marketing consulting for wedding professionals    Writing, branding, logo design.newsletter design

Optimizing Your Photos Just Got More Powerful

March 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment

You know where I stand on how powerful the photos on your website are. If you somehow missed this, read this article on labeling your images for SEO.

In a nutshell…

Today’s bride search by images.

You have to label your images for the search engines to find them.

Well I have just discovered a new tool that will make those images even more powerful. It’s called ThingLink and allows you to embed links, music, videos and even more labels in your images.

Here is a slide show that explains it all

Here it is in use, Click on the icons.

Style shoot for local wedding magazineI

I can’t wait to play with this over on Wedding Dish.

Here are the details.

It’s free.

It’s a breeze to use.

It has analytics!

You can install it on your website as a WordPress plugin.

It connects with just about anything you could want from YouTube and Vimeo to Sptify and Sound Cloud, Facebook and Twitter.

The images on your website just got even more powerful.

Yes, it adds another step but oh it is sooooo worth it.

Filed Under: Announcement, Marketing, Social Media, Website marketing, wedding marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What TODAY’S Bride Wants

February 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I had a long conversation yesterday with one of the smartest, most savvy planners I know. She doesn’t chase celebrities. She isn’t obsessed with landing only the luxury market. She is obsessed with only one thing, growing her business. She is a firm believer in knowing your market and giving them what they want in the way they want it. She keeps her finger on the pulse of today’s bride. Consequently she and her team do several hundred weddings a year.

Our conversation revolved around how today’s brides and grooms are different and how savvy wedding professionals are changing to meet the new demands.

She was telling me about a conversation with a Tuxedo shop. Rumors are rampant that the men’s formal wear industry has hit on hard times because grooms aren’t renting tuxes anymore. Here is what the tuxedo shop owner had to say to that…

No, men are not wearing tuxedos for their wedding BUT that doesn’t mean they aren’t renting garments from tuxedo shops. They don’t want tuxedos, but they are willing to spend a premium price to rent exquisite suits. They don’t want to wear their granddad’s monkey suit, they want to look like Harvey in Suits or Matt Bomer’s character in White Collar. They love fashion but it has to be today’s fashion! What’s more, they are more than willing to pay a premium price to get it. Our shop owner said it has taken him 4 years to find the right mix of vendors to fine tune his offerings. Now he gets calls from all over the country to rent his offerings. #winning’

  

 

Then we got on the topic of the coming upheaval in wedding invitations. Gulp. This goes directly to the generational differences of today’s brides and their peers group.

As a planner that manages several hundred weddings a year, often managing even the RSVP list for her brides, she is the one that has to make those calls when the RSVPs don’t come in.

Do you know what she is hearing these days? “Invitation? I didn’t get an invitation.”

Do you know why? It isn’t that they didn’t get an invitation, it is because the don’t check their mailbox, sometimes for a month at a time!!

This even goes so far as one guest responding with “I didn’t see an evite.” The poor child didn’t even understand the question, something important coming by snail mail wasn’t even in her vocabulary.

I have news for you, the day is coming when they won’t even catch it in email. I see text message save the dates on the horizon.

“Hey, check your mailbox. I’m sending you an invitation!”

Are you selling what today’s bride wants or are you still trying to sell what you want?

For all of you that are crying in your coffee right now bemoaning the end of an era, I feel sorry for you. I have said for as long as I can remember, our target market is ever changing and ever evolving; you either keep up or suffer the fate of the dinosaurs before you.

In short,

Catch the wave~

                 or drown.

Filed Under: Announcement

Your Best Referrals Come From Other Vendors and I’m Going to Show You How to Get More

February 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

You have heard me say it when I talk about Bridal Shows and in articles like The Art of the Suck Up. One bride may send you one or two referrals, but a fellow wedding professional can send you dozens and even more over the course of your relationship. Isn’t it time you made it a bit easier for them to refer you?

I met with my friend Scoobie Schneider over lunch last week to talk about his new company, ShareWed.com. In a word, it’s brilliant!

Just imagine how much more often you would refer your fellow vendors (and they would refer you) if it was just a mouse click away? Bunches, I’m betting.

This system is so seamless and so intuitive that you will not believe it. Working with partner Glenn Cooper on the tech (FYI, Glenn works as a consultant for companies like Cisco Systems and Microsoft ) they solved the puzzle.

Here is how it works:

You meet with a bride and as a natural part of the conversation you ask her what other services she needs.

