This was in my PR file this morning. 
The Dessy Group Introduces Wedding Planning Tools Online.
Now why would a bridal fashion house take the leap into planning? Or, more correctly, to become a
“one-stop shopping” wedding site
I can think of two reasons why.
The big one, at least on the surface, is to keep brides on their site as long as possible. Any couple that decides to use the Dessy suite of planning tools has to do it through their website. Everytime they log on to use the tools or update their wedding website Dessy has the opportunity to expose them to their product line. That is pretty self evident.
The more important piece of this puzzle is that if it catches on, Dessy will now have access to a very deep level of information on its target market. I have a hard time imagining that a company as large as Dessy would have built this thing with out including a few algorithms to pick the data apart. When you spent as much of your marketing budget to build something like this what’s a little more to be able to fully mine the results.
I think that is the the key behind this project. Data.
Will it work? Good question. Wedding planning tools are a dime a dozen on the internet. These are going to have to be pretty spectacular to even get noticed. Had they done it 6 or 7 years ago, maybe.
On a personal aside, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting for this. I’m sure it was never mentioned that they would be taking on the Knot, Wedding Wire and Brides.com. Just sayin’
I am always telling people that you need to know how to read the stats on your website. Today I want to share a great practical application.
Blog Statsical application from one of my clients.
I was chatting with Sarah. Last year I designed a new website for her bridal salon. It seems that she has been watching the patterns emerge in he web stats. She can now tell by her traffic on Tuesday and Wednesday how busy her shop will be on Saturday.
She tells me that she now uses that information to decide how to staff her shop for the weekend. How cool is that?
Tracking your stats is really all about patterns. I have been uploading all the member content for Think over the last few weeks, every time I do my stats skyrocket. So now I am uploading a couple a day instead of spending a day and uploading in bulk.
If you follow the pattern, you can adjust the way you do thing to maximize the benefit.
We are all guerrilla marketers. We have to be. There is no more cost effective way for a small business to get ahead. We will always have more time than money. Guerrilla marketing is fast, nimble, cheap and able to turn on a dime. Done correctly and consistently it builds tidal waves.
One of the best tools is online text content. It is free, searchable forever and it demonstrates your expertise and knowledge. It takes time to create content, to write blog posts, to write article to submit online to tweet and update your Facebook business pages, but you don’t have to carry that load yourself.
Guerrilla marketing depends on human resources,; why isn’t your whole team involved? If you have done a good job of hiring and training your team you have a valuable resource with knowledge of their own. Everyone of your team can and damn well should be expected to participate in your marketing efforts. I mean, after all, the busier your business is the more work ~read hours~ for them. So put their butts to work.
Set your blog up to be a team blog with multiple authors; same with your Facebook Group page. Have your staff tweet under your banner. Have them set up accounts with your name and theirs. (@Think Chris or @BlueBrides_Stacy) Yes you can monitor these and probably should but if you trust these people to handle you money and your clients then you should trust them to handle a little content.
Do you need some ideas on this? All righty. Say you are a bridal salon, each of your consultants should have an authorship on your blog, so should your in house alterations person. Do you have one staffer that you all think of a “Shoe Queen” have her post a weekly shoe column? Caterer? How about you, your chef and your event designer all posting on a regular schedule. For that matter, why not add guest posts from your favorite rental company and your florist?
Wedding planner? Get your whole team involved. Assign each an area of expertise. Just like the caterers, get all of your favorite vendors to guest blog on your website. The more the merrier.
Come on people, this is almost too easy.
Here are the benefits.
- You are no longer responsible for all the content.
- Your staff will be energized to have a chance to express themselves.
- You will be creating stars out of your staff. Just think about all those reality shows, it isn’t just the owner that the audience loves.
- You can give a bit of spotlight to your favorite vendors. Trust me, they will do the same for you on their website.
- The more content you get out there the more keywords.
- The wider perspective you showcase, the wider range of potential clients you have the opportunity to attract.
