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Radiant Photography – Facebook & Instagram Ads Management & Commercial Photography

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Just a quick win to post up.

During a client meeting to discuss June ad concepts, they shared some fantastic sales numbers comparing 2017 average daily revenue to the same months of 2018.  Our Facebook marketing efforts have contributed to an average daily sales increase of 68% !

Here are some average daily sales numbers to share:

 

 

 

And for the more visually oriented, like myself:

 

 

 

 

 

Averaging all months out, we get around a 68% increase in daily revenue for 2018 compared to 2017.  Pretty exciting stuff for any business, but especially for a small brick-and-mortar niche business. 

Our strategy so far with this client is a result of months of split-tests and trial-and-error, due to their niche industry.  Right now, what’s working is 4-5 ads per month, mixing in the following:
– Evergreen video view ads to raise brand awareness and educate local buyers on a particular product or service the business offers
– Event or sale engagement ad
– Product or service engagement ad
– Offer claim ad for a limited-time discounted in-store purchase

So, our client is pumped because of more revenue.  We’re pumped helping them get more feet in the door and money in the tiller.  And the customers are pumped they’re getting great products & services.  Everyone wins!

 

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Just checked in on a client’s small ad campaign and saw something I wanted to share with you. 

I talk to clients about how we need to get their demographics input correctly up front and then let Facebook do it’s thing for a couple days.  If you tweak things too early, FB doesn’t get to learn the engagement habits of your target audience to fine tune your ad delivery.  Even after it’s fallen into a nice delivery pattern, futzing with delivery optimization and such to try to boost numbers can put the ad in a relearning coma.  In that case, it’s best to split test the ad in another separate campaign. 

Anyway, we had some client video ads that just weren’t performing as well as I’d like with the Video View objective, so I replaced the ads with a single new campaign using the Traffic objective, optimized for Link Clicks.  Just one video ad was used and the entire $5/day budget was thrown at it.

What has happened so far is illustrative of how FB’s algorithm works to find you better quality clickers.  You’ll see the costs going down, while the CTR is going up, as well as the relevancy score going up.  This means FB is getting a bead on the ideal clickers in our vast potential audience.  

In the last 20 hours alone, the clicks doubled, the CTR nearly doubled and the relevancy score when up one point.  This shows up FB is finding us higher quality people to serve the ads to.  Now we just keep monitoring and don’t muck anything up. 

New ad progress:
5/10/17 –
12:08 AM
Much better ad so far!
406 reach, 5 link clicks, $0.66 CPC, 1.21% CTR

9 AM
Getting better.
593 reach, 8 link clicks, $0.61 CPC, 1.31% CTR
 
3:09 PM
Better still.
791 reach, 11 link clicks, $0.58 CPC, 1.33% CTR, 4 relevancy
 
5/11/17 –
11:06 AM
FB is finding its groove.
990 reach, 23 link clicks, $0.57 CPC, 2.21% CTR, 5 relevancy
 
Just thought this was an interesting illustration of how FB auto-adjusts ad delivery as it learns more about your ideal customers. 
Now let’s hope they purchase our client’s services!
– Ryan
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It’s in the Bag!

This is just a quick peek at a current product photography shoot I’m doing for a long-time client.  They manufacture, print & distribute super nice bags for the food & coffee industries.  You’ve undoubtedly seen their bag on retail shelves before. 

After years of shooting their products, I’m always challenged to find fresh ways of showcasing the features of their bags.  Like their one-way gassing valves that keep coffee fresh.

For this shoot, we’re doing various bag groupings on a weathered wood background.  Given that they market to the coffee and organic foods market, the earthy style of the background will resonate well with their target buyers.

Not much else to say, really, just wanted to share some recent work.
– Ryan

 

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by Ryan Weber

“I’ll try anything twice…” has always been a sort of motto of mine.  I believe everyone sees the most growth by getting out of their comfort zone; driving themselves to learn, achieve and even fail. 

So when I was feeling a bit burned out on commercial photography, I set out to experience new stimuli, in hopes that I’d get a binary answer on what path I should pursue going forward.  But what I realized was that life is a multi-branched path, not a straight line.  My reading of books, listening to podcasts and watching of online videos exposed me to myriad interesting topics, any one of which I could easily see myself experimenting with as a future career.

