Are you a service based business?

Do your clients work closely with you, or learn from your expertise?

If you find yourself spending hours of one on one time with your client, the process you take your clients or students through is unique to who you are.

A large part of what they are drawn to is your specific approach.

It’s likely going to be a large part of their decision to ultimately work with you or not.

So why would you keep your personality and persona out of your marketing?

When who you are is a critical part of the decision… you should be a big part of the marketing too.

People want to know if they like you. If they feel they can trust and respect you enough to do business with you.

If they

Now, not all businesses have 1:1 connection with their clients like this. But most service based businesses do. It’s in the whole “service” part of the business!

If find yourself nodding your head in agreement here, you should probably consider making yourself more front and center on your website and social presence.

If you look back at your website, blog, and social feeds, and you can’t ever see photos of you doing your thang then you may want to stop and think about this for a while.

People want to connect with people.

Especially when it comes to learning from or taking the advice of someone online. While your offer needs to hit their pain points, your approach to fixing it has to align with how they like to learn.

And while your offer can be provided by scores of other companies just a quick Google search away, if your potential client connects with you as a person, they will have no reason to open their app up and start googling because they will be invested in you!

So take a look at your online presence and make sure your face is there. Show the behind the scenes. See images of you at work. Tell a funny story that helps see you as a person and not so much as a company.

Speaking of stories, let me tell you one.

It’s one of me as a wedding photographer showing all the pretty things and pretty photos on my site.

I had a quick about me page, but it was… meh. I paid attention to all the old school marketing techniques saying you should have a professional appeal on your site, and basically that your personality is just a distraction. “Let the work speak for itself,” they said. And I listened.

I mean, these guys had books and books saying the same thing, so they must be right.

I had all the pretty photos, I shared blog posts from past weddings and portrait sessions. I had a good FAQ page.

I had crossed all my Ts and dotted all my Is.

The inquiries weren’t coming in as I thought they should. And when they did, it came down to the potential client wanted to know about the price and that’s all they cared about.

And you know why?

Because I didn’t give them anything else they could grab onto to care about.

I looked like every other wedding photographer’s website out there.

To their eye, it all looked the same, so at the end of the day, price wins.

You never want to be so interchangeable that price is all that matters.

So, I started including more of me on my website.

More personality and quirks. More stories about who I am and who I love to work with. I started showing people the person who was going to spend the day with them on their wedding day. I started sharing my love of Oreos and my inability to say the right words, and do you know what started happening?

My inquiries started coming in more, and when couples would email, they would be talking to me, mentioning Oreos or sunshine or one of the other things I had shared.

They were reaching out to me and already feeling a connection to me, and my bookings went up as well as the types of clients I started getting were those awesome clients I dreamed of having.

As a photographer, I am a service based business, just like you are.The experience my clients have when they work with me greatly impacts the results they have. 

When I transitioned to branding photography from weddings, I implemented the same strategies. Because the more people understand my personality, as well as see photos of me, the more they feel like they know what they can expect of me and my business.

And it all started with just putting a little bit more of myself out there for people to see. I let my face be the face of my business, and who would have guessed it, but people loved it and my business grew.

No longer do I get inquiries that are focused on price alone… I now get inquiries from people who are excited to work with me from the get-go.

So what are you going to do to put your personality and approach into your brand?

If you feel lost or confused on what to do here, join my free Facebook group: Building a Magnetic Personal Brand.

I share tips and strategies every single week on Wednesdays!