Michael Bower Digital
Strategic Online Marketing
The Boutique Business Model and More Wedding Photography
Oct 15th
For a long time I’ve been struggling to find a way to express to clients, friends, everyone I talk to about why investing in your brand is one of the most important ways to invest into your future as a company.
Now I’ve got it.
The last couple days I have been bantering back and forth with the wife of a friend of a friend of mine about how we might make her wedding photography brand stand out.
Marcella sent me this link to her website: http://www.cellabrationphotography.com. Great name, I thought as I pulled it up.
I looked at the site and in my reply to her asked several questions, among them
- what her unique value proposition was as a wedding photographer (a tough industry right now as we have discussed).
- whether she’d put any thought into how that value proposition could best be expressed
Marcella sent me her answer–
I want to be a boutique photographer….and it is best described here:
…and for “here”, she attached a copy of an e-book from Sarah Petty’s the Joy of Marketing website called The Boutique Experience–A Business Model, Not a Gift Shop which you can get for free here.
Read this e-book if it is the only business literature you read this year, no matter what kind of business you have.
Here’s the link again.
Can I Trust Apple? Should I Trust Apple?
Sep 1st
Developers and designers drooled when they heard that Adobe Flash Pro CS5 would be able to package applications for the iphone straight from Flash.
What a sore disappointment when Apple decided not only to exclude flash support from their mobile devices but disallow the use of third party development environments in making apps.
Apparently due to the imminent threat Google’s Android OS poses, Apple has chosen to relent. Yay Yay! Freedom for developers! No more worries about how you build your app impacting its reception by Apple! Right?
Honestly, I’m still a little afraid to trust them.
Don’t get me wrong. I have been using Apple products since I was eight years old. I love them. Apple Software is intuitive, beautiful and normally has just the right number of features.
But with what’s gone down in recent months, I am afraid to trust them and specifically afraid to develop for them. It’s not an issue of what their current posture on developer restrictions is at any given moment. The issue is that they have set up restrictions in the past and I have no reason to think they won’t in the future.
Referring back to their initial “Thoughts on Flash” statement, we see Jobs talking about how their software is open and Adobe’s (at least Flash) isn’t. Good points to some extent but my question is this: Are you going to deal with “closed” (exclusive plugin-requiring) software and content in an open or closed manner?
So will I stick with Apple? In a manner of speaking. As long as Apple happens lead the market in technology I will buy and develop for their products. But if a better alternative to Apple shows up, I’d switch.
I’m not sure what it will take for the company to earn my trust back. It’s certainly a start to take back the restrictions. Better would be if they kept their exclusive mindset just for their marketing.
Top Ten Websites for Entrepreneurs
Aug 17th
I was browsing the Small Biz Nation group on Linkedin today and found a great question: “Top 10 Websites for Entrepreneurs”. Made me think.
Here’s my list, not in any particular order, and only including destination locations:
- Guy Kawasaki’s Blog – Guy is his own brand. Copy him.
- Seth Godin’s Blog – Thinking about business, marketing and life.
- Mitch Joel’s Blog – The BEST blog I have ever read.
- Google Trends and Zeitgeist – The spirit of the times.
- TED talks – Social issues of today turn into markets tomorrow
- Guerilla Marketing – Love it!
- The Onion – This is the kind of news people like
- Mashable – The kind of news I need every day.
- Fast Company – The kind of news I need every couple.
- The Economist – The kind of news I need every week.
A Developer’s Take on Clover
Aug 10th
I became aware of cloversites.com over a year ago from a friend who works at an international non-profit. He asked me to review their platform (very new at the time). Here’s what I told him
I really like what Cloversites does! Simple setup, really nice templates, ease of editing…all wonderful features. $20/month isn’t bad for hosting and $1000 isn’t bad for what you’re getting.
