subject: How to Sell Your Bridal Services by:Kenneth Huber [print this page] I own a Philadelphia based wedding company that offers Photography, Disc Jockey and Videography. My company serves over 200 weddings a year.
Right off the bat you need a webpage, which you probably already have. If not, I would certainly look into having one designed for you or if you are able to use WYSIWYG applications such as Dream Weaver or Front Page design a page by yourself. You will need to register a domain name, I would certainly suggest something with a ".com" suffix. There are many registers out there that you are able to register with. I advise you to register your website for as long as possible, ideally 10 years. The reason {{{being|for this}, is that Yahoo and various other search engines take note to how long your domain name is registered for as one of the pieces to their algorithm for how they will rate your website. The higher your rank, the higher you will appear on search results, the more clicks you get, the more revenue you earn.
Now that you have your site up and running, begin finding as many places to submit it as possible. I would not pay for advertising at first. I suggest doing a lot of research on particular websites prior to deciding to shell out big bucks for advertising with them. See if they offer any type of trial run and see how much money you generate from them. I like to maintain a one to ten ratio, for every advertising dollar I spend, I ideally like to receive $10 in gross revenue. With certain websites, this ratio would be almost an impossibility, therefore I would eliminate those websites from my consideration. There are certain large wedding advertising sites that charge over $250 per month. That would breakdown to $3,000 annually and I can say with almost certainty that you won't receive thirty thousand dollars in gross revenue from those sites. There are many places that you can advertise your wedding business for {{{free|no cost} or small fees. If you are paying for advertising, make sure the site has a lead program. The lead program will send you potential brides that are looking for your business. There are a few pay for each lead programs out there, but I don't like those much. I like the membership sites that offer unlimited monthly leads and they automatically email those to you.
After you have the wedding sites you want to advertise with, you should start some website promotion. Try to get as high on Yahoo and Google's ratings as humanly possible for the keywords for your business. I try to be as high as I can for Philadelphia Wedding Videographer currently (April 9th, 2009) my site is ranked #2 on Yahoo and #22 on Google. I am striving to improve my ranking on Google as much as possible. The best way to improve your rating is to get your link out to as many relevant and reputable sites as you can. Many site webmasters would be more than happy to exchange links with you. Another good promotion method is to join forums and be an active participant. You can write articles and post them on the internet, such as this one. SEO is not the main purpose of this article, do a couple Yahoo searches on SEO for more methods of improving your site rating.
Finally you have your page up, well designed, and advertised. There are the other advertising techniques. You have a gamble with doing bridal fairs. Bridal fairs can be excellent for drawing in new clients, but it is extremely rare to close the deal at the actual bridal fair. I try to setup consultations to get the potential clients to come to my location and occasionally I am willing to travel to their location. The problem with the consultations is that many brides do not show. They have so many things going on at the bridal fair I guess they just forget about the consultation they scheduled. I will usually send an email and will call to confirm the meeting on the day before. Some brides give excuses why they cannot make it, but most simply do not show and do not call to cancel, it can be very frustrating. I usually get a booth at 8 bridal fairs anually at $750 each. At the normal show, I setup 40 consultations, of the 40 consultations, 5 brides will actually show up, of the 5 brides that showed up, 2 brides will book my services at an approximate price of $5,000. Breaking the numbers down, I spend approximately $6,000 annually on bridal fairs and I receive $80,000 in gross profit. The bridal fairs are a viable advertising option for my business. Of course, bridal shows being a good option for you would depend on the price point of the service or product you are selling. If you do decide to advertise at a bridal fair, I would strongly recommend attending a bridal fair prior to participating, if you have never been to one. Just to have an idea of the handouts that the vendors give and the advertising strategies that they use. I would also suggest getting a few hundred brochures made and thousands of business cards. I would also suggest running some type of promotion for the day of the bridal fair. If your item or service is an inexpensive item, give them a promotion to buy it there on the spot. If you are offering an expensive item or service, compute a large discount you can offer that will get the potential clients intrigued and thinking they are getting a good deal. As they should be with the sale you are offering. Personally for my bridal fairs, I offer a very big discount off of my normal rates.
Last and certainly not least is the mostimportant advertising method is to keep in touch with previous customers. The name of the game is referrals. Referrals are the best type of advertising, simply because these are potential clients that are referred to you by someone they know and trust. This type of potential client will book with you almost (((100%|one hundred percent}}} of the time, just dazzle them with your work and present yourself right. So keep in touch with your previous clients, occasionally send an email asking how married life is. I keep monthly emails ready to send out to all my brides that got married in a certain month. I do this just to wish them a happy anniversary, and keep in touch.. One last thing is to give everything you got for every wedding and you will be successful.
About the author
Kenneth Huber is the CEO of Ken's Entertainment Group, a Delaware Valley based wedding company, which specializes in Photography, Disc Jockey and Videography services.
