selling. So let me give you an example. Maybe in their calendar they are selling motherhood sessions. Then immediately after motherhood sessions, they go into summer mini sessions, and then they immediately go into back to school photos, and then they immediately go into fall photos and it’s like, slow down, sister.

Like stop selling to me all the time. And again, they’re missing that connection piece. Don’t hear me say that. I don’t want you to sell because you absolutely need to learn to sell and you need to sell and you need to time periods of selling to your audience. But if you turn into a brand that sells constantly, and that’s your only marketing strategy, you’ve turned into like Old Navy or the Gap, okay?

Where people are immediately flagging your emails and pushing them to spam, or they’re unfollowing, or they’re muting your account, or they’re swiping all the time because all you do is sell, and that’s annoying. Instead, I would rather you see your marketing calendar get mapped out with periods of selling and then periods of connection, periods of selling, and then periods of connection.

And we talked about connecting on social media. We talked about how, you know, what would you share with your best friend, which is such a great, um, example. You can do the exact same thing with your email list on your blog. I mean, it’s, this is not just a social media thing. Allow there to, to be a little bit of a pallet reset in between periods of selling.

Brooke: That’s a game changer. That was a good one. I see this too, where, you know, I’m like, okay, let me go check out like, what have you been selling? Let me look at your, your feed and then what have you, what have your emails been like? Oh, you know, I really only get on my email list to send a promotion out, guys.

That’s where you’re losing people. I mean, yes, like, you know, like Sabrina said, we want you to sell. We want you to continue to sell. But how can you again, leave room for connection? My biggest tip when it comes to even just emails in general, right? Email marketing, is don’t just send a newsletter that’s literally all about you and your photography business.

Like we wanna know more, like give a life update, give value or tips and tricks, or a hack or something to your audience that’s like, Ooh, I’m so excited to open her email every month because I know she’s gonna have this in there. It could be like. Maybe it’s like you’re sharing a, your grandma’s recipe and it’s like super top secret and you’re never gonna share it on social media.

You know what I mean? Like, make it feel, just give people a reason. So I love that you said that we do need to press pause and not go from one thing to the other. I also think that marketing in general, the way people are just throwing out things and then one minute we’re talking about pets and the next we’re talking about families.

Like I’m confused, and so I’m sure the consumer is just as confused. That’s probably why the bookings are low. Is there anything else that you see that you’re like, oh, red flag here?

Sabrina: Yeah, I think there’s two more big things that I see with marketing. One is when we are, when we are selling again, we’re relying on the facts.

And we think the facts are gonna sell for us as opposed to pulling at heartstrings and like filling stories in using storytelling. So again, going back to the motherhood example, instead of sending emails and getting on social, when you’re, motherhood sessions are open for booking and saying, this date, this time, this many minutes, this many photos, blah, blah, blah.

Talk about stories of motherhood, why these photos matter, what the process will feel like to a mom who’s maybe never done anything like this before. Those are the things that are going to connect with your audience. Where a mom is gonna be reading this and thinking, I need this experience. I need to capture how my arms fit around my 2-year-old before they don’t anymore.

I need to have images like this for my walls and an album. They’re not, their heartstrings aren’t tugged with $300 for 15 minutes, like that’s not doing anything for you. Instead, think of the storytelling that you can draw them in on why they have to have this experience.

Brooke: Man, I love that. That’s such good advice.

And that just takes it up another level. They will remember who told the story. They will remember the person that tugged on their heartstrings. I think of like the best stories I’ve ever heard or the best marketing, and there’s people rolling through my brain right now that I’m like, man, they’re such good marketers and storytellers because they know how to evoke emotion.

So I love the example you gave about the motherhood photos. I mean, it breaks my heart every time I get a client inquiry and they’re like, we haven’t done family photos since Johnny was a baby, and Johnny’s now nine years old. I’m like, wait, what? You know? Yeah. No one has been tugging on their heartstrings because Yeah, there’s no way they would’ve waited.

I love that so much. So for someone that maybe is, and I know we’re not copywriters here, but I think we have enough experience that we can make something up for someone that’s like, I really don’t know how to do that. Do you have like a couple tips just to kinda help spark their brain so they can go write a really good.

Emotion driven post or email.

Sabrina: Yeah, so I think the easiest thing to do is to pull from your own experience. So even if you have never photographed the example motherhood sessions before, if you’re a mom, you’ve got stories of motherhood. If you are a child and you had a mom, you have stories of motherhood.

And so it’s really not as hard. It’s literally thinking back to any moments with your kids, whether or not you have a photo of it or you wish you had a photo of it. And it doesn’t have to be professional photos. It can be iPhone snaps, but any kind of story that’s attached to a memory of motherhood will do the trick.

