Marketing Moments

It's a sad fact that many stores in the scrapbook industry have closed this year. I keep hearing about more and more. Many of them were operating at the edge of their income even in the best of times and had no room in their bottom line for any sort of bump in the road.

There are probably many factors beyond just finances that have contributed to this. Marketing your business in the best of times is so important, but marketing it at times like this is vital. Actually, marketing your business ALL THE TIME is what helps you through thick and thin.

A smaller store near my house just quietly closed up. Aside from a plain quarterly email (which really isn't enough contact), I never heard anything FROM them or ABOUT them - yet, they were just 2 miles from my house. I suspect that being tucked back off the road in a strip mall blocked from view by other stores and next to a barber shop was part of their problem. No one knew they were there and they didn't go out of their way to tell people they were.

Marketing is tricky for most people because it takes more time than money. Time and money are two things that many small business owners lack. So, advertising, which takes more money than time is just as unlikely to happen as marketing is.

Small businesses need marketing ideas that are uncomplicated and easy to find. One good new source for these is the new PMA Marketing Moments website. This idea was actually my brainchild and PMA has taken it on and created a site for the entire photo and memory industry. These little sound bites take less than 90 seconds to listen to and they will hopefully spark some ideas in you to help you market your business. Many times, marketing is merely an off-shoot of something you're already doing in your business. You just need to aim at a different crowd (potential customers) instead of aiming your effort at current customers.

Another good place to gather marketing ideas is ScrapBiz. We talk about marketing a lot because it's the life-blood of our business members. For instance, National Scrapbook Day is coming up May 2. At ScrapBiz, the theme we suggest for our members for that day is "Sweet Memories" - a day of chocolate and scrapping. Along with that comes ideas for games, treats and activities. Most business owners want that - a plan that is ready-made that they can draw on so they don't have to invent the wheel themselves.

Find other businesses that you can network with to create marketing ideas and plans. There aren't very many resources left directly targeted at our industry. Interestingly, many retailers I have spoken to say that the biggest loss for our industry when Scrapbook Retailer magazine ceased publication was the 2 month marketing idea calendar they had in every issue.

Marketing - it's something we all know we must do but that time and money thing gets in the way. Yet, it can be our very downfall in the end.

Wars are not won by evacuations

I love this - Winston Churchill said it. He also said, "Never, never, never give up!".

I see lots of evacuations going on in the scrapbook industry right now. Some are necessary because, I assume, the war is un-winnable for that business. But, I fear many are just taking their scissors and going home because they think it will never get better.

Earlier this week at ScrapBiz, one of our members posted a great article from her local paper about busting the recession. One of the great points was that while everyone else is pulling back, it's a good time to surge forward with your marketing activities. That doesn't mean you have to go crazy, but it means you need to step it up.

BECAUSE, if you can even hold steady and, with luck, increase your market share even slightly during the tough times, everyone else will have to play "catch up" to you when things get better. You'll have some momentum (and new customers) to work with while others are trying to re-start their engines.

If you've felt like a little fish in a big pond, now can be your time to be the big fish. For instance, many magazines are slashing their ad rates because there are fewer subscribers and fewer advertisers. Now might be a good time to invest in an ad. The subscribers still hanging around are going to be the ones who have money to spend AND are hard-core scrappers. You're going to get greater bang for your buck.

Now is also a great time to slash your expenses to the bare minimum. Focus your funds on activities that create revenue and slash the ones that don't. For instance, going to a trade show may be a good thing, but taking another employee with you may not. Don't skip it just because you don't want to go alone. It may be necessary for your business to be there. It's okay to go by yourself - I often do. If you don't want to be lonely, then join ScrapBiz before you go and you can come to our dinner, meet other members and not feel alone at the show.

Look at attending PSRO - there are going to be some FANTASTIC classes there that will help you be a better, more savvy business owner. One of the challenges of our industry is that it's changed over the last few years and we didn't pay a lot of attention to the shift. We were experiencing some issues before the economy did. Learn about the changes and how to tackle them at PSRO and discover new products and services at PMA to reflect the recent photo-centric shift of the scrapbook industry. Due to the economy, hotels in Las Vegas have slashed their prices for PMA - I've never seen that done. Usually prices shoot way up during a large trade show. Expect air fare to drop also. That makes the show an even greater value!

Another way to add to your revenue stream without a lot of cash is to sign up for PhotoBookBiz. It's just $49 to sign up! All you need to do is add the unique Rocket Life platform link to your current website and you've just increased your potential revenues without having to buy or stock any additional inventory! When customers make photo books or photo products at your site, you make money! It's simple and easy for you.

So, don't evacuate, keep fighting! You might have to change strategies or attack from a different front, but fight on if you can! Scrapbooking and memory preservation are not just frivolous hobbies. They are meaningful hobbies that most people will continue on with despite the economy. Be there for them!

