Or, Cowboy Up and Get Some Damn Self-confidence.

This is going to be one of my ‘beat you up a little bit first ” pep talks.  Fair warning.

I was chatting with a new client yesterday and we got to talking about how many wedding vendors are so afraid of having their work displayed along side the work of their competitors. Why? don’t your think you are better than (or at least on a par with) them?  Aren’t you proud of your work? If you really seriously think that your work won’t hold up to the other vendors in your market at your price point you shouldn’t be in business!

Seriously.

You do what you do (hopefully) because you believe that you have talent and skills, right? So why should you be afraid to show off your talent in the company of other talented, skilled practitioners?

This seems to be most prevalent among photographers but applies to most creatives. “Oh I don’t what them coping my style” Please, if they can copy it, then it isn’t a style its a formula.

“I don’t want them copying my poses.” Newsflash, they are going to do that anyway. That is why you have to be the innovator, constantly creating new and different to stay ahead of the pack. Rather than worrying about someone copying you, start delighting in having them wonder just what the heck you are going to do next. If they are so busy watching you they don’t have time left to develop their own style.

“Oh, I would rather they don’t explore my competitors.” Second newsflash. Trust me, your brides are online and have already seen them.

If you don’t think your work will stand up in a head to head viewing than you have a lot of work to do. You either have to bring your work up to the level needed or work on your self-confidence. I’m betting it’s the later.

Let’s talk about that for a moment. Would you for one minute consider displaying something that you didn’t think was your best work? Of course not; so don’t doubt yourself.

I was taught along time ago the when we look at others we see only their shiny side and we then compare it to our dark and wrinkled side. Stop that!

I know that to this day, when I look at a  shot of one of my cakes, all I can see are the flaws. I focus on what I could have done better or maybe done differently. Yet when I look at a cake in a magazine or someones portfolio all I see is the cake and the skill needed to create it. I’ll bet that you are guilty of doing the same thing.

One of the first things to remember in marketing is to believe in the product. Doubly so since this is your product. As creatives, every time we display our work we are displaying a piece of ourselves and that’s scary. Be proud of who you are and what you create.

I’ll tell you a little secret, every time I hit publish on one of these articles it scares the bejezzes out of me. Not as much as it used to, mind you. Do you know why that is? Because of you and all the positive feedback I have received from my readers over the years.I have begun to see the shiny side. You need to do the same.

The more websites I build, the more I learn. So time for a little sharing.

Here are the top five things that have to be on your website, in no particular order. These are all aimed at wedding professionals. The list may not be the same for other markets.

Images.

Your target market is visual, very visual. I once had a young lady stand up in one of my seminars as I was talking about tagging your images and how GenY mostly surfed for pictures. She stated straight up that she was firmly Gen Y and truth be told, they ONLY surfed for pictures, rarely ever reading a word. So, add them to your blog posts and include large galleries of eye candy. Bue sure that you images are added in a way that the search engines can read them, in other words, don’t use Flash. Be sure to annotate and tag every single image with any relevant keywords, paying special attention to include subject matter and location.

Local Content

Most of my readers are based locally, by that I mean that even though they would love to book wedding all over the world, most of them are in their home town. With that in mind, be sure that you put a lot of local flavor in your website. If brides are looking at your site they want to know that you know all the best places and faces in your location. Remember brides search locally for their vendors. The other part of getting local on your site is that it give you an excuse to use the name of your town or neighborhood frequently. Why is that important? If you want to come up high for wedding planners in Washington, DC you need to have the actual words”Washington, DC’ appear in your content for the search bots to see. Search bots read words, only words; so the more often you can logically mention wedding & Washington, DC in you site the better off you are. (assuming of course you are a planner in Washington, DC, but then you know that)

Testimonials

As many and in as many ways as possible. Give them their own page, add pictures of either the smiling couple or the service that you provided. If they are complimenting you on the flowers and décor, add a picture of that.

Get the Wedding Wire Review widget and put that on your front page. Not only will brides read your reviews but it will make them more likely to give you a review themselves.

Add endorsements from other vendors. Those carry a lot of weight as a bride tries to decide if you are stable and reliable. Any one can get one or 2 good reviews from clients but it is the people you work with week in and week out that can really speak to what you are made of! Incidentally, I spoke with Wedding Wire last week and in their next revision they are adding a widget to add your endorsements just like the review widget. Yeah!

