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My CameraDojo podcast with expert photographers Kerry Garrison and David Esquire on website search optimization/marketing and getting the most from your blog

January 7, 2009 by Marc 5 Comments

If you haven’t been taking lessons at the CameraDojo, you probably should take the time to visit. It could only help you gain the skill to survive and thrive in meeting any challenge … even this economic recession.

Created by well known and respected photographers, Kerry and David, it is an excellent website to assist professionals in all areas of photography. All areas, and even in the non-imaging areas towards gaining the success (and comfort) that comes from effective marketing.

Recently they have recently had podcasts by such notables as Dane Sanders and … to my surprise … now even me. The podcast we did right before Christmas is now up and ready for your ears and thoughts. Let me know if you have any comments or questions. Click here to listen to the podcast.

And to become a master, browse through the rest of CameraDojo’s terrific site including other podcasts, resources, specials, news, forum, etc. Learn to take better pictures and make the most of your photography budget. Camera Dojo has tips, tutorials, and product reviews for Canon, Nikon, and others.

Filed Under: Advertising, Announcements, Sales, Search Engines, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: Blogs, blogsites. marketing, CameraDojo, photography, search optimization, SEM, SEO, Websites, weddings

Some New Years Day Black Eyed Peas for Good Fortune and Motivation in 2009

January 1, 2009 by Marc Leave a Comment

Record breaking success is always a challenge, and without doubt 2009 will be a very challenging environment for all wedding professionals. Now before we begin, how about we take a little time today for pay heed to past customs and today’s pulse with Black Eyed Peas. It can’t harm.

My mother’s folks were from the Southern USA and our New Years Day diet always recognized the custom of consuming Black Eyed Peas as a way to help make sure of good fortune in the New Year. In fact, I will have some early this New Year’s morning with eggs and bacon. And. there are lots of other, even tastier, ways to prepare them. If you don’t like or have any Black Eyed Peas (the first two stores I went to were all sold-out) perhaps just a few moments of meditating while gazing at a photo will help ensure good fortune in 2009.

black eyed peas 300x259 Some New Years Day Black Eyed Peas for Good Fortune and Motivation in 2009

But really, we all know diet is only part of being successful. A larger part is persistently creatively effectively constantly … actually working towards success. So what could be better than working to the fast driving pulse of the Black Eyed Peas?!

Here is some Black Eyed Peas music to help “Let’s Get It Started”

And to keep it strong and going let’s “Pump It”

(Bless you Mom)

Filed Under: Announcements, Sales Tagged With: Black Eyed Peas, custom, New Years, southm, success in 2009

When upscale brides downshift

December 29, 2008 by Marc 5 Comments

It is time to shift your positioning.

There are probably some lessons here for wedding professionals as we go into the booking season.

Regardless of client base, many of us have already noticed that for 2009 it seems that ostentatious luxury is “out” and here are a couple of articles with some measurements.

First from Conde Nast on the recent holiday sales results. Out of all types of purchases, luxury items had the largest decline.

Next, even Prada is having in-store sales and Chanel is striving to reduce expenses.

Luxury for the sake of luxury is in decline and the major leading brands are shifting their marketing focus as a result.

Thankfully weddings are persistent. We will always have weddings, but the motivations and desires of bride-to-be for their wedding, reception and honeymoon seem to be changing. So for the best results consider changing with them.

UPDATE – 1/1/09

I just wanted to add this article from the Washington DC area into the post. It is from Aug 2008 and relates how many couples, while still getting married, were reducing costs. Includes a good reference to a NACE survey which found that about half their 465 responding members said 60% of their clients were “buying less expensive meals and avoiding luxury items”. I do not believe that this means that couples are not living their dream, only that many couples are working harder to afford their dream and choosing with care what has the most meaning and lasting value. It is my thought that this shift, creates an opportunity to advantageously re-position your business stressing heartfelt meaning and lasting value.

UPDATE – 1/3/09

I came across this article from the New York Times, dated Dec, 20,2008, titled “Recession? Time to Slash the Flower Budget“. It seems a little pessimistic but does relate what a number of couples are facing and doing to keep their wedding plans together. It is a good read to understand the reality of the circumstances and reactions by both couples and wedding professionals. Here is a excerpt:

“… As the financial condition of the country worsens, the wedding industry, so long considered recession-proof, is seeing fairy-tale weddings stripped of their sprites, their sparkle and everything else that suggests splurge.