Annoying Customers is NOT a Winning Strategy

I know this post has the potential to be controversial, but... I'm gonna say it anyway!

DOGS and CATS in a scrapbook store... (I can feel some of you fanning the flames already).

Two local scrapbook stores in my area have resident dogs. I stopped going in to both. I like dogs, just not in the scrapbook (or any other) store. Here's what happened:

Store one (now closed): They had a cute smallish dog (about 20 pounds) who was either darting out of their office just a couple feet from the front door when you came in OR, it was locked behind a baby-gate in the office and whined at you when you came in. It was a friendly dog. But, it was always underfoot or yowling to get out.

Store Two: a new store in my area. The first time I went, there were two lap-dogs penned in a baby gate pen right by the front door. They were friendly enough - too friendly actually. They yipped and yapped every time the door opened. Then, every time I came into view while I was shopping, they continued to whine for my attention. I found it VERY annoying.

Now, the little girl up the street from us is DEATHLY afraid of dogs of any type or size. Whenever a neighbor comes to the bus stop with their dog, she practically climbs a tree. So, her mom taking her into a store with dogs would be out of the question.

I'm allergic to cats. I can tell you have a cat the minute I walk into your home. I don't even have to see the cat. My stuffy nose tells me instantly you have one. I would get the same reaction in a store with a roving cat.

Most of you store owners who have pets in your scrapbook store would immediately and defensively tell me that your customers LOVE your pets being in there and that you keep them under control.

I'm sure many of your customers DO tell you that they love your pets. But, how many of your customers DON'T love your pets? Do you know? And, how many of your customers have stopped coming to your store BECAUSE of your pets? Those people aren't as easy to measure...

What I'm saying is that given these economic times and the fact that making a profit in a scrapbook store is hard enough no matter what the economy is doing, can you afford to alienate ANYONE with your pets? Are the pets worth the loss of revenue? And, no matter what you think, you ARE losing customers over the pets. Those people will come in, see the pets and then express their opinion over them silently by not returning.

You can get the same reaction with music. I've been in stores where the twangy country or loud heavy metal has literally driven me right out the door. I often hear that Christian music annoys people to the point they leave the store. I am always amazed when a store posts political or religious statements - both very polarizing swamps to wade into. You might be thinking, "Too bad! Get over it! It's MY business!" Yes, it is. But customers pay your bills. Annoy enough of them and you go broke.

I'm sure we are all aware of the Dixie Chicks and the controversy they created by criticizing American policy overseas. Country Music fans are largely conservative flag-waving patriots and they didn't take kindly to what was said. The Dixie Chicks were "punished" when they returned home. Former fans voted with their dollars and refused to buy their music or go to their concerts.

While trying to fill their Chicago concert (and not doing very well at it), they asked basketball legend, Michael Jordan, a fellow Democrat and friend of theirs, to help them sell tickets. His response was beautiful. He said, "No". His reasoning was that Republicans buy his tennis shoes just as much as Democrats do and he couldn't risk alienating half of his customers.

I am of the opinion that you should cater to the average person when you are a public business. Work hard to make as many people as possible feel welcome in your store. The last thing you want is for someone to leave your store and tell all their friends, "They have a DOG in there!" You'd rather they left your store and told their friends, "They have the BEST STUFF!"

Make your store inviting and friendly and leave your controversial pets, music and political or religious (unless that's your niche) opinions for your private life.

Random News and Views

I was browsing through one of the photography magazines I get and came across an Q & A column. A photographer with an old-fashioned camera wanted to set up a business taking vintage look photos. He wanted to make the white edges of the photos deckled like they were many years ago. He was asking how he could possibly make the edges look like that.

The answer was something scrapbookers already knew...

The Fiskars rotary cutter has a deckle blade. The answer was to pick up one of those and trim the photos with it to create that old-time photo edge. We have as much to offer the photo industry as they have to offer us. I look forward to a closer alliance with them.

In fact, my local scrapbook store who recently celebrated a dozen years in business (Wow! That's nearly a record in this industry!) just added a Kodak Shoebox scanner to their list of services. I have been advocating adding those types of services to stores. I hope they will think about adding slide scanning next! They also do the unthinkable... THEY ADVERTISE IN THE NEWSPAPER! Yup, every Thursday, they have an ad in the Home and Garden section of my local paper. They must be doing something right - they've expanded from one space into THREE store spaces in the last few years and they've been around for a long time while other stores around them have come and gone almost instantly. Hmmm, I'm feeling the need to go shopping today.... :-)

AND, I thought this was interesting. A group of retailers in California are setting up a co-operative organization. Here's a LINK to Angie Pedersen's Scrapbook Industry News site with the story. "The group aims to foster success for member stores through vendor partnerships and alliance benefits in operations, purchasing, and business education." They just pretty much described ScrapBiz... We've been successfully bringing retailers together for nearly 6 years now. It works and it's good for the industry. It's just too bad that many stores have spent the last few years eyeing one another suspiciously instead of working together.