You can RSVP here
The What
Social Media Marketing for the Wedding Professional:
Blogs, Tweets & Beyond
Tuesday, April 20th 6:30pm – 9:30pm
What is Social Media Marketing and just how do you do it? Blogs: Why you need one, where to get one, how to write effective posts for both readers and SEO, how to read & understand your stats. Twitter & Facebook: How to use both to effectively increase your exposure in the market place and increase your readership. Email marketing: Best practices, effective design and writing, and reading and understanding your tracking stats. Understanding what brides look for online, especially what they look for in your website
Deliverables:
1. Come away with a deep understanding of the new media available.
2. Who can benefit from using these new tools?
3. How to effectively craft a blog and its posts for maximum results.
4. How to put together an effective campaign using a full spectrum of social media tools.
The Who
Christine Boulton, marketing diva to the wedding industry has been writing about, speaking on and helping her clients navigate the new marketing waters since 2005. Her eZine, Think Like A Bride is blunt and to the point, each month bringing her readers the things they need to know about how today’s bride thinks and the tools needed to reach them.
A seasoned veteran of the wedding industry, she not only understands your target market better than anyone else out there, she also understands the wedding industry from your point of view. After all she has been there done that as the owner of a boutique bakery for 20 years and board member of TN Wedding & Events Specialist Association for 10 years.
The Why
Today’s brides are the most tech savvy we have ever seen. Unless you are on top of the changing landscape of marketing in the new media you will never reach the brides you are seeking. You know as well as I do that running your own business leaves very little time to keep up on anything else.
In this 2 hour presentation you will learn more about who today’s brides are, how they plan their weddings and how you need to be marketing to them than in all the other seminar you have attended put together. Her blunt style and take no prisoners attitude is what has people coming back for more.
Christine gives you the tools that every wedding professional needs to have in their marketing arsenal today. You will not only understand what they are but you will walk away knowing how to use them in your overall marketing plan.
Unlike so many dry presentations, Christine’s seminars are all about give and take. Your questions spark her creativity and give you the answers! Nothing is off the table.
The Where
The Place where old meets new in grand style! Top O’ Woodland, Nashvilles most beautiful classic Victorian venue located in the heart of Nashville’s Hippest Neighborhood. You have to see Top O’ Woodalnd to believe it.
Top O’Woodland
Historic Inn and Wedding Chapel
1603 Woodland Street
Nashville, TN 37206
Tuesday, April 20th 6:30pm – 9:30pm
What People Are Saying
I learned so much from your presentation and I am very excited to add some marketing features to my site…I loved your energy, and you kept me very interested in what you had to say as well as caught me up to date with what the way brides think. I will definitely contact you with any questions you truly have the heart of a teacher.
YOU WERE TERRIFIC and I learned more in your seminar than all the other programs I attended on this topic. Also what a DYNAMIC SPEAKER AND ENTHUSIASTIC PERSON YOU ARE…
Excellent…thanks for being so blunt
Very interesting session, had a lot of usable content
I don’t know about you, but I am constantly analyzing the best place for wedding professionals to place their advertising dollar. With the current economy, there have been few sign posts to guide most of us.
The newest development in the world of wedding marketing online brings an interesting new spin to the equation.
When Wedding Wire debuted I praised it as a site that I thought brides would like and find useful; but with new players entering the market on a daily basis it is hard to make solid predictions at the launch of a new site. To be honest, few of them have the brains and talent, unique concept and perhaps most importantly the deep pockets to make a serious play. Well, Wedding Wire had the brains, talent and concept in spades. When they added the clout of Martha Stewart Ominmedia as a partner they certainly picked up the exposure and perhaps the cash.
Now in a rather interesting play, they have added the considerable strength of eHarmony’s wedding assets to the network. Among those assets is the behemoth in it’s own right, Weddingbee. Weddingbee is perhaps the most popular collective blog for brides. Not with out it’s detractors, even the concern over loss of traffic due to it’s sale to eHarmony has not stopped its growth.
So what happens when you bind players this large together in a collective advertising play? One heck of an opportunity in terms of exposure. I am willing to bet that darn near every bride in America is going to hit one of these sites at sometime or another. One ad buy, maximum exposure.
What does that do for the big daddy of them all, the knot. Good question. The real question is are they still the big daddy? That really depends on how you read the numbers.
You know for sure I will be exploring this in a more in depth my for my subscribers on the main Think Like A Bride site next month. I can’t wait to see how much more information, if any comes out between now and then.
I would imagine that by now you know you have to be online and that you have to do it right. It is pretty competitive out there and having a website designed isn’t exactly cheap. So here are a few tips to getting the best website for your needs.
- Know what you want and need before you approach a designer. Have a clear idea in your mind about what role you need this site to play. Is it simply an online brochure? Do you want to use it to build a community? Do you need it to be an e-commerce site? What do you want this site to achieve for you? If your answer to that last one is “more business” tell me how it will do that.