Some couples are slashing guest lists to include just immediate family and very dear friends, leaving aunts, cousins and the friends of friends out entirely, and bridal consultants say that they are seeing more couples postponing their events until they can be more certain they will have the money to pay for the wedding they want. Others are ratcheting up plans for quick, simple weddings that allow them to more readily take advantage of a safety net woven from the government and corporate benefits available to married couples.

Still other couples, armed with the skills they learned in a go-go economy, are trying to forcefully renegotiate with vendors to keep some semblance of their ideal wedding.

One bride had put down a deposit and locked into a contract with a site in a town south of Philadelphia, where she and her fiancé live. Given the amount of debt piling up from their graduate school studies, she suddenly thought that the $30,000 to $40,000 she had planned to spend on her wedding seemed ridiculous.”

Filed Under: Advertising, Profits, Sales, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: economics, luxury, marketing, upscale brides, wedding planning

A New Year’s Blogging Resolution

December 29, 2008 by Marc Leave a Comment

As I read through my own blogging, and that of other wedding professionals of all walks, I see that I/we need to makes some changes for the New Year.

PROMOTE YOURSELF! Use at least 10%-20% of your posts to:

Share your solutions.
Stress your benefits.
Promote your business.
Illustrate your work.
Demonstrate your dedication
Portray your professionalism.
Educate about your continuing education
Celebrate successes.
Quote testimonials and thank yous
Be your own hero.

Your blog posts can be your best advertising, and few of us use it to that benefit. It is often difficult to publicly trumpet what we do that is exceptional. But we must! One or two posts out of ten is not too much about what makes you and your business special. We tell our friends, in ’09 let’s tell our readers.

Filed Under: Blogs, Sales, Websites, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: blog writing, blogging, marketing

Getting the most out of your Bridal Show investment.

December 22, 2008 by Marc Leave a Comment

For many of us, it is that time of year again. In a few weeks we will be stting up our displays in wedding and bridal shows, hoping to schedule weddings for 2009 and 2010 or at least get solid contacts that will soon convert to contracts.

So I though it might be helpful to mention that Christine Boulton of The Agency at Think, has done a series of 5 excellent blog posts for wedding professionals on how to maximize your wedding show investment.

Here they are, (even old hands may find some useful info) -

Ten Tips for Bridal Shows: Part 1

Ten Tips For Bridal Shows: Part 2

How To Pick the Right Bridal Show For You

More Tidbits on Bridal Shows

Bridal Show Wrap-up

May you have a great ’09!

Filed Under: Sales, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: Add new tag, bridal show, display booth, marketing, wedding show

What is a top search result showing worth to your business

December 12, 2008 by Marc 2 Comments

What is it worth to your company to show up in the top search results for your type of services or products? Shouldn’t that be the primary goal of your website? Shouldn’t your website market you, rather than you having to market your website?

Many of us make decisions about our website without first determining the primary goals for having a website. Instead we chose what seems pretty or something similar to our competition. I have nothing against pretty, but it is subjective and difficult to use for the evaluation of results. And I think it is very good to have better results than your competition, so don’t automatically do what they do either. Doesn’t it make sense that a primary goal should be improved marketing through high search results?

What do I mean by high search results? Just this, “high placement based upon likely generic search phrases“. For example, it is not significant to rank high on a search term like “love story wedding videography Miami” because really how many brides would be searching on a phrase that specific? Virtually none! What is important is a generic phrase like “Miami wedding videography”. That is an almost universal type phrase used by many South Florida brides seeking video services. And would result in a lot of website visitors for any videographer ranking high based on that phrase.

Let’s examine some of the other benefits of high search results, besides increased visitors. How about greater credibility, allowing for higher margins? Yes! Two recent studies have found that surprising outcome related to placing higher in search page results. First a report from iProspect revealing that “top rankings in search results transmit brand value to fully one-third of online consumers” and second this comprehensive study out of the University of Indiana titled “In Google We Trust: Users’ Decisions on Rank, Position, and Relevance” that had this finding

“An eye tracking experiment revealed that college student users have substantial trust in Google’s ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When the participants selected a link to follow from Google’s result pages, their decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in position … This demonstrated trust in Google has implications for the search engine’s tremendous potential influence on culture, society, and user traffic on the Web.”

So a wedding business that has a high search ranking with generic search terms can also have higher brand value making for higher income margins. Not only will high search rank provide more business, it helps support higher prices. Here is an example from an article titled “What is a #1 Google Ranking Worth?”.

