Effectively Marketing to Today’s Bride

When you think of what brides were like 30 or so years ago and then compare them to the brides of today there are some major definable differences. One of the first things that stands out is how they shop for their wedding. It used to be that brides would go window shopping and plan their weddings based on the businesses available in their town. Of course there were some who would also go to the nearest big city as well.

Today’s bride will usually start searching online. In fact search is the key word here. Even if she doesn’t have a clue of what she wants she will start searching for ideas as soon as there is any possibility that she will be getting married. With the advent of Pinterest a brides search for ideas has become much more public and obvious. According to Michael Schrage’s article this consumer action to search endlessly is a direct result of Google.

When you build your website, or do any marketing you have to keep the fact that today’s bride is a searcher at the front of your mind. If she’s searching online she want’s ideas and pictures. She wants to know more about your business than just what you do and how to contact you. Basically you have to sell brides the artistic vision behind your business, not just the fact that she needs a wedding dress or photographer. Gaining a bride as a client means that you have convinced her that you can do her wedding better than anyone else out there. That she needs YOU. What do you think?

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Just Because Brides Aren’t Buying High End Services Doesn’t Mean They Won’t

Sometimes it is hard to figure out what it is that makes a bride choose one business over another. On an even closer to home front, it can also be hard to figure out why brides repeatedly pick one package deal over another within the same business.

When you see a trend in the way that bride’s buy from you track it. Not just so you can offer one package as the “popular option” but also so you can figure out how to upsell your products and services. Every business wants to sell their higher end packages. Sometimes creating a new package full of all the bride favorites in a higher end package is all it takes. At other times you simply need to re-think the order that you list package deals according to Brian McGovern on his blog.

Don’t ever just assume that because no one is buying your high end product that means that they aren’t interested in the product. In fact they might just choose something else because it was the first thing they saw, making them emotionally attached to it. Have you ever played with the order your wedding business package deals are listed and if so, what have the results been?

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How To Help A Bride Get What She Really Wants

Choices. Every bride is faced with a million choices and let’s face it, she really doesn’t know what to do with all of them. She wants a beautiful wedding and so assumes that she wants all the bells and whistles. In reality however she couldn’t afford the bells and whistles and probably doesn’t even need them. So how do you sell to this bride?

Sean points out in his article on Psychotactics.com that what consumers really need is your recommendation. They need to hear about everything, but once that happens they need someone else to steer them in the right direction. The last thing you want as a wedding business is a bride who impulse buys from you and then comes back for a refund. Find out what she really needs, create a custom package based on one your regular packages and throw in some extras just for fun. You want a happy bride, and the happiest bride is the one who got what she needed, and got some extras that gave her that extra wow factor. What do you think?

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Sick of Blogging With No Results? 3 Actions to Boost Your Bride Visitors

Question: How do you get more brides to your website so that you can capture those leads?

Hi Stephanie,

We have watched your newest videos for wedding vendors and had a question for you. You said that the “37 Ways to Wow” really got the ball rolling for your company. My question is, how did you get your site in front of brides so that they could opt in to receive the guide?

We are struggling tremendously with getting in front of brides. We are doing the social media thing, blog posts, guest blog posts, hired a company to help increase our SEO, and are working on inbound link building. We are also trying to network with other vendors and ask them to share our posts and we will do the same for them (we feel our posts contain valuable content and are worth sharing), although this is not going well at all. We seem to be working harder than ever to put out great content and get our site out there, but it’s just such a struggle.

Did you do anything different to get your website seen so that brides would sign up for the report? And how did you advertise the report on your site?

Thanks for your help!

Jamie

Answer:

Hi, Jamie!

From what you’ve written and from a quick look at your website and blog (you’re in EXCELLENT shape with WordPress, by the way!) you’re doing all the right things to generate website visitors.

But there are two essential elements missing:

  • Local keyword phrases.
  • Consistent blog posts every week.

#1 – LOCAL KEYWORDS

What do brides and grooms who are searching for a DJ in your area type in to the search engines to find one? That’s what you want to come up for on page #1 of Google so that they can find you, and to do that, those words must appear on your website and blog.

When the search engines look at your website and blog, they can only read text to figure out it’s about. Right now, I could only find one local keyword phrase on your website (“wedding DJ in Massachusetts and New Hampshire”) which is probably a little broad.

The local keywords that will bring in more targeted couples, and be easier to rank for, are probably terms like, “Andover DJ,” “Andover weddings,” or other terms that contain the names of your region, county or large cities that get a lot of searches, but don’t have as much competition as “Massachusetts DJ.”

You can use the Google Keyword Tool to find out which search terms get searched for the most.

Put those specific keyword phrases on your website in the following places so that you get found for those terms. (I saw you have the YOAST plugin, so that should make it easy.)

  • Page titles.
  • URLs.
  • Tag and categories.
  • Blog post titles.
  • In the text on your pages.