- Know what you want it to look like in terms of style. Bring up 5 or 6 sites you like and really give them a good hard look. What is it you like about them? Is it the visual elements or the functionality that caught your attention? They don’t have to be in the wedding industry, feel free to think outside the box a bit.
- Know what you want to include. Do you offer multiple services that can all be included or would they be better served with individual sites? For example, someone that plans both weddings and corporate events may be better served with two sites, each with a very different look. Ditto for the photographer that does both weddings and sports photography. The people seeking sports photography are going to be instantly turned off by the style that would attract brides. Not so for the photographer that does weddings and family portraiture; those two would easily blend. Think about your target market(s).
- Find a designer that understands your industry. Someone that understands your industry will understand your target market. I can’t over emphasize how important this may be. They are crafting your online presence, if they don’t understand your target market they won’t have a clue how to reach it. The may build you a technically spectacular site and still miss the mark.
- Don’t micromanage it. Trust me; you are the only one that the minutiae will make any difference to. Yes it is important that the overall look is right, that colors and graphics are spot on to your branding and that the functionality is flawless. Moving an image 10 pixels to the left isn’t that important. Trust that your designer does this for a living, they know what works. Just like you would not want your brides to micromanage you, don’t micromanage your web dude.
- Don’t rush it. Take your time in making the decisions in the first 4 points. Don’t put impossible deadlines on your designer. Every site is different and there is always something that has to be worked through. Better to let them work through it and get it right than to have them slap some band aid on it to hit your deadline. Be patient; remember right is better than quick.
- Admit what you don’t know and ask questions. Yep, we tend to be a bit techie but a good web designer should be able to answer your question with an explanation that you can understand. The key here is in the admitting what you don’t know. Just tell them it went over your head and to explain it to you.
I hope this has helped. I wish I had had a list like this when I had my first site designed. Wow, was I clueless. Jesse, if you are reading this, I am so sorry.
If you have been in the wedding industry for more than a nanosecond you already know that the single best marketing is word of mouth. What you may not know is how much word of mouth has changed in just the last few years. Yes it is still about the Courtneys telling the Ashleys who the best caterer is for their wedding but now when Courtney speaks she is telling half a million Ashleys instead of just one. With that kind of reach you had better be a part of the conversation.
I have been talking about the social networking phenomenon for a while now and it may be beginning to bore some of you. I think many more of you are just now beginning to see the light. I can’t go anywhere these days that I don’t get peppered with questions about blogs or Twitter or FaceBook. All of these are the building blocks of word of mouth marketing campaigns. Yes you read that right, I said marketing campaigns. The big boys of marketing recognize that WOM is a tool in their arsenal that can be crafted and managed. Multi national companies like Coke and Proctor & Gamble are sinking money to the tune of 30% of their ad budgets into social media campaigns. They recognize the fact that it is the way today’s consumers get their information. So how does that translate to the small or even micro businesses that are bridal? Very easily, it just takes time.
Basic marketing consists of finding your message and shouting it at the masses and hoping it sticks. You craft the message and they have to take what you say at face value. WOM is essentially based on open two-way dialog. Yes that means you lose some control of your message, but if you think about it you never had any control over WOM anyway. With the tools today you at least get to be a part of the dialog. If you put forth the effort, Courtney and Ashley will invite you into their conversations where you can listen, learn and participate. That is what’s so new and exciting.
There are a lot of you that are building pages on sites like Facebook or are trying to maintain blogs but if you aren’t becoming a part of that community you aren’t accomplishing any thing more than your magazine adverts are. You have to become one of them in order to earn their trust. That is what a WOM campaign is all about. First you have to listen to them and then you have to participate.
You have to respond not just to the voices that love you but more importantly to the ones that don’t. If you find a negative comment about you or your part of the industry respond and find out how you can make it better. Learn from it. It is about becoming a trusted voice from the other side of the table.
But Christine, you say,”I don’t have time.” This is too important not to make time for. Here is a trick that I use called Marketing Blitzkrieg. Take one hour every other day and focus completely and totally on your WOM campaign. Get into the fray on Twitter or the blogosphere. Read as many forum posts or blogs as you can and respond. Most of these give you tools to ‘follow this thread’, use them. What that does is when someone responds to your comment you get notified, usually by email, and you cancontinue the conversation. You have to become a part of the dialog. It won’t be long before you become a recognized part of the community. That is your goal.