And telling the story so that you feel like, again, you want your reader to feel like they are in the same seat and they can envision themself in this story. And I say in, you know, in the year of 2025, when in doubt, use chat GBT. If you’re not great with words, you can dump in three sentences about a story that you have and ask it to make it emotional and make it something that moms would wanna read, right?

Let it help you take your idea from decent to fantastic.

Brooke: Love it. Yep. Chat. GPT really isn’t everyone’s back pocket. You have to learn to utilize it, which again, this just gave me such a good idea for a future episode. I’ve never talked about my strategy with chat GBT, but you wanna make sure that you, uh, you don’t just take it at face value, but yes, feed it what you want it to say.

Read it back. Does it sound like you? If it doesn’t tell chat, GPT, this doesn’t quite sound like me. Rather than this, say this and watch. They will perfect it to your language. It’s very, very neat. Yeah. If we’re not using chat GBT, we’re wasting a lot of time. I think so. Very. I love that tip. I think you have one more thing you said that you wanted to talk about.

What is that?

Sabrina: Yeah, yeah. So again, this is about selling. You know, I started with the big nugget of like, we’re missing connection. We’re missing connection in every single piece of our marketing, and I believe that, I think you could literally look at all of your marketing strategies and the things that you’re doing and say, how can I make this more connection based?

And you would already be winning. But this one’s another thing about selling, because I think when we hear about marketing, the end game is to sell. And this is something that I see photographers not doing great, and it is, honestly, it’s one of the biggest things that we’ve go on over in the Mastermind where it’s like, like I can’t drill it home enough.

When you are launching an offer, you have to give it enough time to marinate with your audience and lead in. So what often happens is, you know, photographer Jane over here has this great idea. Let’s stick with the motherhood example. She’s got this great idea that she wants to do motherhood sessions and she picks the date for them and then kind of loses track of time, and all of a sudden she’s like, oh my gosh, I need to like get those you know out so that people can start booking them.

And she just kind of sends an email and slaps something up on Instagram and then she wonders why she only got a couple of bookings and it didn’t fill up. And this is where I want to put my, my hands on her shoulders and look her lovingly in the eye and say, nobody heard about your offer ’cause you didn’t lead up to it enough.

And this goes back to like the marketing rule of seven. People need to hear it seven times, although people say now that it’s actually closer to 10 or 12. And when you think about that, it’s like. Okay. That’s a lot. So I encourage people to warm up their audience for at least two weeks before they even start allowing people to book.

And if it’s a new offer that you’ve never sold before, you need to warm up for a solid month. And this allows your audience to see the emails, to see you talking about this thing on social media so that it perks their interest. And so again, going back to this motherhood example, if you’re going to open your doors to booking sessions, let’s say it’s April 15th, you need to be talking about it from probably either March 15th or April 1st, somewhere in there, depending on if it’s new or not.

And when I say talk about it, I don’t mean sell it. I mean, talk about the thing, tell the stories. So again, going with motherhood, I want you to spend two to four weeks talking about motherhood. Just motherhood, not motherhood sessions. So telling stories of clients, past clients, you, your childhood, your kids, anything related to motherhood, and share as many motherhood photos as you can and personal shots of you with your kids if you put your kids on social media.

All things related to motherhood so that when you do start emailing your audience and saying, okay, motherhood sessions are booking next week, set an alarm. Mark your calendar. They’re about to open. They’re so in the mood for motherhood because that’s what you’ve been talking about for two to four weeks when you do this and when you commit to sending multiple emails about your, your offer and you commit to sharing about it on social media and really going all in and having nice long period.

This is when you sell out, when your doors open. This is when you immediately book all the spots. This is when that dreamy, you see it happen to other people, and you don’t know what you’re doing wrong. How are they selling out so fast? This is how, okay, this

Brooke: is the tip that if I was a listener, I would be highlighting right now, like really honing in on, because this is it, and this is one of those tips.

I always say, you guys just don’t give it long enough. You don’t talk about it enough. So I love that you brought this up. Talking about your, your mini session or even your regular sessions, you guys sprinkling that in and doing it two or three times is still not enough. It’s not the stat you were talking about earlier, how they used to say seven, seven touches, right?

They have to hear something seven times. Then it went to 10 to 12 after the pandemic. I just heard a recent stat and I’m like, this has to be, this has to be fake. It’s like 20 to 30 something times because of how saturated everything seems to be. And I don’t say that negatively. I just mean there’s a lot of people out there selling a lot of things that’s just mind blowing.

And I can tell you even. As an educator, and I know you can, I know you can back me up on this, but we go through Launch Promotions to promote a program or a coaching service that we have, and I still get people who said what? I never saw a single thing. And we’re like, what do you mean? I talked about it for like 45 days.

