As I continue to transfer the archived content to the new site I keep running across these gems. This is an article that originally appeared on Think in August 2007 and will give you some insight into both why the major bridal magazines are failing and why the face of weddings today are changing.

Why Brides Think the Way They Do

August 2007

Have you read any of the editorial content in the bridal magazines lately? Probably not. Anytime I am in a group of wedding professionals and a new issue gets passed around all anyone ever looks at are the pictures for ideas or the placement of their ad. Your market is reading this stuff and getting some pretty skewed information.

Pull out any of the recent magazines that you have lying around and look at the prices they list on things. Now it is understandable that any magazine is going to want to have only the prettiest, shiniest choices to show their readers. The down side of that is that they are almost always the most expensive. From reading some of the editorials, today’s bride is led to believe that there is no middle ground. There are either the absolute bargain basement goods or service or the very high end choice. This has the effect of driving a great many brides to look at alternatives outside the mainstream before they even look at a true professional.

Where I see this most flagrantly displayed is in the fashion end of the industry. Lately the entry of Target into bridal fashion has gotten a lot of press and you are also seeing a lot of the designs from J. Crew showing up in print. That is a start but also part of the problem. Here they are showing gowns for $200 and under but most everything else they show is in the $2000 and up range. The reality is that the majority of the gowns sold in the US fall between $900 and $1500.  Why aren’t these gowns getting any ink?

This conversation came to a bit of a head last month in Philadelphia at a gathering of bridal salons that handle the 2Be Bride range.  Bruce Campbell, Fashion Advertising Manager for Conde Nast Bridal Media was presenting the most recent American Wedding Study.  When he got to the page titled “Key Wedding Expenses” is when the conversation began to get a little heated.  It was right there in the Powerpoint, the average price of a wedding dress in the US is $1056.  Steve Lang, CEO of Mon Cheri Bridal just couldn’t contain himself any longer and neither could I. Lang began questioning Campbell about their lack of mid-price gowns in their editorial even though their OWN SURVEY showed that was what the brides wanted. In his defense, Campbell is from the advertising side of the aisle and really has no control or even really any input on the editorial side (unlike in the local magazines). Lang had a very valid point.

The effect that this is having is that a lot of today’s brides aren’t even looking at the local salons. They are heading right to either the internet or that big box store that runs the $99 sale. The editorial has convinced them that they can’t afford to look anywhere else. I know some heavy spending advertisers that are beginning to lose patience. I can’t say I blame them.

I am sure that if you look at the editorial for your segment of the industry you will find the same thing. I know it was evident in cakes, especially in InStyle Weddings. They would show two cakes by Ron Ben-Israel, one being the ‘budget’ option but still well over $1000 for 60 servings or less. Not much of a budget option if you ask me. So they come to your bakery and book a cake for about ¼ of their guests and head to Costco for sheet cakes. If the magazine would tell the brides that Ben-Israel in one of the most expensive in the country maybe they would have more realistic expectations.

I am not sure what you or I or even the big advertisers can do. I will suggest that there is strength in numbers. If you see something in the editorial that sets you off, write a letter. I am fairly certain that it won’t be the only one.  Now of course this does mean that you will have to actually pay attention to the editorial.

I want to further explore the Real-time Review trend and its effect on the wedding industry and customer service.

Real-time review is by definition, hair trigger. Suppose you are sitting in a restaurant and it seems to be taking a long time for your food to arrive, so you tweet your displeasure.  That tweet is read in real time. What if one of your followers reads it and decides to head to a different restaurant to avoid the slow service?  Later, when your food arrives the waiter explains that the reason for the delay is that he took one look at your steak and knew it was not the way you had ordered it and had Chef recook it. Rather than the bad customer service you thought you were getting, you were really being well taken care of. Hmmm, you hair trigger tweet still cost them a customer. Come to think of it, did you even bother to tweet an update? If not, since twitter is searchable, you may do much more damage than just that one customer.

Here is a great video example from Gary Vaynerchuk

That may be an extreme example but look at it in the light of the highly charged emotions that surround all things wedding. Once upon a time, you had some leeway. Today you don’t.

