internet marketing

How to Handle a Bad Review

December 23, 2011 By Christine 1 Comment

I don’t know if you have been following the recent string of articles over on eWedNewz concerning reviews on wedding websites. If not you can catch them here, here and here.

What started as a story regarding the sale by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia selling their interest in Wedding Wire grew to be an indictment of Wedding Wire and it’s review program. Whether you like Wedding Wire and it’s review program or not isn’t really important to my point. They are only one of many review programs out there and I happen to think Wedding Wire does a pretty reasonable job.

Here is the thing, you are not going to please everyone.

Yes that is what we all strive for, but it isn’t going to happen. So on that rare occasion when someone is upset enough to take finger to keyboard and put it out there, how you react is of vital importance.

The first thing you want to do is step away from the keyboard. DO NOT post a response in the heat of the moment. Your feelings are hurt and you are probably angry. Give it a day or two to filter.

Then post one or two reasonable sentences. Something along the line of

“I am sorry that we did not meet your expectations. We are actively reaching out to you via private channels to help resolve these differences.”

Of course you will need to reach out to them, but the point of the post was to let anyone reading the bad review know that you stand behind your work.

What you don’t want to do is post some long, rambling explanation or string of excuses. That is just going to start a very public pissing contest and that is the last thing you want.

Be sure to contact the hosting website to have the review verified or moderated. Sometimes this works. Sometimes.

What if you have no idea who this bride is?

Yep it happens. What if a competitor that is sneaky, malevolent and underhanded lies and posts a bad review on your page?

First you will contact the hosting website to have it verified. That can take forever and they may not even take your side. In the meantime, you need to respond to the review.

“I am not finding any reference to such an incident in my records. Would the poster please poivide her wedding date and location so that I may attempt to resolve this issue.”

Now you have publicly called them out and the ball is in their court. If they continue without providing the information they look like fools. You have also done a lot to CYA.

The main thing you want to keep in mind is that today’s bride is savvy enough not to base her opinion on just one bad review in a long list of stellar ones. In fact in some ways, it makes the other ones look more real. If every single review is Amazing!! Stellar!!! Way beyond expectations!!!!! they start to look a little fake. You know, like those late night infomercials.

Come on now, you do that yourself when you read reviews.

If worse comes to worse and you just can’t take it or find a way to resolve it; contact the website and have yourself removed entirely from the site.

Since this whole bruhaha started with a Celebrity planner’s bad review on Wedding Wire, I reached out to Sonny Ganguly, CMO at WW to be sure you could have your business removed. Here is his response:

In regards to your question, a wedding professional can inactivate their WeddingWire account by sending a request to our Support team at support@weddingwire.com. Our team will then inactivate the wedding pro’s account and remove personal information that they entered from the Storefront.

Ok, so that was kind of vague and didn’t really answer my question; so I followed up with this:

I need just one point of clarification please.

Our team will then inactivate the wedding pro’s account and remove personal information that they entered from the Storefront.

Would you remove ALL information regarding said wedding pro? All traces of them, including reviews or would you leave a basic listing?

I still haven’t received an answer to that one yet, but I will post it to the comments when/if I do.

If nothing else comes out of this dust up and the press from it, I do believe that WW will be more closely watched with regard to the review process. To quote one of their, umm, associates “That’s a good thing!”

As I was writing this I saw this come through my Twitter stream

@idillionaire: If you’re not making enemies, you’re not doing well enough.

Filed Under: Announcement, Social Media Tagged With: advertising, internet marketing, social media, website design

Marketing to Grooms

June 3, 2011 By Christine 1 Comment

Now that we have established this new dynamic going on in the wedding industry, specifically grooms having more input, how do we use it?

First things first, you have to decide if your service or product is one that is likely to fall in their laps. Some things like gowns and flowers probably won’t. Face it, you show a groom a bouquet of all white carnations and another of white phaleanopsis orchids and most are going to see two white bouquets. Just about everything else is fair game.

Next, let’s take a look at where he is mentally on this whole thing. He is probably going to have an attitude of “Well heck ya I can do this and I’m going to look damn good doing it! i’ll knock this out of the park.” Underneath all that is doubt and fear at entering an arena in which he has never been. Add to that the knowledge that this is the first really big thing he has undertaken in his budding role as “husband” and the outcome will forever color the opinion of not just his wife but also her mother and sisters. Let’s not forget that he still wants to look manly to his bros. No pressure.

Men Shop Differently

Much of the marketing we do aimed at women can best be summed up as ‘wooing’. We strike her emotions and become her friend. She buys the team, he buys a commodity.

Your first goal will be to put him at ease. A little humor will work wonders here.

You will want to clearly state the benefits of your product or service. Even go so far as pictograms and charts of why you are different. Remember, the nuances that she would see must often be pointed out to the men. Also, men are visual.

