The Bridal Show season is on us. Below are some tips for making the most of your booth at a bridal show.

1. Location, location, location. The advantage of picking your booth location early is that you get to pick the best spots. What to look for: high-visibility locations like the booth facing the end of an isle, or a corner. What to avoid: being in the back row of the show, being next to free food (sticky fingers on your samples), or being next to DJs (noisy).

2. Booth Size. Bigger isn’t always better. Even a small booth will be fine if you decorate it with outstanding graphics. We strongly recommend our portable pop-up banners (available in ROES). Use them individually, or combine 2-3 to go across the back of your entire booth.

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I’ve been warning you for a few months that you need to create a Google+ account for your studio.

It’s time.

“Give me a break,” I can imagine you saying. “It’s hard enough to keep up with my website and Facebook.”

You’re right, but it doesn’t matter. In the last 6 months, Google+ has added over 90 million users, so now it’s time to pay attention.

Google+ is Google’s attempt to compete with Facebook. Yes, it means you’ll have to create and monitor a new account. However, the advantage is that when someone gives you a “plus” on Google+ (just like a “like” in Facebook), Google rewards you by listing your studio higher on the front page of Google (something Facebook cannot do). That means the first studio to embrace Google+ in your area will be able to dominate Google searches for your keywords in your target market.

Need another reason? Google is starting to experiment with molding search results based on individual user’s preferences. Google+ is part of that initiative. A couple years from now, it is possible some potential clients simply won’t be able to find you online if you don’t have an active Google+ account.

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My friend who sells real estate has one of the coolest laptops you’ve ever seen.

And I know you’ve seen it.

It is the Thinkpad x220, the model on all the TV and YouTube video commercials that shows a guy jumping out of an airplane with this laptop to prove it can boot in under 10 seconds.

But this model has another very cool feature: the screen swivels and transforms into an iPad. That means you can work on the laptop all day, then transform it into an iPad to make sales presentation to clients.

With the rapid-boot drive, the touch-sensitive swivel screen, and the extended 9-hour battery, the total price came to about $2,000.

And it sits on the desk every day like a plain-old PC. No client has ever seen it.

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How important are online reviews? According to online marketing research, 6 out of 10 potential clients look for online reviews of your studio before contacting you, and 8 out of 10 consider those reviews critical to making a purchase.

This means that even if potential clients know your name, 48% won’t consider contacting you without reading positive online reviews.

While that number should scare you, the solution is easier than you realize. Here’s how: Read the rest of this entry »

by Ted Suss, Prism Photo

Is the money you’re “saving” really costing you more and not allowing you to grow your business?

Are you printing your own? Have you become a lab? Be honest; how much time are you really spending making prints and how much money are you really saving?

As a photographer, you make the most money and grow your business by marketing, shooting and selling. Everything else is secondary and non profitable. Here’s why:

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Dress designers do it. Car companies do it. Cell phone companies do it. Every year, new products with new features are rolled out to consumers.

People like “new”. It generates excitement. It gives them bragging rights.

Why should professional photography be any different?

To say that great photography is timeless may be artistically correct, but it doesn’t mean more sales. Read the rest of this entry »

On January 19, 2012 Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Although you’ve probably heard it elsewhere, we wanted you to know that Kodak’s bankruptcy WILL NOT have any impact on our ability to provide you, our clients, with any of the products and services you’ve come to expect from JD Photo Imaging.

We’re proud to be a Kodak lab and proud of their products.

Like any small business, the professional photographer should be constantly looking for ways to improve their website. But often, it isn’t clear which changes you need to make to “tweak” your website to make it more attractive to potential clients.

That’s why I was so excited to find this article over at SearchEngineLand.com. They asked 1,790 consumers across the country to rate what they felt was most important on a local business website. This simple graph says it all. Read the rest of this entry »

While JD is constantly adding new products to our ROES catalog, we also update older products. Occasionally a client tells us that they still see old artwork when looking at updated products.

Sometimes the ROES program just behaves strangely, and there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do to fix it.

The solution in either case is to clear the ROES cache. Here’s how:

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We’ve been talking about lagniappes for years, so I was surprised to read a new book by Stan Phelps (What’s your Purple Goldfish?) about them. Here’s what Drew McLellan writes in the forward:

True lagniappe can’t be faked or forced. We banter the word authentic around too much these days. But for lagniappe to work, it must be just that — real and offered without expectation of anything in return.

In other words – you do it because you want to, not because it’s in a marketing plan document or because your ROI calculator told you it would generate a 42.36% return. (And no…there’s no such thing as an ROI calculator!)

This is absolutely true.

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