Should I create an online course to sell?  Dive into affiliate marketing?  Start a podcast?  Seek a position in the political realm?  Teach college-level photography courses?  I had some good ideas, some of which are still viable for future exploration. 

What landed in my lap was something unexpected.  One of my favorite podcasters, Tom Woods of The Tom Woods Show, had a guest who talked about creating and selling apps to local businesses.

After a bit of research, I realized a couple benefits of this idea:
1. It was a laptop-lifestyle career, which afforded the freedom to work from home or anywhere with an internet connection.
2. It was a product largely untapped by small local businesses, so there were lots of potential clients.
3. Designing apps nowadays is about as hard as designing drag-n-drop websites.   You used to have to know how to code, but now there are services that have app templates you can customize and have your app live in just days.  It’s a great product to repackage and sell to the right kinds of small businesses.

So I had it in my mind to start looking for app ideas all around me.  That’s where Disneyland came in…

Wait,…what?!

As Disneyland annual passholders, our family was at the park nearly every month and each time I’d overhear someone complaining of a dead camera, tablet or cell battery around dinner time.  I started hunting down all the well-hidden power outlets around the park, ultimately finding over 160 of them.  If dead batteries were such a problem, an app might help alleviate that issue, I figured.  So the Mouselets app was born!  (Click link to find out more about it)

Mouselets app screenshot of pinned power outlets around Disneyland Resort.

But creating a consumer app, and selling an app to consumers are two different things.  Because my app had special features, I had to learn about Google map APIs, JSON coding, creating Terms of Service & Privacy Policies, and many other behind-the-scenes elements of getting an app designed and published.

Getting it into the app stores was no problem, but marketing the dang thing was a Herculean feat.  Trying to advertise a niche app with nearly no profit margin to a wide demographic, all the while bleeding monthly hosting costs…well, it was both stressful and enlightening.  Much of the app’s success came from hours of good ‘ol fashioned social media outreach.

(Side note: Did you know you can harvest all tweets within a certain geographic area (Disneyland + 1 mile radius) for a particular keyword (“phone dying”)?  It’s a dynamite tactic for local businesses…just ask me how to do it). 

In my search for the best ROI for my advertising dollar though, I discovered the power of Facebook ads! 

Location-based ad serving, crazy granular demographic targeting, re-targeting people who’ve taken certain actions on your website or FB page, ads for pennies, detailed reports that allow you to fine-tune your current and future ad sets…the nerd in me found it all so fascinating!  Forget the app, I needed to be doing this!  THIS is the way you add value to a community!  Helping businesses and customers find out about each other through a platform they’re both already using. 

I’d discovered what I had originally set out to find…something that fired me up!  It was just a round about way to get there.

As an autodidact, I dove into many hours of getting familiar with FB’s ad platform, listening to trainings and reading blogs on ad strategy.  I tried advertising my app as a case study, but what I realized in the end was the Disney demographic was just too expensive to market a $0.99 app.  Anything Disney-themed had too much targeting competition and I’d lose money on each app download.

HOWEVER…I knew it would be a fantastic platform for businesses with higher margins, which is just about any other non-app business in existence.  I thought to myself “This is a freakin’ gold mine of demographic data, and hardly anyone is using it correctly!  What if I could take a traditionally low-revenue business, like an artist, and earn them some profit on a minimal ad spend?  That would definitely prove the power of the ad platform!  And if I can do it with a niche local artist, it can surely scale for a brick-and-mortar or online business!”

And so I did! 

In the next blog post, I’ll talk about using Facebook ads to help artist Toni Best find paying students for her gourd basketweaving classes.

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I’m currently finishing up some images of a very rare MINI Goodwood edition.  Developed in collaboration with Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, this car was limited to 1000 units with only 140 cars making it to the US.

The MINI Goodwood is a treat for the senses.  The intoxicating smell of the Rolls-Royce leather, the ever-changing LED ambient interior lighting in the doors and pillars, the wonderful sound system, and the spry turbo and suspension to make you smile.  It was a fantastic car to shoot, as well as drive to and from the location.

Here are some shots I’m working on and more are on their way.  Click on any image for a higher res, more detailed version.

