Fao Sindia

All across the world thousands of people have purchased a digital camera, computer and a few lenses and begun a photography business. Many of these businesses have grown to the point where the photographer’s time is maxed out. To continue to grow profitably, these businesses need to analyze carefully how work will be organized. This article identifies three work organizational issues that must be addressed before addressed before an effective growth strategy can be implemented.

1. Without hiring additional photographers, the photographer’s time will almost always determine the limit of revenue growth. There are only so many sessions a photographer can shoot in a week. No matter how talented the photographer there is a limit to the price increases that the market will bear. The resulting action that should be made to respond to this truth is to take as many tasks that are not related to shooting off of the photographer’s plate.

The clients pay for the photographers expertise and creativity relating to shooting and editing – not his ability to fill out his tax returns. These types of tasks, rather than shooting and editing should be done by others when possible.

2. Clients will be resistant to paying for services of associate photographers. When client’s come to a particular photography business they are usually drawn to the creativity, expertise and personality of the person upon whom the photography business is based. If that person is not available, the value of the services to these clients will decline. If a photographer decides to hire associate photographers, he will need to address the issue of how to maintain the true and perceived value when an associate is performing the work.

3. A tension exists between moving upscale and turning away profitable business. Marketing is a major expense, both in terms of time and money, for any photography business. As a photographer moves his business to increasingly high end clients, he will need to develop a strategy that responds to those clients who would be profitable but not as profitable as other clients. There are a number of options available. He can, for example, refer these clients to another photographer or hire a talented associate who can photograph these mid-level clients. Each option has its advantages and disadvantages and should fit into the businesses overall strategy.

Small photographers need to research, analize and address these three issues before deciding on a growth strategy.

There are seven components that should come together to form your integrated construction marketing strategy. Let me correct one misunderstanding common in construction marketing. The sole purpose of your marketing system is not to generate a flood of qualified sales leads.

The golden rule in all your marketing efforts is to build relationships with your client base and with your potential future clients.

However, in this article I am looking at generating qualified sales leads.

Whether you cash in on those leads is a sales issue. Do not expect your marketing system to close sales and ring the cash register. Do not expect your estimator to do that either, that’s not his job nor is he well suited for selling.

To generate the volume of quality leads your business needs to achieve your sales goals, you need marketing systems for seven key strategies.

Let’s dive into the seven marketing systems, discuss their purpose, and highlight a few tricks that will make them productive for you.

1. Generating Leads From New Customers.

Here is the mountain all businesses must climb, generating opportunities with new customers. Getting them is really not the problem. Getting them without breaking the bank is the problem.

You can’t afford unlimited advertising. You can’t afford to hire a large staff of sales personnel to cold call everyone. You need an efficient and effective system for generating new leads.

Here a couple of tips for that.

Get your website up and ready for prime time. It is your most cost effective method for capturing quality leads. You may not be computer oriented, but your customers most assuredly are.

Second tip, copy the successful advertising practices of a best-in-class peer. You will need to contact contractors outside of your city to pull this one off.

Track down the best in the business. Get the owner’s name. Call them. You’ll be amazed how generous non-competitive peers will be if you approach them humbly and with genuine respect of their incredible success.

Every time you put a new lead generating system in place, monitor its effectiveness. Tweak it and monitor the improvement or lack there of. Keep tweaking until you learn the most efficient method for generating the quantity of new customer leads you need to fulfill your sales goals.

2. Generating Leads From Existing Customers.

You need a system for stimulating repeat business. Sam Walton used to say that the first time someone bought, he had a sale. The second time someone bought, he had a customer.

Your easiest sell is to your existing customer.

You need to prompt those repeat sales. If your construction business involves ongoing service (landscaping, pavement maintenance, painting, roofing, air conditioning) send out reminders when they should be approaching on the date they would need new service.

As a job finishes, ask your client what future projects they are considering. Put the information into your scheduling calendar and start calling them or mailing them prior to that time.

If you have multiple services, send advertisements and coupons that invite them to try the services they haven’t used yet. If you offer a maintenance service, send educational materials that explain what maintenance should be done…and offer to do it for them.

If you already have a large customer base, expand your services to tap into all the goodwill you’ve already created. Your existing customer base is the most valuable resource your business has. Learn how to mine new sales from it.

3. Prodding Referrals From Existing Customers.

Word of mouth advertising is the most effective means of generating leads from new customers. What carries more weight with you when deciding whether to buy something or hire someone to perform a service for you?

Advertising, research or the recommendation of someone you trust who has previously bought the product or used the service?

It’s human nature to take the word of a trusted advisor over all other information. The one thing we all hate is spending money on something that disappoints us. So we take the word of someone who already purchased and wasn’t disappointed to avoid regretting our purchase.

