Episode 041: Data and Marketing: The PB&J of Business Growth with Carolina Guzik
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Are you tracking data in your business? To optimize your business growth and success, understanding the relationship between your data and marketing is key. In today’s episode, Carolina Guzik joins us to share why data is important and what she’s tracking in her business!
The Business-First Creatives Podcast is brought to you by CRM and Dubsado expert Colie James. Join Colie each week as she discuss how to build a business that brings you joy and a paycheck! From business advice with fellow entrepreneurs to sharing automation tips and tricks, Colie and her guests are sharing industry trends and resources, along with a little bit of sarcasm.
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Guest Bio
Carolina Guzik has been a Miami wedding photographer for the past 12 years As she started her business, she quickly realized her degree in Mass Communications & Advertising and her previous work experience working in marketing wasn’t for nothing – the knowledge and experience she had in marketing was equipping her to serve her brand and clients well.
A few years back, she created The Tog Republic Podcast because she wanted to share her knowledge of marketing strategies with other photographers. Since then, her podcast has been downloaded over 150k+ times with listeners from over 30 countries.
Her goal is to share with you this knowledge, so you too can have a business that you love + supports your lifestyle!
Here are the highlights…
[1:44] Get to Know Carolina
[4:36] Tracking Data in Business
[4:47] Low Hanging Fruit: Social Media (Instagram Followers, FB Group Members)
[8:30] Tracking Trends & Seasons (Month over Last Month vs. Month over Last Year’s Month)
[14:26] Carolina’s Tracking System | Method of Organizing
[17:00] Airtable & Auditing Your Business
[19:16] Google & Search Console (Users, Time, Bounce Rate, Traffic, Channels
[23:51] Content Types Based on Searches + Link Strategy (Breadcrumbs)
[28:04] Getting Inquiries
[30:54] Pinterest Strategies
[36:20] Optimizing for Search with Pinterest Strategy
[40:06] Outsourcing with AI
[41:54] Biggest Fuck Up
Want to avoid a blank screen while setting up your Dubsado templates? Steal mine 😍
The Template Shop is now open with templates created specifically for family photographers for use inside Dubsado. You can copy and customize for your own brand + offers in no time. Save yourself hours per client with these templates 🌈
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Episode 127 of The Tog Republic with Colie
Episode 214 of The Tog Republic on Tracking Data
Focused Photographers Podcast with Dan Moyer | Episode 47
Dubsado – Use COLIEJAMES for 30% off your first payment, month or year!
Business Audit Series: Episode 26, 27 and 28
CONNECT WITH CAROLINA
@TheTogRepublic
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello and welcome back to The Business First Creatives podcast This morning, my guest is Carolina Guzik, the host of The Tog Public, which is an amazing marketing podcast for Photographers Carolina. How you doing this morning?
Carolina: I’m, fantastic. What about you, friend?
Colie: I am good. So I was pulling up podcast episodes because guys, I was on Carolina’s podcast back on episode 1 72 and it was how to use a C R M to eliminate booking friction, and I enjoyed that conversation so much.
She is now here on my podcast.
Carolina: I’m super happy to be here and I had a lot of fun talking to you about crm and it’s actually, uh, podcasts episode that I refer very often because as people know, I myself don’t use a crm, but I do that they should.
Colie: definitely one of those situations guys, where she’s like, do as I say, not as I do, but we’re gonna get into that more later in the podcast. I wanna throw you some, some softballs first. So, [00:01:00] Number one, I was sitting in my car, I think it was one or two weeks ago. and I was listening to you on the Get Focused podcast with Dan Moyer, who’s also been a guest on my
Carolina: shout out to Daniel
Colie: and I immediately, like when I got to the restaurant that I was driving to, I sent you voice messages and I was like, oh my God. Carolina, this is what we’re gonna talk about on my podcast, cuz we had already scheduled this interview, but I wasn’t quite sure what we were gonna talk about. So guys, today we are gonna talk about effective data tracking and how you can use it to increase your marketing efforts.
So first, Carolina. , why don’t you? Cuz you know, maybe they, I mean, maybe there’s a chance that they don’t know who you are. Tell them who you are, what you do, and where you’re located.
Carolina: So I am Carolina Guzik. I am a Miami wedding photographer. I do also photograph families, but mostly wedding photographers and I love marketing a lot. I went to school for mass communication and marketing and one thing led to another. I became a photographer, but like [00:02:00] my, my love for marketing was always there.
So a couple of years. , I don’t remember exactly when. Maybe four years ago, maybe five. I don’t remember. I created the Tog Republic and it started as me recording a podcast without knowing what was happening on the other end. If people were listening, if my mom was the only one tuning in . And, and it happened that people really enjoy, the conversations that I was having or the little short episodes, with like straight to the point marketing tips.
I. Like, I don’t like fluff. I’m really bad at a small talk and I am very impatient. So like, I want, if you’re gonna gimme something, give it to me now, . So I think that’s how my episodes are and it’s been good. It’s been a good, ride.
