Why Your Wedding Business Can’t Survive Without “Buzz”

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Creating buzz is something that the big names do well, no matter what industry they are in. “Buzz” can be summed up as something that people get excited about and spread the information by word of mouth. An event with lots of buzz is the thing that everyone and their brother is talking about.

The reason this is important is because if you can create major buzz about your wedding business and then carry through on delivering what everyone is excited about you are going to be loved by brides all over. So how do you create buzz you ask? By creating an event, product, or wedding package that people have to love. Usually it is something that happens only once, is only available for a short time, and has the ability to catch the notice and interest of most people.

A super simple way to create buzz is by writing articles that generate a ton of interest. It’s not easy to do, but the long term benefits are huge. Pricilla’s of Boston was successful for decades due to the number of celebrities they created wedding dresses for, and when that celebrity status died away, so did the business. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth in creating long term success in business. For more information on ways to create buzz and track the results make sure to check out this article by Mark Schaefer. 

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How To Target Your Advertising Dollars to Attract the Right Couples for Your Wedding Business!

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- Guest post by Jim Parsons

When couples get married, they want something fabulous! Unfortunately, fabulous often costs money. In some cases, a lot of money.

This is a common question/statement among the brides our company speaks to on a daily basis. As a business owner, I face a constant challenge of understanding these concerns, but selling a service that is more expensive than the average DJ or planning service in my area.

Not only are we successful at it, but we’ve booked ourselves big time with the following practices. Here’s how we do it:

  1. Target your audience better than any other company who does what you do.
  2. Don’t waste time on leads that do not match your objectives or will take decades of convincing.
  3. Be open to movement in pricing on dates when you aren’t normally busy.

In a bridal market where couples are placing more emphasis on budget, how do we “non-budget” businesses thrive? The key is in understanding how you can use low cost or free internet marketing tools to reach the audience you want to reach!

1) Facebook targeted ads.

With Facebook there are a lot of ways to waste time and money. If utilized properly, it can be a great tool for narrowing down your market and reaching ONLY clients who you’re specifically trying to reach.

Facebook’s cost per click ads allow you to specify gender, location, age, working class or income, relationship status and more.

Most people who’ve researched Facebook ads already know this. What they might not know is that you have to make sure the content in your ads is specific enough to weed out clients you DON’T want.

If you’re looking for Friday night events, offer a “Free Gift for Friday DJ Bookings” in your ad headline. If you want to book more long weekend Sundays, consider something similar. It might get you the odd Saturday inquiry, but it targets the nights you want business.

2) Free or low cost listing sites that focus on your profile and communication with clients — NOT the fact it’s free.

There are tons of sites you can create a profile on. Wedj.com, weddingwire.com, weddingvibe.com… and we suggest you list there if you want to. But, where we succeed is by focusing on the sites that allow you to really target your message and communicate directly with the client if possible. Demonstrate your expertise!

Sites like TheWeddingBidders.com work well for low cost listings that allow you to market ONLY to the clients you want by communicating your specific, unique message and offering a quote or availability to whatever client suits your needs best.

If they don’t fit your market, your desired date, or your business profile, you simply go on to the next one who does. There are multiple listings going on at once, so you can find a date that works with your schedule.

3) Offer an irresistible deal to your local hotels.

Having a few hotels or venues in your back pocket is great. But everyone is trying to do that. Try something different.

Contact local hotels and venues and let them know that you’d be willing to offer them a fantastic bonus for referring clients on off dates. Sure, you’ll take regular referrals as well, but let them know that you’ll really go the extra
mile with bonuses on off event times.

It’s easier for the venue to remember your name on an off date because for them, there are not as many clients to refer, either. It’s a much more one-on-one situation. You’ll be the “Friday guy” or that “Sunday company we call” instead of one of ten DJ’s they refer on a busy Saturday.

Try these tips and you’ll find it much easier to target the right brides for you!

Jim Parsons is the owner of Equinox Sound and Entertainment Inc and CEO at www.theweddingbidders.com, an online planning site that provides a solution to the issues many brides and vendors are facing in today’s changing bridal and wedding economy.

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Making Facebook Advertising and Your Wedding Business Page Work

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If you’ve ever tried Facebook advertising you know that you’ve got a 50/50 chance of it working. The thing about Facebook is that people want to interact, learn, and well, be social while they are on Facebook. What they don’t want is to have their chat with an old friend interrupted by an advertisement. As a result Facebook is working on revamping their advertising to try and make the ads more relevant to its users. Make sure to read the article by Tim Worstall or Forbes to find out a bit more on how the new ads are going to work.

