Are you ready to automate you social media sales strategy? In today’s episode, Dayna Schaaf joins us to discuss the power of ManyChat and automations for marketing. Listen in as we walk through setting up trigger words and automated responses in Instagram DMs and how they can help photographers efficiently handle client inquiries, build engaging waitlists, and provide instant gratification to potential clients.
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Guest Bio:
Dayna is the marketing director at This Can’t Be That Hard, a business education platform for portrait photographers. She help solo-prenuers, like photographers, learn how to up level their marketing strategy without having to hire a social media manager or marketing expert. She lives in Phoenix with her husband and two frenchies. Her life’s ambition is to solve the Wordle on the first try.
If you’ve tried setting up your Dubsado or Honeybook account, yet aren’t actually utilizing all of the features it offers, I want to invite you to check out The CRM Blueprint. My course includes templates for all of the forms, emails, and workflows that you need to get paid in one easy step. Ready to maximize your use of Dubsado or Honeybook, enroll in The CRM Blueprint today! Use the code PODCAST for 10% off.
Here are the highlights…
02:33 – The Importance of Marketing Systems
09:14 – Understanding ManyChat and Its Benefits
17:17 – Implementing ManyChat Strategies
26:03 – Opt-In Strategies for Lead Magnets
27:03 – Lead Magnets and Their Value
30:04 – Creating a Waitlist with ManyChat
32:33 – Maximizing Waitlist Effectiveness
37:17 – Free vs. Paid ManyChat Options
42:07 – Consistency in Marketing
43:24 – The Consistency Club and Marketing Summit
Mentioned in this Episode
Episode 84: Applying the Rule of 7 with Dayna Schaaf
Dubsado – Get 30% off your first payment (month or year) with code coliejames
HoneyBook – Get 50% off your first year
Streamline Your Success Marketing Summit – Use BIZFIRST for 50% off your ticket
Connect with Dayna
Website: thiscantbethathard.com
ManyChat Training: thiscantbethathard.com/manychat
Consistency Club: go.thiscantbethathard.com/club
Instagram: @thiscantbethathard_
Instagram: @daynamarieschaaf
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. I just can’t get enough of the creators of This Can’t Be That Hard. if I don’t invite Annemie on the podcast, her better half Dayna showing up in her place. Good morning, Dayna. Welcome back to the podcast.
Dayna: you so much for having me back. It’s so good to see you and to be here.
Colie: I mean, so guys, literally I was listening to their podcast for the consistency club, which we’ll talk about that before the end of the episode, I’m sure. But I was listening to the episode of the consistency club where the two of them get together and they chat about all things marketing. And I’m immediately texting Dayna, okay, listen, you were supposed to come back on the podcast and I was sick and we never did that.
So how about we do it before the next marketing summit, which again, we’re going to chat about this before the end of of the episode, but guys, I literally texted her yesterday and now we are recording this today. So We are fast action people,
Dayna: Yes, you and I are both like the type of person who are like, we have an idea. Let’s pounce on it right away.
Colie: immediately. So this is not Dayna’s first rodeo on business first creatives. If you are struggling with selling and not wanting to be salesy in episode 84, we talked about the rule of seven, which kind of turned into the rule of 12, which then morphed into like the rule of 24. But basically. We talked all about a concept of how many times you have to get in front of your audience before they think that they need the thing that you have been trying to sell them.
And so this episode is not about selling, at least for the most part. So if you are struggling with selling to your audience, I highly recommend that you go back to episode 84 and listen to our conversation because I am sure it’s going to be just as good as this one.
Dayna: Well, I hope so. And I think like when people hear sales, you know, they, most people are like, oh, I hate sales. And I totally get that. And, my, you know, background is somewhat in sales, but mostly in marketing. And I think that sales and marketing are really just like different sides of the same coin.
And when you can master your marketing, It makes your sales effortless because then they just happen and it feels really natural on both sides, on your side and on your client’s side. So that’s always my goal is, you know, to help solopreneurs learn how to market their business, you know, in a way that feels really authentic and also, that helps them sell more ultimately.
Colie: And I want to say, guys, today we’re going to be talking about systems. But we are not going to be talking about the client experience systems that I jump on my bandwagon and like wave signs at you all day, every day, twice a day, whatever it is, I was having a conversation with myself. I mean, Dayna, do you ever do that?
Do you like have conversations
Dayna: Never, never.
Colie: was thinking to myself the other day, you know, I really need to like jump back into solo episodes and have a conversation about what it means to be a system strategist, because I need to call myself a client experience strategist. a lot more than I do because there are so many systems that every single entrepreneur needs in order to run their business.
And we’re going to be talking about marketing systems today. And I am 100 percent not an expert in that. And so if you feel like you need help in marketing systems, I mean, I could give you some ideas, but I’m definitely not your girl to like, help you set that up or anything like that. So I just feel like going forward, I want to expose you guys to like all of the different systems that you could have in your business beyond the client experience ones that I talk about nonstop.
And so today’s conversation is just a really good starter into that conversation.