Colie: I mean, I’m really enjoying the podcast. I have decided that this is going to be my main marketing channel going forward. Listening audience. You guys know how I feel about solo episodes, so I am moving towards doing like 90% guest episodes cuz I really enjoy having conversations [00:03:00] with people. I am totally capable of those short episodes where I give you tips, but like you, I’m like, but is anybody listen?
And I don’t know, Carolina, maybe you can give me your insight from your years of podcasting, but I still get really shocked when someone pops into my dms and they’re like, oh my God, Colie, I listened to today’s episode and like it was amazing and I immediately did this, and I’m like, oh my God. Someone’s listening.
Carolina: A hundred percent. And I, I always tell people like, because when I look at my analytics, I’m like, who are these people? Because, you know, like it’s, it’s large numbers. I’m like, who, who are they? What are they? Pop on my dms. Let me know because I, I wanna hear from you and I’m sure you know the same for you.
And yes, when you get that dm, I get like a warm, fussy feeling. I’m like,
Colie: fuzzy feeling. Yes. I like Olaf definitely. Well, and I mean, it’s always, not that I don’t love hearing from the people who love me, but like when I get the text messages, and this is how you know that they love me because they have my actual phone number. Sometimes my clients and friends will text me and be like, holy, that [00:04:00] episode was so good.
And I’m like, Aw, thank you. But like, we’re friends. And so you have to say that . So I always really love it when the person that pops in my DM is like, I’ve never heard of you. Who are you? Where are you from? How did you find my podcast? And then I go into like marketing mode. Like, no, really? Can you tell me how you found the podcast so
Carolina: A hundred percent. I’m like, can I send you a cute, a, a cute little survey that you can fill up really fast?
Colie: So let’s, let’s start with data. So first of all, Carolina, what kind of data do you collect in your business and where do you house it or where do you like review it?
Carolina: All righty. So I collect everything. Everything. And when I’m talking about everything is like, start with like the lowest hanging. Followers on Instagram. I wanna know how many people follow me every month. And this is not like an ego driven or anything like that. Again, this is like insights so I can understand what am I doing right and what I’m doing wrong and I can correct.
A [00:05:00] lot of times when we talk with other photographers, even myself years ago and you know, when like my business was like not at the point what I wanted or you know, we all have those moments when like the business. It’s not growing, it’s not decreasing. It’s just like there and you need to know what happened.
And then you ask, but like, what am I doing wrong? Or What am I doing right? And then the answer is always like, I don’t know. I don’t know. So like if you don’t know, You don’t know, so you need to know . So, so I start with like, you know, my social media every month. So at the beginning of the month, I write down my starting of the month stats, right?
2000, 2000, whatever that number is, right? This again, this is not an ego driven and at the end of the month, the last day of the month, no. I would say, let’s say, let’s say I start January. . That’s when I write my first data and then February 1st, I go back and I said, well, how many followers do I have now?
And then, you know, I do a little math and then I say like, oh my God, I gained X amount of followers. It has never happened when I lose followers. But if I had that number, when I lose a [00:06:00] lot of followers, then I’d be like, what did I do? What happened here? And then I can backtrack and see what happened and correct if the growing.
Small, right? Because I don’t have, I mean, as photographers, sometimes we wanna have thousands and thousands of followers, but the reality is that we are very niche, especially when you are a wedding photographer. People might follow you just through the journey of wedding planning, and maybe after that, Irrelevant, right?
The main goal has happened, so the growth might not be as big. So sometimes we don’t even know if we’re growing. And I remember that was me like, I’m like, I don’t think my Instagram is growing. Like I don’t see any growth. But then when you start tracking, you’re like, oh no, it is growing. It might not be thousands of followers every month, but.
You know, 50, 60, 70 new followers every month at the end adds a lot. And I also think that it’s important to understand that we want this massive growth. And if we take a look at big, gigantic [00:07:00] companies, right? Coca-Cola, even Facebook, Instagram, their growth really is so little is like five, 10% per year.
So we want this like 300% growth per year, when in reality that’s not how businesses work. So
Colie: it’s very unrealistic. Mm-hmm.
Carolina: So tracking is important also to keep us motivated, right? If you think that you’re not growing and then at the end of the month you’re like, oh my God, I got 15 new people to follow me. Yes, go me. I love this
Colie: Yeah. So, and I’m, I’m kind of surprised that you started with Instagram, cuz I know your love hate relationship with
Carolina: Yeah.
Colie: So you track your, you track your Instagram followers. Do you pay any attention to Facebook or just Instagram?
Carolina: No Facebook, I only pay attention. I have a group, so like I follow how many new members I’m getting each, you know, each month. other Facebook pages. I mean, I still post there, but like I don’t even see what’s happening,
Colie: Yeah, I don’t either. My stuff just gets auto transferred from Instagram. I don’t bother anymore. I mean, I do it so that if someone happens to land on Facebook, they’re like, oh, I mean, that was posted recently, so she’s still in business. But other than that, yeah, I make no effort on
Carolina: Yeah, it’s like, I mean, I do make a left for about like 5%, like very, the, the bare minimum that I can do. So I don’t track Facebook. I track, let me, cause I have my list here. I
Colie: right.
Carolina: I mean we we’re podcast host, so I track how many downloads my podcast every month is getting. And this is when I do a little bit different Instagram, Facebook group and my newsletter.
I track monthly. So I compare month to month, my podcast and my. Website visits I track compared to last year’s month. So I’m not comparing January to February. I’m comparing January, 2023 to January, 2020 second. And the reason why is because those things are more seasonal, right? So the podcast, you know, January is a good no, it’s like February is a good month.
March is a good month. Summer [00:09:00] comes and the downloads drop because people are on summer vacation, they’re not driving to work. So I understand that during the summer my downloads are gonna be lower than any other month, so I don’t wanna compare summer to like May when they were really good. Cuz then I’m gonna be like, I would not understand what happened.
But again, if I do it seasonal, I understand that, okay, this is what happening. The same thing for my website visits. I’m on a business that is very seasonal, right? People especially, I mean all over the world, but like for me in Florida, people get married in the winter months because that’s actually like our good weather.
Exactly. Summer, people avoid the summer like the plague because hurricane season and it’s super hot, so like I don’t wanna compare. For example, I know February, my website views are gonna be very high because it’s Valentine’s Day. A lot of people getting engaged or excited. I cannot compare February to like July when nobody’s looking at my website.
Cuz then I’ll be really disappointed. So those two things I do compare to [00:10:00] other year.
Colie: Okay, so the funny thing is you started with Instagram and then you went to your website and your podcast, but the thing that people usually think about, at least photographers when I start talking about data is they’re like, oh, you mean how many, how many sessions I’ve done? And I’m like, yeah, that’s not what I mean.
Like there’s a lot of data that you can be tracking inside of your business, but I will admit that booking trends and income are very important. And so recently I had a conversation with someone and she was basically saying that, you know, last year in January and February, she had an amazing, like few months, and then this year she hasn’t had any bookings.
And I was like, well, but for most photographers, like January and February are really bad , so I don’t know that I would. I don’t know that I would judge this year based on comparing it to last year, which clearly was amazing for you, but that’s not normal. But so I am really glad to hear you mention the seasonal aspect of tracking your data, because I wouldn’t want any photographers who are really focused on booking trends and how much money you make each month to try to compare what they got in September or October to like what they’re doing in February, because that comparison makes absolutely no sense
Carolina: It’s also very,
Colie: 80 or 90% of the photographers.
Carolina: like a psychological thing, right? If I’m gonna compare, as you mentioned, let’s say family photographers, they’re really busy during the fall, right? That’s like super high season, and as you said, January, nobody’s booking anybody in January because it’s back to school.
Christmas had just happened. They spend all their money. But if I see that paper right, when I’m like, oh, in October I made, I don. Let’s, let’s pull a number, whatever, 20 grand on sessions, and then comes January and I had a thousand dollars, I’m gonna be depressed immediately and I’m gonna start doubting myself like, oh my God, what am I doing wrong?
I need to close business. I need to find a job, because that’s how we do it, right? That’s, we all go through that. So I need to compare, okay, wait a second. I need to compare. [00:12:00] August to August, you know, September to September, and then see, and then also understand if there is any wedding photographers listening to this.
Last year was the wedding boom. It was insane. We all had so much work that it was crazy. This year things are gonna be different. So also understanding that, so there is so many things that we need to understand, but also, again, I think the main component is when you ask a photographer that that comes to you and says like, things are in well on my business.
And then you ask a deeper question, the the result is like, I’m just not booking. Okay, let’s dive a little bit deeper. No, no, no. I’m just not booking.
Colie: I’m just not booking
Carolina: And I think that’s like the last goal for business. and I always say like, if your goal is just to book more clients, you’re gonna be disappointed because there are so many little steps To get to that final goal, I want you to focus on the little things that you can control, because at the end of the day, technically you cannot control how many clients you book, but you can control how you show up on Instagram.
You can [00:13:00] control how many blog posts you do, you can control how you curate your galleries, and that’s gonna lead to either more bookings or no bookings.
Colie: Yeah. And so like last year I even got caught up in this and the only way that I was able to like get myself out of the spiral was by looking at my data. So guys, if you’re not currently tracking your data, like the reason that I’ve asked Carolina on this podcast today to talk about this is to make sure that for the rest of 2023 that you are tracking your data.
At the end of last year, I was like, oh my gosh, like la like at the end of 2022, I was reminiscing about 2021. Like, oh no, I did so much better in Q4 in 2021 than this year. Like everything is slow, slow, slow. . And then I went into my air table and I looked at the money that I actually made. And, you know, surprise, surprise, I actually made more money in Q4 of 2022 than I did of 2021.
So I was [00:14:00] remembering incorrectly, and this was causing me to be really down and worried about my business when I really didn’t need to be, because I looked at my, you know, my income and I’m like, no, I, I actually made more money now. It wasn’t sign. , but I did make more money and I was tricking myself into thinking that things were slower than they actually were.
But since I mentioned tracking your data, so Carolina, you literally get a piece of paper and you write
Carolina: Oh, I’m old school
Colie: the papers?
Carolina: so I’m old school. I like to write things down. I like my color pencils. So, uh, literally what I do is I have this very skinny. Calendars, they’re very skinny, so like I can have them for several years and for like the past four years that I have implemented this thing, it’s really easy for me to go back to my paper calendar and look at it.