WARNING: Don’t overuse local keywords on your site. Google just cracked down on this in the latest Penguin update. When in doubt, make sure it makes sense and is useful for your website visitors first; don’t just cram keywords in there for SEO reasons.

#2 – CONSISTENT BLOG POSTS

You should post a 100-200 word article about local wedding topics and containing local keywords at least once per week, preferably 2-3 times. You’ll see your website traffic steadily increase over the next month or so.

#3 – EARN BACKLINKS & GET SHARED

Guest blog posts on other websites with a link back to your site are a great way to earn backlinks. Make sure you write up each wedding you work, credit and link to the vendors, and send them a link to your blog post.

Especially make sure you send the bride and groom a link to your post of their wedding. This earns backlinks and get traffic and shares on social media naturally.

You can also improve the effectiveness by making your Bride Bribe offer more prominent on EVERY page of your website. Consider adding your email opt-in form to a popup with Pippity or Popup Domination, which work well with WordPress.

Get more FREE info about how to capture more bride leads in our free video series here.

Keep up the good work!

Stephanie

Got a wedding business question you want answered? Email Stephanie & Jeff and you could be the next Question of the Week! All personal details about your identity will be removed unless you specify otherwise.

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Why Your Wedding Business Has To Give A Bride What She Needs

 

Wedding_PhotographerThe best marketing tactics don’t come from the perspective of “let’s sell brides something” but rather from the business asking themselves “what do brides really need.” Whether the bride knows that she has a problem that needs solved doesn’t matter, as long as she truly does need your solution.

Let’s think about it for a minute. Before cameras were invented there were a lot of weddings, but no photographs. In fact, very few of the rich and famous got paintings done of their wedding day. Now days it is unthinkable to not have a photographer take a million pictures of your day.

People don’t want to be sold something they don’t need. In fact they hate businesses which ignore their needs and focus on selling. The only way you can really reach the bridal market is to reach them where they are at: in love, planning a huge party, and in need of a ton of advice, products and services. For more ideas on how to reach customers and market to them based on what they need make sure to read the article by Emily Heyward. What do you think?

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How To Sell MORE To Brides

If you want to sell more products and services to your clients, you’ve got to learn how to trigger your client’s A young girl holding a fan of cashbuying response.

The thing most of us don’t realize is that buying is always EMOTIONAL.

Think about the last time you made a big purchase.  A car, a house, a wedding ring.  What drove you to part with that hard-earned cash in your pocket?

A big, compelling emotion.

Maybe you buy a sexy new car to bring back the feeling of youth…or so that you can stop worrying about getting into an accident in your old beater.    

Maybe you buy a house to fulfill the promise of the American dream…or to escape the frustration of being a renter.  

Maybe you buy that ring because you met the love of your life and can’t imagine living a day without her…or out of fear she’ll leave if you don’t pop the question.

In any and every case we buy on emotion.  We act to move toward pleasure or away from pain, or sometimes a combination of both.

Sure, we rationalize our purchase and use logic to justify our actions afterward.  But in that moment when we pull out our wallet or swipe that credit card, we’re firmly in the grip of a powerful emotion.

But don’t take my word for it.  Studies of buying behavior performed by the researchers at MIT, Stanford, and the Sandler Institute (along with countless others) show that we all buy for emotional satisfaction.

So if you want brides to buy MORE you’ve got to get them in an emotional state.  What is the bride’s biggest fear?  What are her frustrations?  What are her hopes and dreams?

When you understand this and connect on these emotions, you’ll trigger the buying response.

The Digital Wedding Forum blog just started an awesome series of articles to teach wedding photographers how to sell more albums using this principle, but all of us can learn from these examples.  You can check out the first two here:

7 Tips To Selling More Albums Part 1
  and Part 2 

How can you use emotions to book more weddings and sell more?

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Are You Selling Complicated to Brides?

A nervous bride biting her fingernails

Ever notice how neurotic brides can be?

Yeah.  So you’ve noticed.

In most cases, they’ve been dreaming about their wedding day for years, and the day is all too swiftly arriving.  They’re full of hope for the future and fear that they’re going to mess it up.

What Brides Really Need

In this highly emotional state, decision-making, always a painful process in even the best circumstances, becomes excruciating.  After a while the multiple choices involved in planning a wedding feel like a prison sentence.

Brides want planning a wedding to be…Simple.  Easy.  Fun.

Is it fun for brides to pick from 107 different packages?  52 different locations?  832 different first dance songs?

No.  In fact, if you try to sell her something complicated, you’ll lose her.

In the wise words of Seth Godin, “You can’t sell complicated to someone who came to buy simple.”

Read the whole article here: “The Answer Is Simple

Sell brides SIMPLE.  Make it easy and fun.  Eliminate the complicated and your profits will soar.

How has your wedding business gained by simplifying?

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