Dayna: Yeah, and I think what’s cool about systems is even if that’s not your like, if whatever you’re creating the system for isn’t your jam, like, if that’s not your thing, creating a system is actually going to help you do it less. So like, if you’re like, Oh, I hate marketing, or I hate sales, or, I hate math, for example.
If you create a system around doing that thing, it means that you actually have to do less work in the long run because now you’ve like created a system for doing it over and over again and it will stress you out less because you know that you have created a fail safe system using technology, right?
There’s no like human error involved that’s just gonna like You know, go like whether that is trans auto transferring money to your savings every month so that you don’t have to do it. Like I am definitely capable of transferring 500 to my savings account every month. Do I do it? No, not if I don’t have it set up to do it automatically.
So I think that is sort of the mindset behind system. So just get into that. Brainspace. As we go into this conversation, if you’re like already feeling some resistance around marketing or sales or systems, remember, they’re here to help you. They are here to actually make your business easier and to free you up so that you have time to do the creative thing that you got into photography to do, which is hopefully take photographs of people.
Colie: think it’s hysterical guys that Dayna mentioned basically financial systems because if you did not listen to last week’s episode with Madison Brown of Madison dearly bookkeeping, I seriously need you to go back and listen to that episode because we talked all about creating financial systems for yourself and habits so that bookkeeping doesn’t feel overwhelming.
Dayna: Love that.
Colie: So now we’re going to kick it over to marketing because I feel, and I’ve said this many times, but I feel like marketing is like the hidden thing that no one told you was probably going to be the most important part of your job that no one thinks about when they decide to open a business. Like in terms of tasks in your business, I would actually say that marketing takes up the biggest chunk of your pie.
Dayna: I agree. And that honestly is sort of like where I felt like I wanted to help people the most is how do I help people shrink down that section of their pie without, bringing the quality of what they’re doing down. Right. Because I think a lot of times what happens, why marketing takes so much of the pie is because people are spinning their wheels on like, what should I say?
What should I do? How do I do this? Instead of again, just creating us like coming up with an idea. in the beginning, putting in a bit more work, coming up with that idea and then systematizing it so that you don’t have to think about it every single time. And whether that is, you know, an email marketing campaign or how you respond to people in your Instagram DMs, it’s going to save you time over the long run and it’s going to end up working better for you.
Colie: And I feel like we should also just put the little nugget out there in case you hear us saying marketing over and over again, and you are thinking of Instagram. We are going to talk about Instagram today, but neither of us believes that Instagram is all the marketing that you should be doing inside of your business.
Dayna: No, absolutely not.
Colie: but I, do you not feel like every time you talk about marketing, you have to give it the caveat of, I am not just talking about
Dayna: about social media totally. And I think I, I might’ve even said this on the last episode. I can’t remember, but I really like to explain your different marketing, pawns that you have, like, right. So Instagram is just one pond that you can go fishing in. Right. But then if you want to like have, okay, this is such a bad analogy because I am not a fisher woman.
So I don’t know the terminology. But like, you know, when they stock a pond full of fish and then there’s just like, you’re definitely going to catch fish because there’s a lot of fish in that pond. That’s what you want to do. You want to pull those fish from the river of Instagram into the pond of your email marketing. Somebody who’s into fishing is like cringing right now, listening to that analogy. So you just want to like, Stock that, you know, that you’re at the pond of, I would say really your email marketing is going to be the heart of how I want you to market your business. But obviously there’s social media, there’s in person marketing, there’s referrals, there’s, there’s all these different places that you can find your quote unquote leads from and then you want to bring them into like your network, which is stocked pond.
Colie: mean, I, I totally agree and there’s no really wrong way to market as long as you are marketing to different areas. I mean, I just, I think the 1 thing that I will say is, please don’t put all your fish in 1 single pond. Like, you need to be getting people from like, I cannot believe we are on these pond references.
Dayna: we need a better analogy. But to your point, I think today we are going to talk a little bit about Instagram specifically because I’m going to be talking about a tool that people can use on social media. But I want you to sort of on a macro level take the the idea of this conversation and apply it everywhere else, which is the biggest system that is at play here is gathering needs from outside sources and bringing them into a central area, which is your email marketing.
That’s the macro, the macro takeaway from this. And today we’re going to specifically be talking about how you can do that on Instagram, using a tool called ManyChat to automate your marketing so that you are able to Pull people over to that email system with as little resistance as
Colie: I mean, guys, I feel like from now on, I’m going to keep track of how long it takes either me or my guest to say the word automate. And then who says it first? I think I’m going to start keeping track of this. Because once again, I did not say automate first. I don’t think I’ve said it the entire time we’ve been on.
But let’s jump in because I feel like. ManyChat is becoming super, super popular, but if there are people in the listening audience that aren’t really on Instagram that much, they might not know what ManyChat is. So first tell us what ManyChat is and why it’s so helpful for us, you know, entrepreneurs, photographers, creatives, all of that jazz.
Dayna: Okay, so many chat is a DM bot, so it’s artificial intelligence, but it is something that you can tweak on the back end, right? So it and it smartly recognizes when somebody is sending you a message about something or commenting on a social media post, and it can trigger a DM bot. a specific action based on, you know, however you set it up.