Having said that, I would be consider with them:
- Some of the features they don’t have yet (but will have soon) are:
- podcasting – (but you can set one up at podbean.com that will work great for free or host it yourself)
- downloadable files
- For folks with older computers and/or who are more cautious with downloading software, it’s important to have a non-flash version of the site. But Clover’s non-flash versions of their sites aren’t very good. Try turning off flash in your browser and see what you get? Below I have pasted it in for you to see:
From what I see I think Clover is a great bet for you, especially if you can figure out the non-flash website issue.
If you do end up going with Clover, I’d love to hear how it turns out for you…
My friend decided to go with Clover and had a great experience doing so. So good, in fact, that I referred another budding non-profit to use it, and they signed up!
Now, over a year later, Clover has added podcasting, downloadable files and a host of other options (list here) in their newly updated tool “Greenhouse 2.0″.
NOTE: The only thing I’m still unhappy about is their HTML view (which is what people will see on an iphone/ipad). But let’s face it, the vast majority of us still view websites on computers most of the time, not our iphone. I’m sure they’re working on this issue (Clover, are you listening?) and I bet they’ll have HTML5/ CSS3 compatibility up really soon.
If you’re thinking about doing a new website, you gotta consider Clover.
Lessons from Wedding Photography
Aug 9th
Always trying to look outside my industry to learn how to thrive in my industry, I’ve been following a wedding photographer named Lawrence Chan for a while now. I came across Lawrence’s main site, www.tofurious.com, because a photographer friend referred me to a nice minimalist WordPress theme I needed for a project. But to get it I had to sign up for his email newsletter. For once I’m glad I gave out my real email.
From reading Lawrence’s emails, I’ve sensed that wedding photographers are facing an unbelievable amount of competition right now. Apparently the advent of affordable prosumer DSLRs has created an influx of “expert” wedding photographers. How to survive? Lawrence offers a lot of good advice.
Along the same lines, Lawrence recently started a new site, www.startup-strategy.com full of simple lessons on how to survive and thrive in the wedding photo industry. Check out Lawrence’s video about Kogi BBQ.
Whether or not you’re a wedding photographer, you’ll enjoy Lawrence’s wise thoughts.
NEW NEW CURRENT BREAKING NEW
Jul 28th
In the digital media industry, we make our living figuring out how to make NEW STUFF WORK. The whole point seems to be staying on the razor sharp edge, knowing what kind of NEW STUFF WORKS.
So we read about NEW STUFF on sites that cater to our industry (in my case, Mashable tends to be near the top). Every week or so I binge read for a couple hours on websites that contain new and breaking information. The funny thing is how often I felt frustrated after these speedreading sessions. Did all that new info really help me?
Then we wonder about whether all that NEW STUFF WORKS and how to get it to WORK.
The problem is that the newer NEW STUFF is, the less it has been interpreted, figured out. It’s just raw data.
We could draw a rough analogy to David Allen’s “STUFF”. STUFF makes us cluttered and unproductive. Transforming STUFF into “next action steps” makes us productive. All this takes a schema, a grid that we can use to interpret the NEW STUFF.
[The things that happen to be popular online are often pretty stupid.]
Where can you find a schema?
Schemas are interesting because they are critical to working with NEW STUFF. But they aren’t necessarily NEW (they’re often older than the hills). And they aren’t digital. They’re found in all those classic business books.
The key to the NEW STUFF is very often the OLD tried-and-true schema.
Books like Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt (1960′s) are a perfect example. No NEW STUFF in here, just practical advice from an envelope salesman (yeah you heard me right, he sold envelopes).
Everybody has schemas they use to interpret data and make decisions. Some schemas are good and some are bad. But the good ones are usually OLD.
So the trick is to figure out how to deal with NEW STUFF using OLD schemas.
Some Questions For Leaders
Jun 9th
I spend my time working with a wide range of small businesses and nonprofits. I keep asking myself the question “What prevents a small organization from overcoming obstacles and reaching its goals and potential?”
