Wedding Marketing Strategy: Ads That Get Response

What's the number one thing the wedding professionals I work with want (and will always want) from their advertising? More response!

Wedding advertising is a bit different than typical print advertising. While much of the advertising you see in national magazines aims to build awareness or establish or reinforce a brand, wedding advertising almost always aims to prompt an action (i.e., encourage a bride to call or visit your web site). Consequently, when creating advertising for your wedding business, it's useful to look closely at what works in direct response media (e.g., direct mail and direct email) for guidance.

(Of course, you can also apply these principles to any direct mail, e.g., postcards and mail-out brochures, that is part of your marketing to brides.)

To learn more about what works in direct response from a professional direct response expert, check out the following excellent article from Marketing Profs (a site by marketing professionals and marketing professors -- all about marketing, only about marketing).

Four Ways to Raise Direct Mail Response Rates

A preview of what you'll learn in the article: four effective ways to prompt response include making a special offer (give them a reason to respond); spotlighting a benefit instead of highlighting features (e.g., "look like a movie star on your wedding day," not "professional makeup services"); ask and answer a question of interest to the audience ("think you can't afford a custom-made gown?"); and use humor.

For the full scoop on how each works -- and those dreaded mistakes you want to avoid! -- be sure to read the full article.

Opportunity for Wedding Professionals: Tax Cut

As a small business owner myself, I feel your pain when it comes to tax time. I just discovered a suite of online and software services that look they'll help me save money and time on taxes -- and thought I would pass the information on to you.

As everyone knows, H&R Block offers tax preparation services for the general public at affordable prices. And, most people are probably aware of their do-it-yourself TaxCut Products -- software you can use to prepare your own taxes at home.

I just learned, though, of a few intriguing options that go beyond tax software. The most interesting: H&R Block's Signature Online Tax Product. Basically, this option combines the convenience of doing your own taxes online (at any hour of the day!), with the security of a signature from a tax professional on your submission to the IRS. Sounds like a great blend of convenience and confidence!

For general tax information, H&R Block's site also offers a free Tax Tips area.

30 Day Free Trial - RapidFax

When a client or a vendor asks for your fax, do you uncomfortably reply, "we don't have one?" Would you like to have a fax, but not the hassle and expense of an extra phone line? Do you have a fax machine, but worry about the confidentiality of faxes arriving on a shared machine?

RapidFAX offers a great, affordable solution. Fax right from your computer -- save the time, expense and hassle of printing a document and then faxing it by machine. What's more, you can receive faxes in your email -- confidentially, reliably, without the expense of an extra phone line. (And because they don't have to go through a machine, they're clearer, too!)

Best of all: they offer a 30-day free trial! Click the link below to take advantage of this offer:

30 Day Trial Fax-to-Email

Please note: The Wedding & Special Event Yellow Pages has been sending and receiving faxes via email for over three years now! We love the time savings, cost savings, space savings (no machine to find room for!), and the easy permanent archiving of important faxes. We recommend you give RapidFAX a try!

Wedding Marketing Strategy: Bridal Show Tip

If you're participating in a bridal show this season, odds are you've put a great deal of effort into having the best possible display and handouts ready. You've no doubt paid close attention to staffing. You've probably updated your pricing, and maybe even already considered branded attire and other key details of the show-day experience.

But, have you pre-planned how you'll handle the leads you receive after the show is over?

By not marketing to bridal show leads, many wedding professionals miss out on big part of the value of participating. Are you one of them?

It can be hard to find time to prepare and send follow-up information in a timely fashion. Once the show is over, there is the scramble to get back to regular business, and deal with inbound calls from brides who saw you at the show. And, there's all the other work that piled up while you were prepping for the show. It's not hard to see how follow up mailing/emailing to your list of interested brides can slip through the cracks.

The solution? Make preparing your mailing a pre-show activity. Design a postcard, brochure or letter for follow-up mailing, and have it printed and ready before the show. That way, all you'll have to do is apply a label and send once you have your list.

Wedding Marketing Strategy: Testing

Advertising agencies use typically use testing to identify the most effective creative approach before making a large media buy -- helping to maximize the return on their clients' marketing investment. (The term "testing" refers to trying out different versions of the same ad - each with one modification to be tested - on small segments of an audience, to gauge the effect the different versions on the response.)

Now ... I suspect you are thinking, "Yeah, that's all great, but, how does that apply to me? I don't use an advertising agency, and I couldn't possible afford to create multiple ads!" However, because most testing is done with direct mail (e.g., postcard) or direct email campaigns, testing is an option that is feasible and affordable for even very small wedding businesses.

Keep in mind that postcards can be purchased in small quantities for as little as $.10 each. So, while it may seem a little counterintuitive to create multiple versions -- knowing that ultimately only one "winner" will be used -- the investment can be small in comparison to the potential return.

