Offering an Event?

Quick post about a service I just found out about: Upcoming (www.upcoming.org/).

If you're planning an event (or just want to spread the word about one you're attending), post it on this highly visited, free service. It's a Yahoo! site, so you know it gets traffic -- plus, you get a link back to your site from a highly ranked site, so it will help your Google performance, too.

Events are organized geographically by date -- so it's a great way to check out what else is going on in your area, too.

Brides ARE Still Out There. So, Why Don't They Call?

So many vendors are feeling the effects of the economic slump, there's a prevailing impression that "the brides just aren't out there." Our experience at The Wedding & Special Event Yellow Pages suggests otherwise.

We've been distributing our book for just under 11 months, and have already nearly reached our 20,000 annual goal -- in fact, we're running a couple of weeks ahead of our normal distribution rate. (This despite being able to distribute much less than half our normal volume at bridal shows this year.)

Similarly, our web traffic is comparable to previous years' fall/winter results -- and, it has been the same or higher than last year throughout 2008.

Our book is of no real use to anyone who isn't actively planning an event -- so, it stands to reason that thousands of potential clients have at least begun the process of planning their weddings. But, why are these prospects not contacting and booking wedding vendors?

Based on the results of our online brides' survey, our interactions with brides, and other sources of economic and marketing information, I have a few theories. I suspect that many brides are influenced by two emotions of the moment: fear and guilt.

The fearful brides worry that they (or their fiancés) will be without a job sometime in the near future; it's hard to justify spending thousands of dollars on a single event when worrying about paying the rent/mortgage.

The guilt-ridden brides, on the other hand, may have the money set aside for their weddings -- but, may consider it imprudent, insensitive or gauche to spend lavishly during economic times that are difficult for so many. Brides may also feel the need to be 'greener,' less wasteful.

What's a wedding vendor to do? Address these emotions in their marketing programs, of course! Some thoughts on how to do so:

Allaying FEAR:

- develop some kind of prepayment/layaway type program
- offer more modest or flexible packages
- reduce deposit requirements/penalties for cancellation
- emphasize your company's experience and customer satisfaction track record in your advertising -- to help nervous brides feel they are making a sound investment
- emphasize value for money in all your materials and in the packages you establish
- provide context: for example, a $1500-$2000 service is about the same cost as a daily latte for one year -- switch to drip for a year and it's almost paid for, painlessly

Allaying GUILT:

- connect your business to local charities -- perhaps incorporating a donation with purchases
- emphasize in your promotional materials that the wedding is an opportunity for a bride and groom to entertain their loved ones -- some of whom may not feel they can afford a really great night out
- reinforce that a wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event -- it justifies a memory-making celebration
- consider developing a greener side of your business -- whether by adding recycled materials, promoting local, in-season flowers, local foods and other local goods, offering living plants instead of cut flowers, or taking other steps to cut waste and transportation. And be sure to promote any aspects of your business that already qualify as environmentally friendly.

Do Something for Yourself: A Wonderful Opportunity

Happened to be flipping through a magazine in a doctor's office over the Thanksgiving holiday, and stumbled up on this surprising personal finance offer:

Save Yourself

In a nutshell, Suze Orman and TD Ameritrade have teamed up to offer an incentive to open a new Ameritrade account, and set aside $100 per month for the next 12 months. After you make your twelfth monthly deposit, you'll receive a bonus of $100! That's like getting an interest rate of about 15% -- not including whatever return or interest you can earn on the money you deposit and invest.

With the uncertainty of today's economy, most everyone can use a little additional nest egg hidden somewhere. Here's a great way to get paid for doing what you know you should anyway. And, there's no obligation to keep adding to the account after the 12 months end. (You can also access your money before the end of the 12 months -- you would lose your bonus in that case, though.) Plus, you don't have to invest the money in stocks -- if security is your main objective, just leave it in the money market Ameritrade offers.

I encourage you to investigate this generous offer. I signed up myself and it took just 10 minutes or so.

Do You Use Stock Photos?

I've discovered a new source for stock photos that is really affordable, has nice variety, and has an easy-to-use search engine. I purchased some images for a client's web site at $1 each!

The service is called Fotolia -- visit them at:

Images for a $1 - Fotolia.com

Layaway Resurfaces. Could it Work for Wedding Vendors?

Layaway plans -- whereby you ask a retailer to hold merchandise you'd like to purchase and allow you to pay it off in installments, then retrieve it once you've paid in full -- had all but disappeared by the 90s. When everyone had easy access to credit, there wasn't much allure to delaying gratification. Now that credit is tight, and most consumers are nervous about taking on more debt, layaway is looking attractive once more. (Here's one article about the trend: MSNBC: Layaway Makes a Comeback.)Which got me to thinking: could wedding vendors create payment programs for their brides and grooms inspired by layaway?

