Creating Upward Buying Pressure

What would happen if you could reach out directly to the check writers? Most of us in the school photography business take it for granted that we serve two customers -- the school principal and the parents. You can't get to the parents until you go through the principal, right? Maybe not.

Since we started our school & sports photography studio last year, we have been kicking that idea around. What if we could out-flank our competitors and reach out to the parents of our target schools at the same time we are selling to the principals? We're reasoning that aside from picture day communications, the parents rarely (if ever) hear from the big national companies. Why? They're following the traditional communication paths.

And when we stick to the traditional Studio >> Principal >> Parent communication line, they never hear from us either because we haven't passed the gatekeeper. We're filtered out by our own marketing because we accept that we have to go to the principal to talk to the parent.

Do you hear this? We stop ourselves -- voluntarily -- from speaking to our customers!

If we accept the above as true, this means that our primary paying customer is effectively isolated from the normal marketing and advertising traffic that would make her aware that there is a choice. While the parent doesn't (and probably won't) make the actual choice between studios, we're betting that they can certainly have an influence.

And so the question becomes, what is the best way to reach the parent of the target school? How can we create a groundswell of upward buying pressure that makes the principal and secretary take notice of us? What do you think? We're working on this and will post as we try different things and begin to make progress. But by all means, post a comment or e-mail us with your ideas. www.marcophotoservice.com

Jay