“Disable Any Pop-up Blockers”

Posted on | July 3, 2010 | No Comments

I was checking out my search engine placement for some of my selected terms this evening, and came across a listing for someone I hadn’t heard of before. So I clicked on his website, and came to his Flash opening page (mistake number 1).

To actually see anything, you had to get past the landing page (mistake number 2). But in order to do so, the site advised “Please disable any pop-up blockers” (mistake number 3).

Don’t inconvenience me by making me change the configuration of my machine just to see your website. I might not even know HOW to disable my pop-up blocker. In all likelihood, I’ll just hit the back button and go on to the next website in the search listing.

There’s a great little book out called “Don’t Make Me Think”, which is all about how to structure your website to make it easy for people to visit. Disabling a pop-up blocker is certainly making the viewer think.

Make you’re website easy to navigate, intuitive to follow – both directions. Don’t make people guess how to find the information they might be looking for.

Website marketing is one of the top methods we have in our arsenal these days, and it’s important that your website be very effectively designed and implemented.

And, PLEASE – Don’t Make Me Think

Category: online marketing, web strategies

The Power of the Referral

Posted on | July 1, 2010 | No Comments

Yesterday, the starter went out in my van. Once in a while it would actually turn over, but most of the time it just went “click”.

I did manage to get it started, but had no idea where to take it to get it fixed. I’ve had so few problems with this car that I didn’t have a regular mechanic, and somehow the thought of taking it to the dealer didn’t appeal to me, since a little internet research showed me that dealers are generally more expensive than independent mechanics.

But how to find a good shop in the morass that is auto repair. There are literally hundreds of shops in our town. I Never even thought of the yellow pages, the new version of which arrived on my door the day before. Most of the ads tell you NOTHING, and I actually can’t even remember the last time I looked up a service or product in that anachronistic book. Didn’t even want to try to find on on the internet because who know who you can really trust?

BUT, we’ve been taking my wife’s Honda to a local shop that SPECIALIZES in working on Hondas, and they’ve done a fabulous job for us for the last 4 year or so since we discovered them. But they don’t work on Dodge Caravans, even if I tried putting a Honda hood ornament on it.

So, I piled my dog in the car (totally irrelevant, but I love my Golden Retriever and he goes everywhere with me), and drove to my wifes mechanic. Leaving the van running I walked in the door, and asked who they’d recommend. I wanted someone close, and someone they’d take their cars to if necessary.

They gave me the name of a shop about 6 blocks away. Crosby and I quickly headed over there.

Because of the recommendation from someone I trusted, I never even questioned that this was where I would take my van.

The end result – I now have a new favorite place to take my vehicle. They did a great job, communicated well, did it on time, and gave me a heads up on some other work I was going to need to get done before too long.

That’s the power of referrals. I was pre-sold when I walked in the door. I had trust an confidence because of the referral.

And even more importantly, they took good care of me, understanding that a referral reflect on the referring party as well. Had they not, it might have lessened my trust in the Honda shop.

And that’s why we should be doing as much referral marketing as possible. It works, and it’s cheap. Even if my new shop sent a thank you give to the referring shop, it’s very inexpensive marketing, given the lifetime value of a happy customer. In the next 90 days, I’ll be worth about $1200 to them.

So how’s your referral marketing process? Mine’s pretty sloppy right now, and that’s something we’re fixing. A few years ago we had a much more formal process, but with all the changes, we let it slide, and now it’s time to put it back in place.

I’m right now reading John Jantsch’s book The Referral Engine (see the bookstore in the sidepanel). The first half talks all about the importance of creating a product an service that’s imminently referrable, which is not what I expected, but something I very much needed to read and internalize. I’ll let you know about the second half as I finish it.

Category: Referral Marketing

What You Can Learn from Roger Ebert

Posted on | June 12, 2010 | No Comments

I subscribe to a number of different marketing related blogs, and one of them is the Copyblogger.com.

They recently posted an article entitled ” What All Content Creators Need To Learn From Roger Ebert“.

The article makes some great points that apply directly to what we do, regardless of copywriting.

Focus on what you do well; do it long an vigorously

Use your Life Experiences to fuel your work. Be forthright and frank whenever you talk about yourself

Let your passion carry yourself through hardships. Let your passion spill into your content [or your creation of portraits]

The article is worth a few minutes to read, especially if you ever start to feel sorry for yourself as we slodge our way through the current economic downturn. You’ll find it inspiring and I think DEAD ON.

Writing these articles has turned out to be one of my sweet spots. It’s something I’m passionate about, and I hope it spills over into what I create and share with you.

Our new website – Footprints On The Heart - is a reflection of several of my passions. As the author of this article states in one of his final points “If even a fraction of that passion spills into your content, the potential to build your audience and develop true fans is huge.” I’m hoping that is the case with both my projects.

Category: Motivation, Psychology

“I’m bawling my eyes out from a PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE. Now I understand what you’re talking about!”

Posted on | June 11, 2010 | No Comments

Our new site went live yesterday, and we started to introduce it, and our new program to the world. It’s http://www.footprintsontheheart.com. The background to this project is contained in some other posts on the PSM blog.

I’m encouraged by initial reaction. Here’s one from another photographer on Pro4um (a teriffic PRO photography forum, if you haven’t heard of it). This was in response to a post about finding who you are in a very crowded portrait market. I’d responded with a comment about finding your inner passion, told the story of the backgrouund of the new site

Fred…I just checked out your links…great stuff and lots of helpful information. Thanks so much. You are definitely an inspiration to me.