Is it recommendable? No. What you can do is you can update technology, right? Yes. You can update technology. So you can [00:15:00] have a CRM that can tell you how to do these things. Once again, I don’t use a crm. My second favorite things are Excel spreadsheets. I love them because it’s real. I really clicked to like my top 2021, 2022, 2023, and then I can see everything.
Um, so I do that, you know, like I have my paper thing and then I have my Excel sheet. I’m super old school.
Colie: wrong with writing it down on Paper. Carolina, I don’t wanna make you, I mean, I just, I wanna make sure that you have a method of organizing the paper because you can’t see my desk. I make sure that you have a nice, clean background to see me when I do this podcast, but my desk is fucking horrendous.
Like there are piece of papers with notes jotted everywhere, especially after consultation calls, like for consultation calls, I literally write down notes, pen and. , and then what do I do? I take that and if they actually book me, I go type those notes into DTO so that I have them so that the piece of paper is not just, you know, on my desk forever and then accidentally gets tossed.
So I do [00:16:00] value writing things down. I just wanna make sure that you either translate that into an electronic version that will never get. Or that you have some kind of filing system to like keep track of all these little pieces of paper where you’ve written down all of these really great stats about your business.
Carolina: think obviously the easier is a digital thing that you can just one click away from like any year that you want and everything. It’s saving to the cloud and all that. But, monthly I do use a paper calendar to track everything and I also use a paper calendar to, Write down when I post, like for any content creation that I use, so like when I post, when I blog, I write down so that at the end of the, at the end of the month, I can have literally have like a bird view of like how. Much content I created during the month, and then I can go back to my numbers and be like, oh, well now it makes sense why I get so many followers. Because I was posting constantly or once again, be like, well, no wonder I got two new followers because I posted never so[00:17:00]
Colie: Yeah, so the one thing that’s really changed in my business since I was on your podcast is now I am absolutely obsessed with Airtable. Do you know what Airtable is, or do you use it for anything in your business?
Carolina: I don’t, but tell us all about it.
Colie: I mean, so actually I’m creating a template that photographers will be able to use cuz like you said, you’re writing down all this data and at the end of last year, I had a three part series.
The week of Thanksgiving, I believe it’s episodes, 26, 27, and 28, and I was basically trying to get people pumped up to do an audit of their business in Q1 of the next year. I feel like everyone should look at their data. I mean, yearly is like absolute minimum. , but you know, I would prefer that you do it more often than that.
But what I was finding was that, you know, everybody is relying on their CRMs. And CRMs do not let you aggregate data in order to make decisions. Like, first of all, your CR M has nothing to do with your podcast downloads, so you can’t put that in there. Or even if you [00:18:00] created a form to put your podcast downloads in there, like you can’t see all of your podcast forms at one time in Dosa or really any other C rm.
If you do it in something like Airtable, you can look at everything at once and kind of make some data decisions based on, you know, how the data looks throughout the year or comparing this year to last year. So it is something that I am a little obsessed with and not everyone needs to jump into Airtable.
I mean, Google Sheets, you mentioned that an Excel spreadsheet is great, but. . Once you start really tracking this data and you have it in that Excel spreadsheet and you wanna do even more with it, that’s when I would consider something like Airtable. But I’m absolutely obsessed. Like I have spent weeks getting all of my data together because, you know, with the podcast.
I do wanna know if I’m growing. I do wanna know if my downloads now are better than they were when the podcast started back in May. I mean, so I love having all, you know, all kinds of data at my fingertips, which is what we’re gonna transfer to next. Cuz we’ve talked about Instagram, [00:19:00] we’ve talked about your podcast, but we haven’t talked a lot about website and I feel like that is what a lot of people.
Will gain the most value from, in terms of photographers. So how do you track website data and what are you looking at?
Carolina: So I track, I use Google Analytics and I use Google Search Console. Both of them are free. Anybody can use them. It takes, you know, a couple of playing around to understand exactly what you’re looking at. But super simple. And there is a million tutorials on, on the YouTube so you can go watch it.
So what I track is users. right? I wanna know how many people actually not sessions, because that’s different. Just wanna tell how many people hit my website every month. Then the second thing most important to me is how long they stay on my website. I don’t care if I have a million people visiting my website and they stay 10 seconds, that means absolutely nothing.
I’d rather have a hundred people that stay. And again, [00:20:00] understanding the numbers because if you don’t know the numbers for websites, this could be like insignificant. A minute. That’s nothing. Literally a minute on website is half an eternity. Yes, So, so if you’re, if your analytics are over a minute and a half or you know anything over a minute high five yourself, you’re doing
Colie: Good job.
Carolina: The next thing that I track is my bounce rate. That means, If somebody stayed on my website, and if they just look at one page and they left, that is a bounce rate. Doesn’t mean that they immediately hit and then they left. They can stay on your homepage for an hour, but if they didn’t see any other page, that’s a bounce rate.
