One of the things I love most about the one on one consulting I do is that it always gives me ideas on what matters most to my target market…you, the readers of Think Like A Bride. While every consulting client has a different specific need (Hey, that’s why they called me in the first place) in a larger sense they are all struggling with similar issues.

I see so many wedding vendors struggling with identity issues. Whether they are looking for a web make over, trying to figure out what to put in their blogs or  if and where to place advertising it almost always boils down to an issue of identity. What is your businesses identity, what is your “Brand”.

Exactly as I have told brides over and over, first figure out the style and theme of your wedding; you as wedding professionals have to do the same. By finding, defining and understanding your unique brand you have a template for all of your other decisions. When faced with a question simply ask yourself, “Does this fit with my brand?”

For many, defining the brand is the hardest thing they have to do in marketing their business.

Here are a few articles that may help and I plan to explore this yet again in the March issue of Think Like A Bride.

Branding. What Are You Missing

Branding. Again> Or why you need a second opinion

If all else fails, call me.

Every now and then I run across these videos. I’ve used some of them in my presentations and seminars. This one has a lot to say about the power of social media. If you think it is just a fad or that you don’t need to use it for your business you are sorely mistaken.

As wedding vendors, your target market IS GenY. If you ignore the media that they use you have no hope of reaching them. In order to sucessfully market anything, you have to:

• Understand your target market
• Know where they are
• Reach out to them in a way that they are receptive to hearing

You can not market your goods or service only in the way that you would be receptive to; or that worked well for previous generations.

Because of how unique our industry is, our target market is constantly shifting. They move at light speed and you have to stay on top of their trends to find them. It is no longer enough to stay up on the latest trends in weddings. You have to constantly scan the jungle to see where the herd you seek to capture is lurking.

There are two distinct schools of thought on how to handle how you use social media: short and frequent versus longer and less

often. Is there really a difference and which style is for you.

The conventional wisdom for blogging was that the best strategy was to put up short posts on a daily basis. Limit yourself to 500 words or less but do it every day.  This is the part that got a lot of my clients groaning. The thinking behind this was that in the eyes of the search engine every post represents a page on your site. Another factor was to keep subscribers happy and coming back. Well with the rise in popularity of microblogging sites like Twitter a new thinking is beginning to emerge.

First let’s look at Twitter. If you are on Twitter than you know what I am talking about when I say that there are too many people clogging the twittershpere with mundane stream of consciousness nonsense. “Yum, starbucks here we come” “Uploading Saturday’s wedding”  “Such a nice day and no photo shoots”  Please people, I have a life, I don’t want yours. Then along comes an article on how the CDC is using Twitter to keep everyone informed about the Swine Flu issue. (which, btw, I found on Twitter in the first place)

Be Simple and Selective on Twitter, Don’t Over Complicate: Unlike many of us (myself included) who congest Twitter’s airwaves with excessive banter, the CDC exercised impressive restraint in sharing only the most essential content. In a weird way, its Twitter account @CDCemergency felt more authoritative precisely because it didn’t spray unnecessary junk our way. Everything it shares is important, timely and actionable. When it arrives, you know it’s important.

Precisely because it posted only the most essential content, you pay more attention to it. I follow close to 500 people on Twitter; it is the ones that only post meaningful things that I really pay any attention to at all. Do you want your followers to hear what you have to say or are you just posting to hear yourself tweet? Constant tweeting can be a plus for name recognition but are you getting recognized for what you want to be known for?

Some one that is doing frequent right on Twitter is Bravo Bride. They post about once an hour but always with a new item on their For Sale boards. It’s almost like watching the Home Shopping Network pop up on my twadget sidebar. What a wonderful, guilty pleasure.

As for blogging; more often doesn’t have to be the only way.  There is such a thing as evergreen posts; those posts that will be just as relevant 2 years from now as they are today. Suppose you write really great how to posts, those will most likely look good for the life of the blog. It’s ok for these to be longer. They may also have the added benefit of looking better to the Googlebots and if they are really good they may just land on the front page of Google and stay there for up to a year. One of the keys is that these posts have to be really well done. Mediocre just won’t cut it for a long post, so edit, edit, edit.

If the posts you write tend to be more topical and time sensitive then you have to be a frequent poster. Just by the nature of the beast you will want to lean toward quick hits here. Think of them as more of a news flash than a well researched feature article. Get your facts right, make your language concise and hit it and get it. Toss in a couple of well labeled images and you are on your way.

