I recently came across this open letter on Facebook. I think it is very instructive as to the intelligence of this generation’s brides-to-be and how we need to become more authentic and helpful in marketing our services. If anyone would/want, please comment on this opinion by Ashley Keene a college senior from Cincinnati.
“My generation, the millenials, grew up with the blinking ads that claimed we were the 1,000,000th visitor and had won money. We grew up with simple, absurd games of “catch the fish!” or “punch the rabbit!” or “shave her legs!” that sent us away from the page we were viewing if clicked. We grew up viewing millions of pages of content with absurd animations attempting to draw our eyes to the ads.
These early, poorly-planned, poorly-designed marketing schemes destroyed web marketing. They established early habits in consumers that are not easily broken.
Banner ads have a reputation for being annoying, misleading, untrustworthy and ignored by almost everyone.
We will never click on an ad to interact with it because we were taught that clicking anywhere on the ad, even if it wasn’t a link, would send us away from our page.
We will never believe that an offer is in any way exclusive or special.
Animations never grab our attention.
I’m just a college student, but I’m also a designer who has interned at a couple of marketing agencies. Whenever I’m confronted with creating a design for a web advertisement, I feel lost because I know there’s nothing I can do to break the long-established habits of internet users. “
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About Marc
Hello Marc – While what you say might be true, it fails to address another key factor of today’s bride-to-be; an unwillingness to provide information, a lack of communication skills and a failure to courtesy and respect. I have been shooting weddings professionally for 12 years and I have never witnessed what I and other professionals are seeing. I have a very complete website at LITfoto. On it there is a (non-committal) registration form to provide me with basic information about wedding plans. This year, however, 7 of 10 queries I have received have simply been un-informative emails. (At the bottom of this post is an actual email). I have responded to these emails almost immediately with enthusiasm and a request to fill out the registration form and provide me with more information before we talk. In each instance I have simply never heard back. Follow-up emails on my part go unanswered. So I ask: How is one to do business with a generation that doesn’t understand basic communication and business skills? Here is one letter:
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My fiance and I are getting married in (town) on August 16th. How much do you charge?
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As I mentioned, I encourage a phone conversation, a followup email, or filling out the registration form. Multiple attempts to contact the person are not responded to.
Thoughts?
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your comment, and first I want to say that I have visited your website and your work is beautiful!
I agree with your observation regarding the shift in brides-to-be over the last few years. The letter you provided asking about charges seems almost arrogant, doesn’t it? I believe what comes across as lack of communication, and seemingly almost arrogance on the part of many brides-to-be may be sourced in the feeling of social inadequacy regarding the “whole wedding thing”. Television wedding programming and published “average wedding expense” figures have unfortunately created an set of expectations that very few can meet. For example, the Wedding Report has published that the average wedding expense in the US for 2008 is projected at almost $28,000. What gets lost is that over 80 percent of the weddings will cost that much OR LESS.
The mean (the mathematical average) may be close to $28K, but the mode (the most frequent expense) is probably much closer to $15K. So most of the brides planning their wedding are now set-up to feel “less than average”. But in reality they are legion! And always have been. Popular entertainment and news has just conspired to make them feel a new level of stress.
The way to address this is through more effective communication on our part, that as I put in my recent newsletter, addresses a bride’s desires, fears and uncertainties related to our services. This needs to be done throughout our marketing efforts . From the first page of our websites, to our direct emails, to our thank you notes.
Soon I will be starting a working lab group to help us all redraft our marketing messages I hope you will consider joining the group.
Marc,you are correct in saying ” The way to address this is through more effective communication on our part, address a bride’s desires, fears and uncertainties related to our services.”
Today’s brides have been set up to see us as an adversary. They come to the program looking for the vendor that will “screw them the least.”
It is very easy for we vendors to pull into protective mode these days. So many of us are getting burnt on a recurring basis that there is a tendency to become pre-emptively demanding. That is the opposite of how to handle it. The OP should have simply answered her question and continued the email in a friendly open manner by asking further questions. If the bride failed to respond at that point, the photographer was not in her price range.
True – there seems to be a communication difference with this generation. But we were warned years ago. This generation is able to do everything online therefore making them somewhat lacking in personable communication. The are not bad people, they just do things differently.
As professionals we ask the important questions upfront, so we can give them the best answer — name, phone/email, budget, date & time, etc.. But I get emails that say the same thing…my wedding is in 2 weeks, how much?
Sometimes I wonder if that person is just tired of typing, therefore leaving out the info we need to give them the best answer, or is it, that they really just dont know any better?
I had a young lady call me yesterday. I answered the phone, she says – what do you charge for a wedding? Thats it, just that blunt, just that fast. I had to step back, say hello, how are you, Yes, we do weddings, what are you looking for, we offer several packages.
Usually once we talk, they open up a bit. It is just interesting how they do things.