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.