I am reading a very interesting book, No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent by Dan Kennedy and it got me thinking.

I am in a unique position to know a wide variety of wedding professional in every major segment, both veterans and relative new comers.  Well this book got me thinking about the photographers I know. I have long listened to the established photographers lament the onslaught of the young turks. They are dumbfounded that their experience and expertise, their established reputations and quality of work seemed to count for little or nothing with today’s brides.

Well, I’ve got a news flash for you. It isn’t about the quality of your photography; it’s about the quality of your marketing. Let me explain. Today’s hot players realize that what they are selling is an experience; the photos are only a part of that. They are selling exclusivity: “Wow, I got X & Y to shoot our wedding! I’m so pumped.”
They also understand the concept of multi level pricing and the part it plays in forming their image. They can offer you one price to have an associate photograph your wedding, another price if they are on hand to shoot but turn over the editing and a third, much higher fee if they personally handle it all.

Another thing they understand is PR. Article writing, public appearences and teaching gets your name out there and polishes you image. If however you are publishing in journals for photographers, appearing at photographers conventions and teaching only other photographers you aren’t doing a thing to enhance your reputation with your target market. Instead, these new masters of the game write articles on how to work with your photographer to choose the best location, or teach seminars on how to pose to get the best photos from your wedding or speak at bridal show to brides. Those are but a few ideas; each one has their own specific. The point is they are working to build their reputation with potential clients, not their peers. Truth be told, they could give a rats hind end about their peers.

I don’t mean to dis the photographers with this post, they just made it to easy to get the point across. The lessons above would apply to virtually any one in any field. I hope you are beginning to see what a large part of your business is tied up in how you sell it.

Here at the Agency we build websites for small, very small, businesses that are sick of paying some web guy to update every little thing on their site. We build websites for clients that don’t want to spend an arm and a leg but know they need a great site, which is connected to social media and does amazing things for their search. We build these sites for clients that aren’t web-heads, some of our client have barely mastered sending an attachment with an email.
So therein lays the one thing that makes us different: our sites are beautiful and functional on the front and elementary on the back.

The Proof is In Our Clients Reaction
Last night I had a client meeting to do the final tutorial and hand off on a site we had built for a wedding association with over 200 members. Everyone involved is an over worked small business owner that volunteers what little time they can to run and grow the association. One of their goals was to have a site that they could mange themselves. The also wanted some fairly heavy backside integration with membership subscriptions, a private blog and an integrated email newsletter system.

At the meeting was a florist, a transportation company owner and the associations one paid employee, a part time accountant.(hardly the most techie bunch) I had created a manual for the association with all their passwords and the how to information on all the different parts it took to put the site together. In under an hour, all three of the attendants were blown away by how simple the whole thing was to manage. From managing the member roster and the email newsletter to pulling reports about subscriptions (the money part) to updating and adding new content to the site my clients were having an “I could have had a V-8” moment!  Why had they not done this sooner?

We had already blown the rest of the members away with the look and functionality of the public side, now we had blown away the association officers with the stunning ease of the backside. SCORE!

“Thank You For Making This SO Easy”

That is what I love to hear and that is what they said when we were done. What your website looks like is only half of the battle, the real beauty of a website from the Agency is what you can do with it all by yourself.  For a long time I struggled with my
consulting clients trying to get a website that worked for them, so we began to build them. We know who our clients are and that is why we build them the way we do. We know their skill level and we know how little time they have to devote to their site. We don’t build sites for geeks; we build site for small business owners that already have their plate full and are sick of getting their pockets picked by traditional web design firms.

Let me know when you are ready to move your site to this new way of thinking.

See for yourself. TWESA.com