Prices

The number on thing that brides ask to have included in their online experience is pricing. This is something that hasn’t changed in as long as I have been at this. They want to know if they can afford you before they fall in love with your work.

Lead Generator

Right there on the front page and even in the post sidebars, you have to have a lead generator to collect email addresses. You never know when you are going to need them. Email marketing should be an important part of your overall marketing plan. Read why here. You can use it to promote any events you have coming up.

Of course there are other things that will be specific to you, but these 5 things are a must have for any wedding vendor.

So you have a Facebook page and a twitter account but are you using them to their full advantage? What am I talking about? Well are you just shouting out updates or are you using social media to create conversation.

Most of what I see is the former. Yes, your updates are giving information and helping to spread your name but are your followers responding back. Oh I don’t mean when you post what you are having for dinner do the all post back “yummy.” that’s not a conversation.

Would you like an example? Take a look at The Loft.

Loft posted this “LOFT We love color at LOFT. Tell us your favorite way to wear color in the comments.” and got 59 comments.

You know what, when they start buying the next season they know exactly what you want. Dang, that’s helpful.

Something else they are doing is letting their employees post. There are updates,and more importantly answers to questions from stores all over the country.

How about their “Loft Loves Teachers” program. If you sign up to Like the program, you get 15% off. Educators get discounts every day. Way to appeal to your target market.
The customers at the Loft may not all be teachers but a darn high percentage are moms and of course they support teachers.

Now let’s apply these things to us.

DJ’s, instead of putting in a list of fav first dance songs you could ask what your ‘friends’ are using or “What is the worst song you have ever heard played at a wedding?”

You could post a music video and ask for opinions on when best to play it at a wedding, even put in a poll.

Bridal salons. Easy, post a dress pic and ask for opinions. Love it, hate it, how would you change it?

Run a favorite LBD post. Put of a small gallery of maybe 5 little black dresses and get your ‘friends’ to vote on their fav.

Florist, ask what is the hardest part of planning your décor. Or ask everyone to post their colors for their wedding. Run a Favorite Flower poll. Post a small gallery of 5 flowers and have for their favorite.

Planners, There are a million questions you could ask. You may also want to throw out some random scenarios just to see what bride say. Things like”Your best friend has turned into Maidzilla, how should you handle it?’ Asking them will give you a real insight into how your target market really thinks.

Photographers, ask brides to post their favorite pictures that they have found online. Once you know what they love, you have a better idea of what to put in your portfolio. Change it up every week and ask for say, a cake shot one week and an engagement shot the next. Keep it active.

Now I know some of you are going to go out there, do it once, not get a response and call it a failure. WRONG Campaigns like this take a while to catch on. One of your questions will hit a nerve one day and then it will take off. Your ‘friends’ will backtrack and start responding to the previous questions and start coming back to look for new ones. So you have to keep at it.

Once it starts to work you get the benefit of more visitors and brand recognition AND you have begun to successfully pick the brain of your potential clients. Yaha!! Giant double score. How much easier would it be to market to someone if you already knew what they were thinking.

It is not enough to just be in social media, it’s time to learn how to really use it.

From the Archives, August 2007

I am always hearing from wedding professionals about that gut feeling about a customer that there is no way you are ever going to please. We have all had it; that nagging feeling that no matter what you do and how perfectly everything goes they are going to find something to complain about. How do you handle it?

This used to happen to me from time to time and my response was usually to either build in a Pain-in-the-butt charge or just try and price myself out of there budget. Almost always they went for it and I was stuck with them for the next six to eight months waiting for the sword to fall. You know exactly what I am talking about. Once I even went so far as to refund the brides deposit (with plenty of time for her to rebook of course) because she had just become such a nightmare.

I recently ran across a new take on how to handle this type of customer. Lower their expectations. That’s right, rather that trying to get paid for the aggravation set it up so you so exceed their expectations that they can’t possibly find fault. What a concept. Here are some tips courtesy of Seth Godin on how to do this.