You have all had customers that you had to calm or manage or cajole at some point in your relationship. You probable ended up making them happy-happy before it was all over. The problem is that in the new reality of real time review you may not get the chance to do that before they have drug your name and reputation through the mud. One miscue and they whip out their cellphone and tell the world; no chance for you to fix it if it even needs fixing.

Time was when bridal salons biggest fear about cellphones was the camera in the dressing room. Suppose now she is in there tweeting away about how she thinks you are mean for not letting her play dress up to her heart’s content? Never mind that the very next dress you bring in is the one and the tears of joy start to flow.

Suppose you are 20 minutes late delivering the cake even though it is still hours before the reception. If your bride is edgy to begin with she could have done a lot of damage to your reputation in those 20 minutes.

Time was that your biggest concern was a post at some point after the wedding if something displeased a client. “After the wedding” means that you have undoubtedly already done the backflips and somersaults needed to make your client happy and to repair, remake, refit, recover, rewhatever to make sure their day was perfect. With realtime review you have lost that cushion.

Here is a little story that a florist friend of mine told me. She had dropped off the personal flowers in the bride’s room and moved into the church to decorate it, then on to the parish hall to decorate the reception. Before she left, she stopped back by the bride’s room to remove the boxes she had used to deliver them. The bride’s mother was upset, claiming that the florist had forgotten the boutonnières. She hadn’t. She pulled back the corner of the tissue paper in the box to reveal two packages of lovely boutonnières the mother hadn’t bothered to look for or ask about. I wonder just what was tweeted in that hour?  Scary, isn’t it?

Now, more than ever before you have one shot and one shot only to make your clients happy. If you customer service and more importantly, your client communication isn’t top notch you may be in for a shock. Oh, and you might want to keep track of what is being said about you online in real time.

I have two rather different takes on what brides are saying this month; the annual survey from David’s bridal and a discussion on the blog Bowie Bride. The former is numbers and trend and the later is an eye opening laugh fest of brides take on “Say Yes To the Dress.” So yes, both have a loose connection to bridal gowns but they are completely different in point of view and tone.

Before I dish the dirt, a few words about surveys and blog comments, by their very nature, both are skewed. You can, however, gain some insight by reading deeply into them and not merely taking them as gospel.

Polls are created by humans that bring their own preconceptions to the table. Those polled, especially when the poll is done through a business, are already a part of that business’ target market.  If the same poll was taken using only ladies that bought or shopped for their gown at high end couture bridal salons then I suspect that the answers would have been quite different.

As for blog comments, unless a post goes viral, the comments are skewed by the fact that the commenter’s tend to think like the author of the original post.  To understand where the comments are coming from, you must read enough of the blog to understand its tone and outlook. In the case of Bowie Bride, they tend to be non-traditional and outspoken.

Ok, let’s get the numbers out of the way first. This is from a survey released by David’s Bridal.

The methodology: (quoting now)

“This Internet survey was conducted by Infosurv, Inc. from December 3 – 8, 2009. A total of 500 surveys were completed among a national panel of women (ages 18 – 35) who were recently engaged or married. This study has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3% at the 95% confidence level.”

You can read the entire release here.

Now for the takeaways.

“In 2009, three-quarters (75%) of respondents adjusted their budgets, however this year only 68% of engaged couples say their bottom-line has decreased. In addition, more than half (54%) of today’s brides revealed they do not plan to spend more than $25,000 on their wedding day, and the key to bringing that dream day to life is keeping priorities in check.”

My question is did the second group set lower budgets to begin with while the former were blindsided by the economy and had to readjust mid-planning? That $25,000 is actually a bit higher than what the Wedding Report claims was spent in 2009.

“Couples spent $19,581 in 2009 compared to $21,814 in 2008, a 10.2% decline.”

My guess is that it has to do with the way the survey was worded. Most likely the respondents were given a range of budgets to choose from, with $25k being closest to their true budget. Remember also with polls like these, there will be a few very high budgets that will skew the average. It’s the old joke : Bill Gates walks into a bar, suddenly the average net worth of all of the bar patrons skyrockets to over a million.

