Revolutionising Portrait Studio Growth: The Imperative of Active Lead Management and Conversion
In the contemporary world of portrait photography, the approach to business growth has evolved dramatically. The traditional reliance on passive methods like waiting for inquiries or walk-ins is no longer sufficient in a digital-first era. The new key to success in this competitive industry lies in the proactive management and conversion of leads. This shift isn't just a recommendation; it's a necessity for studios aiming to thrive in the modern market.
Understanding the Changing Landscape of Customer Engagement
Today's customers expect quick, personalised responses. They are more likely to engage with businesses that show they are responsive and customer-focused. This shift in customer expectations requires a change in how portrait studios approach potential clients. Every lead that comes through digital means - be it from a website inquiry, a social media interaction, or an online ad - holds the potential to be a valuable customer. Actively managing these leads, rather than passively waiting for them to convert, can significantly enhance a studio's chance of increasing their bookings.
The Art of Multi-Channel Lead Conversion
Effective lead conversion in today's market goes beyond a single point of contact. It involves a strategic mix of communications through text, email, and phone calls. Each channel serves a purpose: text messages for quick, immediate engagement; emails for conveying detailed information and nurturing the lead over time; and phone calls for that personalised, persuasive touch that can often be the final nudge a potential client needs to book a session. The key is to tailor these communications to match the lead's preferences, making each interaction feel personalised and attentive to their specific needs and interests.
Creating a Persuasive Narrative
The conversion process is about creating a narrative that resonates with the potential client. This involves actively listening to and addressing their concerns, showcasing the unique value your studio offers, and building a connection that goes beyond a transactional relationship. Strategies like offering limited-time deals or exclusive packages can create a sense of urgency, encouraging leads to make a decision. Additionally, leveraging testimonials and examples of past work can effectively establish credibility and showcase the quality of the studio's offerings.
Embracing Continuous Improvement
An essential aspect of effective lead management is the continuous analysis of strategies and results. This involves tracking which methods are yielding the best conversion rates and adapting tactics accordingly. A feedback-driven approach, where insights from clients and leads are regularly sought and incorporated, can lead to a more refined and successful lead management process.
In conclusion, for portrait studios to flourish in today's digital age, a shift towards active lead management and conversion is critical. By embracing a multi-channel approach to lead engagement, creating persuasive and personalised narratives, and continuously refining strategies based on feedback and data analysis, studios can not only increase their conversion rates but also build a stronger, more resilient brand in the competitive market of portrait photography.
Experimentation in Digital Marketing - Part 1: An Introduction to Experiments
Sales and marketing teams often use intuition when designing marketing campaigns. Although experienced marketers have learnt from their past experience, there is no way to determine the actual impact of using a certain methodology over another, unless you measure and experiment.
Background
Sales and marketing teams often use intuition when designing marketing campaigns. Although experienced marketers have learnt from their past experience, there is no way to determine the actual impact of using a certain methodology over another, unless you measure and experiment.
When experimenting, we pit variations of our campaign against one another until we can use data and statistics to prove which variation is the one true winner. Some statistical methods even allow us to approximate the improvement this variation could result in (this might be the number of potential leads we could gain/lose, or even $ value of lost/increased revenue).
When running an experiment, we collect user behavioural data and can use statistical models (see part 2) to prove or disprove a hypothesis we may have. When experimenting, it is important to select a good, high impact hypothesis (see part 3) as they generally require less data to prove, and have more tangible results. The more different our variations in the experiment, the more data we need to prove/disprove our hypothesis, and the longer we might need to run the campaign for - poorly designed experiments may never reach completion.
How we Experiment at Marketing Minds
Most people/companies compare variations via an A/B test on via ads platforms as ads platforms (which have this feature built in). Ads platforms already allow you to run multiple variation an ad, and analyse the success of each variation. This still leaves a lot left to desire as the ads platform does not have visibility over data that they are unable to track; such as cross platform touch points (e.g. email) or offline conversions.
A customer journey is diverse and complicated, by not experimenting or simply running and assessing an experiment at a single point in the journey, you are leaving learnings, customers and dollars on the table.
At Marketing Minds take this a step further. We ingest data from ads platforms, your website, communications and all other customer touch-points to understand the end to end customer experience. This means that we can experiment at any point in the customer journey, and also assess the impact of the experiment downstream.
A typical experiment via an ads platform might test clicks, leads generated or online sales from a single ad. With our data infrastructure, we can assess more complicated things like impact of each and every touch point, cross platform, in person sales, post sales and long customer journeys. This is important as a particular variation in the experiment might appear to be performing better, but doesn’t move the needle in metrics further down the funnel or other, more important metrics.
Case Study
We were working on lead generation for a Sydney, Australia based gym. We wanted to experiment between a few different types of promotions - some just mentioned a gym discount (A), others specifically outlined the details of the gym’s classes and services (B).
While we ran the experiment, the ads platforms were telling us that variation A was outperforming variation B both in terms of clicks and leads generated. However, after analysing the down stream impacts of our variation, we found that B resulted in more successful customer contact (via phone or coming to the gym in person), as well as much more gym membership signups. In fact, our Bayesian Statistics model (see part 2), estimated a 31% increase in conversions if we had run B over A.
Okay, so how do we run an effective experiment?
In part 2, we will be looking at how to measure and learn from an experiment
In part 3, we will be looking at how to run an effective experiment