There are some things you need to know as a wedding business however that will help your advertising reach people better. First of all, Facebook is not your billboard. Your ad needs to get Facebook users to interact with you. In other words your ad needs to be social. The more interaction you can trigger with your ad and with your Facebook business page, the more likely you are to be reaching an audience who will actually be interested in using your business.

I decided to do some research and find out what is working for some of the top wedding companies on Facebook. Believe it or not, they didn’t have a lot of advertising spiel going on. The main tactic they were all using was posting interesting pictures. A picture on Facebook generates instant interest. It gives people ideas for their wedding, lets them share it with others which is free advertising for your business, and triggers conversations. Use pictures of weddings you’ve done, wedding bloopers, cartoons, a dog eating a wedding cake, anything that will both help your audience and spark interest in your business. Your caption can help the conversation along as well as pointing people to your website. What do you think?

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How To Get Started Creating A Wedding Business Brand

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Many wedding businesses think that branding their business just means saying “we’re a wedding business”. There is a whole lot more to it however. The first thing you need to think about when considering branding your business is the question “Is the brand’s identity immediately recognizable and memorable?”

Think about other brands out there. For instance, a well known brand which has recently been overhauled is Walmart. Their byline is “Save money. Live better.” Everything about the stores reflects their brand. There is no way you are going to confuse it with another store. You know what they stand for, what types of things they sell, and the price range they use.

When you are branding your wedding business you need to think about how to do the same thing in a more elegant way. A brand includes everything from your color scheme, your byline, what products or services you offer, a distinctive type of customer service, etc. To learn more about what you need to think through when branding your business check out this article by brandingstrategyinsider.com. What do you think?

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How To Reach More Brides By Placing Ads In The Right Place

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Newspaper_and_CoffeeIf you are still placing ads for your wedding business in local newspapers and magazines now may be the best time to stop. While there are still places where printed ads get attention those places are quickly dwindling. Many people are getting their news and information online and if you want to reach your audience you have to be in the same place that they are.

Cynthia Boris shows the statistics about the growth of online marketing in her great article. But more important that just watching trends in marketing is putting what you learn to good use. That also applies to ad formats. Wedding business ads are generally beautiful, but color choices often make them blend in on websites so make sure you are picking pictures that grab attention. What do you think? Is online advertising working better than print advertising?

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Are the Big Wedding Websites DEAD?

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A sign of wedding business failure

David Fuher of the event planning website MyCompleteEvent.com claims that wedding planning websites, including the “big boys,” are doomed to fail.

“Any website that thinks they have a sustainable plan to create revenue by selling advertising or directing traffic to local businesses are simply wrong. A website is simply a marketing tool, not a business model. There has to be a sellable, marketable product behind the web site,” he was quoted in eWedNews.

I kind of have a problem with people using absolutes like this.  Sure, traffic to 8 out of the 10 most popular wedding websites is DOWN according to The Online Wedding Market Report 2010 from WE tv Networks Wedding Report.

That’s significant.  But does it spell the kiss of death for ALL wedding directory websites?  What about the two whose traffic increased?

Whew!  The controversy this stirred up is pretty interesting.  Make sure you read the comments over at eWedNews: “Wedding Website To End: Owner Tells Why They Don’t Work.”
and the follow up “Website Whistle Blower Opens Eyes of the Wedding Industry.”

Are you through with advertising on wedding websites?  Is it still working for you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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How Do I Know If My Wedding Advertising Is Working?

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by Claire Gould 

A dozen pink English roses reflected

The secret to successful wedding advertising

It’s important to work to clear objectives when advertising your wedding business. It can be very easy to place an ad in your favourite local wedding magazine and simply hope it will bring some orders in. That’s what I did when I started out – but it didn’t work too well for me.

Now I generate all the sales I need through my websites, and in quiet times I advertise online via a select few advertising channels (like Wedding Chaos) which actually work for my business.

Your wedding advertising objectives should be realistic, measurable, and flexible. It’s important to have a methodical approach to advertising. Plan carefully, monitor your advert’s performance and evaluate its success rate on a regular basis. Be prepared to make changes to your ads and you’ll know for sure what works for you, and that you’re not wasting your advertising budget on poorly performing ads.

Where to begin

While you read this article, think about your existing wedding adverts or any ads you’re considering. The process of setting objectives is easy to work with and will pay for itself.

Start with the basics: what are you advertising for?