Even better, how about an example from a successful wedding photographer? Many of us have heard of Houston wedding photographer Christine Tremoulet of Houston TX. Her photography is gorgeous. Christine has put the lesson of high search ranking to work by using the ideal of a WordPress based web/blogsite (with Flash limited only to portfolio galleries) that gets tremendous search rank and traffic. We can see this because she has also generously chosen to share her recent site activity through her site tracker. (Thankfully for the rest of us, true market leaders and innovators like Christine are almost always willing to share with the rest of the profession). If you take a look at the tracker you can see that her website regularly gets over 200 visits a day, with 50%+ coming from Google searches. Her largest single search term … “Houston”. Google “Houston wedding photographer” and she will almost always come up in the first page or two of results. And not because of costly Google Adwords, but free natural search. All this helps allow not only for a lot inquires, but also fees sufficient for a good income. That is the purpose of good marketing. Learn from leaders, she does not market her website, her website markets her.

So when trying to determine what to use for your website; if income is important to you, I recommend you chose what will get you the highest search results … a WordPress based web/blogsite.

Filed Under: Advertising, Blogs, Profits, Sales, Search Engines Tagged With: blogsites, marketing, search optimization, SEM, SEO, SMO, website marketing

How to get 300+ inquiries, you’ll make so much more money

December 6, 2008 by Marc 10 Comments

David Jay’s Open Source Photo (OSP) forum has quickly become a favorite. It has a great easy attitude and a tremendous amount of helpful information is exchanged.

Outstanding is a list put together and recently shared in the OSP forum by Matt McGraw, of Matt McGraw Photography which he directly titled “How to get 300+ inquiries, you’ll make so much more money“. I think he is right. His list is a great reality check for anyone in the wedding business. Go through it and use it to check what you are doing to build your business. Each item has the potential for very beneficial application. Some of it I have been doing in my business, some I need to improve and a couple were brand new! Use your own perspective, but put it to action and your 2009 could be great.

I appreciate Matt letting me share his list of ways to increase your business.

How to get 300 inquiries

1. Vendors vendors vendors, vendors are important: From reception people to cake makers… I do a pre-questionnaire for my brides and grooms. In that questionnaire I find out who I am working with from DJs to Florist to cake people to ministers to reception places etc. I obtain all the contact information for these vendors. After the wedding I compile a list of photos that each vendor would find interest in. I splash my logo on the photos and email them the pictures and say if you would like any of these photos in high res and without my logo let me know I can email you those photos. For reception places: if it is somewhere I have never worked I’ll send them a 20X30 print with my logo splashed all over it and 4X6s of the same photo with my contact info to pass out to potential brides. I’ll also send them a disc with images they might be interested in and tell them they can use whatever photos they would like to… Become buddies with the vendors too. For example, I’m on a “hug basis” with the sales directors of 5 major hotels in town. Their cell numbers are in my phone. I shoot their kids… I’ll sometimes meet them for a beer or 2… I never talk about my photography it’s always buddy talk. Sure we talk shop sometimes but it’s not my goal. They feel comfortable around me.

2. Newsletter/blog: Start one… I use constant contact set up a page and send mine out once a month. My email list is 5600 strong. Most photographers have a webpage set up. We do not.. I’m not opposed to that but I just prefer the email newsletter. Next question for you is how we get 5600 people on there. Anyone that emails me gets on the list. The only people who do not get on my list are emails that are inquiring where I am not available. Also I advertise in 2 magazines where they provide a lead sheet. I’ll copy and paste emails of brides and grooms where I am not booked. I do this once a month right before I send out the newsletter.

3. Advertising: spend most of your advertising money online as opposed to print. Print is just name recognition. They’ll see or hear your name and see an ad and say I’ve heard of this photographer…

4. Online advertising: There are a lot of free resources to advertise. Go online and be a consumer find out what wedding sites come up first. Type in your city and photographers … these are common search words for brides and grooms. You can also add the word weddings.

5. Search engine placement: There are companies that specialize in this. I use localpull.net and partypop.com I spend about $80 a month on the two to make sure my name stays on top of the search engines.

6. Every person you meet represents 10 people: Sounds cliché… but when I introduce myself I always say “Matt McGraw”. I hear all the time that they’ve seen me or heard my name somewhere. My wife gets asked when she says her last name if her husband is a photographer. It gets on her nerves.

7. Local publications: Not just wedding magazines. Local magazines are always looking for material. In my case there is a local magazine that has a wedding section. So once a month I submit photos from weddings that I’ve shot. I ran into the editor one day and she said I was the only photographer that sends in photos and she was very appreciative. If they don’t have a wedding section send some anyway. And suggest they start one.