• Be the underdog. Something along the lines of “No we aren’t the biggest caterer in town but that is why we try harder.” Do you remember the old Avis ad campaign, ”We’re Number Two, We Try Harder”  It worked for them.
• Build up expectations of difficulty. Just like a magician sets the tone by pointing out all the stumbling blocks before an illusion you can too. “I have to warn you that the lighting in this church is a little iffy, I have shot there many times and I just wanted to warn you”  “Yes these roses look just like orange sherbet in the book, the ones that come in for you wedding may be a few shades different due to the growing climate the month before your wedding.”” I have to tell you that these are some of the prettiest strawberries I have seen, I can’t guarantee they will be this gorgeous in February.” You get the idea. Set it up so that when you do pull it off you look like a hero.
• Underhype. Don’t bill yourself as the best there ever was just to get the job, which will lead them to expect miracles. If that is what they want you are much better off letting someone else take that heat. You want your client to leave feeling like you are so much better than you let on.
• Call them on it. If you think they are just being a perfectionist you may just have to call them on it and ask for a chance. Ask for a chance to do a great job rather than promising one and having to apologize for failing to achieve some wild promise they talked you into.

We all know that there are going to be those clients that no amount of awe and wonder will be enough to satisfy but this might help just a little.

One of my faithful readers was asking me recently about the association of wedding professionals that I write about. It seems that Dawn was so taken with the idea of local wedding professionals bonding together for their mutual benefit that she has started one in her local market. Bravo Dawn!!

Participating in a local wedding association is one of the best ways to grow and improve your business. The advertising opportunities alone are worth the membership fee in most cases. The one I belong to, Tennessee Wedding and Event Specialists Association, advertises in 6 magazines, does 6 bridal shows and 2 local Chamber of Commerce events each year. All of that advertising is directed at two things: branding the organization so that the membership logo on your literature carries some weight  and driving consumers to the website. The website, of course, has a complete listing of all the members with live links to each of their sites. That is the least you will get from being a member.

To really get the full benefit of membership you have to participate. The more you are ‘in it’ the more you will get out of it. Networking is huge in any business, in a local organization you have the in to network with all the best in your area. Why do I say all the best? Because it is the go getters that will be the ones willing to put in the time and energy to participate and group dynamics have a way of flushing out the bad one in a sort of natural selection type of way.

So many of us in the wedding industry are micro businesses with out the large support structure inherent in a large corporation. There is no water cooler to stand around and gripe about the boss, we are the boss. There is no HR department to find us better insurance and stay up to date on current laws. There is no after work happy hour to blow off steam. It can feel lonely and overwhelming at times. For us, an organization like the one I belong to can fill those gaps. Whether it is actually getting an insurance agent to talk to you about group rates or having someone present on recent changes in local law that may affect you, there is power in numbers.

One thing you can’t get anywhere else is the bonds you will make. At times it comes from battling a common enemy, that bride from hell that pops up when you least expect it. At other times it comes from working together as an impromptu team to pull off the stunning and spectacular. Everyone in the group can relate to what you do for a living. You just won’t find that anywhere else.

Here is a recent article I wrote for our newsletter. I think it gives you a good idea of what I mean. The last few sentence say it all.

Why I Love TWESA

I went to a launch party last night to hear the announcement that Fred Jacob had bought Weddings: The Bridal Show and The Pink Book from Renee Maddison.  As I looked around the room I got to thinking about the people I know through TWESA and how much they have grown their business in the eight short years I have known them.

Take Renee for instance, when I met her she was selling ads for someone else’s magazine. Yesterday she announced the sale of not one but two thriving business she has built in that time. When Renee took on Weddings: The Bridal show it was a fledgling show trying to prove that a fall show could work. By the time she sold it, it was the largest bridal show in the southeast. When she thought up the concept for the Pink Book it was (and still is) a one of a kind product; no one knew whether or not it would work. Today it is poised to be rolled out in every major market in the US.

Then there is Gilda York, one of TWESA’s founding members. For the last twenty years she has managed an American Tuxedo store for Bob Knowles. Last night she announced that she finally owns the store. In her words, not much will change she just “bought the bills to go with it.” Don’t we all know that feeling?

Then there is Diane Nesbitt and Matchless Limousines. When she joined TWESA a little over five years ago her company had one nail biter of a car. Now Matchless has a fleet of 17 vehicles including the mammoth “Patron”; a full size tour bus that seats 24.

