Internet Marketing. Do You Just Not Get How Important It Is?

I’m working with a client right now that has me a bit baffled.  I don’t think they quite understand how important their online marketing is.

We sat down and came up with a very simple yet comprehensive plan. Nothing fancy, just a new blog based website and an email campaign. Three weeks later…

I’m still waiting. The holdup is they want to launch the email campaign first since they already have (a very old) website and they are still compiling their email lead list. Ugh. It seems that their leads are all on paper forms that clients have filled out and they have to wait for their son to put them on the computer.

COME ON PEOPLE!
Hire a virtual assistant and have it done in an afternoon. Move forward. This stuff is important. Spend a little on this, OK?

I know that I have been preaching that social media marketing is insanely inexpensive but it’s not free. Yes, compared to conventional advertising; print, TV, radio, it is insanely cheap. If you do it yourself that is. If on the other hand, you are so unaccustomed to computers and the internet that you have to ask what Excel is then you are going to have to pay someone to do it.

Big business gets it. A new report by Aberdeen Group spotlighted by eMarketer shows that 63% of “best-in-class” companies’ surveyed plan to increase their social media budgets this year despite the recession. Another report that came out this year, The Forrester Report stated that “budgets in this emerging category (social media marketing) are still miniscule — three-quarters of marketers have $100,000 or less earmarked for social media.”

OK, admittedly no small business is going to spend that kind of money, but it doesn’t take that kind of money for a small business to buy in to social media. If you look at what you spent last year on advertising, and eliminated one print ad or reduced the size of them all across the board you could come up with more than enough to hire a professional to get you going in social media.

Hire someone to design a plan for your company and get it set up. Hire them to train you or an employee on how to use the applications. Then either take the time yourself to do it or make it the responsibility of a trusted employee. For next to nothing you are creating your own in house marketing department. It’s not rocket science people but you do have to put forth the effort to either do it yourself of pay to have it done. You can’t just not do it; you’ll get left in the dust.

What Influences Woman’s Buying?

In a word, everything. A recent conversation with a bridal salon got me thinking about how the purchasing habits of women are influenced. There is always talk in the industry about price and how that is the determining factor in closing the sale. That’s not altogether true. It may be a factor in whether they ever meet with you but price alone won’t ultimately be the only influence in their purchase.

Women are hard wired differently than men. They see, smell and hear everything around them and on one level or another are influenced by it. Men tend to hone in on the things that are of interest to them with complete focus and clarity. Why does this matter and what can you do with it?

First it matters because your customers are primarily women. Even if this wasn’t the bridal industry it would still matter; women make or influence 85% of all purchases.

Even if you provide men’s formal wear women control the purse strings.

If a woman loves your work, accepts the price and isn’t put off by your contract you may still lose the sale on something that you never even considered, like say your lighting or your bathroom. Remember I said woman see, smell and hear everything. Do you? You probably don’t because you see it everyday.

From the time a woman makes contact with you, everything counts: how fast was their email answered, was the phone answered by a human during business hours and were the answers given helpful? Remember also that you are dealing with them at a highly emotionally charged time in their lives. Even the slightest perceived disconnect may take on more significance than usual.

The shop owner I spoke with asked if I thought that personal appearance mattered. Yes, everything matters. Women pick up subliminal clues. If your appearance does not match what you are saying they will catch it. For instance, if your style of photography is hip and trendy but your clothing is stodgy and traditional you are projecting a disconnect. If you are selling high fashion and your manner of dress is purely for comfort with tennis shoes and old sweaters your clients aren’t going to trust your judgment. I don’t know how often I have said it here but perception is reality. What your customers perceive you to be, you are.

This same philosophy carries all the way through what ever contact you have with your clients. If you meet with clients in an off site location like a restaurant or coffee house you need to consider how that location reflects you and your product. While the local diner may be convenient and familiar does it project the image you want to send? If the image you are trying to project is upscale you may do better to set up camp in a chic dessert shop across town. Everything matters.

Sometimes we are to close to the situation to really see it. An interesting, though sometimes painful exercise is to ask a trusted friend to tell you what they see. Pick a friend that can be brutally honest and have them meet you as a client would; dressed as you would be in the place you most often meet clients. Find out what their perception is. Does it match what you were hoping to project? I often send articles I am working on to an editor friend of mine with the subject line “Shred my copy”. Sometimes it hurts, but it always makes me a better writer.

It may come to a point where you need to reallocate some of your already stretched marketing budget and hire a consultant to look over your shop or office to get a new perspective. Be sure and have a clear picture of the image you are wanting to project; an image that reflects the style of your work. Remember it is the total package. I know some people that are wonderful at their chosen field but struggle because they just aren’t projecting the right image. It may sound sad or petty, but in today’s highly competitive world it is the tiniest pieces that separate the winners from the losers.

This is another tidbit you can use from the archives of Think Like A Bride. To read more articles like this subscribe to Think today

In this month’s Think Like A Bride I wrote about evolving your business with the times. I have been having a conversation with a wedding manufacturer friend of mine that is doing just that.
I had read on a forum that her business had gone under. Well knowing a bit of the story and not being one to take things at face value I contacted her immediately to find that the rumors of her demise had been greatly exaggerated.
The truth was that she had seen the writing on the wall and closed down every one of her wholesale accounts and gone to pure retail using online. Guess what; in the year that she has been orchestrating this transformation her bottom line has been transformed.
Here is a bit of the exchange.

“Thank you. Really, thank you – you made me realize months ago that doing this was not an irrational decision. My gut and our numbers have told me for a while that this is what we need to do, but is/was a scary decision and it helped to have an insider’s opinion.

Not even to mention the fact that I can actually CONTROL how our products are sold in my store and website, but not in other people’s stores. I have no idea how things were displayed, if sales people even knew anything about the products, or how they were priced.”

You have to keep evolving. The world of bridal is changing rapidly. Nothing will be the same in 5 years. The manufacturers that will survive are the ones that aren’t afraid to evolve with this changing environment. Sounds like Darwinism has come to the wedding industry.

“OK, everybody that wants to survive: climb out of the ooze!”

To you my friend I say ”welcome to dry land! So damn glad you could join us”

The complete article “What’s Dangerous Is Not To Evolve” is available to subscribers of Think Like A Bride