Here is the real meat of the release:

• Budget Matters: Of the 68% of brides who adjusted their wedding budget:

o   More than half (55%) cut up to a quarter from their total spend.
o   14 percent say they will slash their budget in half.
o   5 percent will have to cut it by more than three-quarters.

• Save Me the Money: Almost one-third (30%) of respondents plan to spend less than $10,000 on their big day, while only 22% have a total wedding budget over $50,000.
• Cutting Cost Corners: Almost half (46%) of brides-to-be said they’d cut their guest list and 39% said they will likely spend less on the venue/location. 39% also indicated the wedding planner would get the boot.

We will continue to see guest list shrink. That bit about them saving on their venue backs up the word I have been hearing on the street. Brides are waiting much longer to book a venue and many more that usual are opting for a wedding at a private residence.

I have also been hearing a lot of rumbling in the wedding planning community. This seems to back that up also. I believe this “39% also indicated the wedding planner would get the boot,” will have a greater effect on planners in the upper-mid to low end market. Those in the high end and luxury market should continue to thrive. Same will go for those that cater to brides on a high-powered career track.

In my opinion this finding is the best forecaster of where we are going this year:

“Last year’s survey revealed that other than their wedding, 77% of recently engaged couples said their top economic priority was to pay off debt. This year, barely one in five (19%) ranked this as a leading concern. Today’s brides seem to be happily looking to the future, opting instead to save for a down payment on a home (24%) and prepare for a family (21%).”

Here is what I take away from the above finding. Last year they were scared, this year they are getting on with the business of moving forward. Our couples are more optimistic about the future; they are thinking more of marriage and family than merely surviving. I have the feeling that going forward, spending will begin to tick up, but not yet to the extent it was a few years ago.

Gen Y was woken up by the recent economic downturn. Their priorities have been adjusted. Look for weddings to be more about meaning than ostentatious displays even as the spending ticks upward.  Couple will start finding room in their budget for things that have meaning beyond flash.

Now how about a Laugh?

I am sure you are familiar with the hit show”Say Yes To The Dress” that showcases the trials and tribulations of the famous Kleinfeld’s . I ran across a thread recently on the blog Bowie Bride discussing the show. Funny.

If you want to know how real brides feel about the show and the salon, just follow the link and read the thread and all the comments.

I am hearing from more and more vendors that bookings are not just down this year but stupidly, appallingly down. Folks that were used to being double, if not triple booked year after year for every weekend in May with even more on the big Memorial Day weekend have nothing; I mean zip, zilch, zero, nada for the entire month in 2010! This isn’t just one or two random vendors, this is many many in a lot of categories. Florists seem to be getting particularly hard hit.

So what’s the deal? It isn’t that the number of weddings is down that much, a little yes but they haven’t come to a complete stand still. Well, a few trips through Weddingbee and the Live Journal planning forum and I may have the answer. I think DIY is bigger than any of us ever wanted to believe.

I don’t just mean with a few budget brides, I mean across the board. Another thing is that these aren’t just the toilet paper napkin ring crowd, these are full blown Martha Stewart wannabes. These brides are tackling everything from centerpieces and ceremony flowers to bird cage veils and “fauxto” booths. Invitations and Save the Dates are a given. I’m even seeing quite a few make their table cloths, overlays and runners.

I know I have said this before but I don’t know how many of you were listening. Look at your bookings for 2010, you may just listen now.

How can your become a part of this growing phenomenon? What can you do to support these DIY brides AND make a profit off your talents? I was chatting with a floral designer client and I suggested (not for the first time) that she offer classes on how to DIY your wedding flowers. She could do one class on simple centerpieces and another on personal flowers. She has the design room space. She also has an amazing stock of containers available for rent. Let’s add to the mix her personal history of having been a teacher for years with an MEd.

Here are the possible benefits we came up with in our chat. She would make money off of the classes themselves. Each class could showcase her containers for rent. She could order in the flowers for the bride’s weddings, with mark up.  A certain percentage of the students would decide that DIY was too much work and actually hire her to do their wedding.