Kellie Bryson was just starting to make wedding cakes in a spare bedroom in Murfreesboro. Last fall saw the completion of a beautifully renovated new location in downtown Nashville. The Bake Shoppe and A Catered Affair today have two locations and three full time staff members, a roster of part timers as long as your arm and a Dunkin’ Donuts commissary.

I will admit that these are the exception, the one that have devoted their blood, sweat, tears, time and treasure to growing their babies. But one thing they have all had in common was a strong commitment to TWESA and the networking opportunities that it offers. As an organization we have supported and helped each other. We have shared our knowledge and out contacts. We have cried together and laughed together. We have held each other up when we were scared witless at what we had gotten into, and we have popped more than a few corks to celebrate one another’s triumphs.

This is just one of the reasons I love TWESA.

Fire Sales on advertising; GetMarried’s seeming fall from grace; the Knot’s numbers being questioned, Vera moving to David’s, eHarmony buying up Wedding Bee and jumping on the Wedding Wire train, What the heck is going on here?

As you know, we run the syndicated feed for eWednews.com on this site. More than that, its publisher/editor Paul Panonne is a friend and associate. As you might imagine, we have some fairly deep conversations about the industry.  I follow both his feed and our conversations and try to spot the trends and make sense of it all. Here is my take on the above news.

There was some tremendous growth among the big players starting about 5 years ago. A good bit of that was fueled by angel investors and venture capitalists spotting the wedding industry as a market with the potential for unimpeded growth.  The numbers were there five years ago to back up that assumption.  That was, of course, before the bottom fell out of the housing market, nearly crippling the US economy.

When you or I run our business we have to answer to only ourselves. When you grow to the point where you go public (theKnot), or take on VCs or Angel investor you now have the person holding the purse strings breathing down your neck. These are purely investors and have no more understanding or compassion for your brides (or your business) than they do for a coal mine they invest in. If it stops becoming as profitable as they think it should be, your neck is on the chopping block. Rewatch that classic movie Wall Street if you don’t know what I mean.

I warned you back in 2006 that we were in for some rocky times(Here & Here); little did I know that it would take the form it did.

Here is what I see happening next.

You can expect some of the major players to crumble now that their investors are feeling the heat. I don’t know which ones but having a Fire Sale on advertising is never a good sign. You can look for others to regroup and try to figure out who their money really comes from; (Here is a clue to the Knot, your advertisers help pay the bills, not your brides. Without the brides you don’t have any advertisers. Don’t forget the shareholders breathing down your neck. Can you say “Rock and a hard place”?)

Others like David’s are looking for the cachet that come with a high end label and some are willing to dilute their brand just to move merchandise.

Actually, from the perspective of the small business owner, it’s kind of fun to watch. We are all scrambling with a couple of zeros after our name; they are doing it with a whole bunch more. Ouch.

I’ll keep watching and analyzing.

Everyone will acknowledge that you need an elevator speech, but do you know how to craft a remarkable one?

The basic elevator speech goes something like this: “My name is Judy Baxter and I own Flowers For All Occasions.”  The listener now has your basic information and a sense of what you do, but no reason to find out more. Suppose instead Judy had said something like, “I’m Judy Baxter and I create thoroughly amazing contemporary floral designs for less than amazing budgets.”  Now I know a lot more about you. You have intrigued me enough to ask for more.

The point of an elevator speech isn’t just to introduce you, it is to say just enough to compel those listening to want to find out more.  Marketing today is about being remarkable. A million people like Judy own flower shops, but how many have the ability to create amazing on less than amazing budgets.  I read an interesting article from one of my favorite marketers, Seth Godin, What Is Your Superpower? Much like the minor superheroes in The Justice League of America, no one knows your superpowers unless you tell them. Yes you do have superpowers.

What is it that sets you apart from the pack? That is what your 60 second speech should has to be about. It is up to you to figure out what it is that you do that makes you remarkable. I know, it’s hard for most of us to think we are remarkable and even harder to state it in front of strangers without feeling arrogant.  It isn’t about arrogance; it is about embracing what it is that makes you unique and stating it with complete inner confidence.

