Meredith's Husband: 0:33

Hey, this is Meredith's husband. I've got some SEO advice for you, but I'm going to keep it really simple, so that you can understand it, so it makes sense, and most importantly, so you can actually use it. Happy birthday, baby. That's not what the podcast is about. Welcome

Meredith: 1:05

everybody back. Thank you,

Meredith's Husband: 1:07

but it is Mary's birthday. It

Meredith: 1:09

is my birthday.

Meredith's Husband: 1:11

You can send gifts if you want, Venmo and public credit cards.

Meredith: 1:19

No, give to the people in need. That's all. Yes, there

Meredith's Husband: 1:22

are other people in need. Yes, many more. So I thought today I just take some of your questions. My questions, yeah, what do you what? What does Meredith want to know about on her 32nd birthday.

Meredith: 1:38

Well, well, one of the things that I do actually want to know is we were talking the other night, and I don't understand the difference between marketing and advertising. What's right, like, what

Meredith's Husband: 1:56

it's yeah, I remember. I remember you, you mentioned this. Somebody once explained this to me. One of my very first mentor type colleagues, explained it in a way that I thought it was made a lot of sense. So, you know, the the saying you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Yes, so he said, marketing is leading the horse to water and sales is making him drink. So that's, that's not, I mean, that's not exactly, actually, I think your question was marketing and sales and then advertising. So I think there was two parts. So I just answered the what is marketing versus sales?

Meredith: 2:33

Right? That? I think I know the marketing versus sales that I get, but, but I was talking about like advertising, I hate when I say, like, I was talking about advertising and trying to figure out how advertising and marketing differ, because it seems advertising

Meredith's Husband: 2:55

is a is one form of marketing, right? Oh, yeah. So there are several. There are several types of, you know, there's no, there's actually no limit to the number of ways you can, you can market to somebody. Marketing to somebody is just getting their attention, bringing them to water, let getting them to look at your product or your service, or whatever it is, you're selling, getting their attention, okay, for you know, and sometimes advertising does that, like, 50 years ago, advertising, I don't know if marketing was even a thing. It was just advertising, right?

Meredith: 3:27

That's, that's what, and I think that's why I, I'm confused, because you have you people are you say, what do you do? And they go, Oh, I work in advertising. What do you do? Oh, I work in Marketing. And

Meredith's Husband: 3:43

we can, we can? I can give you some examples. So there, so there are many ways to market a website. You can do email right? You can do email marketing. So that's a way to get people to your site. That's not advertising, that's marketing. You can do social media now. You can run ads in social media, but you can also do the organic side, the free side, and so search engines are the same way. So there are two halves, like, let's let's first take search engines. Search Engine Marketing consists of two parts. There's the organic part, the SEO, where you don't, if somebody clicks on your website, you don't pay anything. And then there's the PPC, the Pay Per Click side, that's the advertising site. That's when somebody, if they click on your website from Google, you're going to pay $2 or $5 or whatever the rate is. Now the both of those things are considered search engine marketing, but one, only one of them, is advertising. So when you say marketing, I'm in marketing, usually advertising can fall under that umbrella. It doesn't always, I guess it depends on, you know the company, but average, if somebody says they're an advertising that's different than being in marketing, okay, does that help? Does that make any sense? So social, let's take social media. You can, you can post every day on all these social media platforms and get lots of attention that way, that's, that's a, that's a, that's marketing, right, yeah, and also on social media, on those same platforms, you can buy ads, right? Totally different. I mean, you're still getting, you know, it's the same, it's, there's a lot of overlap, obviously, but so that's the difference.

Meredith: 5:31

It seems that marketing. Yeah, rather, it seems that advertising you pay for, but you also pay for marketing. Do you pay for marketing with time and advertising with money?

