Located in "the boonies" of Fredericksburg VA, Wen and her husband Sean are rocking their 3,000 sq ft studio with a heavy emphasis on high school seniors. A unique customer experience and exceptional portraits has customers flocking to their doors. Wen's background in marketing combined with her non-traditional/ D.I.Y. approach and willingness to share openly has brought her to the attention of the photography industry.

Creating A Community Within Your Studio

How to create a presence in your community, and draw the community into your studio. Just one studio event costing $75 drew 120 kids into our studio in one night and was the talk of the school for months...and got our studio featured on the school website. We will discuss lots of low cost ideas you can take and use this year to create a buzz about your business in your community. Everything from studio events, facebook, friend’s sessions, contests, photo booth, to fundraisers at football games.

Posters & Beyond Use sports and club posters to get your foot in the door at your local high schools, then rock them with your generosity. We'll show you how we put our spin on the Dave Junion style sports posters and in less than 3 years we've gone from zero presence to capturing a 25% market share of one target high school (a contract school with a sr. class of over 350) This has also lead to the creation of full color fall sports programs and posters for drama productions. These have become the leading edge of our plan to create a "community" through our studio.

Senior Model Program aka "Winter Cashflow"  Looking for a way to create cash flow in the winter time, while ensuring a good senior year ahead? Our model program is a little different than the others. Step by step details of what we do in our program to create a buzz even in their junior year. Start booking seniors before school is out. Detailed instructions for using facebook, school newspaper inserts, video and automated web forms.

DIY - one man's junk... From Marketing to Creating Sets

Take anything you have laying around and turn it into something valuable for your business. Come by for a barrage of ideas that you can take home and implement for little or no money. From marketing pieces, equipment, organizing your studio, creating new sets and lots of buzz. Learn to see anything with new eyes. I will share several of the guerrilla marketing campaigns that we have created from what we had in our hands that our customers are still talking about today.

In addition to the business pods and round table discussions on marketing, I love to help other photographers with their marketing dilemmas on a one on one basis. So feel free to find me and sit and chat for a while about your situation. Here are just a few messages I received after my first After Dark Mentoring Experience in Minneapolis.

“First off THANKS for helping me with all the great ideas! As soon as I got home I totally narrowed my focus to seniors. I've met with most of the coaches and band directors in the area and they are all on board. Once again, I really can't thank you enough for all your great ideas, you really pointed me in the right direction.”  - Craig

“Thanks for the great experience at After Dark, for sharing your knowledge and the drink on Wednesday evening! It was all such an amazing time! Now to put it all to work and see if I can come somewhere close to what you've got going will be the next challenge.” Best wishes, Mitch

“Thank you, thank you for sharing you knowledge at After Dark! It was such an honor to meet you and listen to you speak! Your work is gorgeous!”  Thanks again, Janet

“Wen, you were truly inspirational at After Dark!”  Cammie

www.wenmcnally.com

Email: wen@wenmcnally.com