You plug her name, date and email into the system and all the vendors in your network pop up, conveniently sorted into categories.

You scroll down the list and click on your favorite vendors that fit her needs and the system sends her an email with your hand curated recommendations.

What could be easier?

Oh, ya, if that vendor is already booked for that date, they are marked out in red. Brilliant!

Not only that, but the vendors you referred get a heads up by email or text. Now they know you referred them. Good stuff.

Oh heck, why don’t I just let them explain it.

 But Christine, there aren’t any other vendors in my market yet :-(

That is a good thing! Huh? Because they have an affiliate program. For every vendor that signs up for ShareWed using your affiliate link, you get $20. Sign up your 6 favorite wedding professionals and you have recovered your costs for the first year.  

That is why I am posting this. I want my savvy readers to be the first in their markets. I want them to be the ones that benefit the most. There are coins to be made here; not just from the referrals but from the affiliate program too! I want you to be the ones to make that money. You deserve it.

Now, not only are you building an air tight, seamless referral network of your favorite wedding professionals, but you are basically doing it for free. What’s not to love.

Compare that to what you pay for listing type sites like the Knot or Wedding Wire where you hope brides see your ad.

Go on, click the link. You know you want to.  While you are at it, share it on Facebook and Twitter.

 

ShareWed

 

Filed Under: Announcement, Building Your Business, wedding marketing, What's Hot Tagged With: , ,

Good Ideas From Sunday’s Bridal Show

January 9, 2013 By 2 Comments

Well I kicked off the 2013 bridal show season by visiting a very large show that I am very familiar with.  I have been involved with this show through 3 owners, as a vendor, an employee, a visitor and then there was that one incident with the emergency room. Suffice it to say I have seen it grow, shrink and start to come back.

2 things struck me, the number of people who grabbed me to say, “Look at my booth! I’ve been listening!” and boy they had! The signage was spectacular, the promotional collateral was really good and the booths had some serious POP.

Here is one piece of collateral that I first saw last year and it worked so well that he kept using it. You all know that giving show discount coupons is a great way to get bookings directly from the show but aren’t sure how to do it. Well here you go.

AccentDesigns bridal show coupon

Another thing I saw for the first time was using reviews, blurbs and awards is booth signage. Apologies for my craptastic photography skills.

Good bridal show booth design

In addition to the use of the reviews and blurbs on the signage, the layout with that fabulous image in the center makes you feel like you are walking down that aisle. Of course there was a video montage playing on that flat screen. It was a corner booth which is why the screen is pointing in the direction it is; to capture attention before they even rounded the corner. Simply a great use of the space available. Bravo, Scarritt-Bennett!

Something else of note. I was touring the show with a woman friend of mine. I had gotten there early and done my work so she and I grabbed a Bloody  Mary(yes they have a bar, love it!) and just walked the show. There were a lot of people who didn’t know either of us, many of whom, for some reason assumed we were a couple. What really impressed me was their total acceptance of the prospect of doing a wedding for a couple of middle-aged women. Don’t ever tell me that Nashville isn’t progressive!  Very proud of my hometown.

Filed Under: Announcement, bridal shows, wedding marketing Tagged With: , ,

Ingela Floral Design

December 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Ingela Rushkin had a beautiful website that she had worked very hard on to perfect the graphic design. The problem was that while lovely, structurally it was outdated and not mobile responsive. Additionally, it wasn’t something she felt she could update herself. So the task at hand was to recreate her site’s look and feel on a much better, mobile responsive platform.

Click the image to visit Ingela’s new site.website for ingela floral design

Filed Under: Announcement, Clients, Portfolio Tagged With: , , ,

Let Think Like A Bride Help You Advertise to Brides That Get it

November 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Are you ready to kick it up a notch?

Wedding Dish is rocking and rolling these day and you need to jump on board. I trust you have been following my posts about the little blog that could. Now it is time to share the joy.

I will be accepting advertising on my blog for brides, the Wedding Dish. You can choose from a banner ad in either 300px x 120px or 300px by 300px; a text link in the resources box, or an advertorial.

If you aren’t familiar with the Dish, it is a quirky little blog for brides with the same no BS style you have come to trust on Think Like A Bride.  It has been around since 2006 and appeals to a wide spectrum of bride. It has a curation style highlighting all areas of wedding loveliness. I highlight not only the most luxurious but also the DIY. One thing you will notice is that I am very honest with brides as to the realities of DIY and I always advocate for professional wedding vendors.