In a perfect world she could change her entire business model. Hold her classes one or two Saturdays a month. On Wednesday come in for a few hours to receive condition and sort flower deliveries and prepare and pack containers. On Thursday be on hand for the brides to pick up their stuff. If she works it right she could even put a book together. What is not to love?

What is there about your business that you can use to profit from this new paradigm? I know if I was still doing cakes I would be offering custom handmade sugar flowers to go on their cheap little cakes from Costco. I would also be offering a line of plain vanilla cakes that were iced but unstacked and undecorated for them to do whatever they liked with; a blank canvas as it were.

For those of you that are being hit by this; now is the time to rethink your business model. Just because you have always done things a certain way doesn’t mean you can’t change. After all, your target market sure has!

You have got to get on this train or get run over by it.

How engaged with your business/you/your brand are your customers. As the market place gets increasingly crowded and brides are looking more toward price points than design our goods and services fall increasingly into the category of commodity. That simple truth makes the perception of your product no different than anyone else’s.  Notice I said perception.

I know you think your product is different, but in today’s market that is not as convincing as it used to be. Neither is it as strong a selling point as it was 5 or 10 years ago. Two examples. Sitting in the front row of the runway shows at Harrogate were people with sketch pads from the Chinese factories. By that night patterns were being cut and I’m willing to bet those knock offs will hit the market before the real thing. If a bride likes a particular wedding gown there is a darn good chance that she can find a reasonable facsimile at every single price point. It won’t be the same gown, but most of these girls don’t care. To her it’s still a strapless mermaid gown with a beaded neckline, ruched bodice and tulle peeking out under the skirt; or what ever it is she fancies. It may look like a cheap copy out of fabric that you or I wouldn’t line our cat box with but she can’t see the difference.

Same with photographers. I can hear the gasps out there now. Yes I know you are creative and can set the shot perfectly but here is the reality. Brides find shots they like and take them to their photography as a ‘must have’ photo. You captured that once in a lifetime image and now everyone and their duck is doing it too. Will the lighting be the same? NO. Will the color be adjusted just so? NO In some case the composition won’t even be good but the bride is still happy: she got her picture of Grandpa on the steps blowing bubbles. Yawn.

Are you starting to see it now? I’m sorry but that is what is happening in the heads of brides. If you are in the wedding industry for artistic excellence and the profits be damned you can stop reading here. If however you are in the wedding industry to make money and grow your business you have to come to terms with these new brides.

You have to engage them on another level. You have to give them another reason  to want to give you their money. ~sigh~ You have to make then want you on a different level.

A lot of that can be done through branding. Let’s look at some famous brands and see what they mean.

• Target Stylist and low cost.
• David’s Low cost, I settled. You can see this in the posts on the forums, they almost apologize for buying at David’s even though the majority of there gowns are not any less expensive than most of what is on the market.
• Vera Wang High price, cutting edge fashion. This one is so well branded that she can now put her name on anything and sell it, just like a certain lady named Stewart.
• Reem Acra High style. This is another one backed up by the chatter, “I’m a Reem bride.”
• Tiffany’s Quality, expensive. This is even though they have many items under $100. Anything in that blue box is perceived to be about 50% more expensive than it is.
• Bed, Bath & Beyond Lots of variety and available nation wide. You can get 90% of the same products at Sears and they’re nation wide but it just doesn’t have the same cachet on a bridal registry.

Do you see how their branding is helping sell their product? You should consider your brand your promise. Last month I talked about how to boil down the essence of what your brand represents. Now you have a clearer understanding of why it may be becoming so very important. Next month will look at some ways on how to use it.

So how do you think Gen Y would like their lives to look? What do you think they find disturbing about the world as they know it? You may be surprised to see what they are thinking.

I read a very interesting article about Gen Y this month, Eyeing Their Futures, Kids Today Turn Back. You can read the article here It seems that they are longing for a simpler time. This is the generation that was told they should do it all, excel at everything. They were told that in their safe shiny protected world they could and should have it all. No matter how badly they played soccer they still got a trophy. The world was their oyster and by golly they had better take. They were over marketed to and over scheduled.

Now they just want to live in the life showcased in “That 70’s Show” where you could live simply and just hang out, and be OK with that.  Hmm interesting.