Here is an example of the difference.

Short post:  Amber & Josh’s Wedding.

This would be an example of a post that would be short.  Get in all the important information and relevant keywords like your location and the venue complete with town and state. Use your great pictures and let them carry the information for you.

Long Post: Why Amber’s Wedding Makeup Looked So Great & How Yours Can Too

Same wedding, maybe even same images but this time you are giving the brides tips on how to achieve the look they want in their pictures by using the right makeup tricks. Yep, you may have to pick up the phone and ask the makeup artist a few questions, do a bit of refining but you will have a post that has staying (and search) power.

There isn’t anything wrong with either approach. There isn’t anything wrong with a combination of the two. What you want to be careful of is mixing them up. No one wants to read a 1500 word review of some strangers wedding. If you go long, make it packed with information that your readers can use.

I sat in a meeting the other night with 10 other wedding professionals. It was supposed to be a board meeting for our local wedding organization but it quickly digressed to an all out trash fest of one of the brides for next month.

You see, half of the people in the room had already fired this bride. The only one that still had not was the planner. The floral designer, transportation company, the invitation designer and one other had already had to make the decision to walk away from the outrageous behavior and demands of this client. It is not an easy decision to make; I know, I had to do it myself this week.

When do you know it’s time to fire a client? For me, it is when I come to the realization that no matter what I do it will never be right with this client. Often it has to do with communication and for me, it usually has a component of extreme micro-management. For others it is a clash of personalities or a death by paper cuts scenario, what ever has caused it- it is in your best interest to remove yourself as soon as possible. The longer you keep trying the worse it is going to get.

As professionals that are passionate about what we do it is hard to give up on a client. Of course there is the money aspect. Hey, who likes to give up income?  Take a look back at some of the weddings you have done where your instincts were telling you that something was wrong. I bet that most of the time they ended up costing you money in the end. You bent over backwards to please the unappeasable. You replaced, added, amended and redid over and above what was originally agreed upon. In the end, they still were only marginally satisfied.

I have had to do this twice now. The first time was a on a very simple wedding cake. Well I guess it was simple, it was supposed to be buttercream with borders, nothing like most of the designer cakes I usually did. After three design consultations and nearly 5 hours of time spent with this bride I still had no idea what she wanted. At one point it came to me piping the same border for her to look at in 4 different tip sizes at which point she said “Let’s schedule another appointment so I can see some more ideas.” I’m still not sure why she came to me in the first place. Mind you it rarely took more than an hour to an hour and a half to design even the most elaborate cake.

I had worked with brides that I had done as many a 4 redesigns on, no problem. I have had brides request trial tiers if it was an especially elaborate design or we were doing some very specific color matching, again no problem. There was just something about this girl that my inner voice kept screaming at me about. In the end I listened to that voice and made the hard choice to fire her. At first it makes you feel like a failure. How could you not have made this work? Then at some point you realize that you just weren’t a fit no matter how hard you tried.

I called her consultant and talked it over. She completely understood; after all she was working with her too. I wrote her a very professional letter explaining that I felt she would be happier with another cake designer and returned her (non-refundable) deposit. I never regretted it, especially after hearing from the planner after the wedding. Nothing had been right, all the way down to the temperature of the A/C in the limo. That time my instincts were right.

So how do you keep this from happening in the first place? First off never be afraid to NOT take a client. Tell clients at every step of the interview process that if you feel they would be a better fit with a different professional you will happily recommend one. That way you don’t have to take them in the first place.

In the long run a bad client can do you more harm than any amount you stand to make off the wedding. They will kill your self esteem, try to ruin your reputation and generally make you question why you are even doing what you are doing. If your inner voice is screaming, maybe you should not be afraid to listen.

“So Then I Shouldn’t Let My 6 Year Old Answer the Phone?”

Ummmm, no. That question was really asked of me recently. Do some wedding vendors just not get that this is a

business or are they clueless as to what a business is?

I truly didn’t know how to respond to the question. Where do you start to correct something like this? The question arose after a DJ had asked me to take a look at his business card from a marketing stand point. He asked me if he should risk putting his cell phone on the card. I told him if he wasn’t around his business phone most of the day then yes.

“Oh no” he said, “That is my home phone. I don’t have a business line.”

