I’m not sure about the rest of you wedding photographers out there in Arizona, but as a millennial business woman, I’ve learned a few tried true and tenets over the last few years:
1. If you aren’t on social media, you might as well not exist
2. You need to be available… really, really available
3. Uber Speed in response = bookings
With these concepts in mind, I went into the webinar held by WeddingWire (Can You Hear Me Know?) this past week with a little healthy skepticism. I mean, heck, I’M A MILLENIAL! If I don’t understand how they communicate, than who does?
It turns out that the webinar was wonderful! It was put on by Alan Berg, a pro on the WeddingWire network. Which, by the way, if you are a member on this awesomely large wedding pro site, you need to be taking advantage of this fabulous educational perk. Not only do they host live webinars, where you can ask your burning questions, but they also send out recording of the webinars, if you are unable to attend because your schedule is something out of a tangled, chaotic nightmare (like mine J ).
The webinar was wonderful, not just because I learned that yes, I am doing a lot of what I’m needing to do to connect with my future brides/grooms-to-be, but I also learned some cool stats that helped me change my website and change the way I think about connecting with clients.
The most important element I learned about was Live Chat. For some reason, even though I help develop actual websites in my other life, I never thought of implementing live chat on my own website. I mean, I guess I never thought anyone would need to ask ME a pertinent, burning, immediate question.
But then, during the webinar, I thought, well…um…everyone would! If you are on an artist’s website and you are thinking about booking them, wouldn’t you love to just reach out, right then, to ask them if they are available, or if they can meet a certain price? You don’t want to write down an email address or a phone number. You probably don’t even want to fill out the little form they made super available to you. But a quick little text line… right there? Next to a picture of the person you actually want to connect with? It’s kind of a no-brainer. Which makes me really embarrassed that I didn’t think about adding it sooner!
So…BOOM! It’s now available. If you’d like to check my availability, want to chat about price, or just ask me if I know a good videographer, you can do so now, literally within seconds! How amazing is that!?
The other fun fact I learned is that my gut instinct was right. Millennials (a very large portion of the soon-to-be-wed population) wants immediate feedback. Like, super immediate. I used to worry that if I responded right back to a client they would think “Whoa…doesn’t this chick have anything better to do than hang by the phone/computer?” I thought it might seem kind of desperate.
But it turns out that if you respond to a client inquiry within 5 minutes you are 300% times more likely to book that client than if you don’t. So those numbers made me feel pretty happy and secure about my trigger happy, emailing/texting fingers.
All in all, this week was about technology. How to use it, how to make it work better for me, and how to fine-tune my use of it to grow my business. As with any “tech heavy” week, it had its obstacles and frustrations, but it was also super rewarding. Another week of growth for Rachel Leintz Photography! I think I’ll post an animated meme of confetti flying on Facebook, then tweet it and share it to my Instagram account! ;)