Most wedding vendors sell services, not merchandise -- so, technically, there's nothing to lay away. But, vendors could offer brides the option to pay for their services ahead of their weddings in small increments -- say, monthly -- for a year or more prior to their wedding dates. Most people are less nervous about paying $75/month better than $1,000 at one time. And, such a plan would allow people who simply can't put $1,000, $2,000 or $5,000 on a credit card like they once could. Expand the concept a bit, and family members can join in by picking up a payment or two in lieu of gifts.

Just like it once did for designer bags and furniture, the option to prepay in small bits over time could help keep more expensive wedding packages in reach of more brides.

A few caveats spring to mind, though. I wouldn't recommend this if you don't have much tolerance for bookkeeping; implement a plan like this, and you'll need to do a lot more of it! You'll need to think through a cancellation policy: stores like K-Mart charge a small fee, but return money paid towards the merchandise. You'll need to decide how much you should charge for cancellations -- and whether that figure should vary based on how far away the wedding date is.

And, of course, marketing will be critical: make sure you can update your materials, your web site, and your ads to bring in enough clients to make the effort of setting up such a plan worthwhile.

Wedding Planning in a Downturn

Since early this summer, we've been surveying brides on our web site about how the economy has changed their wedding plans. Not surprisingly, nearly all brides responding said they've had to at least consider altering their plans. However, there were some surprising responses to how they plan to change their events.

The most interesting things we learned from the survey were:

• Except for videography and live music, most brides do not plan to eliminate key services to save money. Instead, 100% of brides responding said that reducing the guest count was one of the first places they will look for savings -- with more than half saying it was the place they are cutting back. Trimming the menu was the next target for savings, with 80% of brides indicating they intend to reduce food costs with a simpler menu.
• Other top cost-cutting tactics were fewer/less costly flowers and decorations, and DIY invitations.
• What brides want most from wedding vendors: flexibility and education. Nearly 100% said that "creative ideas for doing more with less" and "education about what really makes a wedding great" were their top choices for how vendors could help. A la carte services and flexibility (e.g., less restrictive minimums) were the second most popular choice.

The upshot: the good news is, most brides are still planning a conventional wedding with most of the major services. But, they are looking to be prudent about costs (without sacrificing quality, of course). Vendors who can demonstrate flexibility and efficiency in their services can take advantage of brides' desire to feel their making good decisions and spending hard-earned money wisely.

Excellent Article About Web Site Quality

A great post on marketingprofs.com noted that a recent study showed that about 75% of consumers visit a company's web site to find information about products and services they're shopping for. I'd venture a guess that the percentage is even higher for brides, since they're shopping for things they've never evaluated before, they're spending more money than they typically do, and they're under tremendous pressure to make good decisions quickly.

Unfortunately for vendors, the study also pointed out that a much smaller percentage of shoppers -- about 40% -- are satisfied with the information on the sites they visit. (And that, in turn, bodes poorly for the vendors trying to market to those customers.)

What does that mean for wedding vendors? Most obviously, it's more proof that an effective web site is critical to your business. It is the key to making all your sales and marketing efforts effective, because once you've captured a bride's interest via advertising, a referral, a bridal show, or a search engine, she will go to your web site to determine whether or not to consider your company.

What kinds of things should you consider when developing or redesigning your site?

(1) Remember that your site must be designed with your customer in mind.

Too many vendors develop web sites that are more about their own desires than their customers needs. For example, noisy sites with lots of Flash are irritating to brides (who are often logging in from work). Ditto for heavy sites with lots of video.

(2) Invest in a quality designer.

Amateurish designs or run-of-the-mill templates can do more harm than good. By keeping the functionality or your site simple, you can save money that can be invested in a good set of custom template pages from a quality designer. What's more, this kind of simple design is easy to update with new text (e.g., for pricing and package changes) and images. You'll save money in the long run, and have a site that's more friendly to both brides and search engines.

For more on the subject, check out the original article on marketingprofs.com.

What Do eHarmony and Travelocity Know That You Don't?

Over the past couple of years, I've heard some wedding vendors boast that they've "figured out" that print advertising "no longer works" because "everyone I book finds me online." Believing they were eliminating waste, these self-styled leaders cut out advertising altogether, or restricted themselves to web advertising only. Interestingly, my impression is that these same vendors have seen their businesses decline substantially versus peers who kept up advertising.

Of course, this is no surprise to me. Nor would it be to online leaders like eHarmony, Orbitz, Travelocity, Overstock.com, Expedia and other web-only companies who spend millions advertising offline to drive traffic to their web sites. These companies only conduct business with customers online -- yet they still need offline advertising (in print, on TV and on radio) to promote to potential customers.