The article goes on to hypothesize that this may be a reaction to both 9-11 and the current economic situation. That their shiny, have it all world has been rocked at its very foundation; much as the generation that experienced the Great Depression was changed.  I don’t know if it is all that, but I think there may be some basis to it.

I do think that this generation has been fundamentally changed by recent events. I think as a whole they are more cautious, particularly when it comes to money. Do you realize that one of the trendiest places for kids to shop today is Goodwill? Go into a big one on a Saturday and it’s packed.

How does this reflect on our market? I think you are seeing it in a call for less formal, more casual intimate weddings. I think you are seeing it in smaller guest lists and more DIY and yes, in smaller budgets. They are placing more emphasis on their future lives together than the wedding.

I don’t think these changes are temporary either; rather I think they will have impact for quite a few years to come. Here is why. In the first year that our economy started to take a hit brides were in denial about their budgets and what their dollar would get them. Today, they are, by and large, approaching wedding planning with adjusted expectations. I didn’t say lowered expectations, just adjusted. They are finding that they can have as much if not more meaning on less show. That is what is different; meaning is deeper. What hasn’t changed except to be more crucial to them is the requirement that their specific needs be met.  In short, they are becoming more demanding particularly in the area of customer service. That is only making our jobs more difficult.  On the upside, it may help to weed out the less than professionals in our industry. There is always an upside, it just may not be as pretty.

What you can do as wedding professionals is to understand that this generation has some heavy underlying fear that even they may not recognize. Use that knowledge to ease those fears and make them feel safe and confident in their decisions. You have to be a combination of their hero and their comfort food. Wow that sounds a lot like their parents doesn’t it? All they while being hip and cool and one of them? No, their hip cool friends need to refer you, you just need to be you.

I am hearing from more and more vendors that bookings are not just down this year but stupidly, appallingly down. Folks that were used to being double, if not triple booked year after year for every weekend in May with even more on the big Memorial Day weekend have nothing; I mean zip, zilch, zero, nada for the entire month in 2010! This isn’t just one or two random vendors, this is many many in a lot of categories. Florists seem to be getting particularly hard hit.

So what’s the deal? It isn’t that the number of weddings is down that much, a little yes but they haven’t come to a complete stand still. Well, a few trips through Weddingbee and the Live Journal planning forum and I may have the answer. I think DIY is bigger than any of us ever wanted to believe.

I don’t just mean with a few budget brides, I mean across the board. Another thing is that these aren’t just the toilet paper napkin ring crowd, these are full blown Martha Stewart wannabes. These brides are tackling everything from centerpieces and ceremony flowers to bird cage veils and “fauxto” booths. Invitations and Save the Dates are a given. I’m even seeing quite a few make their table cloths, overlays and runners.

I know I have said this before but I don’t know how many of you were listening. Look at your bookings for 2010, you may just listen now.

How can your become a part of this growing phenomenon? What can you do to support these DIY brides AND make a profit off your talents? I was chatting with a floral designer client and I suggested (not for the first time) that she offer classes on how to DIY your wedding flowers. She could do one class on simple centerpieces and another on personal flowers. She has the design room space. She also has an amazing stock of containers available for rent. Let’s add to the mix her personal history of having been a teacher for years with an MEd.

Here are the possible benefits we came up with in our chat. She would make money off of the classes themselves. Each class could showcase her containers for rent. She could order in the flowers for the bride’s weddings, with mark up.  A certain percentage of the students would decide that DIY was too much work and actually hire her to do their wedding.

In a perfect world she could change her entire business model. Hold her classes one or two Saturdays a month. On Wednesday come in for a few hours to receive condition and sort flower deliveries and prepare and pack containers. On Thursday be on hand for the brides to pick up their stuff. If she works it right she could even put a book together. What is not to love?

What is there about your business that you can use to profit from this new paradigm? I know if I was still doing cakes I would be offering custom handmade sugar flowers to go on their cheap little cakes from Costco. I would also be offering a line of plain vanilla cakes that were iced but unstacked and undecorated for them to do whatever they liked with; a blank canvas as it were.

