Business Day Thursday: Adding Sales Sizzle To Your Wedding Shoots; Just Announced My Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk

Good Morning Everybody,

It's official and it's going to be a blast!  I just set up my Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk [link]- you can find all the details right here.  This is my third time to lead a Photowalk and I love it. It's always fun to meet and visit with all the folks that turn up for the event. And, we get some great shots too!

This year's photowalk will be different from the other two.  We're planning to begin in downtown Cincinnati, wind our way past a few brand new cool buildings, cross the river into Kentucky, and explore the historical Mainstrasse area of Covington, Kentucky.  I promise you a lot of variety in local subject matter. It should be a pretty cool photowalk.

We will grab a nice lunch at Chez Nora's and then make the easy stroll back to Cincy. It will be great fun.  You can register right here.  These photowalks fill up pretty fast so don't wait too long to sign up.  See ya' there.

OK, it's time for another episode of Business Day Thursday: Adding Sales Sizzle To Your Wedding Shoots.  Here we go.

Adding Sales Sizzle To Your Wedding Shoots

I've mentioned a few times this week that we had a great time at this past weekend's wedding shoot.  Great clients, great weather, great music, and I got a chance to catch up with several past clients that were in attendance.

But, that was only half of the excitement. The most exciting part of the day was a little surprise I promised the bride and groom.  Here what I did.  You know I'm pretty fired up about my new iPad.  At last Sunday's wedding I packed it along with me with the intention of showing the bride and groom a slideshow of their wedding images at the reception.  Well, I need to tell you, the whole thing went off like a charm and the clients and moms and dads were thrilled!  Let me tell you exactly how I did it.

Hit the “Read More…” link below for the rest of the story!

I shot most of the wedding with my Canon 7D, loaded with a 16 gig card.  That size card will get you through a good part of the day.  I was getting near the cards capacity shortly into the reception so I had nearly 1,200 hundred images to choose from for my show.

You're wondering, "OK, David, how complicated, and fast was it to get the images from the card and on to your iPad?" Folks, I'm here to tell you it was a "piece of cake." I found a few minutes during the dinner to break away and get the images downloaded. 

I used my Delkin card reader I've mentioned here before, inserted the 16 gig flashcard, and connected the reader to the iPad.  A 16 gig card, tons of images, man, how long did it take to start lighting up on the iPad? Surprise of surprises - only about 60 seconds!  That's right, in about 60 seconds I was looking at images and began making my selections for the show - pretty darn fast.

I was able to move through the images really quickly, picking a few duplicates of the group shots to be sure I didn't have to deal with any blinks. At the end of my quick review, I had 87 images selected for the show. The next step was to actually import them to the iPad.  I hit the IMPORT button and in a short 3-4 minutes they were all loaded up. Uh, did I say I was importing RAW files, yep, RAW files and they looked great on the iPad.

The entire process took me about 10 minutes, yes, 10 minutes - it was fast!  Next, I did a quick review of the 87 images and discarded any image that did not flatter the persons in the shot. That took only a few more minutes.  I would say that all together, I had about 12 minutes real production time in putting the show together - really fast I was thinking - actually MUCH faster than trying to load them up onto a laptop for a show.

I checked my settings to be sure I had the slide show set to run continuously. I also set the show for the images to come up randomly.  I thought this just gave a better overall impression of the presentation to the guests.  Although I selected a song to play during the show, it was set to repeat at the end, you really couldn't hear the music because of the band and the regular wedding reception activities.  No problem, it didn't make any difference. The bride and groom and all the parents still loved seeing the show.

OK, you're probably thinking the story ends there, right?  Not yet. Right after everyone had seen the show, I picked up my iPad and was about to pack it up when I had a guest approach me about hiring us for her daughter's upcoming wedding.  So what do you think I did next? You guessed it, I pulled out the iPad and showed her the show just seen by the bride and groom.  She loved it and the deal was sealed! That sure paid for the iPad in no time.

Folks, the possibilities are limitless here.  Heck, let the bride and groom hold on to the iPad for a bit so they can share the presentation with additional family and friends.  What a great personal introduction of your work to lots of potential clients!

After the bride and groom return the iPad to you, place it somewhere near the cake table so the rest of the guests can enjoy the show. If the cake table is in a quieter place in the reception hall, you could even hook up some inexpensive speakers to enface the show even more. Folks, the iPad is a powerful sales tool that I think every photographer should be taking with them to an event. Think of it as a super-sized business card. 

Now take it a step further.  After you show the presentation to a prospective client, bring up CONTACTS and add their names, addresses, and email’s to your contact list.  This sure beats giving them a business card that will be long lost and forgotten in the next few days. Now you are in the "driver's seat" when it comes to following up with them.

Come Monday morning, pull up their contact info and fire them off a nice email with a few of your favorite images attached.  Add links to your website and blog and now you are really making a first class impression with that prospective client.  The iPad makes this pro-active approach nearly automatic and eminently more successful than anything else in the past.

We live in a pretty fast-paced world these days with smart phones, Twitter, Facebook, and so many electronic gadgets that people are connected to.  Apple's new iPad is just more "rocket fuel" for your business building sales strategies. It doesn't get much easier than than this.

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Hey gang, that's it for me today.  have a great one and I see you tomorrow.

Adios,  -David