What's The Value Of One Business Card?
You know the feeling. You dash out the door, jump in the card, headed for a networking meeting. You arrive on time, just barely, and then it hits you.You forgot to stock up on business cards. It’s too late to go back to your office and retrieve them. You are now going to look like a rank amateur. Not having business cards in your pocket will subconsciously cause you to minimize making new connections. The scary part is that you never know the value of just one business card exchange.
There is a simple bit of preventative wedding marketing maintenance to make certain this never happens. When ordering or reordering business cards, buy an extra 1000 and stash them everywhere. You should never be at any networking event without 25-50 cards.
Stash a reserve 25-50 cards in the following places.
- In your car glove box or center console
- In the glove box or center console of your significant other’s car
- In one pocket of every suit coat or sport coat
- In every purse your own
- … fill in your special place, here
We’re talking about a few hundred extra cards, for back up, We’re not talking about your special business card case. This is back up.
You’ll never have that sick feeling, in the pit of your stomach, again.
Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority
Is your pricing and service structure working against you?
Wedding vendors are often frustrated that brides don’t appreciate the value of their services. Ultimately, aside from ‘customer service,’ there are three major factors that come into play.
- Hours of service
- Price for product/service
- The quality of the result
One major problem is the tradition of how pricing is presented. Often, particularly for entertainment, photography, videography, the pricing presented to the prospect is based on ‘time in direct contact with the client.’
That method, while customary in the wedding industry, understates the time directly serving any single client, not to mention their share of overall service and time from your business.
Until I went through the process of being a groom, I never realized how much time a videographer or photographer spent, after the wedding, before presenting the final result. Contracts for services show beginning and end times at the event, but I’ve never seen an informational description of how much time is spent in post-production, for example.
When a prospect doesn’t know how many hours it takes to edit one hour of raw footage from one camera, it’s hard for her to understand why the price is $4000 rather than $1000. Hours are tangible measure of your effort. The result is more subjective.
It is not sufficient to show a prospect samples of your reel or finished photos and expect them to understand the degree of difficulty. A photographer who shoots a sunset wedding has a great degree of difficulty. If one doesn’t explain the situational differences in equipment, lighting, etc., then you are just hoping that the client figures it out. That’s not good enough.
A DJ service or band prices itself for a specific number of hours of performance. Travel and set up are typically not shown, unless the event is outside the local market area.
What effect might it have if proposals and contracts had a simple ‘informational statement’ that indicated a list of additional tasks associated with the event that do not happen during the precise reception time frame? Effective implementation includes discussing the total scope of your service with the client, including a summary of those points, in your proposal, and briefly including it in (or as an attachment) to your agreement.
Maybe this should be an industry-wide standard for wedding marketers? What would change in the process of selling if every prospect understood you total measure of service, and its impact on the final result for the bride?
I know, I’m turning the pricing and selling approach on its ear. Maybe it’s time we do that.
I invite your specific comments, and how you think this might apply within your slice of the wedding industry.
Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority
Serving Las Vegas wedding professionals through networking, education, and synergy.
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