How many of you have just fallen into your business? Printed up a few business cards and thought you were good to go? More frighten, how many of you did that 10 or 15 years ago and are still thinking that way?

Think Like a Bride is here to keep you up on the trends in our industry, keep you clued in to your brides heads and spew forth marketing advice. I can’t help you if you aren’t at least looking at what you do from the level of a professional. Today’s brides are disenchanted enough and jaded enough that if they suspect for one minute that you are not professional they are never going to give you the time of day; or if they do they are not going to do it for anything but bargain basement rates.

If on the other hand you want great weddings and larger margins you have to look, sound and act like a professional. If you want today’s bride to hand you over a large check she wants to feel like you have it completely together, not some basement Betty just fooling around on the weekend.

Today’s bride is used to a certain level of professionalism when she spends top dollar. Additionally most of our brides have been in or at least exposed to the corporate world. They know how it works. I fear that many of the vendors I run across today have never been in that kind of business intensive world.

Even the simple things like proper business phone etiquette or how to put together a professional looking proposal seem to have fallen by the wayside. Proper spelling and language use count. It doesn’t matter how pretty you bridal bouquets are if your proposal looks like a 3^rd grader typed it you won’t get the good brides. Details matter to these brides. I saw one on line the other day complaining that a caterer she sent an inquiry to misspelled her name in his reply. Her comment “How hard is it to just cut and paste?”

If you want to make a living in this industry in 2010 then you have got to be thinking about it from a business like point of view. We only have 52 Saturdays a year.

Before you even begin to start thinking about spending any money on marketing your business take a good hard look at the little things that make a business’ image. I don’t want you to come to me wanting a brand image makeover if you aren’t already doing the basic things that make you look like a pro. No amount of money spent on marketing is going to work if when they do call your 6 year old answers the phone.

I just got home from The Special Event 2010 in New Orleans. Every time I go, I go with a different segment of the industry. This year I hung out with the planners. Funny how we all work in the same industry but all have very different points of view.

If you have not been to the TSE you have to make a serious effort to go next year. It is really a one stop shop for education, networking and the latest products and inspiration.

Networking: Just like anywhere, it is what you make of it. If you go down with a group and stick to your selves, you are missing the point. You have to reach out and make new friends. Meet for lunch, meet for coffee, talk to the speakers and get to know them. Then follow up once you get home. There isn’t any point in making connections if you don’t build on the initial meeting.

New Products: The show floor most years is a wonderland of what’s hot for the new year. Don’t just focus on your segment of the industry, look at everything. For example, this year lighted bars were everywhere. Most florists wouldn’t pay attention. Well they should because next year you are going to have to design floral decor to decorate them. Duh.

In this same vein, check out the table tops for the wedding luncheon and the tabletop competition. Some of the top creatives in the industry are given free reign to design. This will certainly give you a glimpse into where the trend for “looks” is going in the next few years.

Spoiler: think organic and woodsy.

Also a great source of inspiration is the nominees for the GALA Awards. Be sure to check out what the judges thought was hot enough to make the cut.

Education:There are so many seminars that it can be hard to figure out just which ones to attend. Here is the biggest tip I can give you; pick speakers that come from the wedding and event industry. We really are unique. Every year I sit through at least on given by a marketing guru that has no concept of our target market. Sadly, they just don’t get it. Now granted, I do marketing for a living and I am familiar with a lot of these speakers, but seriously, what they teach really has to be filtered through the lens of our unique market.

Here is another tip, get to the sessions a bit early to network with the other people in the audience. Obviously you have a common interest and as you walk out together you have something to talk about.

Probably the best reason to go is how energized you feel when you leave. Always held in January, what better way to kick off a new year than with a massive infusion of ideas and new connections?

I had an interesting conversation with a new client recently. Part of my review of his marketing strategy included asking him when he last updated his website. His answer startled me; he hadn’t updated anything in over a year!

I’m sure you are thinking big deal but this really is a big deal. In the case of this particular client, a caterer, he hadn’t even changed the prices on the posted menus. If you have bought anything in the last year like oh say food or gas then you know what has happened to prices. What do you think having to live with year old prices did to his bottom line? Exactly.

When he told me why he was doing that to his business I was even more stunned. He hated to call the webmaster to change anything because it cost an arm and a leg. Sound familiar? I am dealing with the same situation with an organization where I am a member of the board. This is lunacy.