Now flip that around. Your customers can be your most effective sales people if you encourage them to.

To stimulate referrals, you need to:

(a) Ask for the referrals.
(b) Make it easy for them – create the referral letter.
(c) Reward them for the referral.

Referrals always work best when your customer contacts their friend on your behalf. Getting the friend’s name and mentioning that you were referred works nowhere near as well, but it does work better than having no referral.

4. Collecting Testimonials.

Testimonials should be the fuel of your advertising efforts. Testimonials overcome buyer resistance. They have greater influence on buying behaviour than almost everything else short of a direct referral.

A process for collecting testimonials should be built into your customer close-out. Typically, if you ask for one it will be granted. Most satisfied customers are happy to provide testimonials, assuming you give them some guidelines.

Store your testimonials in accordance with the benefits they speak to. That way, you will have them ready at hand to prove you will meet your prospect’s needs when making a sales call or submitting a proposal.

5. Building Relationship With Your Customers.

People buy from, and keep buying from, people they like.

You need a system for maintaining your relationship with your customers. Typically, that means tracking and celebrating their birthday, their spouse’s birthday, their children’s birthdays, etc.

Send handwritten greeting cards on their special occasions. Send handwritten Thank You cards upon completion of the work. Track their hobbies and send them interesting information as you come across it. Make them think they are never far from your mind and you will have a customer for life.

6. Publicizing Your Business.

Since advertising is so expensive, you need to be set up to take advantage of every opportunity for free publicity.

Local newspapers are often looking for content. Any time something of substance happens in your business you should send it to them as a press release. That would include landing large or high profile contracts and receiving industry awards.

Get to know the business columnists in your area and become a source for quotes. Give interviews to magazine editors and feature writers.

Give presentations to Rotary, Lions, and other clubs. They are always looking for presenters. The subject doesn’t matter. They will remember someone representing your firm spreading goodwill among business leaders.

Strike up joint ventures with other businesses that serve your clientele.

All of these efforts need to be organized, scheduled, and assigned to someone. They need to be part of system.

7. Developing New Advertising Pieces.

The development of a new advertising piece should be the result of a well executed design process.

Start off by identifying the construction market segment you wish to target. Choose the problem(s) you are going to solve. Come up with a killer offer. Round up the appropriate testimonial or three. Then find a graphic artist and copy writer to pull it all together for you.

Do not outsource your advertising decisions to an advertising agency or consultant. They do not know your customers as well as you do. You or a trusted employee should make all final artistic decisions.

To make sure the advertisement is going to pay off, set a budget for the advertising and the expected income. Share the budget with your designer. Set a deadline for when the advertisement will be ready for delivery or distribution.

Before releasing the money to print the new piece in quantity, it should be tested for effectiveness in a test run of a small set of prospects. Track your results and modify the headline and offer until you arrive at a combo that produces a significant increase in buyer response. Then roll out the full advertising and start raking in the new sales.

Search engine marketing is a cost-effective way to increase business. SEO is the most popular form of marketing to the search engines. However, it is not the only method entrepreneurs should consider.

Sponsored listings and pay-per-click (PPC) are also popular mediums. Marketers pay for sponsored listings, also called paid inclusion. These listings are at the top and to the right of search results.

Internet marketers only pay for PPC ads when users click on them. This helps to drive highly targeted traffic to their websites. This way, only individuals who are interested land on the website.

SEO: Do it Yourself or Pay Skilled Professionals

If you know what you are doing, you can optimize your sites for free.

However, with ever-changing algorithms, this is difficult, at best. In addition, most online entrepreneurs do not have the time.

Search engine optimization involves extensive keyword research. You must also understand keyword placement and readability standards. In addition, link inclusion is an important, time-consuming metric.

Many serious Internet marketers hire optimization specialists. These experts ensure websites rank high in search engine results. This frees entrepreneurs to attend to daily business management.

Sponsored Listings Ensure Top Search Engine Placement

Many marketers pay for inclusion based upon specific keywords. When users type in search terms, their websites are presented. This technique almost guarantees visitors will find their websites.

The trick is to earn more in sales than you pay for advertising. This is a good reason to use other search engine marketing methods. Most entrepreneurs market in various ways and test their results.

Paid inclusion is a good way to get targeted traffic to your sites. Visitors who click on your links are looking for information. They may be looking for the exact products or services you sell.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising is Budget Friendly and Effective

You can set your own budget when you market using PPC advertising. You only pay when your ad is clicked on, bringing you another visitor. While not everyone buys, some do, and traffic increases exponentially.

With PPC, marketers bid on specific keywords relevant to their niche. You will know ahead of time how much each click will cost you. Set a budget for your campaign, and end the listing when you choose.