Here is why that matters: it’s not what you know or who you know…it’s how well you know them. Wouldn’t you rather do business with someone that you know and trust as opposed to someone based on just their slick ad campaign? Get Courtney and Ashley to know and trust you and they will do the rest of your marketing for you.
Word of Mouth, yes you can finally have some influence on the single most trusted source of referrals in the industry. You just have to work at it.
What is new media marketing? Should you care? Oh no, what is this going to cost me?
The answers to the second two are: Absolutely and a whole lot less then you might think. The first one is a little deeper.
If you haven’t heard about New Media Marketing then you haven’t been paying attention. NMM is about conversations, it is about sharing, it is about engaging your target market instead of just shouting your pitch into the air and hoping it lands on your potential customers. It is about building relationships first and making the sale later.
It’s blogging and Facebook and MySpace. It’s forums and email. It’s Flickr and YouTube and before you know it will be mobile phones too. Advertising has changed in so many ways in the last decade and it is the age demographic the wedding professionals seek that has been at the forefront of this wave.
It is the internet version 2.0. Yes, brides start by looking through magazines but they look there for ideas not their service providers. When it comes time to start connecting with vendors they hop on line. If the only on line presence you have is a webpage that is nothing more than an online brochure you are barely going to get noticed. Classic websites are little more thatn online yellow page ads. Today’s brides want more interaction.
If you read this month’s Bride’s Say column than you have an idea of why this is important. Bride’s today enter the market place with a huge chip on their shoulder. Rather than expecting the best they assume that every single member of the bridal industry is out to screw them. To say the very least trust is an issue. You can thank the few bad vendor and authors like the Fields and Rebecca Mead for that.
NMM is one way to help rebuild that trust as a way of attracting your potential customers. If you attach a blog to your website brides will read it and hopefully comment on it, by doing so they get an idea of what you are like. If it is well written they will get to see how passionate you are about what you do. If you post images of your work to your blog you can get a feel for what your market likes by keeping track of which ones are viewed most. They get to know you and you get to know them.
Another way to build community on line is through sites like MYSpace and Facebook. Build a page and read and post to the group forums there. Become an authority in your field, set yourself up as “the go to guy” when brides have questions about your segment of the industry. This is valuable even if the person you are talking to is neither in your price range or geographical location because brides that fit your demo will be reading these interactions too. There are a lot more lurkers than posters.
Flickr and YouTube are another way to get your name out. Watermark your images and upload them. That gets them out there for the world to see for free. There is a brand new group on Flickr put together by Marc Fuller from Great Wedding Network that is working to become the largest repository of wedding related images on the internet. They are soliciting images from brides as well as pros and tagging them so they are search friendly. I can guarantee that if a bride keeps seeing your name come up as she pick things she likes she if going to take the next step and contact you. Get your images out there and not just the set up shots that you put in the magazines and your portfolio but the quick snaps you take on site. Brides want to see the real thing not just the beauty shots.
Believe me, this is where your brides and grooms are, these are the places they go to do their research. You have to be there in a substantial way. You can’t just play around the edges on these things you have to be genuine and real. They will know the difference. Remember, this is about building trust before the sale and about making connections. Think of it as a 24/7 bridal show with a global reach without the sore feet.
Here is a list of some blogs I read. Some I have included because of their popularity and some because of how well done they are. The first one is the highest rated wedding blog in the states and is written by brides; the rest are the blogs of wedding professionals. Give them a look.
Your business will not grow if you do not market it. Period. End of story.
That’s may seem like a pretty strong statement especially in an industry where word of mouth has long proven to be the number one source of new business. You can’t buy good word of mouth advertising so what are you supposed to do? You can prime the pump a little, that’s what. Build some traffic, create some buzz. You just have to do it in a smart, transparent way.
Here are a few simple truths that when taken together can point you in the right direction
One tenant of smart marketing is to spend your ad money where your target market is looking for you. In our case that is the internet and they are fanatical about looking at and sharing pretty pictures.
Another truth about our target market is that they tend toward being self-centered and narcissistic. They love to see themselves and their choices held up and applauded.
If you applaud their choice they will do the work of spreading the word.
Here are some things I discovered from my blog stats over the last month or so. Recently I posted some wedding photos of the daughter of a friend on my blog along with a link to her photographer’s site so they could see more images. Out of courtesy I sent mom a link. By noon the bride had forwarded the link to a few friends. By the end of the day my site traffic had QUADRUPLED and the photographer’s had TRIPLED. Hmmmmmm. Remember, I only sent the link to one person, but that person cared about those images enough to want to share them.
