Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. Today I wanna talk about slow seasons. Now, when I say slow seasons, this means different things to different people. I will say as a photographer, winter months, like January, February, and sometimes going into March, tend to be slower client months for us.

And this is because as a family photo, . We just had a huge influx of people all wanting Fall family portraits so that people had pictures to put on their Christmas cards. And then once that dies down, the need to get another set of family photos doesn't typically come around for another year. Now, that doesn't mean that that's true for all photographers, so in particular, if you are someone who shoots newborns, , you don't really have a slow season because newborns come when newborns want to come.

The second set of photographers that don't tend to have a slow season during the winter months are branding photographers. And that's because business owners tend to get really excited about redoing their business assets at the beginning of the year. And branding photos are usually high on that list.

If you're getting a new website, you need new branding photos. Um, if you're gonna put out a new marketing campaign, you want new mar new branding photos. Branding photographers don't tend to slow down during the winter months either. And then here where I live in Colorado, if you are a small wedding or elopement photographer, yeah, people still wanna come to Colorado and get married.

And the snow, snow photos for your wedding are awesome guys. And so we also don't tend to have slower wedding months here in. But other types of photographers do tend to have slower months inside of winter months. And let's talk about outside of photography, because for the system side of my business, Q1 actually tends to be a much busier season for me.

Everyone is motivated to not let themselves get over. In the new year like they did in the fall of the previous year. And so it's actually really good for my bottom line because everybody wants new systems in q1, so slow seasons are not necessarily tied to an actual season. Slow seasons just refer to times when your inquiries and your bookings tend to be.

And so what are the things that we can do in our slower seasons to still bring in a cash influx? The one thing that I tell photographers that I think applies to everyone is going back to clients who have already told you, yes, every single client that comes into your business has an associated cost of acquisition.

So let me explain what. Let's say that you are someone who does paid advertising and you have paid a thousand dollars for some type of advertising, and you ended up getting five paid clients from those marketing efforts. If we take the thousand dollars and we divide it by five, that means the cost of acquisition for each of those five clients was $200.

If you are someone who gets work based on word of mouth, good for you. And let's say that you pay out a referral fee of a hundred dollars per client that books your services. Every client that you get from that referral will have a cost of acquisition of a hundred dollars, and the cost of acquisition can vary inside of your business based on the offer that they're booking, based on how they're coming into your business.

But the great thing about going back to your past clients to get them to rehire you again, [00:04:00] is that the cost of acquisition is gone. If I've already paid Susie a hundred dollars referral fee for sending you to me when you book me for another session, I don't typically pay Susie another a hundred dollars referral fee.

I have already paid the cost of acquisition for you. So every single time you hire me, going forward, I am making more profit because I am no longer paying to acquire you as a new client.

Now, I did this for years inside of my photography business. I would have newborn clients that would book me multiple times during that first year, and then I always did a really great job of reaching back out to turn them into annual family clients going forward.

Not all of us have that ability, though. Some of us can offer the exact same offer, to the same client, over and over again with the same results. So in the case of a family photographer, it makes sense that you would market your services to your existing client roster every single year, because most people want updated photos on a yearly basis.

That does not work for wedding photography guys. No one gets married expecting to do it again. So the likelihood that you could actually sell your wedding services to the exact same client, and by that I mean the exact same couple over and over again, just doesn't make a lot of sense. But what could you offer those wedding clients? You could offer anniversary sessions. You could offer them newborn sessions when they, you know, start having children if that's in the plans for them. And then you could offer them annual family sessions. Now, not all wedding photographers want to continue to grow with their clients as they, you know, move through life.

And that's okay. If you are someone who really specializes inengagements, elopements, and wedding photography, I would look at the relationship that you're building with your couples in order to get more referrals from them. Because what happens when you're getting married guys, you probably have tons of friends that are either recently married or are in the same stage of life as you and are potentially getting married in the next few years.

So every single past client can bring you cash influx, either in the form of hiring you again or bringing you great referrals. 

So if you are currently in a slow season and you come to me for advice, the first thing that I'm saying is, "well, what have you done with your current client roster in order to get more bookings?" Have you reminded them of the services that you offer?

Have you offered them additional product services? So this brings us into an entirely different realm. This is where you're not offering the exact same service to them again, you are trying to enhance the service that they already got from you. In the case of photographers, you can offer album sales, you can offer wall art.

Um, those are how you can increase your lifetime client value with your current client roster, besides offering them the exact same service that they already hired you for. 

If you are not a photographer and you were thinking about this, I mean, let's talk about my systems setups. I don't know why, but it took me almost two years of doing system setups, before I started to go back to my previous clients and offer them additional services.

Once someone has done a full Dubsado setup from me, they're not likely to ever need that again. Unless you completely switch industries, you completely switch offers, you completely go from one CRM to another CRM. You are probably never going to need another full setup from me. But what you might need is a refresh.

So if you are starting to offer a new service and you need a new customer journey, you need a new client experience, you need new proposals, you need new emails written, I am now offering that in a half day format. Why? Because it's easier to get your previous clients to pay you more money, than it is to acquire a new client.

In that same way, you could offer support services that enhance the previous service that you did. So in my case, I came up with quarterly support. Where my clients can hire me one quarter at a time. . Each month they get a 30 minute call for strategy or to make changes to their existing Dubsado assets, and then they also get four support tickets a month.

Why did I create these? I created those two offers because that is what I saw that my previous Dubsado setup clients needed from me, in order to continue to use the service setup that I already did with them previously. 

So guys, what I would like for you to think about now is what you could do for the previous clients that you have serviced in the last two years. 

And I legitimately mean to pull them up in a spreadsheet, write them down on a piece of paper, whatever it is that you have to do, I want you to actually look at the specific clients that have hired you. 

Figure out where they are in their business, identify an offer that you could make them either in your current offer suite or something new to create, and then guys actually make the offer. Send out the email, reach out via telephone, and ask them how the previous service is going, and ask them if there's anything else that you can do for them in the future.

All right guys. That's it for this episode. See you next time.