Pay-per-click advertising is not for everyone; but it is good to test. You may find there are more effective SEO techniques than PPC. Marketers must try several methods before they find the right ones.

Effective online marketing takes education, skill, and patience. Many marketers turn their entire campaign over to professionals. Search engine marketing is necessary in order to compete online.

The best marketing for business success comes from the heart.

If you learn how to market your WHY … you can inspire and attract people to you and make an impact on others around you. Simon Sinek certainly inspired me recently.

I recently listened to some excellent training from Simon Sinek, author of the book “Start with Why”. Simon really resonates with our community of online entrepreneurs and he’s been drafted in a top trainer with CarbonCopyPRO.

I must say I was impressed with his train of thoughts. Here’s why …

Simon talks about the “biology” behind people’s behaviour when it comes to buying a product or joining something. Marketing for business success starts with why – not what or how. It comes from the heart, ruled by the emotional limbic part of the human brain that listens – not the analytic rationalising neocortex.

As a biologist/medic by educational background and a professional personal development coach … this is very interesting insight when it comes to marketing. It’s something everyone should be basing their strategies upon.

Top successful businesses are led by people who inspire you, by their ‘why’, their passion. You “buy into it” and stay loyal to that company, even regardless of inconvenience (cheaper product, easier to get hold of and so on).

I totally sign up to the psychology/biology of heart-to-heart marketing for business success. This is what makes it a passion. Passion comes from knowing your “why”. When you share your reasons for doing what you do, in the way you do it -also know as “Mystory marketing”, you connect with other people at a deeper level.

If their ‘why’ resonate with your why, you’re on the same page – and someone would rather do business with YOU than with someone else, even if you’re in a different country!

Let me take that through to the most successful and profitable marketing strategies …

Marketing for Business Success

Have you been researching Facebook internet marketing strategies for your online business?

Wow! I just viewed a private webinar from being part of Mike Dillard’s “What’s Working Now”… They showed some pretty cool tricks.

If you are not marketing on Facebook PPC, they gave step by step instructions on how to do it. They actually took us back, built a campaign and showed us other campaigns they had done.

Paid advertising can be really expensive. Mike’s team illustrated some inexpensive ways to do it and how to get in front of a more targeted audience.

You see, Facebook PPC is much different than Google, Yahoo & bing. You don’t use keywords to get in front of your prospects.

Well, you do a little, but they are not searching for you.

The goal is to expose your ad to people that may be interested in what you have.

So for example, if you are in MLM, under likes & interests when building your campaign, you might put network marketing.

Getting Connected On Facebook With Targeted Audience

When you are generating free leads from Facebook, naturally you are working hard at getting in front of the right people. If you have an autoresponder account, you can look up their email address on Facebook.

This way it ensures that it is the right person. Request them to be your friend, then continuously put out valuable content to build trust.

Or if you buy leads, your list should have their name and email address. So again, look for them on Facebook and connect.

Facebook is a great way because if you have your pictures and constantly post great, val

 

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to success in online business. You need the best SEO strategy to establish an online business and generate handsome revenue from it. It is an established fact that an online consumer generally prefers to buy from top five companies that come in any search engine results. This tendency of online buyers makes an online seller to think and work upon a strategy that brings his company’s website within top five ranks with keywords relevant to its business. The best SEO strategy is the one that yields best results.

The right website, right keywords, right content, right backlinks are the four pillars of a successful online business. Hence, you must have these four pillars strongly grounded to strengthen the base of your online business. It is highly recommended to work honestly on these four basic key areas before you start reaping benefits from your online business efforts.

Any online business starts from developing a right website.

Here right website means a website that suits to a particular business. One must choose the website that meets his business needs. It can be a simple static website or an e-commerce website. Further, it is important to choose right domain name and to include major business keywords in it. The keywords can also be included in the name of inner web pages. Before you start SEO work, it is essential to choose the right keywords, keywords that your prospective buyers write in search bar of any search engines. Here, you need to think like a customer and select appropriate keywords. You can also take help from keywords analysis tool of Google and others.

Right content is one that includes right keywords in right percentage and that too very meticulously.

You need to write on services or products you offer through your website. The content should be written to convince the customers and not to deceive search engines. The best practice is to rightly mix keywords in your web content. Backlinks from various websites, online article directories and press release sites help a lot in SEO work. It is essential to get backlinks from websites of same field to enhance page rank of your website. As you get one way links from the articles and press releases you submit in different article and press release sites, it is essential to write and submit keyword rich articles and press releases regularly.

To generate quality online business leads, you need to adopt the best SEO strategy that encompasses right approach on website, keywords, content and backlinks.