So this, I think a lot of people have resistance to ManyChat in its original iteration, which was before it was purchased by Instagram. It actually like kind of dinged your account if you were using this, like, you know, like the algorithm, like suppressed your, your posts. But now Instagram has purchased ManyChat and it integrates with it seamlessly and actually they promote it, they support it.
And so Using ManyChat has not only become, like okay on your account, but it also has really, because they now have the power of meta behind them, they really have up leveled what they are capable of doing. So I’ll just say that for the first, for the people who are like, no, no to the bots. I, I get, I get that you don’t want to come across as like impersonal or, or as a robot, especially as a single person business, right?
That’s something I hear a lot. It’s like, but, But my business is unique and like who I am is like a big part of why people hire me. I totally get that. What’s super cool about ManyChat is that you can literally make every single part of it sound exactly like you. Part 1. Part 2. We as a society have become incredibly accustomed to interacting with robots.
Think about the last time you went to any website to go shopping. You probably immediately got like a pop up that was like, Hi, can I help you find jeans today? Or like, do you wanna, do you wanna do our jean quiz or whatever the heck? And we’re like, yeah. So we understand, you know, even whether that’s a quiz or a chat bot or whatever, We understand that we are interacting with technology and actually, we super appreciate it because it is a low pressure way for us to interact with that brand without feeling the pressure of knowing that there’s a person on the other side that we have to like, feel bad if we’re not going to buy something like, okay.
Dating myself here, but remember when you used to shop in malls and you would like walk by the store and the people with the Fragrances would be like take a sample tip like they would like throw themselves at you outside of the store Like trying to get you to come in and you were like, wow, that is really off putting
Colie: Yes.
Dayna: I do not want you to chase me down in the middle of the mall versus if, you know, you just kind of walk in and there’s like a kiosk and you can like pick up, you know, the fragrance stick and smell it of your, Oh, that smells good.
And now you’re like wandering in the store. It pulls you in in a much more natural way. That’s exactly what these, these automations and these chatbots are able to do. is you’re able to kind of be like, Oh, I’m interested in that. And it’s able to pull you very organically, like through the experience of whatever that brand is, in this case, your photography business, and you know, that you’re in the driver’s seat.
So like, you know, as you’re answering questions or clicking on links that like, at any point you could just walk away and there’s not actually a real person on the other side of the line. And that actually will make you more likely to go further because you’re like, No one’s watching me right now.
There’s no pressure. And our generation is one that is increasingly insistent that we want the information that we want right now. We don’t want to wait for it. I don’t want to send you an email and wait 24 hours for you to respond. I want to know right now. the information that I want to know. Do you have availability?
What are your prices? Do you work with, like, do you shoot what, you know, my, my type of family or my, you know, animals, whatever your, you know, um, specialty is. So that is the key to using a system like this, is that you are able to help people get the information that they want in the moment that they want it, and in a low key, like, low pressure situation.
Doesn’t that sound great?
Colie: It does. Instant gratification. I was, it was on the brain the whole time and she ended up saying it. And then, I mean, I’ve never really considered that it is the low pressure. I have always focused on the fact that you are giving them instant gratification. You are giving them what it is that they’re asking for.
You’re helping them to explore more of your brand before you are personally available in order to help them do this. And this really helps them stay focused on you because what happens, as Dayna mentioned, if They have to send you an email and they have to wait for that response. I guarantee you, if they are in the mood to do the thing right now, they are going to go look for other people that might have more information available to them so that they can make a quick decision.
My husband is definitely one of these people. Like when he is ready to do just about anything, He is like hyper focused on it until he gets that task done and so I mean there is no telling him Oh, no, what does just wait until we hear back from them? No James is already on to the next trying to figure out how he can get this solved since he has like Carved out this 30 minutes in his day in order to do the thing and get it done
Dayna: absolutely. And like, think about who your target audience is. I mean, we are highly distracted, right? So like, if, you know, let’s say a woman is scrolling Instagram, she sees your photo, she’s like, wow, that is exactly the kind of photos that I want for my family this fall. She clicks on your, you know, your photo, and then all of a sudden, a kid screaming in the other room, they’re distracted, she loses that photo, and then she’s never able to find you again, right?
Versus if you are able to give them something to say, like, you know, if you want to get on my wait list, which we’re going to talk about, or, you know, if you want to see my pricing, just comment this one word or whatever, and they’re able to do that. And now that DM is either just waiting for them in their inbox, they can look at it whenever, or maybe they do look at it, then they get distracted and they come back, maybe they look at it.
They look at all your information and they’re like, I want to percolate, but I know exactly where that information is again, when I want, when I want to go back to it,
Colie: Absolutely. It is sitting there waiting for them versus, I mean, what happens to me is like, I’m an old, like I remember seeing it and then I’m scrolling and I’m scrolling and I’m scrolling. And guess what? While I’m scrolling, I find someone else’s photographs and I’m like, okay, you know, this is not the same person, but I love this person just as much.