I want my bounce rate to be really, really, really low. This is gonna change
Colie: Caroline, I’m just gonna interrupt you. Do you know what your bounce rate is? What’s your
Carolina: Yes. So
Colie: I love talking about
Carolina: my bounce rate for my photography website. Sometimes I think that I’m not getting the right analytics because this doesn’t seem right. Last month was less than, I think it was [00:21:00] 1.3%, which in my mind I’m like, this doesn’t sound right.
This doesn’t sound right because an average is about 30, 40%.
Colie: I mean, it’s even higher than that. I’ll be honest, bounce rates are even higher than that. But when I was tracking my bounce rate, like at the beginning of my business, my bounce rate was always like less than 5%. I mean, for years I had a bounce rate that was under 5%. It’s much higher now, I think because I don’t spend as much time on one website.
I’m not updating it like all of those things. And it’s funny because once you get done talking about websites, we’re gonna move into Pinterest,
Carolina: Oh, okay.
Colie: And I found that one of the things that really increased my bounce rate overall was when I started using Pinterest because people were coming to my website for like the fresh 48 content, and then they were just immediately leaving because, you know, those people aren’t local to me.
They’re not.
Carolina: Correct.
Colie: Yeah, they were just coming for the inspiration. So they would see that one blog post and then they would leave. And so when I started actively using Pinterest, my bounce rate went from like under 5% to like [00:22:00] 40 or 50%.
Carolina: tell you how to fix that.
Colie: when I looked at the different channels, like Pinterest was like 95%.
I was, oh my God, that’s so horrible.
Carolina: Which we’ll talk about this in a second, but that’s important to note here for. Five minutes into the future. But another thing that I track obviously is the channels. I wanna know how people get into my website. So the majority of my analytics will be obviously first Google. Then it is direct traffic, and then it’s my love for Pinterest.
My baby is, keeps working for me and I love it. So I track that and then, I track location because again, if I have all these amazing traffic coming all the way from Australia, well, I don’t live in Australia, I live in Miami. I don’t travel for work. I love to travel for funsies, but do not, I don’t care how much you wanna pay me, I will not do it.
That’s not my thing. So I don’t care if people from other countries or other states are looking at my website, however, I am a Miami wedding photographer and I photograph a lot of [00:23:00] destination weddings in Miami. I know that a lot of my clients come from New York and we are enough, California. I don’t know why, because the weather there is fantastic.
I don’t know what they’re coming here for, the humidity, but they’re doing it. So when I take a look at my analytics and I see that the, a lot of my traffic comes from, you know, New York and California. I have five myself. I’m like, those are future clients. They’re looking at my website. I’m good. People from Montana and things like that.
I’m like, okay, good. Come here for the inspiration, but I know you are not gonna be probably my client. So those are the things that I track and I keep a close eye on percentage. Bounce rate. And after that I take a look at sessions. I wanna know how many, you know, how many pages in average are they looking at?
And because I have a lot of breadcrumbs on my website, I get about, you know, four pages per session. So that’s a lot.
Colie: So let’s actually talk about breadcrumbs. Let’s talk about what you can do once you’ve actually looked at this data on your website. So let’s say. That [00:24:00] you were looking at your Google Analytics, and for some reason this month you got like 200 separate hits on this blog post that was related to having a wedding at one particular venue in Miami.
Like what would you do with that information in terms of making it into a marketing effort for your business?
Carolina: So if I see a lot of effort or, or like a lot of interest into a particular venue, obviously I wanna create a blog post about that venue, not about that wedding, but about that venue. Who gets married there, what are the benefits of getting married there? At what time they close, where’s the address? Like even.
Little simple things like that that you think people don’t care about. They’re searching for those. And if you’re giving them a blog post with beautiful pictures and those answers, here they are. Are we talking about breadcrumbs? Right? Because maybe somebody’s looking for wedding. You know, xve in Miami, they land on my blog, they see it.
I give them already what they want, right? So you will think that the bounce rate now is gonna be really high, right? Because they came, they ate, they leave. [00:25:00] Well, no, because that’s when breadcrumbs come into place. So at the bottom of that blog post, I’m gonna leave them three other weddings, one at that venue so they can see a different aesthetic.
And then I’m gonna use two other venues that are similar to that venue, but they have a little twist to them because I wanna keep them interested. Maybe they are just searching around. And this could be exactly the same thing for family photography. So like if you have a, you know, let’s say a beach wedding that is doing really, really well.
Well maybe throw in a city session at the bread breadcrumb so they can have like, oh, I thought I wanted a beach session, but clearly what I need is, uh, cities, you know, and that’s how you keep them in your website. That’s when you use Pinterest instead of their bouncing because they already consume the content that they came here to consume.
Right. They were looking for a beach family session in your city. They came, they saw, they thought it was beautiful, and then the breadcrumbs. , what about an actual city session? Because I actually don’t like sand on my shoes. Maybe this is what I [00:26:00] want. What about if you are a family photographer? On top of that, you put like the top 10 ice cream places in your city because now you’re giving them like, oh, wait a minute.
We also wanna have ice cream after our session. So it’s not only about just photography, it’s about like those other little things that you can add. Or you can even have a beautiful, fun family session at an ice cream partner. So breadcrumbs, super important. , I love ice cream too, so.