The hard part is often putting your superpowers into words that you can embrace unapologetically and with complete confidence in their truth. What is it that you do better than anyone else? You have to look closely at not only yourself but at your competitors. Trust me, there is something that you do differently or you wouldn’t still be in business. If you are just starting out, what is it that made you think you would be able to establish a competitive edge? Figure it out and boil it down to a single phrase. That is the basis for your introduction. THAT is what goes in your elevator speech.

It doesn’t matter what you do, there is something that sets you apart. Maybe you are a bridal salon that carries the complete line of a certain designer, or a caterer that is fluent in eight different cuisines or a transportation company that specializes in vintage convertibles.  We are all snowflakes, each unique. It is your job to discover your uniqueness.

I know that if you are smart enough to be a Think subscriber then you are already all over social media. The question is how smartly are you using it?

I was reviewing the marketing of a wonderful new consulting client recently and what struck me was that even though she had all the pieces of a great social media campaign they weren’t in place.  OK Christine, what the heck does that mean? Well it means that they were there but they weren’t working as a team.  Think of it this way, you can see a lovely collection of stars in the heavens, but until you connect the dots they are just random points of light. Draw the lines and you suddenly see that they are the constellation Orion and tell a powerful story.

D had a great Facebook page, Twitter, a blog, YouTube videos and a website but they weren’t connected.  She was putting in a lot more time and effort than she had to and still not getting the results she could have.  Just like the stars, when all your social media is aligned it can have almost magical powers.

So here is what I counseled her to do…

• Get a plan for Twitter. Rather than just random bits, develop a repeating theme that your followers would look forward to hearing. I don’t want to give away my suggestions to her, but to get an idea look at how @foodimentary publishes food trivia bits every morning. Another good example is @GuyKawasaki, he publishes mostly just links to very cool news stories. Both of these two have a pattern to which you can relate. Also, neither are pitching anything; no spam here.
• Use an application like TweetLater to load a bunch of tweets to post on future dates or times.
• Be more systematic with your blog. Keep a tiny journal with you or use your phone to keep ideas for blog posts. Once a week sit down and write a few posts and set the publishing dates to post over the next week.
• Use an application like Twitter Feed to automatically tweet each new blog post.
• Set it up so your Tweets automatically post to your Facebook page.
• Now, the big one…show links to all of your SM channels on the homepage of your website and you have closed the circle. All of your stars are aligned. From you homepage, your visitors can catch up on the collected wisdom you have Tweeted,  open YouTube to see all of your videos in one place, view all your connections on Facebook even  while they are subscribing to your blog. WooHoo! Orion has never shown so brightly.

By taking the time to setup a plan and a system you have freed yourself from the tedium and constant pressure to post, post, post.  Each piece of the puzzle helps to populate the other.  Your followers on one now have easy access to all of your wisdom on all your many channels.

Social media is an important tool once you know how to use it to your advantage.

In 2010 it is a given that your website is your strongest marketing tool, it has also been a given that ranking high in the search engines, particularly Google, has been the primary driver of traffic to your site.  The second part of that statement is no longer true.

What!! That’s right. According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.  I would expect twitter to show up in the next snapshot they take. Still think social media doesn’t matter?

First, the numbers; using a snapshot from December, web measurement firm Compete, Inc , found that 13% of traffic to the major portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL came from Facebook, Google only served up 7%, falling behind even eBay at 7.61%.

What is happening here is that rather than simply navigating the net on their own, consumers are relying more and more on the recommendation of their online friends. Facebook users share links and photos as well as product recommendations with their friends at an ever increasing rate. Rather than going out in search of news and products, they are now coming to us by way of status updates and fan pages.

Everything you knew about where and how to market has changed in the last few years and that change continues. First it was do the right shows and be in the right magazines. Then it was have a pretty Flash website that was really just and online brochure. Next it was use blogs, galleries and HTML websites to rank high in the search engines. Now even that is beginning to fade.

If you think about it, we have come full circle: once again the most important place to market is in the town square. It’s just that the town square now exists in the digital world. Ideas are exchanged over the virtual back yard fence.