Ultimately it should be to generate a profit from your wedding business. Your advert is a tool to help you achieve this.

Any wedding business advertising has to fit within your means. A small jewelry business will have a small advertising budget – that’s fine! In the case of my calligraphy business I know if I spend too much on advertising I’ll be turning orders away because there’s only one me, with one right arm and the ability to use one pen at a time. Setting objectives is important no matter how large or small your wedding business.

Objectives for internet advertising

The only place I advertise right now is online. It’s what I’m good at, it’s what I know and understand and most importantly it’s what I’ve tested and proved. I ran a series of ads over the summer on Wedding Chaos, testing an ad for a new product on a targeted page.  (See the surprising results of my Wedding Chaos advertising experiment here.)

I planned and tested different advertising placements, creative and formats on the same page and measured these against objectives – it was a great exercise and taught me what really works for my business – and now I’ve set real long term objectives for my advertising strategy which allow me to rein in my spend and still get the conversions I need.

Advertising a wedding business online has its own set of unique challenges. To effectively advertise online you need to advertise on a page with very relevant content.

I advertised a calligraphy product on a web page focusing on Wedding readings and poems – highly targeted and relevant to my business. Website owners design their pages to attract a certain visitor, usually through the use of keywords. Their copy is designed to inform, persuade, educate or discuss a topic.

Wedding Chaos bridal advertising results

Wedding Chaos is a favourite advertising site for me as it allows you to choose the exact page and position for your ad, from information pages on all kinds of wedding related topics.

Finding an appropriate page for your ad is crucial. Then it’s down to numbers: I work to a click through rate of anything from 1% to 0.2% (so if a page gets 1,000 daily visits an ad should get between 10 and 2 clicks).

Measurable wedding advertising objectives

It’s nice to know your advert is doing “quite well”, or that you’ve had a couple of enquiries or an order. But it’s better to know exactly how many visits you’re getting per $ spent on your ad.

Think backwards: how many orders do you need to generate? This works for small businesses who process one order at once, such as a custom jeweller or florist. Does your advert need to generate 10 bookings to fill your diary for a month? Or if you’re selling a product, perhaps you need 1,000 sales to generate your $5,000 dollar profit target?

Taking the former example you can do a quick calculation: 30 enquiries might generate those 10 orders. To get 30 enquiries from your ad you’ll need 300 clicks. At a CTR of 1% your ad will need to be seen 30,000 times. Make sure the page you’re advertising on gets that many views in the right time period for you.

Measuring your wedding advertising performance

Never place an advert and simply leave it. You might as well make a tiara and jump on it. The internet is a vast advertising space with thousands of options for advertising, so do choose carefully and measure performance. Don’t expect to get it right first time either!

How to measure your wedding ad’s success

Measure regularly and in accordance with the size of your ad and objectives. This could be weekly for a small business or hourly for a large organization. If you’re spending $$$ on an ad, measure harder! Don’t take your eyes off that ad until you know it works!

Measure everything you’ve set out in your objectives: clicks, page views, enquiries and conversions. If one goes wrong it can create a domino effect and your whole ad will fail. (If you’re getting 100s of clicks and no enquiries, review your landing page for example.)

Measure your wedding ads across a period of time. For many of us our business is seasonal, so an ad will work less well in winter than in summer. But it may be the case that your ad performs best at weekends, or on rainy days in your state! With AdWords you can even turn off an ad for a day or two if you need that flexibility.

Review your wedding advertising

Whether your advertising strategy has overperformed or not met its objectives, reviewing performance is an essential step.

Just because your wedding advert didn’t generate the sales you needed first time round, it doesn’t mean you should give up. Look carefully at what worked and what didn’t. Adjust placements, creative or landing pages and try again. Compare one ad with another and you’ll get a picture of what works best for your wedding business.

Advertising on Wedding Chaos: further information

If you’re interested in testing your own ad on Wedding Chaos I’d definitely recommend giving it a go. It’s good value for money, the website is so well targeted and gets very high traffic – and you can sign up for a month for starters then see how it goes!

You can also check up on your advert’s performance at any time: the dashboard shows the number of clicks, and cost per click, over the previous 30 days (which is key to making those choices about what is and is not working). Then if you need to, you can change or remove the advert at any time. Credits are only deducted each day the advert is active.

Good luck!

Claire Gould

Claire Gould is editor of English Wedding, the UK wedding blogs for brides and industry professionals. As an ex Marketeer and owner of several wedding websites as well as a full
 time calligraphy business, she knows how the wedding industry works and is happy to share industry secrets with the world!  Rose photo credit.