Colie: And guys, I think what I wanna, what I wanna make sure that you’re taking away from what Carolina is saying is that breadcrumbs are intentional and they are specific to that post or that page, because I don’t know what your website looks like, but on my blog pages, you know, if you have a sidebar, maybe you have static links that are really important to your business.
Or maybe in the footer of your blog you have links to go to the previous blog session and. Block session. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about intentional links inside the body of the [00:27:00] post or the page that are specifically telling these people, now that you have seen this, this is likely what you need to look at next.
And so that is gonna help you keep your bounce rates really low. It’s gonna help keep people on your page, which increases each the average time procession, which are all things that Google loves. Google loves.
Carolina: absolutely. So breadcrumbs, super intentional. I see. I do a lot of websites, reviews. Almost nobody uses breadcrumbs. Everybody has like the next, previous next, if you are a photographer like myself and you do weddings and families, if I block, let’s say a family session, and then the next is a wedding, those are two different audiences.
Colie: Yes.
Carolina: So, so that next previous is not gonna work. What I need to go is into that family session and more families, you know, and again, I always do similar. I do two similar and one, one very different. I’m like, maybe, maybe I wanna present a different opportunity to them. Maybe they don’t know that they want this, [00:28:00] so I keep them interested.
And the same thing for weddings.
Colie: So we’re just gonna talk about one more thing on websites before we move on to Pinterest. Cuz you know, Pinterest, it’s the thing that I know the least about and I know that you know the most about it. But the last thing that I wanna mention on websites is, and I’m sure that you get this because you also mentor photographers, they will say, well, my inquiries are low.
And then, you know, looking at your website traffic is one thing, but the next thing that you should look at is, but how many people actually clicked your contact?
Carolina: correct.
Colie: Because if you only got one inquiry, like in January, if for some reason you only got one person who inquired about your services, but you have 75 people who actually clicked your contact page and looked at it, you’ve got a problem.
Carolina: correct? Yes.
Colie: tell you what your problem is from a podcast, but. , that’s a definite problem. You don’t have a traffic problem, you have a conversion problem. And so if you are not actively tracking how many people are ending up on your contact page each month, [00:29:00] and then looking at how many people actually fill out your contact page, whether that gets them on the backend of your website or it, you know, moves them over to your C R M, that is a definite number that every photographer should be tracking for like the rest of their.
Carolina: Absolutely. I double down on that. And then again, understand, it’s all about understanding each aspect of your business, right? Because you get, as you mentioned, you have a lot of traffic. You get just one inquiry. What’s happening here is. Again, this is a problem that we need to dive deeper. Is your contact form super long?
Is your
Colie: Is your contact form
Carolina: Is your contact form working exactly like what’s going on here? Then also understand that perhaps you got 20 increase, right? And you’re like, good, I’m gonna book the oldest 20. The chances of that are very slim. Again, conversions are about 10%. So if you are getting 20 increase, you are super lucky if you’re looking.
Colie: Yeah,
Carolina: how it is. So, exactly. So you want more inquiries, you need more traffic, you want more [00:30:00] bookings, you need more people contact, you know, sending your inquiry form. But those are things that we need to always analyze and understand, and again, understand also the bigger numbers of like conversions, 10% high five yourself, all the way to the bank, because that’s actually a huge number.
So, I just had a conversation with somebody and she was like, ah, I just booked three, what, like three couples last month? So low. I’m like, how many do you need to book, girl? Like, what’s going on
Colie: what are your prices? Maybe we should talk about your
Carolina: exactly. So like every, every single thing has like a little, Extra layer that we need to look at and data give us an opportunity to see all this.
And that’s for me why I’m so obsessed with like tracking data. I wanna know exactly where the problem is so I can fix that problem and don’t get myself all worked up over something that is not, do I still get worked up over things that I know they’re not, of course, right. , you know, at least you know the numbers help me, you know, get out of it,
Colie: Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about Pinterest
Carolina: do it.
Colie: So, you know, I have two sides of my business. I [00:31:00] have the photography side and I have the Dubsado side. I actually get a ton of hits off of the photography things that I’ve posted over the years, especially Fresh 40 eights, and that’s why I mentioned it earlier. I have several pins that have gone viral and like I continue to get, like hit after hit month after month traffic.
those are not converting because most of those people are not here, and my data is what tells me that. And so then I’m like, oh, that’s okay. Like I don’t need people to convert when they’re clicking on a fresh 48 pin from New York because I’m not going to New York to photograph their baby. So you and I agree on this, but.
What, what kind of data should we be looking at in terms of Pinterest coming to our website, and then if our data or our statistics are low, what are some of the things that you suggest that we do to work on it to make Pinterest work better for our business?
Carolina: Okay. So this is, I think, the, the problem that every single photographer has with Pinterest. So [00:32:00] like, oh, I’m getting traffic, but I’m not getting bookings. Or the traffic that is visiting my Pinterest is not the people that I, that, that will work with me, right? Like you’re. For me, somebody in Australia, I’m not doing that.
So the first thing that I always teach on my Pinterest is like your Pinterest, you have to do it like your website. It has to be local to you. If I just have a board that says wedding photography, guess what? I might go viral, but like I don’t care. I don’t care because I’m just like, I’m Miami wedding photographer.
