Ten Business Building Strategies To Start The New Year: Tip #5

‘My way or the highway,’ as a manner of doing business, no longer cuts it.

• Don’t make it difficult for people to buy from you. If you don’t offer complete credit card acceptance (yes, that means American Express, too), for example, you are probably losing business.
• If wedding prospects require evening and Saturday hours for appointments at your office, you lose out if you are not accommodating them. Yes, I said Saturday hours.
• If your competition offers customers special accommodations or service that you don’t, you have a void in your marketing plan. For example, do you have a telephone hotline for brides, during the week leading up to their wedding?
• Are you using text messaging to confirm appointments?
• Does your website contain answers to frequently asked questions such that prospects and clients can find forms and details even when you, or your sales staff, are not available?
• Have you acknowledged the reality that email and texting ARE, in fact, a conversation for today’s bride?

Make yourself easy to do business with…. to communicate with……

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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The Magic Wedding Marketing Pill

Some of the recurring questions I get, typically at seminars and conferences is: “What’s the right social media to do first?” or “Should I cut back on print advertising?” or “How come my website isn’t working like it used to?” or “How do I find the time to understand all the latest technology?”

All these question are, in essence, the same question. “Andy, could you please give me a list of the optimum marketing methods to make my business successful? I need the Magic Wedding Marketing Pill.”

Sorry, no-can-do. Answers in Wedding Marketing are not that simple.

I taught college for eight years, and one important thing I learned is that students were look for THE right answer. Sometimes I would present a real life business situation that I had experienced. Along with the scenario, I would present four or five possible alternative solutions to address the problem. The class would discuss it, and then would vote on the preferred path.

I would coyly try to move on to another subject, and students would interrupt with, “But what’s The right answer?”

With a smile, I would respond, there is not ONE right answer. I can tell you what decision I made, and why. However, there may be several effective choices; sometimes none.

In the same way, as a wedding marketer, you are looking for the Magic Wedding Marketing Pill. You want the correct dosage, the least side effects, and the best schedule to make it work.

When working with a client directly, I can recommend one or more courses of action. Even then, if you don’t take the pill on schedule, or take too many, all the recommendations are for naught.

Many marketing wizards believe that you should be spending up to 50% of your time on marketing (that should include selling). Perhaps a more efficient and effective person might be able accomplish the same level of sales with a 35-40% commitment. Typically, improving marketing/sales efficiency come with plugging the holes in the the leaky boat.

Beware of the Bright Shiny New Object: This is the axiom for we ADD business marketers who fail to follow a strategy to its fruition because we get distracted, drop the ball, and move on to something else.

• One blogs, perhaps somewhat effectively, but get distracted by trying Twitter. With no goal or strategy for Twitter, we drop the ball on both, and fail miserably, announcing that New Social Media doesn’t work.
• The new bridal show or wedding publication comes to town. They can’t sell booth or advertising space at retail, because they have no track record, but manage to attract commitment. Let someone else waste their money on testing these new shiny objects. If you wouldn’t pay retail for them, why should you bother with them, at all. Stay with what you know, and improve your ad, or booth exhibit.
• I’m not sure whether to focus on Facebook or LinkedIn. Facebook seems like more fun. I think I’ll do that.

Marketing is an endless set of alternatives. How many phone calls to you make? How many emails or postcards do you send?

Here is the solution: Measure the effectiveness of everything, and then start optimizing, based on results.

If you don’t have the tools or methods to do that, you better get started. Otherwise, you are engaged in seat-of-the-pants-marketing. And that, my friend. is like rolling the dice.

Spoken like a true Las Vegan!

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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The June 15th issue of TIME Magazine carries the image of a Tweet by writer, Stephen B. Johnson. The Tweet is shown as an image on an iPhone, almost incidentally.

The cover article is titled: “How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live (in 140 characters or less).”

Immediately following the Twitter article is piece, titled: “The Plot to Take On The iPhone” (an article about the Palm Pre). The Palm Pre article is essentially about competition. Playing catch-up in a technological world. Palm elected to introduce their new phone, just a few days ahead of Apple’s WWDC conference, where it was expected that Apple would introduce an updated iPhone.

Ironically, before I could find this edition of TIME Magazine on the news stands, Apple had introduced its new line of iPhones and, to a large degree, left the Palm Pre in the dust.

For me, this is a story of out-innovating your competition. Get out in front, continue to improve and innovate, without a let up. It’s as simple as that.

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The Twitter story is more complex. As I give presentations about various tools in Online Social Media. I find the headline: “How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live“ a little bit much. In a recent post, I chided new Twitter users to have a reason for being there, and having a marketing plan, as well.

While I find Twitter to be useful for my purposes, I feel like there should be a competency test, given, before people can use it. I encourage you to read the TIME article and try to get your head around it. Just because many people are on Twitter does not mean you need to be, necessarily. In fact, just because I use an iPhone, and recommend it, does not mean it’s the most appropriate tool for you.

I need to be on Twitter because I’m in the business of coaching wedding marketers about the most effective ways to communicate.