MINI Goodwood exterior detail.

MINI Goodwood exterior detail.

Radiant_Goodwood Mini Engine Detail-2 Web

MINI Goodwood motor detail.

Radiant_Goodwood Mini Door Detail Web

MINI Goodwood door interior with LED ambient lighting.

MINI Goodwood dash detail.

MINI Goodwood dash detail.

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Years ago, when mirrorless cameras came out, I wasn’t the skeptic that many pros were.  They seemed to fit a niche for the hobby photographer who needed something light and easy to use at the expense of resolution and pro features.  The fit a gap between plain point-and-shoot cameras with which you couldn’t change lenses, and full on DSLR rigs that offered resolution, lens changes and such but were cumbersome to carry around.

Well that final DSLR quality has done me in on family trips and casual shooting.  I’ve grown tired of hauling a 5D MKII, 17-35mm lens, 50 prime, 100 macro, and 70-200 L-series glass around on family trips and casual shoots.  With my iPhone’s camera quality being sufficient for 90% of what I encountered, I usually just snapped and processed images on it instead of carrying my big gear anymore.

Sony a6000 with lens. Photo courtesy of Amazon.com

Sony a6000 with lens.
Photo courtesy of Amazon.com

Well, now mirrorless tech has matured to the point where I feel the investment is worth it for myself and the business.  Here are three reasons why I’m using Cyber Monday 2014 to score a deal on a Sony a6000 with 16-50 kit lens  (Click link if you’re interested in the same deal):

1. Weight – My current Lowepro backpack with DSLR gear weighs roughly 10-15 lbs, depending on what gear I’m hauling at any given time.  Add a tripod capable of holding a DSLR with a 70-200L lens, and it goes up even more.  I’m 36, I have a five year old and a baby to keep up with, I walk a lot on family outings.  I’m tired.  I need something compact, lightweight and easy to store when not in front of my face.  A point and shoot or mirrorless camera fit the bill for such uses.

2. Functionality – Shooting cars, or anything for that matter, becomes less intuitive and spontaneous the more gear you bring to the shoot.  Photographing detail shots of collectible vehicles in an auction preview area is a hassle (and a liability) with a tripod and big camera set up.  Being able to handhold a camera and quickly change angles and camera settings helps with creativity.  It also makes you less of an asshole for all the other people waiting around to view the vehicle you’re diligently photographing.  BUT, having the functionality of lens changes, a camera flash hot-shoe, tripod mount, and exposure bracketing were things I wanted in a handheld set up.  The lens changes allow me some creative freedom over a point and shoot rig, even finding old vintage lenses to adapt to the current Sony mount to play with some vintage or DIY lens effects.  The flash hot-shoe means I can throw on my Pocket Wizard or other remote flash sync unit and shoot studio strobes for portraits, action, and car beauty stills.  This means I can use the camera on paid shoots and get just as good of lighting but with a smaller camera kit.  The tripod mount I require so when I’m doing beauty stills, I can shoot multiple exposures, but being able to use a smaller, lighter tripod will keep my kit as a reasonable weight.  Exposure bracketing helps in many situations, one of which I run into on a sunny Concours and need to tone-map layered exposures together to retain both shadow and highlight detail in a single final image.

3. Wifi image sharing – Honestly, it’s not as much of a sell as the reasons above, but being able to slingshot images I capture to someone’s phone nearby, is pretty handy.  For personal use, sending my wife an image we just shot at Disneyland so she can forward it to the Grandparents would be neat and save time later in the hotel downloading, processing and emailing images out.  From a business standpoint, I’m hoping I can slingshot images from the camera to a client or art director at the shoot so they can preview images, without having to look over my shoulder at my camera screen.  I tried this with a technology called Eye-Fi years ago, and I never got it setup to reliably work on location, so the 8gb Eye-Fi memory card is still just sitting here unloved on my desk.

For a very informative review of the Sony a6000, visit Steve Huff’s review page here.
For a plethora of mirrorless camera reviews and articles, Steve Huff has his whole library here.

And, again, click this link if you want to take advantage of the Sony Alpha a6000 Interchangeable Lens Camera with 16-50mm Power Zoom Lens 2014 Cyber Monday deal on Amazon.com.

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