So the first thing that we need to fix on our Pinterest is the keywords that we use. How local are we? Once again, if you talk to me because this. The other, the other little pet peeve that I have with photographers, I wanna be an a destination wedding photographer. Okay, but where? Destination? Oh, the, the, the world is my oyster.
Well, yes, the world is your oyster, but you can just put destination, wedding photographer. Be a specific, you know, if you are into the universe and manifestation, you know that people loves clarity. Put Bali, put [00:33:00] Indonesia, I don’t know the exact destination that you. So that will be the first thing. So you might be getting a lot of things for Fresh 48, because that’s a very broad keyword that perhaps a lot of people all over the world are looking at and they’re landing on your pin because your pin has gone viral, but they’re not clients to you because they’re not local to your city.
What I will say is like go back to those boards, those pins, and add your location fresh 24. , Miami Fresh 24 in New York, what have you, and then your traffic is gonna decrease. but the people that are finding your website are actually most likely local to you. So then you have a higher chance of converting, because once again, let’s say a mom in Miami wants to do a fresh, fresh 24, they land on your beautiful image and they immediately are gonna bounce to, because they’re like, she’s not in Miami.
I’m not gonna pay extra to fly somebody into my, the, like, the possibility already ends because it’s a lot, a lot [00:34:00] of mental work they have to do and work that you’re not gonna do because you’re not gonna travel for. So it’s a lose lose on both ends. So let’s get local. Once you’re local and you have cleaned your Pinterest and all that, as you mentioned, traffic is gonna decrease, but traffic now is going to be more valuable to you.
So the things that I track on Pinterest, as you can see, I didn’t mention those on my list because I track my Pinterest through my Google Analytics. But let’s say that I’m inside Pinterest. Putting a lot of effort into outbound clicks, that means that somebody land on my pin, they click on the pin, they read the pin, and they click again on the pin, and now they’re on my website.
And that’s when I start tracking. And once I can see my Google Analytics and I see my Pinterest side of my business, I can see how long they’re staying on my website. , where is that traffic coming from? Mostly Florida, New York, California. So I know I’m doing my Pinterest strategies working and then those are the numbers that I look, Pinterest give you these other analytics that is, [00:35:00] impressions.
I think that’s how they call them. And you see and they get you really excited Cause it’s like the first thing that you see.
Colie: 17,000
Carolina: know exactly. And you’re like, Ooh, I’m doing great. , I don’t care. Once again, impressions are good, obviously, because the more that you know, that interest shows your pins, the better chances you have.
But once again, we’re going back to like the cla, the kind of people you want clicking on your pins. I don’t do general things. I don’t do wedding, romantic wedding images, bright, looking at the sunset. No, those are my clients. I wanna be wedding in Xve Miami wedding, you know, Miami Garden Wedding. Very, very specific.
So I can track that once again inside my, Google Analytics. So that’s how I do it. I focus on outbound clicks and once from Pinterest, I go back to my Google Analytics because you will be like the most. Honest or valuable information that I can have if I land on my Pinterest right now, I think it’s just like over 200,000, you [00:36:00] know, view, uh, impressions.
Good. Good. Okay. Great. I wanna say exactly.
Colie: I wanna know.
Carolina: Exactly. So, so that’s what I wanna focus on.
Colie: Well, Carolina. So it sounds to me like you’re saying keywords. Keywords local. So do you use the same strategy for Pinterest keywords that you use for SEO o keywords on your website? Like is it the same strategy do you have to think about it? Differe.
Carolina: I would say that is the same essence. And then obviously on my website I’m a little bit more curated. And on Pinterest I’m a little bit more broad. So in, in my website, I’m just not gonna put a blog post that says Miami Garden Wedding. Now I’m gonna go a little bit more into detail. I’m gonna do a little bit more, you know, detailed keywords, you know, I wanna curate a little bit more.
And Pinterest I can be a little bit more broad, like, yeah, Miami Garden Wedding will do. Sometimes I go into the specific of the venue, but the essence of like a Miami Garden wedding [00:37:00] works for me. So,
Colie: they’re looking for inspiration. I gotcha.
Carolina: Exactly. So you know, it’s, you do. I think that the best strategy for Pinterest will be, if you’re really good with SEO, you’re gonna do really good on Pinterest.
And the same once you learn Pinterest and you’re like, oh, I’m learning about keywords, I’m learning about being more detailed. I’m learning about not keyword stuffing, but like an actual, you know, curated thing. Then I can implement the same things into my seo. So they go hand in hand. It’s a beautiful relationship. another thing that I didn’t mention about tracking, so this is really important. Let’s say you get 20 inquiries per month. I wanna track where those increases came from. Google, Pinterest Susie referred me to you, this wedding planner refer me to you. And then every month I have another list with every single aspect.
Then at the end of the year I said, oh, I got 60 increase just from Google. Sui sent me actually 15 increase Su Suzy’s going out for lunch with me. [00:38:00] The next one, you know, like, like, you know, like you need to track exactly what’s happening and once. , you see those numbers, you compare them with the last year and then you see, like Susie used to send me so many clients this year, Susie sent me zero.
