TheWeddingMarketingBlog.com

Perhaps you have noticed. Halloween has passed and Christmas decorations are everywhere in sight. Thanksgiving barely registers as a bump-in-the-road anymore.

If Christmas is a scant 50 days away, can the new year be far behind?

Okay, now that I’ve successfully boosted your blood pressure, it’s time to take inventory on marketing. Please pull out your 2008 wedding marketing plan. You have a written wedding marketing plan, don’t you?

In either case, set aside some quiet time for planning. My definition of quiet time means no distractions. No phones and no extraneous people. What you need is your marketing materials from 2008, your financial information, sales data, and media kits for all the new marketing opportunities in 2009. A Sunday away from the office, with just you,  your laptop, business partner, and/or marketing mentor should do it.

Gee whiz… I really didn’t mean to scare you so badly.

Tell you what. Do three things, right now.

1. Block a half-day or full day on your calendar for this planning session.
2. Begin to gather and organize your materials for that session, giving yourself enough time to prepare.
3. Obtain current media kits and rate information from any publications, websites, wedding shows, networking groups or other marketing options you should be considering.

I’ll get back to you on the rest.

Quote: Tomorow’s starting now - John Legend (quote inspired by Marcello Pedalino, MMP Entertainment)

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

Technorati Tags: 2009, Andy Ebon, goal setting, marketing plan, wedding marketing blog

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written by Andy Ebon \\ tags: 2009, Andy Ebon, goal setting, marketing plan, wedding marketing blog

Bob Christie (Christie’s Photographic) is a brilliant networker. He operates in Orlando and Las Vegas. Bob doesn’t do wedding photography; he does event photography. However, there are clear marketing lessons to learn from him.

Las Vegas was an expansion for Bob, about two years ago. He is in active member of the Orlando Chapter of NACE and other organizations, in Florida.

Upon planning an expansion, he utilized his Orlando contacts to connect him with key counterparts in Las Vegas. He immediately added membership in Las Vegas NACE and other local trade associations.

Bob donates photographic services to chronicle local meeting and events, in both markets, and makes certain that the organizations receive a CD-Rom of the images, promptly.

He sends postcards, periodically; and emails, from time to time. Today, I received one of those emails. It was formatted in Constant Contact, and was really quite simple. It was cute photo, halloween-themed, and had a soft-sell, but clear headline.

What Bob Christie is doing is not rocket science, but it’s well planned, timed nicely, and well executed.

One other thing: Bob Christie is polite, kind, and easy to do business with. Can you say all that about your marketing and yourself?

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

Technorati Tags: Email Marketing, event marketing, Las Vegas, NACE, orlando, wedding marketing blog

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written by Andy Ebon \\ tags: Email Marketing, event marketing, Las Vegas, NACE, orlando, wedding marketing blog

In this morning’s Las Vegas Review Journal, columnist Norm Clarke floated a sizable rumor for general consumption and discussion.

He suggested that MGM/Mirage is considering selling its ‘crown jewel,’ the Bellagio Resort Hotel & Casino for a cash infusion to help complete its massive City Center Project.

Background: City Center is a multi-billion dollar project, slated for completion in 2010. It is the largest private development in the world, and will have considerable variety within it: Resorts, hotels, condos, office space, the works!

The City Center construction skyline has made a section of the Las Vegas Strip look much like an active Manhattan resurrection project.

You see, in Las Vegas, when developers and hotel-casino companies play Monopoly, they play it with real money… big money.

How this affects the small business and catering sales manager: The short term impact of a hotel being sold, particularly one of the most prominent, in any market, has a tremendous ripple effect.

For the Catering Sales Manager, their employment immediately becomes unstable. Depending on what company buys an existing property, any given job could be gone, tomorrow, six months from now, or not all. Almost always, some kind of restructuring occurs.

For the small business operator, your ‘relationship’ with the hotel will typically come ‘under review.’ If a new Director of Catering is hired, and you’re not on their short list of great vendors, you’re probably off the list, immediately.

Of course, if some Catering Managers wind up with other jobs at other properties, that can work in your favor, too.

Here, in Las Vegas, assuming the economy has worked through its doldrums, in 2010, there will be a lot more opportunities for everyone, at every level. But that’s a long time down the road. We live in-the-now.

What should you be doing? Doesn’t matter whether you’re in Las Vegas, the Twin Cities, Atlanta, or Timbuktu; you should be doing the same thing.

Always expanding meaningful wedding marketing relationships through entire departments, welcome people to new jobs, and be helpful to people who are out of a job. It’s easy to be there for people when you need something. Being there for people when times are challenging is the definition of true friendship, not just a business relationship, based on referrals.

Don’t worry about things you can’t control! In twenty-five years in San Francisco and five years in Las Vegas, I have seen plenty of real world Monopoly being played. I have seen some great hotels change hands, several times, seen new properties being built, and other imploded.

Those things can’t be controlled. What you can manage is relationships. So make a few calls, today, and go have a cup of coffee with a person you value. And if they need you, be there for them.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

Technorati Tags: bellagio, casino, hotel, Las Vegas City Center, Las Vegas Review Journal, MGM/Mirage, Monopoly, Norm Clarke, Relationship Marketing, wedding marketing blog

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written by Andy Ebon \\ tags: bellagio, casino, hotel, Las Vegas City Center, Las Vegas Review Journal, MGM/Mirage, Monopoly, Norm Clarke, Relationship Marketing, wedding marketing blog