Modern Marketing + Content Strategy for Photographers Worldwide

Think you could probably use a modern marketing and content strategy to help keep you on track? If you’ve been running your business flying by the seat of your pants—unsure of where you’re going or where you’ve been,—then you DEFINITELY need a modern strategy!

What does a Pepper Modern Marketing + Content Strategy include?

The major components included in Pepper’s modern marketing and content strategies are audits—basically an in-depth assessment of where your biz stands—and a strategy that takes all the audit info and puts it into actionable tasks. We use the audits to help you figure out what changes you need to make to bring your biz to the next freakin’ level!. 
Pepper offers a few different kind of audits:

• Foundational SEO Audit
• Google Business Profile Audit
• Social Audit
• Google Analytics Audit

We use the information gathered in these audits to build you out a super awesome, three-month modern marketing strategy that includes content calendars and ideas, as well as some education and training. Each audit has its own purpose and benefit, and that’s what we’re telling you all about today. 
We’ll also dive into why you really need a strategy and how we go about putting one together for you.

Foundational SEO Audit as Part of a Modern Marketing Plan for Photographers

In this audit, we go through everything SEO-related on your website to find out what needs attention and fixing, and then we send you a full report. The purpose of this SEO audit is to figure out where your site sits for Search Engine Optimization and how we can help search engines find AND RANK your website.

A Foundational SEO Audit includes:

1. Making sure search engines are only indexing ONE version of your site. 
2. Checking your website speed to make sure your mobile and desktop versions are optimized.
3. Identifying “Zombie Pages” that don’t need to be indexed by The Googs or other search engines). 
4. Checking your organic traffic & giving an overview of how people are finding your site (if they are) and how.
5. Identifying any weak spots in your On-Page SEO. 
6. Identifying all organic keywords & backlinks driving traffic to your site.
7. Identifying broken and dead links that need to be fixed STAT.
8. Identifying thin content.
9. Analyzing your website architecture—how pages are connected to each other because it affects search engine crawlers and rankings).
10. Putting it all together so you know exactly where your website needs some SEO TLC.

If you’re reading this thinking, SEO what?!, don’t worry—part of our SEO audit process is a face-to-face walkthrough (via Zoom or Google Meets, of course) of your audit. We’ll give you real-time info and feedback, with in-depth explanations of everything, so you will fully understand what your site needs, SEO-wise! The Peppers also created a fucking RAD SEO GUIDE FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS, specifically geared to show y’all how to understand SEO and follow our in-house, step-by-step process to get our creatives’ sites to rank on as high on search engines as possible!

Social Media Audit as Part of a Modern Content Marketing Strategy for Photographers

Of course, it’s important to be present on social media, but these days just being present isn’t enough. If you want to kick the competition’s ass, certain other aspects NEED to  be in place. That’s what the social audit helps you with.

A Social Audit (Instagram, Facebook + Pinterest Aesthetic) includes:

1. Bio Setup: Making sure your bio includes your keywords, and a description of your business, location, and contact info.
2. Colour Blocking: Checking out how your feed flows.
3. Image Type: Looking at the types of images used and determining if you are showing off your work or using stock imagery.
4. Captions: Checking out your captions and making sure you’re varying them according to social platform best practices.
5. Hashtag Strategy: Analyzing your hashtag strategy.
6. Branding: Checking if you have a brand and if you’re using it properly across platforms.
7. Consistency: Checking if your posts are consistent, on brand, and going out at the best times. 
8. Features: Making sure you are utilizing new features in each platform to improve your position in feeds.
9. Insights: We’ll also look at your social insights to make sure you’re getting the most out of your social media platforms and, if not, how you can improve.

These are the foundation “check yourself ” building blocks that we Peppers follow as we dive into your social media platforms. We go through each block, step-by-step, dissecting your account and making sure you check all the boxes. 
Of course, there is always room to grow, so we make sure to take a good look at all areas so we can give you valuable feedback on those that need some love. We provide an overview of your account and how it is presented to your followers and give recommendations and suggestions based on these findings.

Google Analytics Audit as Part of Photographer’s Modern Marketing Strategy & Content Planning

Google Analytics is a formidable, but necessary, beast. And, as a creative who would rather spend your time…well, creating, you may struggle with understanding what geeknerdy GA information is important and where to find it. A GA audit will share this need-to-know information with you and make it so much easier to shape your marketing strategy around your photography biz. The audit includes:

1. Site traffic overview.
2. Traffic Sources identification.
3. Site Times breakdown. (how long people spend on your site) of all pages.
4. Bounce rates
5. Your top 20 Site Pages 
6. Where traffic is coming from 
7. Audience overview and demographics
8. Your top-performing content  
9. Data Comparisons (quarter to quarter)
10. Suggestions for improving your site traffic

After the audit is complete, we’ll go over your analytics with the Pepper team and then use it to help create your marketing and content strategy. We will also take you through the audit so you can understand the importance of monthly check-ins to your Google Analytics.

Three Month Marketing Strategy

Why leave the success of your business up to chance? With the right plan and strategy, you can make it happen, step-by-step (and we can help). Based on your SEO, social media and Google Analytics audits, we build out a marketing and content strategy for you that fills in the missing pieces.
We also take into consideration your goals and how you want your business and online presence to grow. We work in collaboration with you to build out a three-month strategy that we (or you) can execute seamlessly. We’re not here to reinvent the wheel, we’re here to help you achieve realistic goals that you can take on yourself after our time together.
 

Pepper’s steps to creating your three-month modern marketing strategy:

1. We’ll use the audits to see where your business needs improvements
2. We’ll use your business goals/questionnaire as a guideline, along with the audits, to create marketing and content strategies.
3. We’ll nail down six marketing strategies and/or tactics that we want to implement over the three months:Branding
   Social Media Management + Engagement 
   Blogging with SEO
   SEO site fixes 
   Newsletter campaigns
   Public Relations
   Pic-Time campaigns
   
4. We’ll research blog topics based on your location and goals (Do you want leads? Do you want to educate? Do you want to inform people about your services?)
5. We’ll provide you with social media prompts, give you the tools (post ideas + best practices and use of captions).
6. We’ll take you through scheduling and posting best practices for ALL of your social media platforms.
7. We’ll research podcasts that align with your brand and reach out to get you set up with a public relations strategy (like drafting press releases, email templates for reachouts, etc.)
8. We’ll create a custom template, lead magnet funnel, and newsletter workflow to get you started (or continue) building and growing your subscriber list.
9. We’ll give you all the tools you need to make sure you know how to rank on Google, so you’re not being missed, and get you set up with all the search-engine tools you’ll need to succeed!

These are just some of the tools we use to help improve your business. Everything is customizable, based on your first call with us. Once we get to know one another, we will do what Peppers do best—get you in front of your ideal, target clients and audience and get them engaged and invested while keeping your financial goals top of mind.

Strategy Calls with Pepper

1. First, we get together for a kick-off call where we do a deep dive into all things your brand, business and goals.
2. Then, once we get your audits and reports finalized, we get together on another call to focus on reports, audits, and your modern marketing and content strategy. This is when we go over all your reports and educate you on our findings and explain how they can help improve your business. 

Ready for Your Modern Marketing and Content Strategy with Pepper?

Getting a modern marketing and content strategy plan from Pepper will help you take actionable steps toward real results.
What kind of results? The kind where your social and web traffic gets busier and your wallet gets thicker.

We’ll handle the foundational SEO audit, the social audit, and the Google Analytics audit. Then we’ll walk you through everything, and come up with a three-month marketing and content strategy that will blow your fucking mind! 
Ready to make this happen? Reach out to us today.