Marketing Websites: August 2007

Monday, August 20, 2007

Build A Business In The Explosive Wedding Industry

When was the last time you had a booth at an event? Did you work it to its fullest potential? Did you market your booth properly, and did you get all of the sales possible? Chances are you left some resources on the table.

Creating and implementing a successful strategy requires more than attending the show. It takes full involvement by everyone within your company to make it work. You need to:

Promote your company’s attendance at the show to motivate attendees to visit you at your booth. If it’s a local event, send invitations to your entire customer list to tell them you will be in attendance, and what type of specials you will be running. Ask your contact with the event and see if you can get a mailing list of attendees. If so, mail out postcards before the event, offering a special if they return the postcard to your booth.
Have the right personnel on location to fully capture every potential lead. This is a sales event. If you don’t like to sell, get a salesperson to man the booth for you. Your goal is to get names and contact information for everyone interested in your company, and that stopped by your booth. Follow up is very important, because sales contacts will be very short at an event.
Train every exhibit worker to know exactly what they’re mission is, why they are there, and what they do with every contact they meet.
Establish a lead generating system that captures the right information, and puts it into the proper pipeline. How are you going to contact people after the event? Email? Phone? Mailing? Capture the right information you will need for promotions. It’s also a good idea to have your postcards, emails or phone scripts ready, so you can begin the very day after the event.
Support the show to its fullest extent, and require all exhibit personnel to be on the floor at all times, network at all possible functions, and be fully engaged with the entire event. What can you do to volunteer? Can you help run the fashion show? Can you help stuff the bags to be handed out to attendees? Get in there and help – it’ll help you in the long run.

Learn more about the wedding industry>>

Labels: Website Development, Wedding Photography

Thursday, August 16, 2007

What Photography Field Should I Specialize In?

I recently saw a photographer advertising her business, and it made me laugh.

The ad was like a variety of other ads I've seen, but what caught my eye was her area of specialty. She specialized in: babies, families, seniors, commercial, model portfolios, weddings, events and sports photography.

Is that really specializing? How can you ever hope to be good at all of those types of photography, and make a name for yourself in any one of those fields?

Specializing means choosing one niche area, and becoming the best you can be. Certain fields can work together, but it still involves highly focusing on what you do best.

Take for instance a wedding photographer. If you specialize in wedding photography, you can spend the majority of your time looking for wedding clients. You can network with other wedding professionals. And you can show off your expertise as a wedding vendor to the local media. People will associate you with weddings, and you will be the local authority on wedding photography.

The same applies to any of the different photography fields. Take a look at the following list to get an idea of some lucrative specialties: