Last Monday night Jeff and I interviewed Ken Rabasco, also known as “Bosco” in our neck of the woods, of Bosco’s Bridal Fashion Show & Expo to learn the biggest mistakes wedding vendors make at a bridal show.

After 13 years producing premiere bridal shows for the Metro New York and Connecticut area, Bosco sure has some good stories to tell!

On that call, Bosco revealed the 8 Critical Mistakes Wedding Vendors Make at a Bridal Show and How You Can Increase Your Show Bookings by 20-30%.  He dished out some of the best strategies for marketing at a bridal show that I've EVER heard.

If you missed the call, you can download the mp3 recording here. 

According to Bosco...

The #1 Mistake wedding vendors make at a bridal show is NOT following up.

We spend hundreds…or even thousands…of dollars for a booth at a bridal expo where we have exclusive, in person access to 100 or more brides.  A good bridal show generates 5-10 qualified leads per hour at average cost of $4 per lead.

Sounds like a pretty good deal right?  Not bad for the chance to have a one-on-one conversation with a bride who is looking to book our services.

The problem is that a bride typically has to see our business 7-8 times before she even notices us.

If she meets us at a bridal show…and then never hears from us again…it’s like we don’t even exist.  Marketing at a bridal expo is only effective if we FOLLOW UP.  Otherwise we’re throwing away the chance to book those warm, pre-qualified weddings.

Bosco’s Quick Tips For Effective Bridal Show Follow Up

1.    Send a postcard instead of email. Bulk email (even if you only send to only 5 people) almost always ends up in the Spam folder. 

2.    Include a handwritten note and make sure the image on your postcard ties into your bridal show display to make it easy for the bride to remember you. “Oh, yeah!  He was the cool photographer with the photo of the dog in a wedding dress.”

3.    Whether you follow up by phone, email or mail, always reference the bridal show where you met. “Hi, this is Stephanie.  We met at Bosco’s Bridal Expo…”

4.    If you are recommended by the bride’s venue, mention it in your follow up.

5.    Be mindful of the bride's schedule when following up. DON’T call her at 7am when she is getting ready for work. 

6.    Collect multiple phone numbers for the bride: work, home and cell. Use her cell phone number to text her.

To hear the rest of the 8 Critical Mistakes Wedding Vendors Make and for more of Bosco’s tips on successful bridal show marketing, listen to our full interview here.   You can also receive Bosco’s FREE Exhibitor Kit crammed with even more great tips by leaving your name and email on his website.

Thanks for sharing this killer info, Bosco!

Annoyed Bride Photo Credit

What?!?

Alright maybe I'm being a little dramatic here, but never underestimate the power of a titillating headline.  (I've been waiting all week to use titillating in a sentence.)

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool at an incredible price...FREE!

Let's face it.  There are a million and one ways to spend money on bridal marketing and unfortunately, many will not bear fruit. You have to know what is working. Unless you actually enjoy shoveling money into a bottomless pit.

In the world of online marketing, Google Analytics is one of the best tools for tracking the results of your wedding marketing.  Without some kind of tracking, you are sailing without a rudder.

So what is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics creates a tracking code that you put on your website.  This code allows Google to tell you where your website visitors come from, what they do on your website, how long they stay there and more.

Bonus: it is EASY to set up.  Just set up your free Google Analytics account, grab your tracking code and send it to your web master or paste it onto your website yourself.  If you have a Wordpress site, it's even easier; just use a Google Analytics plugin like Google Analyticator, add your analytics ID (looks something like UA-1234567-8) and you're done.

I will admit right up front that I am addicted to this tool. I love to check my stats every morning with my first (of many) cup of Joe. I'm excited to see if our latest marketing piece is working, if traffic is still on the rise, and how many visitors are hanging out and reading our articles. This is really just the tip of the iceberg of what you can learn.

Wouldn't you want to know what keywords your prospective customers are typing that bring them to your site? How about which page they spend the most time on and what page they leave on?  How about just knowing where they came from?  Was it a Google or Yahoo search or did an ad on a bridal website actually send you visitors?

This is stuff you need to know!

Without this crucial data you could be flushing serious time and money down the toilet.  Are you convinced?

Take a deep breath, it's really not hard to get yourself set up.  Really!

My lovely and talented wife has made a nice little tutorial video for you. This should get you up and running. In the near future I'll show you how to use this data to improve your game in a serious way.

I can't overstate the importance of actually knowing how your online endeavors are working. Do yourself a favor and get on this.

STEP ONE:  Watch this video below.  Use it to setup your account and get Google Analytics on your site today.

You're about the learn the secret that made us a Six Figure Wedding Business…for FREE.

When one of our closest friends in the wedding business (who also happens to be a major competitor, but we won’t mention your name, bro) read my Price Shopper to Profit report, he all but told us we were flat out crazy to give this stuff away.

Here are his exact words:

“What you're doing with Book More Brides is invaluable.  Frankly, I think that with that email template, you're giving away the store!  Anyone having trouble connecting with their customer set needs to take a good hard look at that template and customize it to their needs.