What happened to Susie? Did I forget about Susie? Was I not being kind to Susie? What happened to Susie? And then that helps you, you know, fix whatever it is.
Colie: Yeah guys and I, you know, I have to put in a plug for a C R M cuz she just gave me like a perfect tee up. So guys, if you guys are not asking people on your contact form where they found you and you’re not tracking that data somewhere, your c r m is a good place to start. Every C r M that I can think of right now has what they call to be a project source question.
I mean, that’s what it’s called in dsa. It has other names in other CRMs, but you can actually put. The traffic sources that you want to track, and when you an when they answer that question on the form on the back end of your crm, you can probably track how many people you got from [00:39:00] Instagram, how many people were referrals, how many people came in from Google, and some of the CRMs give you really nice datas so that you, or data graphs, so that you can see like a pie chart or a bark chart of where these people came from.
Do it in your crm, and if you’re like Carolina and you don’t have one , you need to ask that question on your contact form and then make sure that you are keeping a checklist of where the people are coming from in your spreadsheet on your piece of paper that you’re filing somewhere. I mean, the bottom line guys is ask the question and track the data.
Carolina: Correct, and I would say don’t ex don’t wait until the end of the year to do this, because then it becomes like a very tedious task. It’s like, ah. And that’s why people don’t do it because they’re like, ah, it’s such a huge mountain to climb to go and try to final this. That’s what I love, doing it monthly, because then at the end of the year, it is really easy just to see and to do the math.
So yes, monthly it’s easier for.
Colie: Carolina, this was a lot of good information and you know, guys, I’m not gonna [00:40:00] let her escape off the podcast without asking my two questions that I ask everyone. So, Carolina, number one, what do you currently outsource in your business?
Carolina: I outsource my calling. I outsource my editing. Uh, that’s it. And by outsourcing, I mean I use ai, artificial intelligence, so like, . If I have a wedding I show up with, I always say that I’m not gonna overshoot. I always overshoot. So I show up with like 7,000 images. I am not sitting through 7,000 images. I put them through after shoot and then after shoot gives me back.
They’re like, oh, here is your gallery that has, let’s say, 2000 images. That for me is still a lot of images. So then I manually go and I call. 2000 images, but I went from seven to 2000. That seems like a more easier mountain to climb. And then I use, imagine. So once I call my wedding, let’s say I ended up with 900 images.
I send them through, imagine they do AI again editing, which is [00:41:00] amazing because within. Literally an hour. I have all my images ready, and then I do go through all those images and I make sure that I adjust whatever I need to adjust. I still have to do some things, but my time, instead of spending a hundred percent of my time doing that now I’m spending 10% of my time doing that task.
Colie: All right guys, so she is just really outsourcing the normal stuff that we hear from all photographers. But like you’re doing your podcast all on your own. You’re doing all your blog writing, like, wow, Carolina.
Carolina: yes. And I can do that because I am very organized. So I have, again, my tracking, my planning, and I have themes for my days. So like, I know Tuesdays is podcast days, so like after doing this, I do my own podcast and then I edit everything on Tuesdays and that’s it. I forget about it.
Colie: Okay, second question, Carolina, what’s your biggest fuck up in your business and what did you learn from it?
Carolina: Not tracking my data So [00:42:00] it was really because, uh, again, you don’t know what you don’t know. Right? And when you don’t track and you come to the end of the year and you’re like, damn, that was a bomber.
Colie: Yeah.
Carolina: Or, or, or you think the perception that it was a bummer, right? But then if you look at your data, you’re like, oh, it wasn’t that bad.
Or then you can be like, oh wow, I need to readjust here. I need to stop doing this so I can spend more time doing that. Or, this was really good. I’m wanna double down on that effort. So not tracking your data and not knowing your numbers, not knowing your analytics was like the biggest mistake that I did on my business.
Colie: All right, Carolina. If people wanna know more about your podcast, about your other offers related to Pinterest and data tracking efforts, where can they find you?
Carolina: So the easiest way will be the tog republic.com. That is tog republic.com. I have everything in there. I have the podcast, which I release every week. I have a Pinterest class in case you wanna know more [00:43:00] about Pinterest. I do have a patreon channel that is only $10 a month where I talk about data marketing, SEO, website.
It’s like, I think I had, they sent me like pictures. I’m like, look at my spreadsheet. I love it. So start tracking your thing.
Colie: happy. That happened to me after I did that three series episode and actually, Let’s see when yours. Okay, so guys, I, I did an episode last week when this airs with Jill Smith because she listened to my three episode series on auditing your offers and then inside a Facebook group, she showed me her, her spreadsheet with all her charts and I was like, oh my God, come be on my podcast.
So if you have gotten to this episode and you haven’t listened to Jill’s episode, it aired last week,
Carolina: There you go. Go check Jill’s episode.
Colie: Carolina, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was a blast. We’re gonna have to do this another time because I didn’t even get to ask you about why you’re still not using a C R M. So we will save that for the next episode,
Carolina: Keep me accountable. Keep [00:44:00] me accountable. We’ll see how that goes.
Colie: Sounds good, everyone. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.