In today’s culture a website has to be a dynamic, current, ever changing entity. Today’s bride can smell outdated at thirty paces. I’m not necessarily talking about changing the over all look of a site, although that should be done every 2 to 3 years. I am most concerned with you keeping the information up to date.  Are you a wedding planner that only has pictures of weddings you did 4 or 5 years ago on your site? Why not the images from last weekends wedding? I know, the webmaster again, right? What about you florists, those bouquets look a little out of date do they? Are you representing your business to its best advantage? Probably not.

With the tools and products on the market today there isn’t any reason why you should have a website that can’t be quickly and easily updated BY YOU at the click of a button. If your web designer is telling you different he is holding you hostage to old technology and stuffing his wallet at your expense.

I also have clients that have come to me with a perfectly good site that was in fact built so they could update it but they never learned how. WHAT??  Come on, that’s such an easy fix I almost feel bad telling you. If you need to learn how to use the website you have, call whoever built it, offer to pay them for their time and have them sit down with you and teach you how to use it. How do you think I started learning all this stuff oh those many years ago?

I’ll tell you something else, most web designer will get a kick out of showing you all the nifty bells and whistles in your site. Remember, they are techies, this stuff excites them as much as that new source for the perfect ribbon or staffing solution or newest gown collection excites you. Let them show it off. Something else to think about, if you buy a new website make sure that a complete one on one tutorial is part of the package. That site doesn’t do you a bit of good if you can’t use it to its full advantage.

Technology is moving at light speed. The days of building a website and forgetting it are over. Remember, that is where you potential customers are looking for you.  Can you afford to show them you are outdated and out of sync with their world?

If you would like me to review your website, just drop me a line. If I get enough of them I may just do a column reviewing them next month, with your permission of course.

Your target market is talking.  Do you know what they are asking for?  I do.  They are asking for information.  Are you giving it to them?  At the last bride’s panel one of the questions concerned websites and what brides wanted to see.  An online portfolio was nice.  So was a blurb about your experience and credentials.  But what they wanted and weren’t finding was answers.

Brides tell me that they put together a list of vendors in a specific category by asking friends and relatives.  They look through local wedding magazines and attend bridal.shows.  This is where you first hit their radar.  But once you make the big list, how do you survive the cut to the short list?  At this point it is all about your website.
They will sit at the computer, either at work or in the late evening, and go to website after website.  The ones that answer their questions get a second look.  Do you offer what they are looking for, such as fondant on a cake or two cameras for a ceremony?  Do you carry a certain line of gown or invitation or what ever it is that they are looking for?  Are you available for their date?  Can they afford you?  If you answered the questions, then you  get a call.  Remember, today’s bride has been on the Internet since the 1st grade.  Researching a product or service online is an everyday part of life.

One of the big things brides want, but are not finding on many websites is pricing.

That’s a tricky one for most of us.  I know it was for me.  Everything I did was a custom design.  There were a million variables.  How do you put a hard price on that?

All brides really want to know at this point is if you are in their price range.  They don’t want to fall in love with your work or waste their time on a meeting if they can’t afford you.  And you don’t want them to waste your time either.  Do you really want to spend an hour with a couple only to find out that their entire wedding budget is in the neighborhood of your lowest package?

Like me, you may not be able to put a hard and fast price on your website.  But if your don’t put some indication of a range of your prices, many brides will see the beautiful images of the best you have to offer, and write you off as too expensive.  So give them some info.  Give them an idea of where your pricing starts and how it works.  If you normally include a few freebies in your deals, shout it from the rooftops.  The more information they can access from their desktop, the happier today’s bride is.

Think about this when you do the annual review of your website. (You do that, don’t you?) Oh and if you need help, just call.

I promise, it will boost the conversion rate of qualified brides.  Better hits, fewer misses.  And isn’t that why you have a website?

I would imagine that by now you know you have to be online and that you have to do it right. It is pretty competitive out there and having a website designed isn’t exactly cheap. So here are a few tips to getting the best website for your needs.

1. Know what you want and need before you approach a designer. Have a clear idea in your mind about what role you need this site to play. Is it simply an online brochure? Do you want to use it to build a community? Do you need it to be an e-commerce site? What do you want this site to achieve for you? If your answer to that last one is “more business” tell me how it will do that.