Meredith's Husband: 5:45

Exactly? It kind of reminds me of this, the good, fast and cheap rule in business, or as a consumer, just rule period. I guess you can. You can get things good, fast or cheap, or there are three facts. There are three factors, good, fast and cheap, or expense or cost. You can get two out of those three, but you can, you can almost never get all three, right? So if you want to get something and you need it, you know you need it to be cheap and you need it fast, it's probably not going to be good, right? Like, if you, if you need it right away and you need to spend no money on it, it's probably not going to be good. If you need something fast and you also need it to be good, it's not going to be cheap, right? That's when people are going to charge an arm and a leg, right? If you need something good and you need it to be cheap, then it's not going to be fast, right? That's when I that's put in particular,

Meredith: 6:39

like, except for Amazon. Amazon breaks that rule.

Meredith's Husband: 6:43

It does seem to get all three but, you know? But then there's the question of, what is the real expense, right? Oh, gosh, you know, it's cheap, you know? But in so, in my business, you know, people have often asked for discounts. I'm sure you would face the same thing, yeah, and, and, and sometimes I will say, Sure, I can give you a discount, but it's the, it's the, it's the good and cheap rule. So I give pretty good services. They're not cheap. So if you want it to be cheaper, you're going to have to do it on my schedule, like, Yes, I'll give you a discount, but then that means i You're gonna have to, I'll do it when I can get to it. That might be in a month, it might be in two weeks, it might be in eight months, I don't know, but that's in exchange for a lower price. That's what you have to accept. That's, that's when I when I do offer discounts. That's the way I do it. Yeah, yes, fair

Meredith: 7:34

enough, yeah, but Right, yeah. And I can offer, yeah, that makes sense.

Meredith's Husband: 7:38

I guess you can't really, I guess if you're photographing an event, you can't do that, but you could say, like I you're gonna need to wait. If you want a deal. You have to edit these. When I can right, my typical turnaround is four to six weeks. You might wait 24 weeks, but if you want a discount, that's the way to do it, right?

Meredith: 7:59

Yeah, that's fair enough. That makes sense. That's it. That's that's really my biggest question.

Meredith's Husband: 8:05

Well, so that, so then it that ties into advertising, that, yeah, you can, if you want to do something, you can either invest your time or your money, right? Very, very rarely are you going to get something that's at all worthwhile and it's not going to cost anything in terms of time or money or very little and be and be and be any sort of quality that's kind of the difference.

Meredith: 8:28

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I was last night, so I was taking the this class from illuminate classes called Raising family business that Posey quarterman teaches on the illuminate platform. And a bunch of the students wanted to know about in person sales, because that's what I do. I do in person sales. And they were saying, you know, how do I differentiate myself when everybody else is giving away their their goods and everything, and I'm more expensive? And I said, Okay, well, this is what I tell people, is that I can't compete on price, but I can compete on quality and on the experience, the overall experience that you'll get. That was the smartest thing I've said period ever

Meredith's Husband: 9:29

that that's true. It you're giving the quality, yeah, like, if people want, you know, great quality, then it's not going to be cheap. Like, if you want cheap, then you can get lesser quality,

Meredith: 9:40

yeah, and less services and less customer cert, you know, less, less quality. Yeah, less quality, precisely,

Meredith's Husband: 9:48

yeah. I mean, I would agree. I would also think, Wow. You could say, like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could also say that's, you know, I've been working years to perfect my services and and

Meredith: 10:04

continually am, yes. I mean, I invest a lot in trying to perfect my services. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 10:10

you could. You could just be really blunt also, and just like you know, better cost more

Meredith: 10:15

I could. I'd sound like an I'd come across as an asshole.

Meredith's Husband: 10:19

Yes, yeah, well, I mean, that's the message, that's the message you want to convey. But yeah, yeah, you've, you've said it in a better way.

Meredith: 10:26

Yeah, I remember, I believe Michaela Jade, who's legacy sales class I'm plugging, uh. All these people, because they're all amazing. But if you're interested in in person sales, go to printographers, I think photographers.com and look up legacy sales Michaela Jade, because that taught me everything that I know, and that was one of the best regarding in person sales, but remember? Well,

Meredith's Husband: 10:56

I remember when you started doing in person sales that your your sales per like, tripled or

Meredith: 11:04

ridiculous. But she said, you know you're not gonna, you're not gonna walk into Tiffany's and ask for a discount, right? But people feel that they have the entitlement to ask artists because it's just time right to give them a discount just because somebody else charges less. Yes, and they say, oh, I'll just go to that person. And I say, you are more than welcome to choose whoever you wish.