8. Bridal shows: I do one every year. The same one… I’m the only veteran at these shows, and when asked why I continue doing them… I say that it’s because it’s an opportunity to keep my name out there. I don’t want to become a photo snob. I don’t need to do a bridal show… but I do anyway. I was talking to a veteran photographer the other day and he asked me how many weddings we had booked next year for he was way down. He said he only had 1 booked. He never does a bridal show never puts his name out there never goes the extra mile. He thinks his name will get him through. Never never have this attitude. Never think for a second that you don’t need to market yourself. And never never never think your better than everyone else. There are a lot of good photographers out there right now.

9. Website: make sure you have your best stuff on there. It’s a first impression. All too often I’ll look at a website and see subpar material. I know these guys too and know they have much better material. It boggles my mind.

10. The drip rule: … There is not one in particular marketing rule/campaign that will work above all others. Meaning you will not get immediate results… but do not think that they have failed. I read on my “how did you get my name” question a lot…”from a few places friends etc.

11. Business cards: throw away your 2X3 cards… Everyone uses them. Do you know where the business cards that people have given you? I use a 4X6 photo with my contact info all over it… When I shoot a wedding I’ll use a photo of them for my business cards. It is a 4×6 photo of the couple or of a bridal photo with my contact info. I’ll put them out on a table somewhere. It’s a photo it will not get thrown away. Do not use the traditional business cards.

12. Email management: I use Microsoft outlook. Do not have a @hotmail or a @gmail acct for business. Your email should be @yourphotocompany.com… be professional and be a business. Treat it like a business. I have a very detailed and organized contact cards. I have a vendor folder, client folder… if I need to get a hold of someone it takes me just a second to find the contact. This is a must in marketing. It keeps you organized.

13. Be accessible… nothing bugs me more than leaving a message. I use my cell number. If I don’t answer the phone one of my guys answers it. Someone sends me an email they’ll get a response fairly quick. On my contract it gives my cell number and below it says put this in your cell number and feel free to call me anytime.

14. Be creative in your marketing. For example: mywedding.com, they called and asked me to advertise… I did a little research and what I found was there were 45 photographers advertising in this particular city. That’s crazy and a waste of money. I asked if it would be ok if I advertised on the reception site. It was a good idea. I was the only photographer on the reception page and got a number of calls.

15. Always always have a good attitude at weddings. Have fun. You’ll be known as a fun photographer. If something doesn’t go your way, who cares… its part of life. I hear stories of photographers blowing lids for the most stupid things. You’ll get a ton of referrals because of your fun attitude.

16. Slideshows for reception sites and vendors. If your like us we shoot at the same places quit a bit. If you do compile a portfolio for these particular places and make an online slideshow for them. the slideshow below is an example of a high end reception place near my home town. When I emailed thist to them they were estatic. They immediately put on their website and in turn we immediately started getting calls. Below is that slideshow. I did this for all the reception sites in town. http://slideshow.mattmcgrawphotography.com…runnerweddings/

17. Charity work.. no not the soup kitchen variety… I mean doing shoots for free or greatly reduced price because of the marketability in this shoot. For example, A friend of mine who is an excellent videographer wife is having a baby… he asked me to come and shoot the baby in the hospital. he offered to pay but I refused… here’s why A he’s a good friend. and B. he sends out a newsletter to 2600 people with all kinds of personal things in his life. He’ll be putting these photos on this newsletter with my name splashed all over the place. Another example: our church has about 5000 people who attend… the head of the children’s education committee asked me to photograph a program that my kid was in. He wanted to pay… I refused to let him pay.. here’s why these photos are going in a program and being handed out to 5000 people. with my name all over the photos. and of course my kid is in the program and I was going to be shooting it anyway… Only do charity work once. If he ask again then I’ll charge him. it can turn on you where they’ll expect it every time. so be careful…

Filed Under: Advertising, Profits, Sales, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: business, how-to, income, Leads, Sales, Wedding Marketing

Wall Street Journal reveals average US wedding cost is really about $15K, or less!

November 15, 2008 by Marc 5 Comments

One of the dirty little secrets of the wedding press is that the oft-repeated statistic that the averge US per wedding spending is approaching $30,000 is really a lie.

Last May in a blog post titled “Lies, damned lies and statistics”, I pointed this out using recent figures from The Wedding Report. Using The Wedding Report’s own data I shared that over 80% of the weddings in their data set spent less than half the amount they reported as “average”.

Recently, Christina Fredrichsen of IntimateWeddings.com directed me to a Wall Street Journal article “Weddings Are Not The Budget Drains Some Surveys Suggest” which further exposed this problem and even interviewed some of our profession’s leaders who work to perpetuate the spending falsehood.

