Knowing How and When To Move Forward In Building Your Wedding Business

There is a way to know how and when to move forward building your wedding business if you are having trouble figuring it out. While there is no magic point for the perfect time, you can look at where you are at and figure out when you should make the next move.

There are several things that play into this decision. The very first thing you have to figure out is your budget. If you can’t really afford to do something, then you need to put it off and budget it in for the future. Second, you should ask yourself if it both helps you, and helps brides. If the idea might not meet the needs of either of you, you shouldn’t do it. Also, always think through whether the new idea meshes with the goal of your business, and is something that you are comfortable with. Make sure to read the article by Sara on Startup Biz Blog for more tips on knowing when to move forward with a new business idea. What do you think?

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When Should You Meet With A Bride In Person?

Knowing when to contact a bride via email and phone and when to meet in person isn’t always the easiest thing to figure out. The first contact can obviously be via phone and email, but what about after the first meeting and they’ve signed the contract?

Think about it this way. Are you having trouble working something out, or figuring out what the bride really wants? Is the bride in the middle of a melt down? Any time emotions start getting a little bit out of hand you might want to meet in person. Not only that, but in the situation where you are having trouble working an idea out with the bride you will same a ton of time and frustration by meeting with her in person. For more tips on when you should meet with a client in person rather than emailing or phoning them check out Selena Cuffe’s great article. Remember, it always means a lot to a bride if you care enough to give her wedding personal, in-depth attention. What do you think?

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How To Effectively Sell Your Product or Service

 

 

Bridal_ShowWhether your wedding business is about selling a product or service the sales techniques remain the same. Selling isn’t about doing what everyone is doing, it’s about standing out and making it easy for brides to find and use you.

For instance, if you are selling seed packet wedding favors your first thought needs to be ensuring that the design is unique, easy to use and beautiful. Why do I use that as an example? Because while I like the idea of seed packet favors there are very few out there that meets the requirement of looking good as a wedding favor.

The actual selling process is all about standing out from your competition according to Greg McFarlane’s awesome and thought provoking article. It isn’t enough to “let your product speak for itself.” It might speak to a bride, but it won’t sell itself. Be verbal about how great you are, use great pictures and descriptions, run marketing campaigns for one particular product or service. Do look at your competition and then do something else. What do you think?

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A Highly Valuable, But Rarely Used Tip To Make Your Wedding Business Visible To More Brides

 

MegaphoneWhen it comes to marketing the end goal is that your business will appear everywhere your target brides are looking. The more visible you are in every marketing venue the more you will appear to be an expert. There is a rule of thumb when selling something: it takes someone seeing the advertisement, product, business, etc. between 3-12 times before they will commit and buy it. Obviously one of the ways to make this happen is by following up with a bride via phone and email after your first contact with her.

There is another way to make your wedding business more visible however according to Lisa Barone’s brilliant article, and this is something very few wedding businesses tap into: guest blogging. To guest blog you contact someone and offer to do an article for their blog/website. You write something as a wedding pro that connects to their readers and include an author bio at the bottom that points back to you and your business, including a link to your website. Once the article is live you link to it from your website, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc. Not only does it build links to your website which Google loves, it also tells a bride that you are an expert, and encourages her to look again at your business as a better option than your competition. What do you think?

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How To Avoid Failure In Your Wedding Business

 

beach-kissIt’s been said that failure is easy, but success, that is what is hard. It might not seem like this is true, but as anyone who has found true success can tell you, getting there took a lot of hard work. In fact when it comes to business there are two main factors for failure, not being cut out for the job, and more often than that it is simply a matter of the entrepreneur not sticking with it and doing what it took to make their business a success.

In his article Ashkan Karbasfrooshan points out yet another important factor to building a successful business: timing. Timing in your business, from when you start it to when you launch new products isn’t just a gamble. In fact if you gamble with timing you are very likely to fail. Timing is a matter of strategy. You have to watch wedding industry trends and figure out when the best time is to move forward. Rule of thumb in building a wedding business: don’t re-create the wheel. Pay attention to the market, and take a cue from other successful wedding businesses. What is your biggest hindrance right now to being more successful in business and how can you overcome it?

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Easy Ways To Save Money In Your Wedding Business

 

Piggy_Bank_and_ChangeWhen you first start your wedding business it is easy to get so overwhelmed with all the expenses that you go a bit crazy with the spending. You don’t have to do this however. Sure, there are some unavoidable expenses and some are pretty high, but it is crucial to keep your expenses in check in order to make it to next year.

So how do you build a business and control your expenditure so that you have a smaller overhead and larger profit? Probably the most overlooked way to control spending is to always make sure that each and every expense you incur is required for you to make more money than you will spend. This means keeping “fluffy” expenses such as paid vacations, and expensive printing ink (unless that is part of your signature products) to a minimum at first. Do you really need that 20th camera lens now for the sake of the artistic part of your photography or could you wait a year or two?

For more tips on keeping your business expenses lean in the first few year make sure to check out the article on Noobpreneur . What do you think? Is there a way you can cut your expenses to build a more profitable business?

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How To Easily Do A YouTube Video For Your Wedding Business Blog

 

Woman_On_LaptopCreating a video for your wedding business blog isn’t that hard. I know, it sounds like a time consuming process. Perhaps if you had to make your video like a movie shown on the big screen it would be, but the expectation for videos on blogs, especially those hosted on YouTube are a bit lower. The reason for doing a video in the first place is to mix things up and keep your audience of potential brides interested in your content, and therefore your business.

One of the absolutely easiest video formats is to do a screen capture or slideshow video. This means that the quality of the visual will be extremely high, your face doesn’t have to appear on the screen, and all you have to do is figure out what you want to say, and record your voice over the content. Gregory Ciotti does a great job in his article explaining the basics of the three main types of video formats used for blogs so check it out! Have you tried using video yet and if so how is the reaction from your audience?

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How To Reduce Price Quibbling

 

angry-brideIt’s a well known fact: brides quibble about prices with almost every single wedding vendor. Why is this the case? Well obviously a part of it has to do with the economy. The main issue however is rarely mentioned.

Brides have trouble with your prices not because they don’t want you to make a living, but because they don’t understand the value of your product or service. Telling them how wonderful you are isn’t going to solve the issue. The question isn’t how great you are, it’s a question is why they need you in the first place. Every bride has this underlying belief that they could do everything themselves if they had the time.Geoffrey James points out in his article that what you have to communicate is why they need you. What are you helping them accomplish? What is the pain (real or imaginary) that you are solving? Why would they be happier going with you rather than anyone else?

If you can answer these questions and incorporate it in your sales pitch in an upbeat way, you are going to see a decrease in brides who try to talk your prices down below what you are worth. When a bride understands how much she needs you and how valuable your product or service is, she isn’t going to be as concerned about the bottom line. What do you think?

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To Do Something Big You Must First Fail

 

Business_Man_In_MudIf you’re here it’s probably because you are struggling with getting your wedding business off the ground and want to turn it into a successful business. Failure is something that most businesses deal with at one time or another. The earlier they deal with failure, the stronger they grow as long as they understand the importance of that failure.

Overcoming failure is a strength that proves your metal. It means you are passionate about your business and understand the importance of trying something that may or may not work. Business is a risk. Those who are successful at it have learned how to turn the fear of failure into motivation to do something big. Sure there are people who have become successful overnight. Some of them last, but those who have had success handed to them do not. As Jonathan points out in his article you’ve got to dream big, and then follow through on that dream. Don’t let the fear of failure slow you down, let it motivate you to do something great. What do you think?

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