These two stories underscore that rapid transition of technology and communication. What you must do is allot time for continuing education in your chosen field, as well as marketing and communication.

Get ahead; stay ahead.

Andy Ebon

The Wedding Marketing Authority

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iPhone and Applications

Apple is holding its WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) this week, and, as is frequently the case, they had lots of interesting news to announce.

Today, I’d like to focus on the next generation of iPhones. They process faster, will now take verbal calling commands, and can shoot video among many other things.

A few weeks ago, I gave a recommendation for Flip TV. It’s still a worthy choice, particularly for High Definition Video. The iPhone does not offer that, just yet. Other than that, one can shoot a video from the iPhone and even edit down the footage, finally uploading the clip to YouTube, emailing it, or saving it to your computer.

The camera now allows better focus on foreground images that are not in the center of the frame. Just tap on someone’s face, for example, and the focus is clearly on them; background images, less so. The camera now has 3mg capability, providing sharper, higher resolution photos.

Perhaps the most shocking statistic, to me, is that two-thirds of all the internet surfing on mobile devices is done of the iPhone or iPod Touch.

All of this should raise several issues.

• Is your website or blog easily view on a Smart Phone?
• Wouldn’t it be helpful to shoot a high quality photo or video with a single device?
• Are you documenting your events? If not, why not?
• Do you have a quick presentation of your business in a phone for easy playback, to anyone, anywhere?
• Are you utilizing text messages with your prospects and clients.

Hopefully, you were up to date, until yesterday. Are you investing in tools, such as the iPhone to be competitive and stay competitive. It isn’t about being cool. It’s about have the best communications and marketing tools available. That is the wedding marketing edge.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

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OK, I admit it… I annoy my girlfriend sometimes when we’re out for dinner or on the town. You see, when I’m a customer, my mentality is more that of a spotter.

Really, I don’t mean to nitpick, but I see everything… the good, the bad, and the ugly. If the service is slow, I won’t simply complain about it, I want to understand why the service was slow.

I think it’s really tough to evaluate your own business; its strengths and weaknesses. It’s almost impossible to be objective.

Most of us have a few business friends who will tell us the truth, no matter what. Find a few and hire them as spotters/quality control. Have them drop into your place of business (if they are not known) and observe. Shop your company (and your competition) by interacting with the sales staff.

If your resources permit, you should consider hiring a neutral party to perform those tasks.

Then, grit your teeth and don’t argue. A neutral party, viewing with a customer’s eyes is invaluable.

Want to get better, be more competitive, expand the distance between you and your competitors? Then, don’t make excuses, seek to improve. Your image, presentation, organization, and execution are ALL part of effective wedding marketing.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

PS: I’ll try to be less annoying, but it’s not likely.

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The current generation of brides have grown up on the cell phone. In fact, many of them don’t have a separate land line telephone at home.

As well, cell phones do far more than facilitate phone calls these days. An incredibly high percentage of people use them for texting, checking email, and browsing the internet.

On this blog, and other blogs I develop and manage, I’ve added the benefit of easy viewing via cell phone. It’s easy to install, and it’s free. Did I say free? Yes I did.

There are several plug-in widgets that offer cell-phone optimization, may favorite is Mippin.

The graphic in this post (upper right), shows samples of how a blog would look in a half-dozen different cell phones. It’s amazingly clean.

In the upper left corner of this blog, there is a box, titled: Mobile Version. Simply click on the animated logo, to visit the Mippin site and see what your options.

A huge part of marketing is making your information available in the greatest variety of formats that a prospect might view.

You might never look at a blog or website on a cell phone. That’s not important. What’s important is what a 27-year old bride does.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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When a customer, prospect, or vendor calls your office, the first impression of your business, is how the call is handled.

• Is it answered within three rings?
• Does it go to an answering service or voicemail?
• Is it answered by a live person or an interactive tree of button pushing, before you can reach an actual humanoid?

For me, there are several responses that drive me up the wall. In no particular order, they are:

• After going through extensive, interactive pushing of buttons, I finally talk to a human. Only to find out that they need to move me to yet another person, to yet another person. I went through this on Friday, with a grocery delivery from Albertson’s. The delivery window was 11:30am – 1pm. It was now 1:10pm, and I  had to leave for an appointment. My request was simple. “I know the driver is late. Since I now have left the house, please have him call me girl friend when he arrives, since she is in a part of the house where she may not hear the doorbell.” It took me three people and nine minutes to get that point, and I was told that their drivers do not carry cell phones. What century are these people operating in.
• A more common scenario is talking the receptionist or another person in an office, first. Then, they put you through to the person you want to talk to…. VOICE MAIL!!!??!! How lame is that? Office phone systems should not need line-of-sight to determine whether another person is in the office. As the caller, I can’t tell if someone is being lazy or careless…. or whether the phone system is just making them look that way. Regardless, by the third time I called back, I was somewhat annoyed.

Good phone skills and systems are Wedding Marketing 101.

What phone annoyances do you encounter? Please feel free to share them.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

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