I love hearing other marketing experts’ points of view, so I jumped at the chance to have wedding marketing expert, Debby Dowling provide a guest blog post for me.
Debby is the owner of Effortless Bridal Marketing, which offers “done for you” bridal marketing tools for wedding professionals to stay connected with brides while remaining fresh, relevant, and vital to their customers’ needs. With these tools, including an automatic biweekly newsletter service that simplifies marketing in less than 15 minutes a month, wedding pros reach more brides and earn more money even if they don’t know a thing about marketing.
Debby is a seasoned marketing professional with a focus on communications, branding, direct marketing, and market research. With over 20 years of experience, she is now a successful entrepreneur specializing in healthcare, fitness, and wedding and bridal industries. Check out Effortless Bridal Marketing, the only completely done for you, use any way you want, wedding content tool to use in your blast emails, blogs, Facebook posts, and Twitter so you reach more brides in less time.
No one likes to be told what to do or why he or she should like something or someone. Yet, that’s exactly what traditional marketing does. And that’s why traditional marketing alone doesn’t work anymore.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t promote your product or services. Not at all! After all, as a business owner, it’s your job to tell everyone about you. You just need to start an ongoing dialogue that allows you to keep the conversation going.
It’s all about the like, know, and trust factor. We buy from people, not from companies. And it can take engaging with a prospective bride 3, 5, 7, or upwards of 12 or even more times before s/he’s actually ready to buy from you.
That’s why if you don’t keep the conversation going, you’re actually going to lose out on sales. In fact, 80% of all sales are lost to lack of follow up. Think about that! That’s a ton of money to lose out on just because you didn’t keep in touch on a regular basis.
Thank goodness for the internet! It gives you lots of ways to keep in touch without picking up a phone or sending out individual emails. Send out a regular newsletter, or create a fan page on Facebook and invite people into the conversation. Start twittering and invite comments, or add a survey onto your site and allow brides to post comments. These are all great ways to engage.
Use your conversations as a way to educate your brides about you, your services, and the industry in general. But also use them to find out why s/he likes you. Or better yet, to find out what s/he doesn’t like.
I know that sometimes it can be hard to hear, but it’s valuable information. Think of it this way: if you don’t know what’s wrong, how are you going to fix it? But this is also your opportunity to find out more about your clients’ needs and wants. Not only will that help you develop new products and services, it will also help you fine-tune your marketing.
This isn’t just a one-time thing either to get a conversation going with just a few prospects. You have to keep doing it on a regular basis. Yes, it takes time and effort, but the information that you’ll receive is priceless.
That’s why you can’t stop just because you think you’ve learned what you need to know. Or that you’ve figured out what customers like and fixed what they don’t. Or that you’ve got more important things to focus on.
WRONG!
You have to keep the conversation going and continually draw new brides in. You never know when s/he’ll be ready to buy. Plus, it’s how you can keep a pulse on how others perceive your business. But even more important is the fact that when people are talking with you, they are vested in you. These are the people who feel such a connection to you and your products and services that they are spending their valuable time communicating with you. If you stop, that connection is lost. Which means they are less likely to continue to buy or refer. In other words, less money for you.
So keep engaging your brides and get those conversations going!
What do you think of Debby’s post? How do you keep your potential clients engaged> I’d love to hear your thoughts here on my blog, so please post for me!