For those of you that are being hit by this; now is the time to rethink your business model. Just because you have always done things a certain way doesn’t mean you can’t change. After all, your target market sure has!

You have got to get on this train or get run over by it.

I am not talking about search in terms of how to come up higher on Google; I’m talking about how to search.  It is fundamental in understanding how to get a desired outcome that you deeply understand how something works.

Every time I do a seminar and I get to the part about search I see all these amazed looks when I tell them the kind of search terms that bride use.  Our brides are very computer savvy. They learned long ago that a generic search brought up too much and quickly learned how to use the tools available to pare it down and bring up more relevant listings.

Brides don’t type in wedding gown; they type in something like lace ballgown with ruched bodice or satin wedding gown+pickups +sweetheart neckline my town. Likewise, they don’t use wedding venue in my townwhere to have a garden wedding for 200 people in My Town. they use

Here is a fun little video that explains it in plain English.

http://www.commoncraft.com/search

For a more technical and in-depth explanation, go straight to the source:Google

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861

Now, why is any of this important? Well, just like any hunter, it helps to know your prey. If you want brides to find your website in search, it helps to what they are looking for and how they do it.

Once you understand how they use search, you can do a better job of using the all important keywords in your website and blog. This is the most basic way to increase your organic search.

Google’s job in life (aside from total world domination.hehe) is to provide the most relevant search results possible. That is part of the reason that the algorithm keeps changing. SEO mavericks quickly learn new tricks on how to game the system. That’s why sticking with the basic policy of great, relevant content, frequently updated will always work.

Here’s my tip. Think about the product you sell and how your customers would describe it. (Note, not how you would describe it) Then use those words and phrases and any variations on them in your content as often as you can without it sounding funny.  Here is an example, I was maintaining a large site for a group of wedding vendors and a men’s formalwear store called to ask why her shop didn’t come up on the site when she searched “tuxedo”  I asked her if that word appeared in her copy? It didn’t because as she said, it is properly called formalwear. I knew that and of course she knew that but the brides don’t. Heck, even she searched for tuxedo! Google is only so smart. You have to use the words that your bride will use and not hope that Google will just understand.

OK, Christine, what word should I use? You already know the answer to that, it’s what your customers ask you for when they call or email. What the heck do they ask for, what word do they use?

The other thing that you need to remember is to put your location in your copy. You know that you serve the, oh let’s say, Orange County, CA area but unless that is spelled out, search won’t just understand because it is on your contact page. Pepper that phrase throughout your site and your blog.

• XYZ is my favorite florist in Orange County
• I can’t think of a prettier place to get married in Orange County
• The next time you are in Orange County, stop by and check out…

See what I mean by including your keyword phrases in a way that doesn’t sound funny? The more you do this, the easier it gets.

Why is that important? Brides will search for vendors in their area. If you don’t use it, you may place high if brides search generically, but hit the bottom of the list when they add the My Town modifier. That put you in competition with the world, not just those in the area you serve. I don’t know about you but I would rather be one of 40 or 50 possible choices than 1 of 1,000,000.

I was following a thread recently on wedding sticker shock. I thought some of the things these brides were complaining about were rather amusing.

As expected, gowns and photography headed the list. I chalk the gown part up to brides being uninformed. Most major magazines list the prices in their editorial content. Couple that with the huge difference between top end and moderate priced gowns and you can have some surprises, although I really thought it would be the other way. If you look at bridal editorial most of what they show are on the high end, very many of the gowns in salons are at the high-moderate to moderate side.

As for the photography, you can blame part of that on Craig’s List and part of it on brides simply not understanding just how important it is to have skill behind the lens. Just because someone can purchase a nice digital camera doesn’t make them an artist with it. Photographers need to do a better job of getting that point across.

Here is where I started getting amused. Chair covers. There were several that were having complete fits over the cost of chair covers. Some were flabbergasted over $3 apiece. Now come on, that’s barely going to cover the cost of cleaning them, extremely reasonable. My guess is that it sounded like a great price until they multiplied it by say 200 guests. So have you seen the percentage of clients using chair covers drop lately? Are they falling into the category of “I can live without it?”