A similar idea was mentioned by a retailer at Scrapbook Retailer Magazine's site recently, too: LINK

I wish this group of stores success. Although, I have a feeling they are already successful because they were smart enough to work with potential competitors and not against them. Although, I doubt these stores are that close to each other. But still, the time to work together with other stores and manufacturers is far past in this industry. We have spent too much time trying to be independent of one another and in the words of Dr. Phil... "How's that workin' for you?" In my opinion, it isn't...

Photo Album "Scrapping" - Yay or Nay for the industry?

Photo album scrapping - that is using the 2-Up or 3-Up photo sleeves to slip in a photo and a photo-sized embellished journaling block is a mini-trend right now. Pebbles In My Pocket introduced their "Share and Tell" system recently that offers you everything from a pure photo book to nearly a scrapbook - depending on your desire and time.

Last year, I was heavily criticized for my "Campaign for Real Scrapping". Some accused me of trying to hurt the industry by telling people to buy LESS. That was so far from the truth that it was almost funny. What I was (and still am) trying to do was to help people worry less about all the hot, new trends and more about preserving their memories. Scrapping should not be treated as a seasonal sport, but a lifetime activity. I fear many are burning out because they are trying to make every page a 3-day long marathon of technique and embellishment. As I said a couple of months ago, we should be in the business of selling memories and not just scrapbook products.

So, enter this new idea of FURTHER simplifying the hobby. Now, magazines and vendors are encouraging us back to photo sleeves. That cuts out the amount of paper and embellishments a scrapper uses. I can make several 4x6 journaling cards out of a 12x12 piece of paper. And, I can't use big, chunky embellishments. So, now all I need is a 2-up photo album, some paper, a couple of stickers and a pen. So, is THAT good for the industry? I bet some are freaking out that I'm even talking about it.

But, I'd say it IS good for the industry. Any way we can get someone in the door is good for us. It's a great opportunity to introduce scrapbooking. It has the potential to invite more people - the ones we left in the dust with all our ribbons and eyelets and fancy embellishments, to do more than just jot a note on the back of a photo and slip it into a sleeve. I see photo album scrapping as a "gateway drug" to a full-blown scrapbooking addiction.

But, are we positioning this new (old) type of scrapbooking correctly? Instead of avoiding it, we should be spinning it to our advantage. Teach a class on it to beginners (remember, it can be a gateway to full-on scrapping). Sell kits with those products for beginners (they may come back for more and start making full-sized pages after they realize they can't use all the other fun stuff on those little journaling cards).

I think we need to remember that embellishing a 4x6 card made of decorative paper is a lot less intimidating than embellishing a 12x12 page. To a beginner, a 12x12 blank page looks like an acre of grass that they have to mow with a push mower. It's overwhelming.

I think the one thing we are guilty of in the scrapbook industry is avoiding any style of scrapbooking that doesn't look like a heavily embellished 12x12 page. I know, we all need to sell a lot to survive, however, we can't go after only the scrappers who know how to stick $15 worth of embellishments on a piece of card stock. We need the simple scrapper, the hybrid scrapper, the digital scrapper, the card-maker, the paper crafter and even this type of photo album scrapper.

So, how can you add this type of simple scrapping to your business and use it to your advantage???

An "aHA" Moment...

I love having "aHA!" moments in business. You know, those times when you read something and the giant lightbulb flips on over your noggin and you go, "aHA! I TOTALLY GET THAT!"

I was surfing around looking for some marketing quotes for the monthly ScrapBiz member newsletter and I came across this one by Theodore Levitt - former editor of the Harvard Review.

"Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film. They advertise memories."

If you're a business owner in the scrapbook industry, did you just have that same, "aHA!" moment? Are we JUST selling pretty paper and embellishments for the sake of the pretty paper and embellishments? That's what we advertise sometimes. But, what SHOULD we be selling? We SHOULD be selling the idea that preserving your memories is important. That is much more meaningful then saying, "look at this pretty paper - what can you do with it?" Paper is just paper, but paper with memories on it makes it special!

What a great concept for scrapbook retailers! Film by itself isn't sexy and neither are stickers. But, when both are used for the very thing they were created for, they can be very exciting! Many of us have spent the last few years collecting products just because we like the products. But, as a retailer, your job is the help the customer use the products they have stocked up on. Only as they use them to preserve their memories will they then have a reason to come back and buy more.

