This is it guys and girls, the end of my amazing trip. Today I’m going to finish up my Imaging USA 2016 review by talking about the second half of the day and the expo that took place every day.
Imaging USA 2016 Review Day 3 Pt 2
Tuesday, 3:30 PM
To be completely honest, this time frame was a flop for me. I started at one session, but the speakers just didn’t seem to be that good at speaking. They might have known about photography but their presentation wasn’t there. They just kind of rambled on and their powerpoint was just random photos with no real connection to what they were saying. I left after about 30 minutes.
The second session I walked into wasn’t much better. The photographer was a bit older and his style of photography didn’t quite fit with what I do. He talked about lighting styles and his personality just seemed out of place.
Tuesday, 5:15 PM 3 Marketing Activities to Build a Six-Figure Income with Sarah Petty
Sarah Petty is known for being a marketing genius. I truthfully don’t know how much she even does photography anymore. All I ever see from her is marketing strategies. She knows how to present and gave some great tips.
The first big idea is to build a little black book of contacts. This info can be used and reused to sell sessions and make connections. With this info, you can email a large group of people about a session or drop a note to someone on his or her birthday or anniversary. The second big idea was to create a dog whistle, which is some kind of item to evoke emotion and get people’s attention. It could easily be some kind of card or product that you show off or send out. It needs to be special and memorable. This will make people remember you and talk to you to others. The third big idea is to gain demand through mini sessions. There can be all different reasons for mini sessions from “Celebrate Mom” to any holiday. The idea is to get people pumped up and to try you out. This builds cash and also adds people to your list.
Sarah had a bunch of other ideas, but she didn’t go into detail. She did try to sell a gigantic program to us at the end of the presentation, which I’m sure would be helpful, but I wasn’t really to drop $1000 on it right there. I don’t like being sold to, but I guess it’s to be expected from a marketing guru.
Expo
Every day there was a gap from 11:30 to 4:30 for the Expo. They had a giant room downstairs where about 100 or more vendors had booths. It took me about two days to make it through all of the different vendors. Some of them I talked to, and others I just ignored. I really liked seeing Lumix, MagMod, Retouchup, 17hats, Miller’s Lab, Ice Light, and Kelby One. There were some other interesting ones, I just didn’t spend as much time there. Then, there were like 50 printing companies. Miller’s is my go to lab, so I went to them and just ignored the rest.
My favorite thing about the Expo was the educational booths. Canon had two different spots for speakers. One was a demonstration spot and the other was just for speaking. Each day they had different photographers come there and do a presentation. It was always packed, but I got a chance to watch Roberto and Linsday do there thing. It was like having mini classes during the Expo.
That’s it. I’m done. It was a great experience, and I hope to get to go again maybe next year or in the future. Photography is my love and I love to learn about it. Thanks to everyone who has read my Imaging USA 2016 review over the past few days. Hopefully you learned something from my experience or maybe I got you interested in going. I’ll be looking for some traveling buddies next time, so feel free to give me a shout if you’re interested.