It is not that I am against lux weddings and upscale brides. The troublesome issue with the misleading wedding cost reports is that the reports are purposefully packaged to misrepresent and oversell wedding professionals and brides-to-be misinformation as to the cost of the typical wedding. This can cause many problems for both the brides-to-be and wedding professionals.

How many wedding professionals decide that their best business plan is to cater to the “upscale” bride? Weddings with budgets above 30K. And invest in expensive marketing to execute that business plan? And go out of business only to find that they were marketing to less than 5% of the market? And ignoring over 80% of the US weddings.

And think about the young couples feeling stressed because their budget seems so much less that what they read on The Knot or in Conde Nast. And possibly go into debt just for what they have been told is the “average” wedding?

In today’s new economic reality I feel that for most wedding professionals it would be much better to positionand market to serve the majority of the marketplace. What could be called the “Wedding Populaire” or even Volks-Wedding. The idea of the average wedding trying to reach an almost unaffordable level of extravagance is no longer stylish … or possible.

Filed Under: Advertising, Sales, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: marketing, spending, statistics, wedding cost

Google Adwords free benefits – just use them in your content

July 8, 2008 by Marc 2 Comments

With the growing cost of Google adwords and our target market brides’ increasing resistance I thought it would be helpful to precisely show how you can discover the search words used most often. And benefit from using them in your website content at no expense.

First to discover the most productive bride’s search engine words use the public Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Then enter what terms you think a bride might use when searching for your goods or services. The Google Keyword Tool will return am extensive list of keywords related to searchs and the nuber of searches using those keywords.

Finally, incorporate the top keywords into your website’s text content. But, do it in a natural conversational format. In doing that you will be describing your business the way the bride is looking for it, increasing your website’s relevancy to her search and moving up to a more prominent search position in her results.

Filed Under: Advertising, Sales, Wedding Marketing Tagged With: adwords, content, Google, marketing, SEO, Uncategorized

Flash based websites: “the accessibility and searchability of a brick”

July 2, 2008 by Marc 1 Comment

In the quest to find methods to help improve marketing results for wedding professionals I often look at website options/techniques. Previously I have discussed the impressive advantages of using a rich featured blog engine as the basis for your entire website, but ignored the almost crippling impact Flash based websites can have on your Internet marketing.

Even today one of the most frequent website questions is “Flash or HTML?” The best answer lies in how you respond to this one simple question: Do you want your website to market your business (be a marketing partner), OR do you want the additional necessity of having to market your website?

I thought we had gotten past the time when people were fascinated with the wow factor of having a Flash Site and had woken up to the reality and amazing return on investment of internet marketing. Flash can be very pretty but if you want to get traffic to a Flash site you are going to have to advertise your site instead of your site advertising you. But a well crafted HTML site can leverage Google, and other search engines, to market for you. Without website traffic there are no sales.

This quote from SEO evangelist Tim Nash’s blog sums it up pretty clearly, “Adobe Flash (formally Macromedia) is a great tool for developing highly artistic multimedia applications;but it has the accessibility and searchability of a brick. If you are serious about getting organic rankings the only advice is stay away from Flash, I mean it. Stop reading this post it will not help!”

Even though the large search engines like Google have some Flash indexing capabilities these are still very limited. The internet is and always has been a text based environment. That is just how search works. When the search spiders crawl your site they are looking for words and relevant content; to do that they have to be able to read the words. The text on a Flash based site is read as an image, not readable words. Since the spider doesn’t see any relevant content it just crawls off to another site and doesn’t bother to index your cool pretty Flash site. No indexing, no ranking in the search engines. What more, is they often see an entire Flash site as a single image. That means that even if you have 1000 images in your gallery of the most amazing whatever the search engines still see it as a single image.

I don’t care how your site looks, if no one finds it what are you getting for your marketing dollars? So the question remains do you want to spend your marketing dollars getting clients to your business or to your website? Traffic to your site shows off your work and your business and prompts clients to contact and hopefully hire you. The more good traffic you have the better chance you have of selling more. If your site, amazing though it may be, doesn’t show up high in the rankings of the major search engine you are going to have to drive people to your site through other marketing channels. That means increased print media buys and increased exposure at bridal shows to advertise your website just to get people to find it. Expect to spend well over a dollar a click through. It is not unusual for wedding photographers to spend $2.00 to $6.00 per click through. So here you have spent all this money on what your designer told you was a pretty website and you are now having to spend bucks just to get people to view it. Organic search is free, take advantage of the best marketing deal ever, organic search results. All you need to do is replace your Flash website.