Active scrapbookers are what the industry needs more of! USE the paper and embellishments to preserve memories. Otherwise, it's just like a totally useless container of un-used film (you remember film, don't you? It's those little rolls of black plastic your mother still uses in her camera...)

What is scrapping???

Today, I got someone scrapping! He would probably NEVER say, "I am a scrapbooker" because he's a Vet and owns guns - totally not cool to say that when you also own guns - LOL! He's a photographer with a KILLER new camera (his wife loves him). He asked me if I knew where he could make books of his photos - to possibly sell. I sent him to LuLu and this evening, he's working on a photo book. He's scrapbooking (shhhh, we won't tell anyone, though).

So, what IS scrapbooking? Is it JUST putting photos on colorful card stock and decorating with flowers, tags and stickers that you then slip into an album? Or is it also making a photo book - simple or complex (in more of a digital scrapping style)? I would say it's both. It's anything that preserves your photos and memories.

So, how do we cater to those people who will never glue a photo to a piece of card stock? Most of us traditional scrappers love the craftiness of traditional scrapbooking. The craft part is a good thing, it's fueled the industry for 10 years. But, it begs to be asked; how many people are out there like this new *ahem* "scrapper" (for lack of a more manly word) with have photos they want to do something cool with? And how can we (the industry) tap into those people in a profitable way? Food for thought...

Hidden Pictures - Hidden Profits

So, my last post wasn't so popular - LOL! So, let me add to it and further clarify as to why photos must be put in the center of our universe. Between my folks and I, we have about 3000 slides. I can't scrap a slide - it would look stupid. But, since I was born in the day when slides were cheaper than photos, I have three full carousels of 80 slides each of me from birth to around age 12. The number of photos I have from that same time period are less than about half that amount. My dad was a slide man. Every photo from my wedding 20 years ago is in a little plastic box inside a little white cardboard frame as is my husband's 2 year mission for the LDS church to Denmark and my once-in-a-lifetime 2 month trip to Australia in college. These images are only viewable when I can borrow my dad's Kodak slide projector. And, that thing is vintage. Replacement bulbs for it are running over $100 on eBay because they don't make them anymore. What happens when we can't get anymore bulbs???

I investigated slide scanning this weekend as I stated in my previous entry. It would cost about 50 cents PER SLIDE and I would have to box them up and send them off. Some companies then send them on to Costa Rica or even India without really telling me. I'm afraid to send them through the USPS, having them land in the Costa Rican mail service is unthinkable - even though these companies claim they have never lost anything. It would be my luck to be the first.

I can scan them myself, I have a FANTASTIC Epson scanner. But I did three boxes of them earlier this year and found loading 4 slides at a time into the slide converter was too time consuming. And, I have yet to see a batch scanner where I can load a bunch in that has a good review for a home-based model. The commercial models have much higher ratings. But, I'm not likely to invest that much.

Of course I'm not having every slide scanned, but let's say I had 2000 of them scanned at 50 cents each. That's $1000. Now, let's say my LSS sent me an email that said, "Hey, we now offer slide scanning for .49 each! Bring your slides to a crop and we'll scan them while you crop!" I'd be all over that. It's not hard to load my slide boxes into my bag and take them with me.

Okay, so, over the course of a year, I bring in a box or two at a time and eventually get the 2000 I wanted scanned at my LSS. The LSS just made $1000 off of me. That's quite a bit of money. So, now I have 2000 photos that I am excited to have my hands on. What, as a scrapper, would be my next step.... thinking... thinking... thinking.... yup, I'm going to want to SCRAP those photos. So, my LSS not only helped me with a problem but they helped to create a new revenue stream for themselves. I now have a lot more photos to work my way through and I'm going to need the products to make the pages.

I have yet to talk to anyone in the baby boomer generation who doesn't moan when you mention slides. We all have them. I looked at my three carousels full of my birth-12 ones last week and wanted to cry. Many are washed out to almost nothing while others have gone almost completely black. At this point, I'm getting desperate to do something with them before they are lost. I could wander around looking for a camera shop or local service to scan them. But, I would feel more "at home" at my LSS since they "get" why those are important to me.

Helping consumers tap into those hidden pictures will open up more opportunities for retailers in our industry. This is just one of the reasons why I say we need to pay attention to the photos first. What the consumer does with those new-found images is up to them. That's where our opportunity to grow begins. They can be as creative as they want (and that's what we want). They can print them out and scrap traditionally or they can go digital. But having those photos out of the little cardboard sleeves and into the hands of scrappers is what I'm talking about when I say that we need to focus on the photos. We want customers to have photos because they won't scrap without them. So, we, as an industry, should devote more time looking for ways to help them get more of their images into a scrappable format and spend less time quibbling over the other stuff. The other stuff will follow if we do our jobs and show consumers how fun it can be to do something other than just slip those photos into a plastic sleeve.