If there is one thing that I have learned in my 20+ years working with brides, it is that even the highest budget brides are still going to scrimp in some areas and that the brides sticking like glue to a $4000 budget are going to splurge somewhere. That is why Wedding Dish spans the spectrum from the Plaza Hotel to the backyard in Des Moines. I firmly believe that any bride, no matter her budget, can have the wedding of her dreams.

Something else I have always done and will continue to do, is tell brides the truth about what goes on behind the scenes. It is my belief that part of the reason brides stammer and shutter at the cost of our goods and services is because no one is telling them the truth about what goes into it. Leave that to me. Let me carry the banner like I did with this recent post or this one from a few years back.

Honesty. What a concept.

If you have come to the point in your business where it is time to advertise to brides

contact me for rates and policies

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Filed Under: Announcement, wedding marketing Tagged With: ,

Tip for a Successful Blog I Learned from The Wedding Dish

October 25, 2012 By 1 Comment

I don’t know if you have been following the changes taking place on my other blog, Wedding Dish, but I thought it was time to share it here.

I started the Dish back in 2006 as a way to speak directly to brides. At the time Think was subscription only mainly because I didn’t want brides to read it but with a name like Think Like A Bride, I knew that they would find it. So I gave them somewhere to go.

Wedding Dish began to take shape as a curation type website long before anything like Pinterest existed. Rather than post entire montages from real weddings and style shoots, I would post single topic articles. Think posts on guest book alternatives, winter wedding decor and cakes. I think you get the idea.

Frankly the dang thing was just rockin’ along and I was passionate about it and having fun.

Then I had some things happen in my life and I just couldn’t face another happy-happy wedding post. Oh, I tried, but I just didn’t have it in me. I posted here and there but without any spirit or dedication. About this same time the web design and consulting part of Think Like A Bride really took off and I didn’t give the Wedding Dish another thought.

Recently, I started seeing a bunch of pins from the Dish come up on Pinterest. So I wondered to myself, ” What the heck is this all about?” Well OMG! That little puppy had been rockin’ along on its own steam, never losing a beat. In fact, the monthly visitors had doubled. WHAT??

Now mind you, this site had laid there unloved and unkempt for nearly 2 years. With all I have learned about website design in that time I took one look at it and declared it ‘butt-ugly’ and a visual embarrassment!Old wedding dish header

Over the course of a weekend I gave it a complete overhaul, new look, new theme, fully mobile responsive.

Wedding Dish

Then I started to really dig into the stats to see what was making this such a successful blog and share those tips with you.

Well, it is everything I have been telling you regarding web design, how brides search, how to create content and how to optimize it all.

Tips for a Successful blog that I learned from the Wedding Dish

  • Start with great structure. I swear by WordPress and Genesis.
  • Know your target market and speak directly to them.
  • Split your site between image heavy posts and keyword rich copy.
  • Optimize your images like your life depended on it.
  • Give your visitors very easy ways to share.

If you thought none of that mattered, then explain to me why I have images that have been pinned over 65,000 times?

this image was pinned over 65k times

Keep watching Wedding Dish. I have once again found that passion and am ready to rock this thing. As you may have seen, I am taking submissions for images, detail shots please. Contact me at weddingdish@thinklikeabride.com or check the Submissions page for the full details

Filed Under: Announcement, Back to Basics, Building Your Business, Inspiration, Website Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Where is the Wedding Market Heading?

August 23, 2012 By 6 Comments

ALERT: The following forecast is guaranteed totally Fairy Dust free.  If you are looking for pretty pink unicorns move along. If you want the truth, read on!

Next year is right around the corner. Every January brings a whole new crop of Brides-to-be embarking on the wedding planning journey.  Now is the time to be planning your marketing strategy for 2013.

I think we all learned a pretty hard lesson back in 2008 when the wedding industry hit the reset button. Relying on what worked in the past isn’t going to get it anymore.

I don’t know how well the old crystal ball is working these days, but let have a look at some indicators to see what’s up.

the economy

A report that came out this week from the Pew Research Center and quoted in a LA Times article states that the middle class in America is shrinking.

The idea of a large, stable middle class is central to America’s sense of itself. But the U.S. middle class has been steadily shrinking, dropping from 61% of all adults 40 years ago to a bare majority now, a new study finds.

This middle tier of American society also has slipped downward in terms of its income and wealth in the last decade, according to the report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. And it has lost a share of its traditional faith in the future.