You need very clear calls to action. Don’t just list your phone number or contact info. Put in a big button.

Give them clear steps to follow.

know your budget

know your guest count

choose your style (see options)

review our menu suggestions (click here for menu)

set a tasting

book your event

Here is the deal, women shop a bit like the students in a Montessori program learn, by seeking out and discovering on their own. Men want a clear orderly list of actionable steps to success. Your goal is to give it to them.

In the end, your couples are probably going to make the final decision together, but an increasing portion of the leg work is going to fall on him. You need to be ready.

Disclaimer: I am not talking about all men, nor am I talking about all couples or all women. I am in the most general terms trying to help you be ahead of a trend I see on the horizon. As with most trends, this is happening first in the more urban areas with the couples least bound by tradition.

Filed Under: Ask Christine, Trends Tagged With: internet marketing, Marketing, Marketing to Grooms, Trends

Wedding Experts and Web Content

January 13, 2011 By Christine 3 Comments

This has been bugging me for a while so prepare yourself for a rant!

I have been following a couple of discussions over on eWedNews, one about wedding portal websites and another about so-called experts in the wedding industry. Gah!

First off, have you done any bride-style surfing on the internet lately? Seriously type in any search string that a newly engaged woman might use, like “How to start planning a wedding”? Every damn one on the first page for that search is some self-serving drivel written as “keyword content”. There were 5,240,000 results. The 7th listing was from a website called MamasHealth. For real! What makes them experts in wedding planning? The 8th result was for a site called the Power of Home Biz telling you how easy and lucrative becoming a wedding planner is. For crying out loud, the Knot didn’t even make the first page! Not that they are an example of great content, but still.

This is the world your brides step into the minute they get engaged. It is one loaded with hucksters and shysters and carnival barkers all wanting a piece of the supposedly rich, recession proof wedding market.

If you take the time to read some of this stuff you will quickly get an understanding of why today’s brides are so confused/deluded/insane.

Once they get past the basic search and start hitting the blogs to gather information to put into their binder they get hit with fairy dust stories of spectacular weddings on a buck .95 budget. Whoops, that bride with the over the top wedding on a $5ooo budget neglected to mention that her sister is a photographer on a par with Jasmine Starr, her aunt owns a posh boutique bakery, her uncle Louie is a caterer to the stars and her best friend is Martha Stewart’s assistant. But hey, she did it for $5K, so can you!!!

How did all this happen? Greed. Greed for search ranking.

In a post Google world, search ranking is the golden ring and content is king. Google is after all only an algorithm, it can’t discern the quality of the content, only if it has the right searchable keywords. Therefore, any article with the right keywords, no matter how bad the information, can get to the top of the list. To the searcher, that gives it credibility. Google has judged your content to be worthy and declared you an expert. Pffffft! Give a huckster a list of the right keywords and they can game the system to make themselves look like an expert in any field, not just this one of badly informed brides. Go MamasHealth!

With the portals, well they aren’t much different. They want your money, they use their website stats to show you how wonderful they are so you will advertise with them. How did they get those stats? Content. Have you ever actually read any of it? Most of it is bullshit with dash of recycled garbage and a touch of fairy dust. When brides read it, one of two things happen: either the site completely loses credibility or worse case, the bride buys into the bogus information. The first group won’t bother to look at vendors on the site and the second group you don’t want as your bride anyway.

Then there are the bloggers. I’m not talking about all wedding bloggers. Please don’t think that I am.Some of the only really credible, honest information today is found in the blogs. There are two kinds of wedding bloggers. There is the vendor that chats about their business and the weddings they have done as a way to market their business and educate brides on their business and their part of the industry. Good on you. Then there are the ones that are just trying to keyword load and will post anything they can think of to wrap around a keyword. My all time favorite was the DJ that was telling brides if your baker wouldn’t guarantee you that your cake would be baked the morning of your wedding, move on and find a reputable baker.

Then there are the probloggers. Generally these guys are pretty good. After all they make their living off this and know where and how to find the real experts to quote and inform. They have a little work to do on budget honesty, but all in all, most are pretty good.

I know this was a long rant and I appreciate you patience in reading it. Unfortunately I don’t have an answer for you…yet. I just wanted to make you aware of the lay of the land in a Google world.

Filed Under: Blog, Rants & Raves Tagged With: internet marketing, search optimization, Website traffic, wedding experts

Why the iPad Matters to Your Bridal Marketing

November 8, 2010 By Christine Leave a Comment

Simply put because it is the future.

Check this blip about the new Glamour magazine app

Each digital issue includes the entire contents of the magazine, PLUS exclusive extras like video, photos and app-only fashion picks you can tap to purchase straight from your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone! You can also save your favorite fashion and beauty items–complete with details on where to buy them–for easy shopping reference when you’re on the go.