And then they are able to like, you know, Get into a conversation with that person. And yeah, so, okay, we’ve talked about what many chat is and today we are going to focus on three strategies in order to use many chat to help us create marketing strategies inside of our business. And so the first one that we are going to chat about.
is sending the client the information that they are interested in getting immediately. Now in ManyChat, how is it that we would accomplish this with like, let’s say you mentioned pricing. So how would we get this if someone looks at our Instagram and they’re like, okay, This is amazing. You know, I’m interested in seeing your pricing that they can do something on Instagram in order to get that in their inbox.
Cause I’m just going to add one more thing before you answer. I feel like the other value of doing it through many chat is when I’m on my scroll, I really don’t want to leave and go to like, All these different websites in order to like do something like I want to be able to save it or mark it or get something in my DMs and just continue about my day.
And then when I really am ready to like do the digesting, I can just go back to my DMS and I know that it’s in there waiting for me. But so pricing guide.
Dayna: all the time. Okay. So the most basic interaction in many chat is some, the, the client, you know, the other person on the other side. says a trigger word either in a comment, in a story reply, or in a direct message to you. Those are the three most common ways. And when they say the magic word, whatever, and you can choose what the magic word is.
When they say the magic word, ManyChat sends them a, a text basically. And it says, Here’s the information that you want. That’s the very most basic automation that ManyChat has available to it, right? So it’s like, magic word, here’s the answer. That’s like the very, now, so let’s get into like a little bit more nuance of that.
One thing that you can set up in your ManyChat is something called a conversation starter, which is like, If somebody DMs you for the first time, you can say something like, Hey, like, it’s almost like an answering machine. You’re like, Hey, it’s Colie. Can’t get to my DMS right now. But if you’re looking for,
Colie: one.
Dayna: yeah, literally like press one to stock my portfolio, press two to get right.
But instead of having to press one, you can actually like create these little buttons that say, like, You know, click here to see my portfolio, click here to see my pricing information, and then click here to get my like, you know, top five outfits to wear for fall sessions or whatever, you know, and like the three things that people probably ask you for the most.
So that is, um, a way that you can interact with people the very first time and only the first time that they DM you, that conversation starter can come up. So again, you want that to be simple. Stuff that people, ask for very frequently when they’re first reaching out to you. And you can make it really obvious.
I’ve seen people do this in so many cute ways. Like, Hey, this is my robot assistant. They’ll use like the little robot, you know, icon. Um,
Colie: Ashley,
Dayna: Yeah, so cute. I love that. I know, um, a pet photographer who, who acts like it’s their cat that is answering the thing. So like you can, yeah, like you can make it really cute and funny, like make it on brand for yourself and like, just call it out upfront.
Like, Hey, I, or you can, you know, say like, I am trying to be better about not being on Instagram all the time, or I’m probably at a session or hanging out with my Children right now. So go ahead and like choose one of these options, right? And so not only is that again, like we said, giving them the information that they want in the moment that they want it.
It also really comes across professionally from my my standpoint as if I am somebody that is looking to hire a photographer and I am like worried about a million different things, but getting a An answer like that. Like, I’m like, wow, she must really have her shit together. Like not only that, but like, she’s clearly busy because she’s not just sitting on Instagram, waiting to answer my DMS.
She’s super organized. She’s obviously in demand. And also I’m going to get the information that I want right now. So great. It’s like a win for me on all. So that’s a conversation starter. I think that’s like a really easy way to do it. But if you also just wanted to give them a link to your pricing, like, let’s say you have a post that they see and you, and you say, like, for pricing information for, you know, my pumpkin sessions, you know, comment pumpkin, and I’ll send you a link.
And so then. They would comment pumpkin, and then that would send them a message that says, Hey, I see that you wanted information on my pumpkin sessions. These are happening from October 1st to the 15th at such and such pumpkin patch. Click here for availability and pricing, and that would just simply be a URL that looks like a button in the DMs, and they just tap on that.
It would take them right to your website, right? So easy peasy. That’s like them just hopping over to your website. Looking around, seeing if they, you know, and then hopefully on your website, if you’re smart, you have an opt in form or something like that to capture their information over there. That’s probably the easiest way to set that up.
Colie: And let’s talk about that because I do feel like this first method that we’re talking about is really successful because it is low pressure and it is low commitment. You’re not requiring them to give you an email in order to get your pricing or in order to get this link. Now they have, you know, you actually get their, their information by default, at least their Instagram profile name.
I mean, you, you’re not getting their email, but at least you know how to contact them again, if you would like to. But they don’t feel like they have to provide a lot of information or jump through a lot of hoops in order to get this versus method. Number two, take it away, Dayna.
Dayna: Yeah. And I, let me put a pin in that and say, so just remember from your side, they DM’d you. They maybe have gone and stalked your website, but remember, you’re going to also get the DM. So you know that they have DM’d you, and now you have started a conversation between their account, which not only is going to pull up all of your future posts in their algorithm, but it also gives you the capability of following back up as a human being, like a day later, and being like, Hey, did you get a chance to look at the pumpkin sessions?
Do you have any questions that I can answer for you? Right? Like, easy.
Colie: And guys, I just want to say that has a 24 hour limit to where you can automatically follow up with them. I mean, you can always go in your DMs and see who it was and send it to them manually, but you have the capability of setting it up inside of your automation in ManyChat to automatically follow up with them as long as it hasn’t been 24 hours.