Well that’s not good news. CBS News didn’t think so either

Follow it up with this article from USA Today citing the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers

…consumers with the most to spend have just as little confidence in the economy as everyone else, some surveys show. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers shows that the consumer confidence index among those who make more than $75,000 annually has fallen 20% since last year. Even confidence among millionaires has dropped to a nine-month low, according to market researcher Spectrem Group.

Then there is this from Unity Marketing

Recent weak corporate results from leading U.S. luxury marketers – Ralph Lauren (RL) , Coach (COH) , Tiffany (TIF) and American Express (AXP) –have pundits warning the luxury market is headed for a fall.  Here’s why they may be right:

In the third quarter 2012 luxury consumers grew increasingly nervous about their financial status, causing Unity Marketing’s exclusive Luxury Consumption Index (LCI) to plummet.  The LCI measures affluent consumer confidence and has proven a reliable leading economic indicator not just of the luxury consumer market, but the overall U.S. economy. Along with the drop in the LCI, luxury consumers cut back their level of luxury spending during the second quarter (April-June) by 8.2 percent from first quarter.  The decline in spending was even more pronounced comparing year-over-year, down 26.9 percent.

So, it looks like the recovery is a bit murky to say the least.

Yes, but at least people are still getting married, right?

Yes but not as many and those that are in no big hurry to do it.

Again from the Pew Research Center.

Marriage Rate Declines as Marriage Age Rises.

A new Pew Research Center report confirms that marriage continues to lose market share among Americans to other arrangements, such as cohabitation or living alone. According to census data cited in the report, barely half of adults ages 18 and older are married– 51% in 2010, compared with 72% in 1960.

This is part of a larger study on the Decline of Marriage

There is the research studies and data, none of it happy.

Here are some personal observations.

Young women still have the dream of a beautiful wedding. Why else would there be so many “Someday wedding” boards on Pinterest.

Something else I have noticed from Pinterest, Facebook to for that matter. Wedding professionals are pinning bigger, more elaborate wedding photos at an alarming rate while brides are pinning more modest images with a comment like “How can I DIY this?”

You want to survive in the coming year?

Do what I have advocated for the last few years:

Be their fairy godmother by showing them how YOU can help THEM get the look they want at a price they can afford by making a few changes here and there.

Trust me, they will reward you with their signature on the dotted line.

 

 

Filed Under: Announcement Tagged With: , , ,

Get Married. A Brilliant Website Redesign

July 17, 2012 By 8 Comments

Get Married has relaunched with a total reformatting and a brilliant website redesign.

The new format is more akin to a Tumblr site than to the big bulky mega-site of old. The look is fresh and fun– taking its cues from what is hot in weddings.

The part that struck me as brilliant is that they have given it a face: Heather. Even though, the site is still owned by a large corporation, Taylor Corp, it has the look and feel of being the love child of a single person. This is a hallmark of the most popular wedding blogs from Style Me Pretty to Offbeat Bride to Thirty Something Bride.

Brides want to feel that they are listening to/connecting with a real person that they can relate to, not a corporation. Putting a face and personality behind this site gives it that feel.

As of today, I don’t see any advertising on the site but I would imaging that is the goal in terms of moneitization. Face it, a company the size of Taylor Corp isn’t doing this just to inspire brides.  My guess is that they want to establish the site and gain a following before trying to cash in.

You may remember that they had a public crash and burn last year. This reformatting and website redesign is such a radical change from the old format that I doubt that brides will even realize they are connected.

Wedding vendors and potential advertiser may be a different story. They will have to go a long way to prove the validity of the new concept and it’s performance before they can earn back the trust of those that got screwed by the previous collapse.

 

getmarried website redesign

 

Filed Under: Announcement, Blog, Branding, Inspiration

Bridal Salon Website

July 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

JJ Kelly Bridal Salon in Oklahoma City knew it was time to update their website. Their wish list included a simple, elegant look to reflect their clientele and an e-commerce function to sell discontinued samples from their stock. They also knew how important it was to have a website that functioned well on all mobile devices.

Using WordPress and the Genesis Framework (affiliate link) we created a completely new site that captured everything they wanted in an easy to use, easy to update, easy to navigate site.

As always, click the image to check out the site.

Bridal Salon Website for J J Kelly Bridal

Website designed for a Bridal Salon

 

Filed Under: Announcement, Ecommerce, Portfolio, Website marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
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