This may be just the thing that causes the revival of bridal magazines. Oh stop, I know that Glamour isn’t a bridal rag but they are owned by Conde Nast, so is Brides. Which means that Brides has access to the tech, if they are smart enough to use it.

Why carry a bridal magazine that weights a bunch around when you can just read it on your iPad or iPhone? Double score that you can just click to buy or link to a vendors website. Sounding better? What’s better, since it is in the app store it is now an impulse buy. Bored on the train to work? Buy the latest Bridal porn. Done.

The iPhone is great but the screen isn’t really big enough to really give the reader the same feel of a high end print glossy. But the iPad does.

Next you are going to tell me that, yes the app lets you view the entire magazine but you have to pay for it and no one will pay for content. Au contraire my friend!

Check out this article from the New York Times

The News Corporation said on Tuesday that it had gained 105,000 paying customers for the digital versions of The Times and The Sunday Times of London since it started charging for access to their Web sites this summer.

The company said about half of those additions were regular, active subscribers to the newspapers’ Web sites, iPad application or Amazon Kindle edition. The rest were occasional purchasers. Another 100,000 readers have activated free digital accounts that are included in print subscriptions to the papers, the News Corporation said.

“These figures very clearly show that large numbers of people are willing to pay for quality journalism in digital formats,” said Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, the London-based arm of the News Corporation that publishes The Times papers.

The advent of the iPad has given a glimmer of hope to the currently on life support print media.

So there are two things I want you to think about:

First if you are considering putting any money into print, make dang sure that their presence on the iPad is what it should be. Don’t let them get away with telling you that they have a website. Tell them you want something like Glamour has put together.

Second, make sure you back up your purchase with a website that will show up on the iPad when a bride to be clicks on your ad. That means one thing—NO FLASH–. Yes I know it’s pretty, but it is totally useless with the format that today’s brides use to access the web most. You may just want to read this to be sure your site is where it needs to be.

The iPhone and more importantly, the iPad are not fads. This is particularly true with the higher end brides.

Check out what Mary Schmidt has to say about the future and the iPad.

Filed Under: Marketing, Trends, Website marketing Tagged With: advertising, bridal marketing, internet marketing, Think Like A Bride Articles, Website marketing

Seriously, How is Your Website?

September 9, 2010 By Christine 1 Comment

I posed that question in a recent email blast to my subscribers and members. Hopefully it got you thinking.

Today I ran across a recent survey done by online wedding planning site, MyWeddingWorkbook.com

Here is the meat of the survey:

Wedding websites, wedding-related blogs and online search engines are the first three places brides look for ideas, followed by online wedding forums, bridal magazines and shopping at bridal boutiques and salons.

“Generation Y and the Millennials have been using computers and the Internet practically their entire lives, so it only makes sense that these are the first resources they use when they start planning a wedding,” said Jeff Kear, owner of My Wedding Workbook.

In fact, when brides were asked what will be their main source of aid throughout the wedding planning process, the Internet (17.8%) ranked just behind brides’ fiances (28.4%) and their mothers (21.3%) – one of the more interesting statistics from this wedding planning survey…

“It’s no surprise that wedding guidance and shopping are definitely the two areas of most interest for online brides,” says Kear. “However, the recent recession has made brides even more reliant on the Internet for assistance in these two areas. Brides are more budget conscious than ever, so they are planning more events and details themselves and need more guidance. They are also spending more time comparison shopping and browsing for bargains, and the Internet has become the default venue for comparing prices and vendors.”

If your website is old, tired and out of date you are missing this generation. They are on the internet all day and have been for years. They use it for work, they use it for entertainment and they use it to shop and research. They use it on their phone and on their iPads. They have seen the best that the web has to offer.

In light of these new statistics, it’s worth taking a look at your current web presence.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Website marketing Tagged With: blogsites, bridal marketing, internet marketing, Website marketing, Wedding Business Success

Why Does Everyone Want to Be in Wedding Planning?

August 6, 2010 By Christine 1 Comment

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’

Filed Under: Blog, Website marketing Tagged With: internet marketing, Website marketing

How Are You Using Your Stats?

June 3, 2010 By Christine Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Blog, Website marketing Tagged With: blogsites, internet marketing, SEO, Website traffic

Why Are You Carrying All The Marketing Load

June 2, 2010 By Christine Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: internet marketing, social media, Think Like A Bride Articles

Social Media Seminar in Nashville

March 26, 2010 By Christine Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: Announcement Tagged With: internet marketing, social media, twitter, Wedding Business Success

Marketing to Grooms

Men Shop Differently

Wedding Experts and Web Content

Why the iPad Matters to Your Bridal Marketing

Seriously, How is Your Website?

Why Does Everyone Want to Be in Wedding Planning?

How Are You Using Your Stats?

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