Usually the problems are simple. Usually, the things you can do to overcome them are simple. Often the problem is related to peoples’ ego–whoever’s making the calls doesn’t want to be teachable or is afraid of change or something like that.
Here are some problem categories:
- Fear – What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
- Throughput – What can you stop doing today (make a list)?
- Focused Impact – What is the single most important thing you need to do today? This year? During your life?
Open Source Customer Service
May 10th
Do you pride yourself over your excellent customer service department?
Might be time to rethink the model. According to a recent Harvard Business Review Post, (thanks to a link on opensources.com)
Most customers these days demonstrate a huge — and increasing — appetite for self-service, yet most companies run their operations as if customers prefer to interact with them live.
I have noticed this in myself. I would rather go to the effort of logging onto my credit card website rather than simply calling the 800 number. Upon thinking back, here are the reasons I don’t like interacting with a human customer service rep.
- Wait Time: Much of the frustration with customer service is the wait time. I would rather wait for myself than wait for somebody else, even if that somebody else is much faster.
- Bad experience: In general, we are used to customer service personnel being bored, slow and generally knowledgeable. “Is there anything else I can assist you with?”, they ask. Of course there are but we can’t wait to hang up.
- Control: As consumers like me get used to controlling and even creating their media-rich environment, autonomy builds. It feels like I have more control if I can swipe my own ice cream at Albertsons.
- Ego: For whatever reason, if I can locate the answer to my question online, I feel that it is I who have solved the problem (of course it isn’t). If I have to resort to a phone call or in-person question, that means I couldn’t handle it on my own.
As a balancing side note, I find it interesting that my reluctance to deal with support personnel does nothing to diminish my reliance upon those I consider to be true experts. I may check out my own ice cream but in no case will I attempt to perform self heart surgery on myself.
Build Trust
Apr 9th
That’s how Mitch Joel says it.
Sell trust
That’s how my mentor says it. I was halfway into a sales pitch I had carefully constructed when he stopped me. “I don’t believe that kind of speech…do you, Mike? What I tell customers is that I sell trust. I don’t sell products. I want them to know and experience that I will bend backwards for them. And I always do.”
The amazing thing is it’s true. I’ve known this particular mentor for over half my life and worked for him from time to time. His business relies on large government contracts that take months to come to fruition. I’ve seen him overnight product from China to keep a promise.
So when I found Mitch saying the same thing it immediately made sense.
Trust. Build it, sell it, live it, be it.
http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/its-a-matter-of-trust/
Try a New Marketing Weapon This Week
Mar 12th
I grinned when I read this in a client’s email today:
We need ideas that bring in revenue….any ideas?
I sent the following back to my client:
How to increase revenue? Print off this list: Guerrilla Marketing’s 100 Marketing Weapons and circle some new weapons.
We’ve all heard of Jay Conrad Levinson’s book GUERRILLA MARKETING. Levinson’s idea is to get you to promote your business the way successful guerrillas conduct warfare–using cheap or even free tactics that are really effective. Jay got even more practical in GUERRILLA MARKETING WEAPONS. On his website, www.gmarketing.com, he has been kind enough to post the book’s table of contents (which is a list of the weapons) on his website.
Here are some of my personal favorites:
- Weapon #68: Online marketing – As Mitch Joel reminds us, spend money on advertising that catches your prospects when they’re motivated to buy!
- Weapon #28: Giver vs Taker Stance – Customers like it when they gain surplus while interacting with a company, whether or not that surplus is “economic.”
- Weapon #2: Marketing plan and Marketing calendar – Marketing by nature is multi-touch. Salespeople use alerts and reminders and all that to get their client interactions just on time…marketers should too.
Every single one of these weapons will technically help your business. However, randomly picking ideas and trying them is the definition of ad hoc marketing. To paraphrase Mitch Joel in Six Pixels again: “Don’t start with HOW we are going to use a particular marketing tactic. Start with WHY should we be using it in the first place?” What we’re talking about is weapon #1.
