“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  

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!!!

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?

But WHERE THE HECK ARE YOU?

Posted on | June 9, 2010 | 1 Comment

Normally, I ignore the paid ads on Google, but I was checking out some of my keywords a few minutes ago, and just for fun clicked on one of the paid ads. 

It took me to a pretty typical template website, nothing much to recommend the site itself, but what really got to me…

NOWHERE ON THE SITE DO THEY SAY WHERE THEY ARE!!!!!!!  NOWHERE.  No city, no area, no address, NOTHING

If you’re going to pay for Google adwords, don’t you think you might want to tell customers where your studio is?

I mean, amongs the paid ads were studios 60 miles or more away from my location (I did a search on family portraits salem oregon).  So obviously,you can’t count on an ad representing a studio in your own area.

I just find this INSANE.

You’re information should be on every page in your site.  So should the ability to contact you – directly from that page.  Don’t make a potential customer hunt for a way to get in touch with you.  Don’t make them work any harder than they have to.

On my main studio website, the menu bar across the top of every page has a contact link.

On my new Footprints on the Heart site, the same thing.  Plus, the studio name, address and phone number is on the bottom of every page.

Check your site.  If someone were to find your site through a search, would they know at the very least the city you’re in, and could they easily get in touch with you?

If not – FIX IT.

ps;  Just for fun I clicked on another one.  SAME PROBLEM.  I had to HUNT through every page on the site to find out where they were.  It should be right on the front page.  What would I find if I clicked on yours?

I Hate Advertising – Part 2

Posted on | June 8, 2010 | No Comments

So, what is the key to successful adverstising in our business?

Well, the old rule of advertising is:
- Get to the right person
-With the right message
-At the right time
-With the right offer.

First of all, we’re very fortunate in that we have a highly identifiable set of potential customers.
Of the four keys, this is probably the easiest for us.

Think for a minute of the poor schlub who owns an autobody business. He has to try to hit everyone, hoping that the 1% who might need his services will see or hear the ad at the time that they need the service. He can’t target those who are GOING to have an accident in the next week, and by the time he gets a list of those who already have, it’s too late – their car is already somewhere being repaired.

We don’t have that problem. We know who our likely customers are, and we can zero in on the best way to get the message in their hands.. We can get lists of seniors. We can get lists of new mothers. We can get lists of women in target age groups above a certain income level with other certain demographic characteristics.

We have available to us highly targeted media choices, and the more closely you can target who sees your ad, the better. (For purposes of this article, I’m going to ignore non-advertising methods)

Of course direct mail is probably the very best, but it has to be skillfully crafted. Most people sort their mail over the trash can, and a poorly conceived mailer will end up there with all the credit card offers (and we all know what a bad neighborhood THAT must be).

Broad based media like newspapers and radio are, in most cases, the very worst. But in between, we have choices as well. Bridal magazines, and bridal directories are an obvious choice for weddings (but we’ll talk about effective messages in a minute).

In my area there’s a new publication targeted especially to moms of young children. We’re looking at it as a possible advertising vehicle. If you’re high end, and your city has a glossy magazine target to the upper income, then this might be a good choice.

There’s probably lots of possibilities, and each area is going to be different, but the KEY is that you KNOW your target audience and it’s characteristics, and that the media you choose is highly targeted to that target audience – the people likely to be interested in what you have to offer.

Absolutely, under no circumstance, should you advertise on the back of cash register receipts or any other non-targeted media. About the only good use I could see for that is printing coupons for cents off a can of soup, and very few of us do that. But way too many people fall prey to those ideas.

Think about yourself. If you were in your target audience, and looking for a photographer, how would you look for one? (Note – it might not even be in an advertising media at all).

If you were thinking about having your children photographed, for example, where would you look, how would you find a photographer, and what message and offer might your actually respond to.

Which brings us to point number 2 – THE MESSAGE.

We photographers are an arrogant lot; we think our images are so beautiful, so stunning that the customers simply can’t resist coming to US. Consequently, most photographers ad’s I see have NO message at all. No notation about what makes them unique. nothing to set them apart from the 20 other ads in the same publication, because “my images sell themselves”.

Well, in a small percentage of the cases that might be true, but for most studios, quality photographs only establish that we are indeed professional in our capabilities. Unless your style is SO UNIQUE, or so far and away above what anyone else in your market can produce, then you need something far more than simply your images. If you take five of your competitors and yourself, lay a bunch of each studio’s images out on a table, and then ask the general public to pick which photograph is from which studio, it’s highly unlikely that they’d be able to do it. We may see subtle differences, or even not so subtle, but the public typically can’t.

Every studio should identify and be able to succinctly communicate what makes you unique. Forget “customer service” and “I’m fun to work with” because everyone says that. Forget “award winning” because everyone says that too, and the customers don’t give a hoot.

You have to identify some reason why customers would want to pick you out of all the studios in the area, out of all the ads in the magazine that makes you different. It’s called a Unique Selling Proposition or USP, and it then is the basis for your sales message.

USP’s aren’t easy to come up with. They require some thought, and some research, and they need to make you stand out. There’s whole books written on this subject.

Then, you have to have a sales message, the ability to tell in words what only you can do for them, and why they need to act NOW. That’s a challenge in an advertisement, so your goal may simply to provide a compelling headline in your ad, and then drive them to your website where you tell them the rest of the story.

By the way, how you write a sales message is another topic of it’s own, and I can point you to some great resources to teach you how to do that. We’ll list them at the end.

So, if you’re producing a print ad, and you’re limited in space (assuming you can’t afford the whole page), then your best combination might be a very strong image, a very strong headline, and your website address. Having the internet allows us to sell ourselves in ways never even considered a generation ago, so use it to your best advantage.

As an aside, most photographers websites suffer from the same problems as most photographers ads -a few pretty images, a bio, but nothing else in the way of information to make you stand out as unique. There’s a past article called “The Problem with Most Photographers Websites” that you might want to find and read.

The third key element is TIMING.
Now you’d think this would be obvious, but that’s not always the case. You have to know your market, and you have to put yourselves in the shoes of your customer.

I see posts periodically from people who did a senior portrait mailing in February and wondered why they didn’t get any calls.

Tony Robbins Interview with John Wooden

Posted on | June 7, 2010 | No Comments

John Wooden passed away last Friday at the age of 99.  Undeniably, the greatest basketball coach that ever lived, his real strength wasn’t basketball; it was leadership and knowing how to get the most out of both himself and his players.  His philosophy made people the best they could be at just about anything.

In tribute to Mr. Wooden, Tony Robbins has made available his interview with Coach Wooden for the next 48 hours.  All you have to do is download it.  No strings, no email address nothing. Send it to me and I’ll post it here for people to download.

Here’s the link (although beware, I think it’s SWAMPED)

http://training.tonyrobbins.com/?p=644

I haven’t been able to connect with the site, because so many people want this file, so if you do, share your file with your fellow marketers.