Dayna: is the limitation, which I like. I like that they are like, people have to opt in to be chatted by this bot. And then you can’t just bot chat them for the rest of infinity. You’re only allowed to
Colie: months, every day, let me butt chat you.
Dayna: you’re only allowed to do it for 24 hours. And I actually was even saying it as do it manually, like go back in and actually start a conversation with these people, but you can set it up to be, a DM as well.
Okay. So back to your point. Number two. So the easiest way is here’s a link, click on it, I need no information from you, easy peasy. The next level would be like you’re offering them something that maybe has a bit more value and so they are going to give you their email in exchange for whatever you’re offering them.
So let’s, this would be called a lead magnet guys, so it’s the idea is you’re magnetizing in your leads with something that they want. So again, If you, are a family photographer, I often see these done as like, what to wear guides. Well, but it could be something outside of photography.
That could be like my favorite, Like parks for kids under five or, my favorite, restaurant, like breakfast spots, for families with lots of kids or something like that in your town, because you’re, you’re an expert in your area, right? And that might be something that they want. So whatever your lead magnet is that you have created,
how this DM would work, again, you create your magic word, whatever your magic word is, you know, breakfast or, you know, parks or whatever it is. And it would send them, and let me just remind you, it can be a comment. You can ask people to say it in a comment. You can ask them to just DM you the word. And you can also, if you’ve like created the post and shared it into your stories, you can say like reply to this story with the word, you know, breakfast.
And you can actually set it up to be all three of those things. So if people don’t want to comment because they feel weird about that or whatever, they can DM you. But a lot of people, like you were saying, as they’re on their scroll, they just want to send the quick comment and like be done with it.
So now ManyChat sends them a thing that says, oh hey, I see that you want my like favorite breakfast spots in Denver. And then they’ll say like, yep, that’s exactly what I want. So they’ll click a little button to opt in and then you’ll say, great, here, just, you can, there’s a couple ways to do this.
The simplest way is to say, great, go here, put in your email address, and I’ll email it to you. And you’re going to actually send them externally to your website if you already have that. Form set up on your website. That’s the simplest way to do it. If you want to get fancier, you can actually do a fancier upgraded automation where they just chat you
Colie: Which I do.
Dayna: Yeah, it’s really great, but you do have to upgrade your ManyChat.
So ManyChat can be free and the free version, you could just send them to your website. But if you want to pay 15 a month, you could just say, great, what’s your email address? And they would type it right in, like you’re having a conversation and you would say, great, I sent you 15. You know, the PDF or whatever, it’s in your inbox.
That’s a really up leveled way to do it because they don’t have to leave Instagram. So it’s really easy for them, like it brings
Colie: right back to their scroll.
Dayna: out right back to
Colie: I mean, that’s what I do and I will say, I mean, because I do you and I were chatting before we started. No, I do actually have a lead magnet. I mean, I don’t use it for a lot of things for photography, but my lead magnet is for newborns. Specifically. What’s a pack in your hospital back
Dayna: Ooh, I love that.
Colie: and so I think that the main difference is when we say lead magnet.
We’re typically not sending them back to your website to a public like blog post because that isn’t seen as like super valuable because it’s always available to the public everywhere. So. I mean, it could be that you’re sending them to, you know, some kind of private video from YouTube or a PDF download.
I mean, you don’t have to get super fancy, but I will just say that, you know, a lot of people consider the lead magnet to be something that you can’t just find, you know, by happenstance on your website if you’re not actually providing the email in order to get the value. It’s
Dayna: Yeah, it’s an exchange of the email for whatever that value is. Do you, do you know what your automation trigger word is? So people could like test it out on your account? Ow.
Colie: one’s not on my Instagram. It’s just my lead. I mean, cause we were talking before and I was like, no, all of my automations are based on setting up your systems or, you know, HoneyBook, Dubsado, Airtable, all of those things. But when you were talking, I was like, Oh no, I mean, I have had a photography. I don’t mean it’s really funny.
Because while you said that, you know, it’s your like 10 best places to have brunch in Denver. I’m all about that. I mean, I love me some brunch, but mine is actually not super specific for my area, which was, it was kind of on purpose, but then also not because I mean, anybody. From anywhere could like, you know, get my hospital checklist and I’m not expecting everyone to be able to book me because if you’re like in Seattle and you get that, I mean, I’m not flying to Seattle in order to offer you a newborn session that
Dayna: I mean maybe for the right amount of money.
Colie: I mean, hello.
Hello. I mean, I could always. Yeah. I mean, but. So I just wanted to say my lead magnet is not something that’s super specific to my area, but if you want to use your lead magnet to specifically drive clients, then yeah, the more local it is, the better it is for you if you are a local photographer and you don’t provide travel sessions.
Now, I, I do have travel sessions. So, I mean, for a documentary lead in, I mean, I could really get, get people opting in from wherever and then contact them for a session,
Dayna: yeah, but that’s a good point. It can either be more specific to your niche, but not to your area, or it could be specific to your area, but not specific to photography, or you could find one that like sort of overlaps both. To your point, like if you found somebody that also was really into brunch in Denver that was, and you were looking for a photographer, you’d be like, uh, I already love her, we both love brunch, uh, we’re gonna be best friends, like it’s amazing.