You know what I mean? Right. So it just goes to show like. People are not all up in your business the way that we think. We’re being annoying talking about it, so, right. Such a good, such a good tip. So good.

Sabrina: I love what you just said that that being annoying because that’s the pushback I get when I say this.

They’re like, but aren’t I gonna be annoying? And here’s the thing. No, because to your point, they’re not seeing it. Like, I don’t know if anybody’s ever paid attention to their Instagram analytics, but like on a good day, 10% of your audience is seeing and viewing your content. That’s on a good day. There are days where it is significantly lower than that, and depending on how big your following is, that could mean that a handful of people are seeing what you’re sharing every day.

That’s not much. So that’s why if you are talking about something for a month, the odds go up that they are seeing something in there, right? If you are not annoyed with your own offer, by the time it sells, then you’re not, you’re not talking about it enough. That’s a really good benchmark right there.

Brooke: That’s a great benchmark right there. Yes. Okay. Wow. These are some really great tips. Now, I feel like throughout our conversation I could totally see someone hopping off being like, wow, I feel really defeated. This was, yeah, I’m not marketing my business, so can we maybe build up whether in mindset or strategy.

Let’s build the photographer back up. All we did was we shined a little light to help you see like where you’re missing the mark, what you could be doing better. Can you just take like a couple minutes and build up the photographer that wants to put herself out there and she wants to market better, but she’s just kind of in a.

I really didn’t know half of this.

Sabrina: Yeah. So this is where I want you to hear that no matter what your brain is telling you about, I don’t wanna be annoying. People don’t care about this stuff. I’m a photographer and that’s why they follow me. That’s all they wanna know. This is where I wanna say, sweetheart, you are a very interesting woman.

You are probably have a spouse, you probably have kids. I know you have friends, you are active in your community. You have things that you love and are interested in outside of just being a photographer. That is not your identity. And I would love for you to loosen up a little bit, and like Brooke said at the beginning of the podcast, be willing to look at your marketing as fun and stop taking it so seriously.

Let yourself open up to connection and open up to sharing about fun things that have nothing to do with your business. Take the pressure off of. I’m marketing to sell. Just change your mindset for a month. Say, I’m gonna market to connect with people. And number one, social media specifically becomes real fun when that’s your focus, because that’s when, like you said, you get great engagement, you get great comments and dms and people asking you questions, and you’re like, wow, people are actually paying attention.

This is fun. And it takes the pressure off. When you can have fun on social media, everything just works better. The algorithm likes you. More people see your stuff. It’s, it’s a win-win, win. But stop telling yourself that you’re not interesting and that nobody cares, because I promise you, this is the missing piece.

They do want to know you. They will care. There are people out there that are going to flock to you when you start. Loosening up a little bit and just be willing to have fun with this and not take it so seriously. It’s not that deep, you guys just let it be fun.

Brooke: Oh, good. Okay. This was such a great conversation.

I feel uplifted and you know, you and I have been in the game for a while and this is still just, it’s such a great reminder to go back to what social media is. It’s being social, it’s everything that you just, um, described. People really do. They will choose to do business with you because you have something in common or because they see how consistent and passionate you are about what you do, or because you guys share the same values.

It’s so crazy the way that people literally just wanna do business with other people that they feel like they can connect to. So, such a great conversation. Where can people dive into more from you and find you online?

Sabrina: So I have a marketing freebie that I’ll make sure to give you the link for so you can put it in the show notes.

Um, it’s literally just 30 days of like different prompts and things to try to kind of get you out of a rut. Uh, it’s just a download. You can download it. It’s super fun, super easy. Uh, so I’ll have that in there, but you can find me on Instagram. I love it over there because I don’t take it seriously and I have fun.

So come send me a dm. I would love to know if this episode resonated with you. And, uh, I’m at Sabrina Gehart Photography. I will probably respond to you with a voice memo because I’m old and we like to do that. So, um, but yeah. And then I guess one last thing I wanna say, ’cause I don’t want you to hear this and think we’re telling you, you have to spend all of your time on social media.

You don’t, and I don’t want you to, and I know Brooke doesn’t want you to either, but when you are there, have fun with it and. You know, you still wanna push people to your email list, you still wanna send emails, you still wanna use all of the other marketing avenues to, you know, market your business so you don’t have to live on social media.

We’re not saying that.

Brooke: Yes, we’re, we definitely don’t want you to live there. We just want you to have fun when you are there. Yes. So, yes. Yes. So good. Well, thank you so much for this again, and such an uplifting conversation. I hope people will come back, listen to it another time just to really let it all soak in.

Sabrina: Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot at Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode@sabrinagehart.com slash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gehart 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.