Meredith's Husband: 11:31

Yeah, I often use the Apple versus other computer analogy, you know, Max costs more, yeah, they're perceived as being better. You could also say, Yeah, I'm happy to give you some, some of my, you know, existing and past clients. And you can ask, you can call them and ask if they feel it was worth it in the end. Oh,

Meredith: 11:50

that's a great idea. There you go. There's that nugget. That's a great one. Now, if I just have to remember it, yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 11:58

well, you gotta, you know, polish that, work on the phrasing of that little bit. But yeah, you can say something like, Yeah, well, I focus on making the my clients happy in the end, and it means that I, you know, somehow, that that's going to cost more, than I'll, yeah, that's, you're more than happy. I'll give you some my clients and you can contact, you know, ask the the other photographer who's much cheaper, if they can share some of their client contact with you. You know, that's, that's probably going too far,

Meredith: 12:29

but I think that's pretty true. That's, you know, I don't want, I'm not competitive that way, like, see, look at their word compared to mine, because that's not the case, because that the client may very well be looking for more of that other person's style, and that's something,

Meredith's Husband: 12:46

yeah, yeah. Also, yeah, also, you know.

Meredith: 12:49

But you remember,

Meredith's Husband: 12:50

if I figure, I figure, at this point, if they're talking to you, they've they like your style, yeah, this point. But

Meredith: 12:56

you remember, and I said this last night when people would come up to not people, when I went to a meetup of children photographers in the city, and they all said, you have to raise your prices. And at the time, I thought that was a compliment, not realizing, Oh, I'm the one being the asshole. I'm now the one that people refer to.

Meredith's Husband: 13:18

No, everybody starts and everybody that's one way. I mean, it's very difficult, as if you're starting in any industry to who attract clients without being cheaper than you know, you gotta get some experience. Yeah? But yeah, you were, I think you were pretty cheap for quite a while. A

Meredith: 13:39

long time. It took me, it took it took you creating a visual piece of paper showing how much money every month I was losing

Meredith's Husband: 13:52

to the point where you're where you were, you were literally working your ass off seven days a week and not and losing money on top of losing money. And yeah, it took a chart, too. It

Meredith: 14:05

took a chart because I have to see things visually. Like most of our listeners, who are photographers, we think visually, not you can tell me anything, but if I don't visualize, it out the roof. All right, thank you so much.

Meredith's Husband: 14:20

All right, so I hope that helped you. Meredith, it did help. It did help me, actually, some Somebody contacted me, and they said they love your perspective, because it because they identify with okay, you ask. Say, I feel this might be too much information, but this, I feel like a dummy, but Meredith's asking all the questions I want

Meredith: 14:40

to know. No, that's because I am the dummy. I these are this, there are things that I do know, but this is something that I don't know, and so I'm asking all the questions that I'm thinking, hoping that it'll help you or listener,

Meredith's Husband: 14:54

yeah, kind of on purpose, because I'll gloss over a lot of things that I am just used to talking about for years and years, and you'd be like, What the hell does that mean? Yeah, I forget that it's not common. Excellent,

Meredith: 15:06

George. We don't need to talk about ourselves anymore. Thank you, listener. I hope this was helpful. I really hope this was helpful. Let us know, and Happy birthday to you all.

Meredith's Husband: 15:17

Thank you everyone. Hey,

Meredith: 15:19

thank you so much for listening. We really hope that you find this helpful and useful, and if you do what you could do for us as a thanks would be to drum roll please, yes. Leave a review. Do. Yes, everybody says that, I know, but it really does make a difference. Take three seconds, leave as many stars say something really nice about what you like, about the podcast, and maybe why other people would like it. It would mean the world to us, especially my husband, that better. I'm gonna try one where I'm not gonna be charming. You.