Something else I have noticed is that my referrals are almost all coming from Google images now. Needless to say I am trying to post some type of relevant image on every post. My numbers continue to climb.
Here is something else I ran across last month: JEEP’s new site was being praised on one of the PR/Marketing blogs I read. Why? Because the have added a page where fanatical JEEP owners can up load pictures of their pride and joy. People will share that which they are passionate about. What is your target market more passionate about than their wedding?
Bear with me, this will all come together. I promise.
I recently came across a site for a bridal salon that posts photos of the “Bride of the Month”. Now don’t you know what that has done for their site traffic? They ask for brides to submit their photo and chose one at random each month. The post a new one each month but don’t archive the old ones.
We are getting closer. Now how do we tie this all together? Use you blog to showcase something every week, our cake of the week, or centerpiece, or bouquet or ‘best looking Groom’ or funniest cake smashing, whatever works for you. Make sure to drop the bride an email asking for permission and then send her the link. They will do the rest.
What’s all this going to cost you? Maybe an hour a week to pick you favorite image, post it and send the appropriate emails. Some of you will need a small digital camera to capture your images, some of you will work through your photographer associates. It isn’t about the best images; it is about consistency and using real wedding material to generate word of mouth. Be sure to have your blog linked to your primary website.
I can hear it now, “How is this going to help me.” Because if you have a large number of woman in the prime marrying demographic check your site, or better yet being referred to your site every week when any one of them gets engaged yours is going to be the first site they hit to set up an appointment. You have been referred to them over and over by their friends, family and sorority sisters.
It is about priming the pump for word of mouth and getting your market to generate the buzz for you.
I talk a lot here about social networking and word of mouth marketing. I ran across a recent report from BIGresearch that finds that 94.2% of consumers regularly or occasionally give advice about products and services they purchased, and 90.8% regularly or occasionally seek advice about products and services before making a purchase. Are you doing anything to harness the power of WOM advertising? Or are you running in horror that someone might post a negative comment?
When you go online to research a product or buy something don’t you always look at the customer reviews? I know I do. I wouldn’t even think about buying something on EBay without considering the Seller’s rating. When was the last time you bought a book on Amazon and didn’t read the customer reviews? What are you doing to give brides a way to check out your fabulous reputation? Hoping they post on theKnot.com? Asking them to tell all their friends? Come on. The only time most people are going to go out of their way to post about you is if you made them mad. “Going out of their way” was the key phrase in that sentence. How about making it easier for them?
Let’s look at EBay and Amazon. When I buy something on EBay I quite often receive a follow up from the seller to post a positive review to up their rating. They always include an active link where I can post my rating. Do you do that? If you did, where would they post? Look at any book on Amazon and there is a link to “Review this Book”. It is right out there, easy to find and for the world to see. Even blogs do this. At the end of every post is a cue to “Post your comment”. It is all about making it easy for the people you please to spread the word. Trust me, the ones you anger will find a way no matter how hard it is. (More on that later)
I met with my web designer and am having him enable comments on each one of my columns. I’m making it easy. I want to know what you think and I want you to know what my other readers think. You should be doing the same. You need to have a comments page on your website. It needs to be easy for everyone to find to both post and view. Since it is on your website you control it and have the ability to delete something if you need to. You also need to follow the lead of the EBay sellers and send a follow up email with an active link to each of your clients encouraging them to share their experience. You have to prod them to post. . By having it on your website, front and center, it lets your potential clients know that you have nothing to hide. “Yes, please review me. I have ever confidence that you will be happily satisfied.”
I have said it often enough that you should know it by heart now; today’s brides trust personal recommendations far more than advertising. How far are you going to use that bit of information? A marketing site I read made the comment that anyone can post one or two positive testimonials, but who can argue with one or two hundred? Give your potential clients the personal recommendation of as many happy clients as possible Yes, there is a good possibility that the random negative comment will show up. I want you to know two things about that. First, like I said if it is on your site you have control and the power to remove it. Second, I hope you will read it and learn from what was said. It may sting but you need to know what is being said so you can fix it. It is how we improve. Better that a disgruntled bride limits her negative comment to a site you can control rather than go completely off the deep end like this young lady did. http://angrybride.proboards107.com/index.cgi Yes I buried that url as far into this article as possible but feel free to post there. I’m all about transparency.