…You put it all together in 1 helpful package and called it Book More Brides.  Now you've made it frighteningly easy for vendors to work your system to find their customers!”

So why are we doing this?

Well, maybe we are a little crazy.  I’m psychotically optimistic in my belief that there is enough wedding business for everyone.  The smart ones like us, anyway.

But the real reason is because I’m tired of watching wedding professionals struggle through the recession needlessly.  I’m fed up of seeing my friends treated like a commodity by tire kickers and left helpless to explain the obvious value of their services.  And I remember how that felt.

It SUCKS.

You don’t have to be frustrated with price shopping brides and spend thousands on advertising to stand out from your competition. 

Positioning yourself as a valuable expert is easy…when you know what to do.  That’s why this Price Shopper to Profit Email is so powerful.

When you include even ONE of the 6 Critical Persuasion elements in this email, your response rate increases.  When you use all of them, you’ll book 20-35% more weddings…automatically.

Just watch this 5 minute video below to see how easy it is to use one of the Persuasion techniques.  I walk you through the process with my response to a real “price shopper” email.

My Price Shopper to Profit Email explains the 6 Critical Persuasion elements in detail.  You can download it immediately by entering your name and email in the form at the top of this page.

Here’s just SOME of what you’ll learn in this special report…

• The 6 Critical Elements of the Price Shopper to Profit email that instantly convince brides of your value so they’re primed and ready to book.


• The simple thing you probably already have on your computer…that you can add to your email response immediately…that kicks in the “Likeability Principle” of influence so that brides feel automatically drawn to you.


• Why trying to “convince” a bride about the value of your services is marketing suicide and how to educate her with this simple link that positions you as the trusted expert she wants to book.


• 5 easy actions you can take right now that make brides feel a powerful pressure to book you.  These literally give you an “unfair advantage” over your competition!


• And much more…

Now, Jeff keeps telling me that people LOVE video.  He insists that “regular guys” like him won’t read a PDF like my special report.

So I’m thinking about doing more of these short videos.  What do YOU think?  Leave me a comment.  Thanks!

So how do you know if your website is, shall we say, not exactly stellar?

I'm glad you asked. But you might not be glad you asked. 

I love to critique. My wife calls me a professional hole puncher. Bring me your wedding business plan and I'll poke it full of holes. Of course, that's only if I like you. The fact that you're reading one of my blog posts means our relationship is definitely stepping up to the "falling in like" mode, at least for me.

OK, back to your website. I bet your mom said it was great...don't trust her.

Then there are those close and trusted friends of yours who told you it looked wonderful...LIARS!

You posted a link on a DJ chat site and asked your fellow pros to rate your website...they said it looked cool!  Come on, have you looked at their sites? Would the head chef at the Four Seasons ask a McDonalds' burger flipper to rate their world famous filet mignon?

I think you get where I'm going here. Be very careful of who you listen to when it comes to any aspect of your business. Period.

Back to your website. There are many elements that are essential to a great web presence. Things have recently changed according to the all seeing eye of Google.  Google rewards websites that have certain characteristics.

3 Critical Website Features according to Google

1. Content (keywords, text, domain name, tags, etc.)

2. Links (inbound, outbound, authority, etc.)

3. Activity (traffic from visitors, RSS subscriptions, comments, updates, etc.)

What does a Google reward look like?

Google rewards you with ranking by letting your site show up when some one does a search for the keywords that relate directly to the contents of your website.

Want to be on page one for LA wedding photography? You better have a kick ass site with awesome SEO (that's search engine optimization for the newbies.)

In super competitive markets like LA photography, your page ranking will have a huge impact on the amount of traffic that actually makes it to your page. If you end up on page 10, you might as well be invisible. The only people who will find you are the ones who type your company name into their search engine of choice.

So much for capitalizing on all that LA wedding photography traffic! To give you perspective, LA wedding photography gets on average 1900 searches a month with about 1,500,000 results showing up. Imagine if your wedding business was on page one for this search.  Can you say KA-ching?

In future posts we're going to probe a little deeper.  (Boy, that sounds tantilizing!)  Each of these concepts deserves much more attention than a casual mention. We haven't even touched upon how critical it is that your website speaks to the ideal customer you are looking for.

Remember, being generic will get you mediocre results; having specific content designed just for a specific prospect can work like magic!

Let's start with some basics. Below you will find a link to a great site that will analyze your website and kick out a grade. No, it won't tell you if it sucks, but a crappy grade kind of says the same thing, only a little nicer.  It will also point out some areas of weakness that need addressing.

This Website Grader is not as nurturing as your mom, but its not going to BS you either.

Go to this site now, plug in your website and find out how you rank. You can even see how your website measures up against your biggest competitor.

Website Grader

So stick around for more cool stuff. We're here to help. We've been where you are and we're lucky to have had some great mentors to help us along the way.

I promise I won't poke too many holes in your plans, use harsh language, or make anybody cry..unless you let me.

photo credit