Calling ALL entrepreneurs and specifically photographers!! HEAR YE HEAR YE!!! This episode is hereby about to blow your MIND. If you’ve been frustrated by Instagram or just looking for a new way to market your business and ya need a marketing kick in the pants…. Today’s episode is the aforementioned kick in the hiney.

We’re having a conversation with Jai Long today, and it’s a doozy. 

 

Jai’s Story 

No stranger to the industry, Jai is a business coach, serial entrepreneur, award-winning wedding photographer, public speaker, founder of the Six-Figure Business Map, and course, host of the Wedding Photography Summit.

A mouthful of accomplishments aside, Jai leads a heart-filled community of wedding photographers and videographers worldwide to create fulfilling businesses by overcoming self-limiting beliefs and setting unrealistic goals.

Today we’re doing a DEEP DIVE with Jai into marketing your photography business WITHOUT relying solely on Instagram. SAY WHAT. Yeah.. you heard me. We’re talking with Jai today about how to utilize other methods, platforms, and tools to grow your business outside of the ‘gram. 

 

Marketing your photography business & Instagram 

Jai did use Instagram at the beginning, but differently than what most people would think. Let’s go back a bit before Instagram and Myspace. Jai had his first business when he was 20 years old, so that was 15 years ago, back then he used print media for marketing. He would put billboards on the side of the road (literally) and print flyers. 

For him when social media came out it was like this wake-up call “You just gave me the power to reach anyone and everyone in the world”. You can do it without spending any money, with a click of a button and your voice can be heard. The profound effect that it had on Jai and to this day, he is still mindblown. He is not the person to complain about algorithm changes because of the power that you have in your pocket today with all the different apps and for free. It’s invaluable and helps so much when building a business. 

Your mindset around social media should be thankful since you can reach all these people. If you can reach all these people, all you have to do is learn how to use it the best way possible and with that, you save a lot of money and reach a lot of people. You can expand your business reaching people past your small inner circle. 

Jai never got on Instagram to market or sell. A lot of us do is we get on Instagram as our marketing strategy, but for Jai, that is not his marketing strategy. He’ll have all his other marketing strategies in place and not build his business marketing on a house of cards in case the app disappears then your business won’t disappear. Use it to create awareness and a deeper connection with your clients. That means instead of using it as marketing, create a community and always concentrate on that. It will eventually turn into marketing but from a different place of creating a deep connection. Letting that spread out as opposed to push marketing. 

Push Marketing: what you see most people do, it’s the least effective marketing. You are pushing yourself in front of people you don’t know who you are, who you serve, or even care what you do. We are trying to interrupt them in their daily lives and push something on them without them knowing about it. 

Pull Marketing: when you go to a party and you see this one person (guy or girl) in the corner and it looks like they are having a good time. And everyone gravitates towards them. They want to listen to their stories, have a drink with them, be seen with them. A lot of times we see this person as the alpha person. We don’t know why we are so drawn to them and their passion. What they are doing is pulling people to them like a magnet. Imagine if you did this on social media to pull people in. Imagine if you were that person who gave value, who listened, who responded, and interacted in a way where you have a community. You have a deeper connection and people could see your why and they gravitate towards you because they get all that through the interaction more so than what you sold. Pull marketing is creating so much value that people can’t not take notice of you. 

 

How to Stand out Against a Saturated Market

We hate marketing because we hate standing out in front of everybody else. After all, it means we can be judged. Which means we can fail in front of people. Which means people can make up their minds about us. We do everything in our power to make sure we fit in and when we fit in we become unremarkable, average, and the same as everybody else and get the same results as everyone else. 

If you want to stand out more, lookout for ways you can be unremarkable. How can you stand out? Wherever you are, what you are looking at, you are looking at what other people are doing but you’re not looking at what other people are not doing. 

Take a look at what people are doing around you and then take a look at what they are not doing. What you want to do is you’re not trying to compete you are trying to make your competition irrelevant. When you compete you will be competing on price and a whole bunch of other things but you will lose or be #2. If you make everyone else irrelevant, that means that you win the game. Once people have an idea in their head they can’t let it go and that’s why people will buy a Ferrari over a house or something. 

 

#1 Marketing Principle

Be confident in yourself, allow yourself to experiment, and allow yourself to fail. If you don’t do that it’s like trying to play the game but you’re only going to play the game if you win, but that’s a sore loser. Get out on the field not because you want to win but because you want to play the game. 

 

Showing you Face with Your Brand or Business

It is crucial, but you don’t have to though if it doesn’t bring you excitement or joy. You don’t have to do these things. We are in a world of information, we have so much information and the problem is it means we don’t have any knowledge. We don’t have any knowledge or wisdom. Funny enough we are in a world of knowledge and we have less wisdom now. It means with all this knowledge bombarding us there is more skepticism than ever before. 

One of the most important things with any business, people don’t do business with people they don’t trust. Your marketing could be the best Superbowl ad ever, but if your company is not a company that people trust then it is harder for you to dominate the world. How can you put trust on autopilot? When you have in-person meetings people tend to trust or hire more. Why do they do that? It’s because they met you, they wanted to trust you. 

When someone has trust there is also desire because in a world of skepticism you are the right choice for them. The reason someone doesn’t do business with someone is never the price but they don’t want to make the wrong decision. 

 

What Marketing to Focus on Starting Out 

Two things, do the thing where you go and look where it is not populated. If someone in your town is not using Tik Tok, Linkedin, or Facebook Groups, then get on it. Create the community before your business. 

In business, we all get fooled thinking we have to do what everyone else is doing, but the answer lies in what other people are not doing. Are there actually hungry people? If you create the community first, the party first, then it is easy to flip the scrip of asking what are you looking for? 

See what people are hungry for. It is so much easier to build a community and ask them what they are hungry for rather than selling a product that you want and trying to find the audience. 

 

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned in business? 

Failing faster is always the best way. Jai makes sure to fail every single day and in a big way every single year. Be comfortable with failing in front of everyone, telling them all your goals, and then not being able to reach them. The willingness to do and fail is so important. 

 

Show notes 

The Heart Conference: www.theheartuniversity.com/conference

 

The Heart University Courses: www.theheartuniversity.com/courses

 

Follow along with Jai: 

Make or Break Podcast

www.instagram.com/jailong.co

 

If you want to connect with us and other listeners in the Heart and Hustle community join our Facebook group here.

 

Follow along:

www.instagram.com/mrslindseyroman

www.instagram.com/evierupp

www.instagram.com/theheartuniversity