1. Know what you want it to look like in terms of style.  Bring up 5 or 6 sites you like and really give them a good hard look. What is it you like about them? Is it the visual elements or the functionality that caught your attention? They don’t have to be in the wedding industry, feel free to think outside the box a bit.

1. Know what you want to include. Do you offer multiple services that can all be included or would they be better served with individual sites?  For example, someone that plans both weddings and corporate events may be better served with two sites, each with a very different look. Ditto for the photographer that does both weddings and sports photography. The people seeking sports photography are going to be instantly turned off by the style that would attract brides. Not so for the photographer that does weddings and family portraiture; those two would easily blend. Think about your target market(s).

1. Find a designer that understands your industry.  Someone that understands your industry will understand your target market. I can’t over emphasize how important this may be. They are crafting your online presence, if they don’t understand your target market they won’t have a clue how to reach it. The may build you a technically spectacular site and still miss the mark.

1. Don’t micromanage it. Trust me; you are the only one that the minutiae will make any difference to. Yes it is important that the overall look is right, that colors and graphics are spot on to your branding and that the functionality is flawless. Moving an image 10 pixels to the left isn’t that important. Trust that your designer does this for a living, they know what works. Just like you would not want your brides to micromanage you, don’t micromanage your web dude.

1. Don’t rush it. Take your time in making the decisions in the first 4 points. Don’t put impossible deadlines on your designer. Every site is different and there is always something that has to be worked through. Better to let them work through it and get it right than to have them slap some band aid on it to hit your deadline. Be patient; remember right is better than quick.

1. Admit what you don’t know and ask questions. Yep, we tend to be a bit techie but a good web designer should be able to answer your question with an explanation that you can understand.  The key here is in the admitting what you don’t know. Just tell them it went over your head and to explain it to you.

I hope this has helped. I wish I had had a list like this when I had my first site designed. Wow, was I clueless. Jesse, if you are reading this, I am so sorry.

If you are a regular follower then you know I am electronic media’s biggest fan.  It is everywhere from the demise of newspapers to E-vites and email rsvps.  So what’s with that headline?

It is exactly the fact that online marketing has become so ubiquitous that I think it may be a time to give snail mail a fresh look. We all have our spam filters set and a separate email address that we use when we have to give an email address that we know will result in junk. Junk mail has fallen off and doesn’t crowd our snail mailboxes like it once did. Hmmmm.

So just why do I think a postcard will get any more attention that it did 4 years ago? Well I don’t think a postcard will, but a nice fat “lumpy” mailer will. What’s a lumpy mailer, you ask. A lumpy mailer is a padded envelope or box with something in it. Don’t YOU always open those? I know at one time I had a whole collection of pens that said “Your name here” LOL

This, of course, is not the most budget conscience option but it may be effective. Even that behemoth of the online world, Google, is doing it. They sent out little spiral bound note cards in bright green listing tips for using Adsence to advertise.

So what do you put into a lumpy mailer? Well it has to be unique and it has to have a connection to your business. Ideally it should be something that the recipient will either keep or remember.  Suppose you are a caterer, how about a sushi shaped eraser with your information on the bottom? I know I’d keep that. A bridal salon might have some mini jewelry bags made up out of bridal fabric with a tag sewn in with their information. Photographers might send out picture frame key chains. Get creative.

I’m not recommending that you buy a list and send these out blindly to a couple of thousand engaged couples. I do think you should send them to hot prospects though. Maybe drop one in the mail to a new consult on the day you meet with them.  Or harvest the best from that list you got at the bridal show and send by snail mail rather than just handing it out at the show, for just a bit more money you get a second exposure.

This kind of thing also works great for business to business sales. Think up something that will get the attention of other vendors that you want to refer you.  You might even consider spending a bit more on something for this purpose. Say you are a florist, find a vase shaped pencil cup that you can put your information on and send it out to rental firms, caterers and venues. If it is unique enough they will use it on their desk, keeping you in the front of their mind. Double score if it is on the desk where they meet with clients.

The old rule of thumb with postcards was that you need 7 exposures to be effective. If you add that up you may not be spending all that much more doing one lumpy mailer than you were on the postcard campaign. If you want to track the success, set up a mini page on your website and have that URL printed on your collateral. Then you can simply track how many people enter on that page.

In today’s market you have to think outside the box to get noticed.

Further reading:

What Google Can Teach Us About Printed Marketing Materials