It gives you, It gives you like a level of comfort and connection with that person already before you even honestly look at their work or inquire about their prices. You already like them because they like something that you like, you know,
Colie: Mm hmm.
Dayna: okay. So let’s talk about the 3rd and biggest sort of, marketing strategy here, which is the idea of using many chat to create a wait list.
That you will then pull over to your email marketing system, and then you will email those people about said waitlist to create urgency. Okay, so I just threw a lot of marketing terms at you. Let’s back it all the way up. Almost every photographer, I think, that unless you only work like in, you know, birth, even birth, but like in, you know, if you’re only working in a studio, Maybe this doesn’t apply to you, but I think everybody can think of a use case for there is some kind of session that you offer.
I like to call them pretty season sessions, but it might be like, you know, when the leaves are turning or the flowers are popping or, you know, the one week in Phoenix in the summer that it’s not 112 degrees or, The first snow in Denver, right? Like whatever that you need people like you don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen.
Right? Or maybe you have many sessions if this could just be used for many sessions, but they’re, you know, it’s a limited number because. It’s a limited time and you, um, you are able to like market that in advance. So let’s use, let’s use snow sessions. Let’s say that you do the snowfall sessions and it’s sometime in January.
So you can start to say, Hey, if you want to like snows on the way, if you want to get on my wait list for my, you know, snowfall session, comment snow below and I’ll send you the link to get on the wait list. Okay. What is so great about getting on a wait list for something? It’s getting the yes before the yes.
It’s so easy. How many times have you put yourself on a wait list for something? It’s so easy to just be like, yeah, I’m kind of interested in that. Like I’m interested enough to get on a wait list, but I’m not giving, I’m not committing, but I’m just
Colie: Not paying money.
Dayna: paying money. I’m just saying I’m kind of interested in that.
So same thing, like if you do mini sessions, like you can say, like, if you want to get on the wait list for my mini sessions, you know, there are only a limited number that you can do. You are always limited by time because you are a human being that has 24 hours in their day. Right? So, like, you aren’t just a robot who can work infinity.
So you’re always going to be time limited. Anything that is time limited. This works for create that wait list. Yeah, so they’re going to say snow and they’re going to pop over and it’s going to say you want to get on the waitlist for a snow session, right? And you’re going to say yes. And then they’re going to say, great, give me your email address here and I’ll add you to the list.
And then they’ll give you their email and you’ll say, great, I will email you as soon as I can. Like we know that snow is coming or I will email you, you know, as soon as I open my calendar for many sessions. And then you might even want to say something like just a heads up. These sessions usually book out very quickly and I am doing them on a first come first serve basis.
So if you want to get your pickup time and date, like. As soon as you see that in email, hop on it or whatever your, your verbiage is, how you talk. So on the back end, what’s happening is all they’ve done is sent, texted you their, their email address in the DM and it’s pulling their email address over into Flowdesk or whatever.
Email marketing system you use and it’s going to tag them with something like snow sessions or mini sessions, right? And then you mini sessions fall 2024 and then you know Like that list will grow and it’s so fun to watch a wait list grow. So you’re like, oh wow Look at this. I have like 35 people that are interested in my snow sessions And I actually am only going to have like eight spots available, right?
so you’ve now created this list of people that are interested and then when it’s It’s time, like two weeks before three, whatever your timing is, you say, okay, my calendar is open. You email those 34 people and you go, okay, you said you wanted to get on my wait list. The time has come. Like here are my available sessions.
First come first serve. And what that does is it creates. Urgency on their part, right? Like they’re like, Oh, that’s right. I did want to do this. And now they realize that they’re in a little bit of competition with all these other people that are on the waitlist. And they’re like, I better, if I really want to do this, I better like hop on it.
So it creates a little bit of scarcity because you only have limited sessions and it creates a little bit of urgency. And those are both things that we really need to help us make decisions because just human nature, like very, unless you’re, James, I guess, like you.
Colie: a rare bird. Let’s just put it to you that way.
Dayna: Unless you like, you need a little bit of, you need something.
We all have a million things going on every day. So we need something to raise. Book a mini session for my family to the top of the to do list. And so if they know that like, If they wait for a day or two, these sessions might be gone. It’s going to raise it to the top of their to do list priority, right?
And I just want to say for the people that are like, yeah, but what if I only get five people on my waitlist and I have eight spots available? They don’t need to know that. Like, you don’t need to say there are five people on my waitlist. Like, you don’t need to tell them how many people are on your waitlist.
And you can still blast this out to your whole email list after the fact, but just send it to that waitlist first.
Colie: Yes. And I always feel that like honest communication is the way to go. So maybe you tell them that. They’re getting a 72 hour head start on the public or 24 if you want to really drive that urgency, but If you have, like, let’s say you had eight spots and you have 11 people. And let’s say that of those 11 people, six people end up booking.
That means you’ve only got two left to sell to the public. That’s amazing. It does not take a lot of people joining your waitlist in order to get the momentum going. And then when you actually announce it to the public. You get to say 75 percent of spots are gone or only two left. I mean, and then you are not creating the false urgency.
