Some of the recurring questions I get, typically at seminars and conferences is: “What’s the right social media to do first?” or “Should I cut back on print advertising?” or

“How come my website isn’t working like it used to?” or “How do I find the time to understand all the latest technology?”

All these question are, in essence, the same question. “Andy, could you please give me a list of the optimum marketing methods to make my business successful? I need the Magic Wedding Marketing Pill.”

Sorry, no-can-do. Answers in Wedding Marketing are not that simple.

I taught college for eight years, and one important thing I learned is that students were look for THE right answer. Sometimes I would present a real life business situation that I had experienced. Along with the scenario, I would present four or five possible alternative solutions to address the problem. The class would discuss it, and then would vote on the preferred path.

I would coyly try to move on to another subject, and students would interrupt with, “But what’s The right answer?”

With a smile, I would respond, there is not ONE right answer. I can tell you what decision I made, and why. However, there may be several effective choices; sometimes none.

In the same way, as a wedding marketer, you are looking for the Magic Wedding Marketing Pill. You want the correct dosage, the least side effects, and the best schedule to make it work.

When working with a client directly, I can recommend one or more courses of action. Even then, if you don’t take the pill on schedule, or take too many, all the recommendations are useless.

Many marketing wizards believe that you should be spending up to 50% of your time on marketing (that should include selling). Perhaps a more efficient and effective person might be able accomplish the same level of sales with a 35-40% commitment. Typically, improving marketing/sales efficiency come with plugging holes in the leaky boat.

Beware of the Bright Shiny New Object: This is the axiom for we ADD business marketers who fail to follow a strategy to its fruition because we get distracted, drop the ball, and move on to something else.

• One blogs, perhaps somewhat effectively, but get distracted by trying Twitter. With no goal or strategy for Twitter, we drop the ball on both, and fail miserably, announcing that New Social Media doesn’t work.
• The new bridal show or wedding publication comes to town. They can’t sell booth or advertising space at retail, because they have no track record, but manage to attract commitment. Let someone else waste their money on testing these new shiny objects. If you wouldn’t pay retail for them, why should you bother with them, at all. Stay with what you know, and improve your ad, or booth exhibit.
• I’m not sure whether to focus on Facebook or LinkedIn. Facebook seems like more fun. I think I’ll do that.

Marketing is an endless set of alternatives. How many phone calls to you make? How many emails or postcards do you send?

Here is the solution: Measure the effectiveness of everything, and then start optimizing, based on results.

If you don’t have the tools or methods to do that, you better get started. Otherwise, you are engaged in seat-of-the-pants-marketing. And that, my friend. is like rolling the dice.

Spoken like a true Las Vegan!

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

The good news is the asuring message to their existing customers, who are still waiting on dresses. Instructions were given on how those orders were going to be fulfilled. They made it abundantly clear that they were not simply ‘closing their doors’ and stranding brides. They would follow through on all orders. Unfortunately, reports of these sort of closures crop up, in good times and bad. Usually, they are not handled in such a professional way.

AAYBG was a bridal salon selling dresses, accessories, and providing wedding planning services.

The letter outlined a number of reasons for closing, including:

• the economy
• ‘appalling’ online competition
• long time employees ‘running off and getting married, and having babies’
• compatibility of the business with the ownership’s personal lives

Through all this sentimentality, there is a major omission. From a website standpoint, this small business couldn’t market its way out of paper bag.

Harsh? You’re damn right!!

I see and critique a lot of websites. I use both my experience and technical tools to analyze sites. It’s hard to do worse than this.

One excellent free tools to evaluate Search Engine Optimization is called Website Grader. The provider of this tool offers many paid services, but this one is free. Just put in your company domain name (and those of a couple of competitors, if you’d like), and its evaluation system rockets into action. In about 30 seconds, you have been given a grade, on a 1 to 100 scale, with specific explanations of what you are doing well, and what needs correction, as it relates to Search Engine Optimization.

I’ve concluded, after running these evaluations via Website Grader on many sites, including my own, that if you make the recommended changes, you see immediate improvement in your score.

For the sake of comparison, I think a score of 70-79 is good. 80-84 is very good. 85-89 is excellent. 90 or more is outstanding.

After running the All About You Bridal Galleria website address through Website Grader system, it came up with a score of 2. That’s not a typo. It’s two, 2 TWO!!!

It would be hard to score that low, if one was trying. Just visit the final score, and see what the report says.

Besides what the report outlines, there are other major league flaws.

Here’s just one: Not only does the site play music, automatically. It plays LOUD music. Even if you mute it, when you navigate to another screen, the music BLASTS you again. You can’t hide from the music unless you entirely mute your computer. It is common knowledge that brides often do some of their wedding research from work (under the radar). And, therefore, the idea of putting auto-loading music, particularly loud music, is NEVER recommended for a wedding site. You will lose many prospective customers, immediately, because you have busted them to everyone within earshot of their computer.

I’m sure the AAYBG owners are wonderful people. It’s clear that their ethics and heart are in the right place. I wish them the best in serving their customers, and making their closing their doors in the smooth and orderly way they’ve planned.

There are many lessons one can learn here. Pick a couple.

Here’s mine: “We’re all ignorant, just in different things.” If you’re a 4-star chef, that doesn’t mean you’re qualified to run a restaurant. You must complement your weaknesses with a partner who has the appropriate strengths and/or seek outside professional advice.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

Content you’ve posted yesterday or two years ago is often still relevant and current for the reader. Hear Andy explain how adding the right plugin to a WordPress blog can connect your reader with archived content. He makes specific reference to the plugin,LinkWithin, which can be seen at the bottom of every post on this blog. It suggests three other older posts that might be of interest to you.

On Monday, October 19th, Andy will be presenting two seminars, one on Blogging, and one on Facebook, at the Television Studio of Get Married Media, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

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 ]]> http://lasvegasweddingnetwork.org/2009/04/26/whats-the-value-of-one-business-card/feed/ 0 http://lasvegasweddingnetwork.org/2009/04/13/is-your-pricing-and-service-structure-working-against-you/ http://lasvegasweddingnetwork.org/2009/04/13/is-your-pricing-and-service-structure-working-against-you/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:01:25 +0000 Andy Ebon http://lasvegasweddingnetwork.org/?p=199 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 ]]> http://lasvegasweddingnetwork.org/2009/04/13/is-your-pricing-and-service-structure-working-against-you/feed/ 1