What do they know that you should know? First of all, they understand that offline media is more efficient at reaching large numbers of targeted customers than online media usually is. Make no mistake: web advertising is enormously effective at capturing web surfers who are actively looking for a very specific service or product. As such, it should ideally be part of any complete advertising program for a wedding vendor. But it's not efficient at introducing your company reliably to large numbers of potential buyers who aren't yet sure exactly what they're looking for. Web ads on Google, for example, are highly restricted in terms of the information they provide -- and, they are generally only displayed to a fraction of the potential audience for your product. Print and other offline media, on the other hand, assemble large audiences around targeted content, and offer you the opportunity to promote to everyone in the audience efficiently.

Second, the online giants understand today's preferred buying process. Customers today often learn of the existence of a company, service or other buying opportunity through offline media. If their interest is piqued, they then go online to gather detailed information about it. In the past, this same customer would have picked up the phone after seeing an intriguing ad. In effect, your web site has replaced your phone for at least part of the buying process.

Third, online leaders understand that evaluating web traffic accurately is crucial. Just asking isn't enough. How many "no referrer" visits is your web site receiving? Odds are, it's more than half your traffic if you're marketing offline at all -- and, those visitors are all coming from your offline advertising.

Finally, successful online commerce companies like eHarmony, Expedia, and others understand that there are simply more links in the chain between advertising and buying than there were before. It's crucial to understand where you're losing people if you're unhappy with your marketing results. For example, if you run multiple print ads, and your revenues don't grow, was the reason poorly designed ads that didn't entice readers to visit your web site? Or, was it a poorly designed web site that didn't entice customers to call you? Only a disciplined analysis will tell you for sure.

Don't Take My Word For It ...

When you're in the advertising business, it can be hard to tell your clients that the solution to their problems is more -- not less -- marketing investment. It can sound self-serving. But, more often than not, it's true.

Too many wedding vendors consider marketing a "luxury" that they'll "splurge" on "after they're making money" -- instead of the fuel that generates the business in the first place. I believe this is why so many wedding vendors end up pursuing their business in a half-hearted (and often half-time) way. They haven't given themselves a fighting chance to succeed.

Thankfully, you don't have to take my word for it. The eggheads over at MarketingProfs.com say it better than I do in a helpful, brief post:

Set Your [Marketing] Objectives First, Then Budget

Remember, your marketing is more likely to fail because you didn't budget proportionate to your objectives than any other reason. Underspending can be worse than not spending at all.

From the Dragon's Mouth

In a recent episode of "Dragon's Den" (on BBC America), Rachel Elnaugh critiqued a pitch for a taxi-based video advertising network. In expressing her dim view of the venture's potential, she made note of a data point that's crucial for any marketer to accept: people today are bombarded with advertising messages, by some estimates receiving more than 3,000 advertising impressions every day.

What did this mean for the unfortunate entrepreneur? The potential investors weren't convinced taxi passengers would voluntarily watch more advertising. More relevant to wedding marketing, they also doubted that any message sent via this new medium would have enough impact to rise above the existing daily impression tsunami.

What does this mean for wedding vendors? A bride receives the same barrage of marketing messages every woman does -- plus, she's now receiving messages from wedding marketers, too. It may take 20 or more impressions just for your message to register as "received" in a bride's mind. That means effective, efficient marketing is absolutely critical to your success.

What should you do -- and not do? In a down economy, marketing is often the first expense people cut, but that's probably the worst thing you can do. Not only is there more competition for fewer brides in a slow economy, there is also an opportunity to get more attention if your competitors cut back. Consider the following dos and don'ts:

DO:

- Strive to maximize the number of repeat impressions your marketing delivers. That means consistency in look, feel and message across your print ads, web ads, brochures, show signage and your web site.

- Place your ads where you would look if you were a bride. That may mean paying more out-of-pocket for a wedding-specific vehicle than for a general purpose advertising opportunity, but, odds are you'll actually be paying less per bride.

- Carefully evaluate new magazine, show and web site entrants to the market. If you are feeling pinched, now is not the time to try an unproven media property. (On the flip side, if you're feeling flush and can afford to add something new, it can sometimes pay off to try something new at introductory rates -- and get a leg up on competitors who opt out.)

DON'T:

- Don't cut out advertising properties for the wrong reasons. In particular, remember that the last publication or web site that a bride saw before contacting you is not the only one that counts! It takes 10+ impressions for any advertising to register -- and, probably much more than that for wedding advertising. Any advertising in a magazine, site or show that demonstrably reaches brides will contribute to the total impression count that ultimately spurs her to contact you.

- Don't let a bride's feedback mislead you. When asked "how did you find me" or "how did you hear about me," most brides want to say whatever will get you off the subject of your business and onto the subject of her wedding as fast as possible. When she says "I found your web site," she probably won't remember -- or care to think about -- the other places she saw you that contributed to her finding your site in the first place.
   Odds are, your web site is not getting you dozens of "free" prospects. Learn to accurately analyze your web traffic (e.g., reviewing "no referrer" visits, setting up tracking URLs, etc.) to avoid making bad decisions based on wishful web thinking.