Here are a few tips to using your Facebook profile more effectively. First off you should try to separate your business profile from your personal profile. So many of us started out on Facebook on a personal level and to some extent this has helped to blur the line between the two. The question is how much of the comments your sister and friends make do you want broadcast to you business contacts. Set up either a group page or a fan page for your business and work at posting differently on each. For most of you, a fan page is the way to go. You can contact your followers via updates (not as great as PM’s but it works) and your page will appear in the list of pages they joined. Post links to your blog or website to your status anytime you post or update. You can set this up to happen automatically using FriendFeed. You can also link your Twitter account to post on your FB page. Just a word of caution, if you hook all these up you end up with annoying multiple posts.

You should have a link on the homepage of your website, above the fold to your business Facebook page and list it in your signature on your emails.

I was sent the beta last week of a new app for Facebook created especially for brides in the planning stage. Wedding List is a well laid out, very organized planning tool that brides use to ask their friends for recommendations. Hmmm, now doesn’t that tie in nicely with I just said about recommendations? As of 3-01-2010 the application had 2,712 monthly active users and this thing is only a month or so old. One of the people behind this new app is my old contact at Modern Bride, Michelle Prelli, so you know they understand the wedding market. Read the reviews and be on the lookout for the logo in your news feed. If you see it, by all means respond.

All in all, you can’t continue to avoid social media. Not only do you have to be there but you have to know how to use it. Trust me, even Google has taken notice…you have seen Google
Buzz haven’t you?

I first started to follow the trend of consolidation in the wedding industry a few years back when the Knot gobbled up The Wedding Channel and Federated (David’s Bridal & After Six) was gobbled up by an investment firm.  Well that trend is still going and it is creating some pretty formidable players.

I’m sure that you knew that Wedding Bee had been bought by eHarmony, well you do if you read my blog. You also know that Wedding Wire had partnered with Martha Stewart Weddings. Now the eHarmony wedding properties have joined that coalition. Formidable. In all, the Wedding Wire network now includes Wedding Wire, Martha Stewart Weddings, Bridal Buds, Wedding Aces, Best City Weddings, Weddingbee and Project Wedding. It is estimated that this partnership gets 6 million visitors a month and has more than 100,000 vendors listed. Yow! Those are some impressive numbers.

Now as a wedding vendor, it may be a great deal to be able to advertise to those 6 million visitors but you have to remember that you will be swimming in a sea of 100,000 of your competitors. It might be pretty tough to stand out. Kind of like the old days of advertizing in the Yellow Pages.

Another interesting consolidation that has just come to light involves Get Married. Get Married, the multimedia wedding entity apparently was bought by Taylor Corp out of Minnesota. What makes this interesting is that the Occassions Group of Taylor also owns Carlson Craft, McPherson’s, Tatex, Stylart, Royal Imprints as well as other online invitation companies. This consolidation is called a “partnership” by Get Married, who stated that the partnership was publicly announced in 2008. Why has no one I spoke with aware of this partnership? Where is the transparency? Why does it matter you ask? Well I’m here to tell you that if I was an invitation designer or reseller that was considering putting my ad dollars into Get Married I would sure want to know. Nowhere on their website is it stated that they have this partnership.  Why do you think this has stayed so quiet for so long?  Many thanks to friend of Think, Paul Panonne for breaking this story in his new news source eWedNews.com.

Closely related to consolidation is expansion. Look out for Kleinfelds. I ran across this article about Kleinfelds growth this morning. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100331/SMALLBIZ/100339983

This paragraph says it all:

“Kleinfeld Men, which kicked off in March, is the latest in a string of initiatives. The company began a partnership last year with Valerie Wilson Travel Inc. to offer customized honeymoons. In recent years, it has also begun offering certain products through carefully selected retailers. For instance, J&B Bridal, in Chambersburg, Pa., now offers a collection designed for Kleinfeld by Alita Graham. A joint venture with a diet product company is in the works to provide slim-down plans for brides.”

Let’s see, gowns, formal wear, travel and weight loss. Of course we can’t forget reality TV, “Say Yes To The Dress”. I would say they are well on their way to behemoth status.

What does all this mean to you, the small local vendor? Probably not much, except that you need to watch your back when you venture out into the bigger world. If you are planning on advertizing on a national level, get all the knowledge about who actually owns the company that wants your money. Is your business really in their best interest?  Don’t just take what your sales rep says at face value. Check, check and double check everything from their ownership, their partnerships and even the surveys and demographics they quote you.  Additionally, know that as these behemoths get more common, it may be your market share that they have their eye on.