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3 Types of Bridal Advertising You Should Ditch TODAY

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Even with the recession budgets, the wedding industry still generates over $432 BILLION in US alone, according to stats compiled by The Wedding Report.

A pink bridal show in Siam

Unfortunately, there is a downside to all this potential cash to be made.

Bridal advertising is EXPENSIVE!

The amount you should spend on your advertising costs should be no more than 10% of your desired income.  However, it’s easy to blow this budget with bridal magazine ads costing over $2,500 per page, bridal shows costing $450 – $1,000 each…plus brochures, displays, wedding websites and lead services all clamoring for your hard earned money.

If you are smart you can spend much less than 10%. In fact, using free and low cost marketing let us cut our marketing budget by 75%!

As small wedding business owners, we have to be super smart.  We need to save time and money wherever we can.

Here are 3 Bridal Advertisements That Waste Your Money

1.  Advertising that Gets You ZERO leads.

You know the ones I’m talking about.  We sign up for an ad in a magazine or in the Yellow Pages thinking, Let’s give it a shot.

Months go by and you keep making payments.  No phone calls.  No emails.  No leads.  But we still keep paying because of that old “out of sight, out of mind” thing.

Well, don’t count on the guy who sold you the ad to call you up and let you know that this ad isn’t working for you.  Dump it! 

2.  Advertising that Gets Leads You Don’t Want.

I’m not going to name any names…but there are certain lead generation services out there that are complete trash.

Sure, you get an occasional email inquiry.  But as soon as you name your price, you never hear from them again.

If you get leads from a source…but they NEVER turn into booked weddings, don’t waste your money.

There may also be some bridal advertising that brings you leads that book…but they are NOT the clients you want to work with.  They end up being brides who nit pick over every detail or fight you on the price of every item. 

Do you really WANT these leads?  If not, ditch this advertising. 

3.  Advertising that Doesn’t Give You Good Return On Investment.

This is the bridal advertising that makes you money, but considering how much time, money and energy you have to invest, it just isn’t worth it.

Let me give you an example…

Last year we tried advertising on a very prestigious wedding website.  The high-end brides we want to attract hang out there.  It gets tons of visits each month.  Being associated with this site was a really good thing for our image.

We paid $500 for the year and averaged about 23 visits to our website each month and got only 6 actual inquiries.  We only booked one of them…but they had heard about us from multiple sources and probably would have found us anyway.

Was it worth $500 to book one wedding?  What else could we have spent that $500 on?

Needless to say, we ditched it.

WATCH OUT:  Sometimes the Bridal Advertising Site or Method IS Working…but YOUR AD Isn’t.

I’ve heard a lot of wedding professionals complain about sites like The Knot not generating “good leads.”  This might be true…but the truth is that The Knot gets traffic of thousands of brides.  If your ad isn’t effective or doesn’t set you apart from the competition, brides won’t even see it.  And if she doesn’t even see it, the ad definitely won’t work.

Before you ditch the advertising, consider the situation carefully.  Are you getting good quality leads from the advertising, but they just aren’t booking you?  It could be your advertising message, image or banner that needs work.  Or maybe brides do come to your website and then leave immediately.  In this case, it’s your ad or website that needs a change and not the advertising medium.

Tracking Is Critical

What if you don’t know which bridal advertising is working for you and which isn’t?

I highly recommend putting Google Analytics on your website so that you know exactly how brides are finding you.   Many website services such as BigFolio or Live Books have analytics built right in or allow you to easily add your Google Analytics code.

What about all those non-website leads?

Create a tracking system that works for you.  Record EVERY phone call and email you get, how they heard about you and whether or not they book.  This is the only way to know which advertising investments are worth the money.

Some of our clients create Google Docs spreadsheets to track leads.  I used ACT! For contact management for years.  A lot of DJs use the DJWebMin system.  Some wedding professionals even use old-fashioned pencil and paper.

It doesn’t really matter how you track your leads.  Just make sure you DO IT.  Otherwise, I guarantee you are wasting money.

What To Do Next

If you’re already tracking your lead sources, take a good hard look at the numbers.  If it falls into one of the 3 types of advertising we discussed…DITCH IT.

On the other hand, if you have no idea which advertising is working, start tracking your advertising today.

What’s your biggest question about bridal advertising?  Leave me a comment because I’d love to hear from you!   

Photo credit Seth Mazow

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