The other biggie was veils. They just can’t get their head around the cost of “a piece of tulle and a comb,” as one poster described it. Having been around a few salons over the years, I know that these are often considered a profit center with higher mark-ups. I think the brides have picked up on that. (NO, I’m not the one that told them)

What all this tells me is that the “gorgeous wedding at any cost” fog has lifted. Brides are evaluating the goods and services they purchase for their wedding on a different level and set of criteria today. They are not afraid to buy off the rack. They aren’t afraid to rethink what is mandatory. They are willingly saying no to bells and whistles.

Do you think it may be time to adjust your core business accordingly? If you have been propping up your bottom line with add ons, now may be the time to re-evaluate your core business. You are being evaluated on what they get for their money; be prepared to show them the value in your product/service.

You will notice I didn’t suggest dropping your prices. If you offer packages, you may want to de-construct them. If you bundle things, you need to show them exactly what they are getting. “show me the money” has morphed into “show me the value.”

Do you still meet your clients at the local Starbucks? Do you invite them into your living room? That may not be the best plan.

For many of us solo-preneurs having a dedicated off site office is just not something we have thought about or built into our growth plan. Heck, I work out of my bedroom but then I rarely meet with clients, it’s all over the phone and internet for me.  If you meet with clients face to face on a regular basis you need to think about the impression you send with where you meet.

This was prompted by a discussion I was following on a photographer’s forum. The original poster was moving into a new place and was wondering if he should turn his old place into a studio.  Great idea, depending on the location.  It was a 2^nd story one bedroom on a side street. No matter how professional he made it, I still worry how comfortable a single woman would be going there alone.  It had better be in a great neighborhood. The thread continued with many people posting about their experiences when they moved into a real office/studio.

Let’s break it down. Brides will tell you that meeting at the local coffee house is OK. It’s a safe, public place that is easy to find. The problem for you is that you project the same image as every other wedding vendor that they meet there. There is nothing there to set you apart, nothing remarkable. There are distractions a plenty and nothing to stick in their mind.

If you meet in your home you are giving them too much information. Every home has its own drawbacks.  Even if you live in a show house designed by the editor of Metropolitan Home there are still a million personal touches that will show. Add to that the safety factor; do you really want to invite perfect strangers into you private space?  I sure don’t. I also don’t know many women that embrace the thought of being alone in a house with a stranger, especially if he is a man. I realize that it is often easier to meet at your home, particularly if you have children.  This is business folks; that isn’t always easy. The exception may be if you have a studio/workspace that is detached from the home.  Then the client is only viewing your home from the outside.

If you have a dedicated, off-site place to meet you set yourself apart. It is decorated in a manner that reflects your style. It screams professional, not amateur. Clients enter the space in a mood to do business, not chat. Unlike a coffee house, you have every possible sales tool at your finger tips. You just can’t carry everything in a briefcase. If it is in a commercial district it is presumed to be safe ground since there are other people near.  Unlike your home, your client only sees what you wish to present them, not everything about your life. All around it is the best solution.

Wait , you say! I can’t afford a place like that! You may be surprised.  I’m not talking about renting a corner office in a swanky high-rise or popping for commercial space in the shopping district; there are a million alternatives.  I know of two different wedding businesses in my small city that have added office suites to their property. They are tiny little spaces design for no more than meeting clients. If there isn’t something like this where you are you may consider doing it yourself.  Rent a place much larger than you need, divide it into small bedroom sized offices and rent them out to other wedding vendors. It pays your rent and they have a “business home.”

Heck, now that I think about it, my editor/publisher started his company this way in a restored mansion near the town square in Franklin, TN. He had one big room on the first floor.  I also remember photographer years ago that landed a similar place. It was a really cool building that a photographer had bought, built a nice studio and divided the rest up into private offices. She rented her office and had rights to schedule use of the studio space.  It worked out well for her for years. You could think of them as small business incubators.

There is a place that can be found if you put your mind to it. Oh, and yes, every single poster to that thread that had moved into professional space had seen a dramatic jump in their close rate. Just though I’d throw that out there.