Consider an example. Let's say that instead of developing one postcard idea and spending $125 to design and print it, you develop three cards, each with a single variation versus the others. (Examples of things you might test: headline, special offer, image used.) Your investment for the three cards will be $375 (or, $250 more than just producing one card).

Let's further assume that the testing allows you to improve your response by as little as one half of one percentage point. So, if you send out 1,200 total cards over the year, you get an extra 6 responses. Assuming you book even 20% of your qualified prospects (a relatively low success rate), you'll get one to two additional bookings just by improving your marketing piece.

For most wedding vendors, one or two additional bookings translates to at least 6-10 times the $250 extra investment. And, you might be able to use the same card for two years -- meaning your $250 testing investment could pay back 20 or more times its value.

What's more, the results of your postcard test will provide valuable insights you can apply to print advertising and brochures -- meaning that the return on your investment goes well beyond the extra bang you get from your postcard campaign.

Of course, if you use email marketing and invest a bit of time and energy in testing, you can keep the cost of testing even lower -- potentially generating additional bookings from your email campaigns with virtually no additional investment.

For a great examination of A-B testing, follow this link:

Optimize Your Marketing Campaign with A-B Testing (U of Utah)

Fonts and Printing: Nice Little Article

The printing shop I use for postcards and business cards sent a link to this helpful little article -- it contains great rules of thumb for fonts in printing that are not obvious to the average marketeer:

Ten Tips for Top Type

Marketing Tip for Wedding Professionals: Reconsider Direct Mail

Most wedding professionals I know have dropped direct mail from their marketing mix -- believing that it has been replaced by cheaper, "free" direct email and their web site.

This creates a huge opportunity -- an open microphone, really -- for those who still use direct mail. The deluge of brochures, letters and postcards from vendors that brides once received from wedding professionals has dropped to a trickle. That means that wedding pros who DO send direct mail no longer face serious competition for the bride's attention. Their marketing piece can stand out like never before.

What to send? I recommend postcards. Two reasons: They're inexpensive, and they don't have to be opened to have impact. (Not to mention that postcards are handy to have around for distribution at wedding facilities you work with, bridal shows, etc.)

Today high quality postcards can be purchased online for under $.10 each! That means that a 200 piece mailing to qualified names (known brides who are looking for your service) from a publisher or show operator will only cost you about $70.

What should your postcard include? A memorable image, ideally some kind of offer, and a clear referral to your web site. The offer is important because it incents the bride to call you. DON'T forget to monitor your web traffic after your mailing "drops."

(And if you haven't read my previous tip about the necessity of a quality web site ... start there first!)

Before You Advertise Your Wedding Business ...

There is one crucial step any wedding business must take before pursuing other promotion: invest in a quality web site.

Why is this so important? Today's bride expects it, and will be unlikely to consider a vendor that doesn't have a web site. She appreciates the empowerment the web has given her to make more choices and do more sorting of her options before "investing" in a phone call.

What's more, it's becoming less and less likely that a bride who responds to your ad will do so by picking up the phone -- the next step she'll take is to visit your web site. That means that if your site isn't up to par, you stand to lose much of the business you're drumming up with your advertising. (And worse ... you may falsely conclude your ad's not working. More on this to come.)

Bottom line: until you have a web site that accurately and appropriately represents your business, investing in advertising doesn't make sense. Start with a quality site -- and, once it's ready, be sure you do back it up with sufficient advertising so that brides can find your home in cyberspace.

Marketing Tip for Wedding Professionals

To kick off this blog, a tip for wedding professionals about marketing: whatever your budget, do as much marketing as you can, reaching as many brides as possible, and, ideally, reaching them multiple times.

Why? Unlike most other industries, you have a very limited opportunity to reach your customer. She's only going to book one DJ, florist, reception site, etc for her wedding -- once she does, she's exited the customer pool forever (well, for all intents and purposes, anyway). So you need to be sure she knows about you during the brief period she's in wedding planning mode.

What's more, she's being barraged with information from multiple sources. So, you need to reach the same bride multiple times to get her attention. (Advertising industry rule of thumb is that it takes 7-10 impressions for a message to "stick" with a viewer/reader. I'd estimate it's more like 10-15 for a bride, because they're reading magazines, attenting bridal shows, and viewing web sites in a very compressed time frame. They're seeing so much advertising, it will take more views for any one ad to stand out.)

If you're budget-constrained, stick with options that get you the most bang for your buck. Look for locally targeted publications and bridal shows. (Be sure to evaluate the distribution of any publication you consider, as well as the marketing plan of any bridal show, so you have a good sense of who they're reaching.) Try to buy yourself repeat exposure to the core group of brides most important to your business.