Made me think of my Daddy’s hands, a true honest pair of working-man hands…….and my grandmother’s hands, a woman who prayed for me to have a baby more than I prayed for myself, and who passed away three weeks before he was born. I so wanted a portrait of her old little tired hands with his fat little fresh newborn hands, but it just didn’t happen.

I’m bawling my eyes out from a PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE. Now I understand what you’re talking about!

Thanks….

Adele McDill, Houston Texas

Briefly, the idea behind the site is this. My passion is people, and the relationships between them. My family is the most important thing in the world to me. That’s my emotional sweet spot. My wife, my kids and now my grandchildren. So how could I turn that into a new marketing direction for the studio. I was already photographing lots of these sessions, but from a marketing standpoint, it was very disjointed.

So with the new program, I wanted to bring it all together under one concept. I wanted to emphasize the emotion that’s inherent in all these special relationships.

Here’s the goals:

1. I wanted to own a word in the marketplace, and that word is RELATIONSHIPS. Lots of other people do the same kind of work, but how can I become THE RELATIONSHIPS GUY?

2. I wanted a type of work that people are less likely to try to do for themselves, or have their next door neighbor do. If you’re in the picture, it’s much harder to take it.

3. I wanted a site that would attract those who were emotionally invested in these relationships, like I am. Attract those for whom family and friends are very important. These are the kind of people who would also be attracted to having portraits created, if I can get them really thinking about the importance in their lives.

4. I wanted the site to give people a reason to come back on a regular basis, to tell their friends and family about it. I wanted a site that would have a chance to spread virally.

5. I didn’t want just another big screaming advertisement sales site, which is what most of our sites and blogs are. (See the article “I’ve Been Blogging All Wrong- and I knew it). Those are only likely to attract someone who’s already thinking of having a portrait created, and then I’m just one of about 500 studios in my little town. I wanted to get them before they started looking around, hook them with the content, become first in their mind, and then have them realize that they’ve just got to be photographed with their grandkids, or whatever.

6. I wanted a program and a site that provided opportunities to expand beyond just the photography. More on that in a later post.

A plain old photography website isn’t going to accomplish these things. Yes, the new site needed to showcase what we do, and provide lots of information to potential consumers , but it needed to go well beyond that.

So, we came up with the name Footprints On The Heart, from a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, and a poem by Flavia Weedn. It captured exactly the feeling I was looking for. I registered the name last November.

So, the overall concept is to provide content that is in alignment with our photography; content that appeals to those who are likely to value what we do.

We decided to collect and tell stories. If you’re familiar with Chicken Soup For The Soul, stories along the same lines.

At first, I just thought it was an opportunity to tell the stories of those we photograph, because there’s a story behind every portrait.

Then, the idea expanded to collect stories from our clients, whether they were being photographed or not. I have a pretty good size client base, and this could reconnect some inactive clients with us.

That exanded to collecting stories from anyone who might want to share one, which has the wonderful advantage of dramatically expanding our potential customer base. People who previously wouldn’t even know who we are will come to the site (we hope).

I’m even searching the web for appropriate content that I can share without violating copyrights.

Then we came up with the idea of having contests for the best story, with prize packages. That exanded to having the readers vote on the stories. So you post a story, then tell your friends and family to go vote for your story online. More people come to the site.

Now we’re working on cross marketing with other businesses who might cater to the same potential audience (mostly female, I’m guessing), and add them to the prize packages, and get them to promote the site to their customers. The key is that they’re not promoting a photography site, they’re promoting a site that will make you cry, in a wonderful way. My portrait work just happens to be all over it, and while we’ve got them in an emotional mood, they begin to realize the true value of having a wonderful portrait created.

We’re also preparing press releases for the local newspapers to give it a bit of an extra boost.

Will it work? Time will tell, and I know it’s going to take some time. But I think it’s got all the right ingredients, and it make use of many of the concepts I’ve been writing about.

Go take a look – www.footprintsontheheart.com. I still have some work to do, and I’ll bet with all these readers, there’s probably lots of other ideas you might come up with about improvements, etc. By all means, if you have an idea, share it. Share it as a comment on the blog so others might benefit from everyone’s brainstorming.

I’ll keep you up to date on the results, but I’m excited about the possibilities.

Then I looked around at your website………thanks for making me cry this morning!!! Wow, a PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE that envokes that kind of emotion………..you nailed it!!!

Category: Business Strategy, Communications, Innovation, blogging, marketing strategies, online marketing, social media, web strategies

What if Google was Just an Ad Server

Posted on | June 10, 2010 | No Comments

Thinking about the importance of relevant and interesting content to your website, as discussed in the article “I’ve Been Blogging All Wrong”:

What if Google was just an advertisement site. What if the only thing you got when you clicked on the site were paid ads?

What if there were no search results? What if there was no information of interest to you?

Would Google have become the biggest thing on the internet?

What if Facebook were nothing but the ads on the side?

Would you go there for any reason?

For that matter, what if television stations broadcast nothing but a continuing stream of ads; no programs, no reality TV, no sitcoms, no sports, no dramas, no news.

Would you watch it? Would you seek it out?

Only goes to show how important relevant, interesting, informative content of value to your target viewers is on a website or blog.

Make sure that your communications with your clients isn’t just one big “BUY ME” pitch. How can you make your website, your blog, or even your email marketing of value and interest to your potential customers. How can you establish yourself as an expert, as totally in alignment with their needs, their personae, almost like you were inside their heads?

Category: Communications, Marketing Plan, Publicity, marketing strategies, social media, web strategies

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