It is real. Like seriously, my wait list took all of these. And it even gives you something to market the next wait list. Cause you’re like, Oh no guys. Like, listen, last time I did a wait list for many sessions. 75 percent of them were sold before I opened as the public. So just keep in mind if you really want a mini session or, you know, these special blue bonnets, I mean, I don’t even live in Texas anymore, but that’s a thing down there.
Like if you want one of these sessions, the best way to make sure that you get your preferred day and time. Or a session at all is to give me your email to be on your waitlist. And then of course, you’re not only sending them emails for the waitlist, but that’s a different podcast
Dayna: Yeah, that is a
Colie: can talk about what to do for your email marketing in a different situation.
Dayna: But no, to double down on what you said, agreed. Like we’re not trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes or be dishonest. But what I’m saying is share the information that they need. And the information that they need is these sessions are in high demand. There are a limited number of them.
And if you want to know first, get on the email list. All of those things are true, right?
Colie: Yes. And so the whole point of this guys is that there is this tool. And I do want to emphasize, because I do want to have the conversation about free versus paid. I will say I pay for many chats. I pay for many chat because number one, I don’t want to send people to an external link. I want them to give me their name and their email right in the DMs.
I have ConvertKit for my email marketing. It has an internal integration. It automatically sends them to ConvertKit. It tags them with the appropriate thing. It is like a completely hands off experience for me. But if you are someone like, well, I don’t even know if I’m going to like this, you can totally try Medichat for free.
It has limitations. Like, When it comes to having them DM you a particular word or rather post a comment, the difference between free and paid is that with free, I think it’s all of them, right? Or is it just the last one? Like there’s some kind of stipulation for the free versus you can basically do whatever in the hell you want if you have a paid system.
Dayna: right. It’s the other way around. It’s if you, if you have the free one, it’s only going to let you like attach it to a single post as opposed to saying like any of my posts. And there’s some other limitations, like you said, like you can’t do those integrations. I think though that you can make it work.
Colie: hmm.
Dayna: Certainly you can make it work on the free one. I also don’t think 15 a month is an extreme expense if this starts to work for you. So I would suggest that if this sounds intriguing to you, you just start to play around with, and, um, when I’m suggesting how people set up their mini chats, I’m like, okay, make yourself like a little.
list of your trigger words. Like if, you know, pricing is one of your trigger words and you know that anytime you do a post. So now you want to think about a call to action is now instead of click the link in my bio, it’s comment snow. or comment pricing. And so you want to keep a list of what your trigger words are so that every single time you’re putting something on Instagram, you’re able to include some kind of call to action.
That’s like, if you want more information on what it’s like to work with me, comment pricing, and I’ll send you my pricing guide, right? Like it’s super simple. And then you can just start to see how people interact with that. And if they are starting to interact with it, and if they are, then you, then it might be worth your while to upgrade to the, to the 15 a month.
Pro thing, and then you can really start to like, you said, do the integrations, pull people over, all the above.
Colie: I mean, guys, I just, I was not a big fan of many chat as Dayna said, and now I use it like all the time because I don’t want to have to go and like, Spend a lot of time and energy inside of Instagram to do the thing. I mean, I’m scheduling all my posts. I want them to do the work for me. And so using many chat is a great way to get more out of your social media marketing without actually putting any additional time because to set up these automations, I know people think the word automation is scary, but guys you can set one of these up in like five minutes.
Like, it is not complicated. The hardest part is probably choosing your trigger word to make sure that it’s something that you like. And if you don’t like it, you can always
Dayna: You can always change it. I think there is a learning curve. I do think that like with any tech, like you, you know, Colie, you’re like tech savvy. Not everybody is as tech savvy as you. So I do think there is a learning curve to learning any technology, but I do think this one is pretty quick and it’s visual, you guys.
So it’s not like, you know, You’re not typing in a bunch of like code. It’s actually like these visual boxes where you’re like, this is the first step. And then you like drag an arrow. And then it’s like, this is the next step. And then you, and then you’re like, do this. So it’s for visual people, like us creatives, that’s really helpful.
I have gone a step further though, because I know that people are like, Oh, this sounds great, but like, I’m never going to be able to figure this out. I went ahead and just created a screen share of me setting up each one of these Automations for you. So it’s just like a training that you can watch. You can watch me set it up on the backend and I’m going to show you like how to do each of these things.
And then you can have your ManyChat account open right next to it. And you can just copy exactly what I’m doing. So you can learn right from me. There are also tons of tutorials in ManyChat itself. So like absolutely learn from them, but this is going to be like those exact three case uses that I laid out for you.
I’m going to show you how to use those.
Colie: And the link will be in the show notes.
Dayna: and you can go to thiscantbethathard. com slash ManyChat to sign up and you’ll see a little form and it’ll take you right over to it, right?
Colie: Awesome sauce.
Dayna: We should set up a ManyChat on this episode if people write ManyChat and then it can say, Oop, here you go, you’re testing out ManyChat, we’ll set it up for them.
Colie: So I’m totally going to take this clip and make it one of the Instagram Reels and we are going to make ManyChat the special word, guys. It’s going to be the trigger word.
Dayna: Love it.
Colie: So I do want to end this with one of the things that we always talk about when it comes to systems, and this is systems for any part of your business, is that consistency is key.
I mean, it helps you save time, but like really you get a sense of delight when you know that you are treating every single client in your business the same. And so you guys have the Consistency Club. And I do, before you tell us what that is, I am going to kick off with guys. The reason that Dayna is here to talk about this today is because the marketing summit for consistency club members and the public too, if you would like to purchase a ticket is coming up next week on July 31st.
It is going to be from 4 to 6 p. m. Eastern. And if you are a member of the Consistency Club, your ticket is already taken care of. And if you are not, we are going to have a link in the show notes to tell you how you can get a ticket. Now, I want to say, I’m teaching, guys. So, in this section, Episode. We have told you one of the things that you can do is to help set up a waitlist for your mini sessions.
I am actually going to be talking about how to simplify your workflows once you get people into your world that book one of these mini sessions because we want you to spend less time on the front end and the back end. So Dayna, in case they want to know, tell me about the Consistency Club.
Dayna: Yeah. So let me tell them about the marketing summit and then I’ll back it up into the consistency club. So the idea of the marketing summit, we do a different theme. We do these every six months. This one is all about optimizing and streamlining your workflow for the busy season so that you are doing less repetitive work over and over again, which frees you up to have more time to either to spend with your family or to do more sessions, to make more money.
Like that’s our goal here is how do we help you really optimize as the busy season comes around so that you can make the most out of your busy season. So that’s what this marketing summit is about. Colie is going to be speaking. We’ve got some other speakers coming. There are always like, we always over jam pack them with info.
So you will definitely learn a lot at the marketing summit, but the marketing summit is part of the business. The Consistency Club, which is a monthly marketing membership for photographers that was sort of born out of the idea of like, know, especially in the slow season, marketers are like, okay, I’m going to be great with my email this year.
And like, they go in with like great intentions and they maybe for like three months, they’re great about sending out an email every other week. And then life happens. They get busy.
Colie: Crickets.
Dayna: Crickets and then their busy season comes and it’s like I can’t even think about emailing anybody and then but then come January They’re like, I don’t have any clients and it’s this feast and famine sort of cycle that happens all all over again So I was just thinking to myself how can?
We and then I, you know, and then people are like, I’m going to hire a social media manager. I’m going to hire somebody to write my emails for me. But there’s not only is that super expensive. It also is not you. So it’s not like that personal touch that you’re so that you so want to come through isn’t able to come through in that same way.
So I was like, how do we bridge this gap? Like, how do we make it easier for people to do their marketing? Take less of the pie to kind of call back to what we were talking about in the beginning, but still help them like get it done even when they’re super busy. So we created the consistency club, which is every month we send you out to email templates that are like Mad Libs.
So like we’ve done the thinking for you around the strategy of what your email should be. And sometimes it’s just like a keeping in touch email. And sometimes it’s a bit more salesy or a bit more marketing, like if you’re marketing for a.
Colie: to ask for the sale.
Dayna: for the answer. I love to lean into the microphone, but we’ve done that all of that strategy for you on the back end.
And then you just get to go in and fill in the gaps with the way that you talk and that email templates there. So it takes, you don’t have to think of the idea. You don’t have to write the whole email. You just have to go in. And instead of it taking you an hour to write an email, it’s now going to take you 10 minutes. So we do two email templates a month. And then we do the same thing for social media, where we send you out six different social media templates. Two stories, two posts, two reels. Same idea, they’re just like mad lib so that if you are like, I don’t know what to post today, you have these ideas that you can just like pull and fill them in and then your marketing is done for you.
So that is the idea behind the Consistency Club. And you can go to any post on at this can’t be that hard on Instagram and you can comment. The club all one word swish together and it will send you an automation and it’s it’s for me But you’ll see it’s a many chat automation and it’ll answer all your questions about consistency club and it’s really fun It’s like a choose your own adventure.
You can like ask it different questions. So if you want more information That’s a really fun way to do it You can also go to go that this can’t be that hard comm slash club to find out more information But do it through the many chat. It’s way more fun.
Colie: Cause then you can see it in
Dayna: Yeah, it’s way more fun That’s way more fun.
Colie: Dayna, it was fabulous to have you again.
Dayna: you. You’re just the best.
Colie: Aw, so we’re going to have to have you come back on again to talk about marketing because I personally never get tired of talking about marketing.
Dayna: Same here, so maybe next time. I’m like sitting in my studio sweating. It’s like 110 degrees here. So let’s do it in the fall when it’s less hot.
Colie: I mean, maybe we’ll do it when I come in October.
Dayna: Oh, okay. That sounds fun. In person?
Colie: All right. For the rest of you, they can’t enjoy us in person. Uh, that is it for this episode. Once again, if you enjoyed this conversation and you want to hear our first conversation, which was packed for tips for marketing and asking for the sale, go back to episode 84.
It will be linked in the show notes.
Dayna: Thanks, you
Colie: right. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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