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

Ten Business Building Strategies To Start The New Year: Tip #4

Advertising education has always focused on the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition. The element that makes your business different or better than its competition.

It’s helpful to be aware of your competition; however, all too often we react to what our competition is doing and how it affects us. The goal should be to turn it around and get out in front of the competition.

Marketing Guru, Seth Godin, has redefined the Unique Selling Propositionin new terms: the Purple Cow. A Purple Cow is a business, so remarkable, that it clearly stands apart from its competition. It’s clarity of purpose, identity, and execution are focused, clear, and perceived as superior by the marketplace.

Defining your business superiority with descriptors such as: great customer service, is a muddy differentiation, at best. Being the biggest, in business the longest, and other such claims sound good, but don’t truly carry much weight with the marketplace.

Strive to be THE benchmark in your field and market.

Your company’s identity and Unique Selling Proposition should be clear, obvious, and memorable in your business community and to your peers.

Your company should be the standard by which other competing businesses in your market are measured.

What you doing to absolutely put your business in its own league?

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

Ten Business Building  Strategies To Start The New Year: Tip #2

Nothing covers up bad decisions like a good economy. When sales are plentiful, profits will always cover any poor judgment. The same poor decisions will bury you in a tough economy or more competitive environment.

It’s easy to rationalize one’s own situation when your competitor is struggling. You begin to believe that your performance may just be part of a larger trend.

We complain about ‘price competition’ eroding mark ups.

The Net Effect: We make failure too easy to accept. Do not justify weak performance. Do not allow your business or employees to be comfortable with the status quo.

It’s all hands on deck for quality control, process improvement, and person-to-person public relations. That means everybody.

Make incremental improvement a cornerstone element of your business culture and wedding marketing plan for the coming year. Preach it, coach it, and get everyone’s buy in. Acknowledge exceptional effort, problem solving, and taking initiative.

Excellence will not be accomplished every time, but with the appropriate individual and team results, you won’t have to demand results. The results will be there.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

Ten Business Building Strategies To Start The New Year: Tip #3

The reality of selling-to-the-bride is the you don’t do it in a vacuum. More often than not, the bride’s awareness of your business is fueled in a variety of ways; many of them indirect.

She sees your ads, website, see you at a wedding showcase, to name a few. However, there are two ways she is moved toward you, or away from you, more than direct contact.

The Gatekeepers

A Gatekeeper is a business contact who stands between you and the bride or between you and yet another contact, connected to the bride.

For a vendor, she most obvious gatekeepers are people in positions such as catering sales manager or private event manager. For a catering sales manager, private event manager, AND a vendor, a wedding consultant is a gatekeeper. People in these position control both the path of communication to brides (which may be their prospects or clients, at a given time) and they provide positive or negative opinion and influence on the bride.

It is essential that you maintain, and build on, existing relationships with gatekeepers to gain additional access to the bride.

It is necessary and important to build new gatekeeper relationships, as there will always be attrition. However, your primary job is to maintain and build your present contacts.

• Does your company have a specific Social Media Strategy? A strategy that keeps your name and business activities ‘top of mind’ with the gatekeepers.
• Do you belong to local trade associations and networking groups?
• Are you active in those groups, with your presence, participation, and thoughtful donations?
• Do you meet one-to-one with gatekeepers on a regular basis.

By systematically redefining and fortifying key relationships,  you can assure an ongoing flow of wedding leads and bookings.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

With Halloween now behind us, can Christmas be nearer than you think? Indeed it can be, and is.

When acknowledging your customers and industry contacts, it’s not necessarily bad manners having two or more tiers of communication and appreciation.

• Lowest Level: Ecards - Send to casual friends or business acquaintances (perhaps people you know, but have no actual business relationship with, as yet).
• Highest Level: Gifts - Long standing customers and industry contacts who refer you, or hire your company, regularly. (Note: This will be a special focus in a future blog).
• Medium Level: Holiday Cards - Send to those people who fall in the middle, such as: Annual customers, fellow members in trade associations, your accountant, and the like.

Notice, I said holiday cards, not Christmas cards. No it’s not a religious issue, really.

It’s a timing and attention thing.

My experience says, the best strategy is to send Thanksgiving cards. Yes, Thanksgiving cards!

“Why?” you ask. Here’s the logic… Many companies are deferring their decisions about holiday parties (yes, no, how opulent, how understated) as long as they can. Their final plans may be influenced my sales, profits, layoffs, the presidential election, or any number of factors you’re unaware of.

Rather than wait until December, if your product or service is tied to a holiday party or December business (such as gift baskets, balloons, or stationery), then get out in front with a Thanksgiving card. Send a card that is received between Wednesday, November 19th, and Monday, November 24th.

Your holiday wishes will be among the first received, and you will be top-of-mind with people who know you, like you, and are in a position to rehire you or refer you business.

And, by the way, it’s OK to put ONE business card in each envelope. Final thing, make sure the card is signed by ALL your office staff, if possible. Not just you.

Looking for a marketing edge to trump your competitors? Stand out from the crowd by sending Thanksgiving Cards. Then listen for the phone to ring.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority

DJ Satistfaction, one of the attendees at the Orange, CA stop of the Mobile Beat Pioneer ProDJ Tour posted a video summary of the evening’s education and festivities.

This highlight reel will give you a the flavor and energy of the seminars, exhibits, and networking hosted by Mobile Beat Magazine. Next Stop: Chicago, Sunday Night - August 16th

Andy Ebon

The Wedding Marketing Authority

Mobile Beat seminar tour

Tomorrow, I fly to Chicago for the first stop of the second leg of the Mobile Beat Pioneer ProDJ Tour (Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh).

There hasn’t been much time to refresh from the first tour leg, but I have put together a few thoughts that may be interesting. To start with, here are some cumulative statistics (approximate) from the first four stops(Phoenix, San Diego, Orange, & Silicon Valley).

• 75-80% of the DJ’s had a Facebook presence (mostly personal, some business).
• 40-50% had a profile on LinkedIn, but many professed to not using it frequently or fully.
• Only a handful at each stop had a Twitter account.
• Just a few at each stop published a blog.

The thrust of my presentation, Social Media Strategies, was two-fold.

1. Help people frame a strategy/goal/reason-for-being-there for Social Media.
2. Explain enough about the different social media tools, and their features, so as to help people frame their tactics, to accomplish their strategy/goal.

It is clear, when talking to people, that many have just followed the crowd (often fueled by national media), and have not yet focused their social media strategy or tactics.

Social Media is not free: I am continually annoyed by seminars or articles that boast the no-cost factor of social media. The statement is nonsense. One’s time is worth money. If you are investing 4-5 hours a week in social media, that has value. For that reason, alone, it’s important to zero in on  your purpose, and apply the proper tactics, consistently, to achieve it.

Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Blog

Last night, at the San Diego stop of the Mobile Beat Tour, I took the time to thank “Dave AND Buster” for hosting our event. I’m not really sure if there is a Dave or a Buster. I was just having fun in acknowledging the venue that is hosting us at all 15 stops.

Most people know Dave and Buster’s as a game room palace for people of all ages. In addition to all the fun and games, the Dave and Buster’s has a showroom at every location. The room is two levels, and includes a huge projection screen, built-in overhead projector, house sound system and podium.

It is a great set up for the Mobile Beat Tour and would be a great choice for any company desiring to do a presentation for up to about 125-150 people in a non-hotel location.