I’m getting back in the swing of things now and trying to make Wednesday morning my regular blogging morning!

I’m getting asked about advertising on a daily basis at the moment, it seems that people know they need to step up their marketing activity and they see placing a few adverts as an easy way to do it.

The truth is most advertising is dying, and I’m not talking about getting old slowly and gradually fading into the background before disappearing, I’m talking about advertising in the way we know it now, being gone within a decade.

But why is this?

It’s because most businesses who advertise are literally throwing their money away because they don’t understand how the advertising model now works

The old model was easy:

Company Place Advert - Customer Sees Advert - Customer Calls Company - Company Sells to Customer

A seamless four step process. This was good, everyone knew where they stood and if you needed more business, you just placed more adverts.

The new model is a bit harder for people to get to grips with (at the moment anyway):

Company Places Advert - Customer See Advert - Customer Visits Company Website - Customer Browses Company Website - Customer Sends Enquiry to Company - Company Sells to Customer

Its not a massive difference admittedly, but you would be amazed how much those two small steps change things.

You see it’s no longer a matter of how good your ads are, or by how many people they are seen, the whole process depends on your website being effective - FACT. An ineffective website now will be the reason why you, and the many people who call me every week, have seen a massive drop in your enquiries. Don’t be fooled, the economy has nothing to do with it - if you sit back and think there is nothing you can do about it then you’re wrong, my customers aren’t just seeing their enquiries stay constant, they are seeing a big increases! Why? Because their competitors are pulling their marketing as it’s not working so there is less competition and they are cleaning up!!!

Action points:

Look at your website and compare it to the best website in your market, how do you compare?
Make sure you have a call to action or a way of contacting you on every page of your site.
Look at your follow up to enquiries, once you have an enquiry you’ve done the hard work, its much easier to sell to that enquiry than it is to generate a new one!

If you are having problems with any of the above then book a free consultation or give me a call and I can give you some pointers

In addition to this whole process there are no much, much more effective ways to advertise than the conventional print and directory based ads, but thats a different story altogether - we can save that one for next week ;).

Until then

Edward

Advertising, Websites

The start of January will prompt Wedding planning season and all seasoned wedding professionals will know that the months between January and April will make or break their year. With the current financial turbulence, this year is going to be even more important than previously as Brides are going to be fewer and competition more ferocious! With this in mind it is very easy to get sucked into the trap of spending extra money on advertising, but you should hold on to your money - certainly don’t spend it on advertising anyway!

Here is a list of 7 FREE methods you can use to make a difference this year:

1. Joint Ventures - this is the biggest untapped market for wedding suppliers and is really easy to implement provided you are willing to give something back. If you want more information on creating Joint Ventures in the wedding industry then visit the main Evolution website. 
2. Blog - You’d be amazed at how effective a blog is as a means of communication and marketing method. They are seriously easy to set up and don’t have to cost you a penny. For more information on creating a wedding blog & blogging for wedding businesses visit the main Evolution site. 
3. Email Follow Ups - Many people do all the hard work by attracting potential customers, but then let all their hard work go to waste by neglecting to follow the enquiry up. This method can increase your profits by as much as 100% depending on how bad you really are.
4. Business Networking - Ok so this one isn’t entirely free but for the cost of a breakfast its pretty close! Business networking can open doors in various different ways, but you need to understand how to get the best out of it as it can be worthless if you don’t!
5. Advertising - You probably know that I am NOT a fan of advertising! 99% of the time it is overpriced, mis sold and as good as worthless. HOWEVER, there are numerous places where you can advertise free on the internet and this has got to make sense right? It certainly can’t do any harm thats for sure. There is a guide to free wedding advertising on the Evolution site which will give you some of the sites which offer free wedding adverts. Please let me know if you know of any that aren’t on there.
6. Publicity - Getting yourself publicised can really give your business a massive boost! There are a variety of different places you can get publicity, by far the easist is online PR. To get more details on publicising a wedding business visit the main Evolution site.
7. Your Website - If you have a website already, then unless you are in the 0.1% of people who have analysed their conversion analytics and made the necessary changes, it is probable that just by thinking in a different way you can get more enquiries from the visitors you are already getting.

If these points are of interest to you then I would highly recommend that you check out the Evolution Programme which is a step by step guide to creating a marketing plan for a wedding business. The programme will take you through each one of these points in detail and tell you how to implement them in your business. There will be a January Bonus on the Programme which you can keep up to date with by filling in your details below.

Advertising, Blogging, Free Stuff

No doubt you will have heard me say more than once that there are better ways to spend your money than buying advertising and hopefully you have read the Evolution Guide to Free Wedding Advertising. Whilst I stand by this view unreservedly, it is possibly a little harsh on one or two sites

My view on web advertising is that if you divide the price you pay for the ad by the number of click throughs you get from it (use Google Analytics for this) and the result is more than 50p then it is a waste of your money and a majority of advertising sites fall into this category.

There are however a small number of sites who do deliver good value for money on the number of visitors they send through, here is a list of them with a few comments about each one.

Your Wedding In - Yes I know, I know it’s one of our websites so I am biased, but there is noone else out there who offers to guarantee you a set amount of traffic or refund the difference - yet again a case of us putting our money where our mouth is! As a result you are ensuring your budget is being maximised more than if you were buying traffic on Google through their Adwords service. The site is based around usability and useful information from the bride’s point of view which is why the results are so good. If you’re a bit weary about parting with any cash then don’t worry, why not try it out for free? For your free wedding advert follow this link.

Wedding Services 4U - While Wedding Services 4 U isn’t as cheap to advertise on as some sites out there, time and time again my customers stats show good referrals from their adverts on the site. The site itself is fairly basic, but sometimes Brides prefer a more basic experience. 

Wed Network - Whilst the site may not be the greatest and the click through rate isn’t brilliant, the fact that they send you a list of qualified leads in your area makes it a fairly good solution. You need to be careful though as not all supply types get a great response so it can be quite expensive. I recommend trying it our for a few months and seeing how it works for you.

Easy Wedding Search - Easy Wedding Search used to be a free to advertise site and as such built up a large database which in turn generated a fairly large following. They’ve now introduced a charge for each advert however it is only £14 per year so certainly won’t break the bank and should bring fairly good results. You get a few added bonuses for signing up as well so well worth a look.

Guides for Brides - Not so long ago Guides for Brides would have been my number one selection but, although they still get good traffic to their site, the price of the advert needed to generate sufficient traffic has become quite expensive and they are also quite scarce as well. Still well worth a try if you manage to find space for a premium advert in your area though.

If you want to learn more about increasing the effectiveness of your wedding advertising then read our Wedding Advertising Guide on the main Evolution site.

I’d love to hear if you agree or disagree on any of these sites and if you have had good or bad experiences with these or any others. Please use the Submit a Comment option below to give your view.

Advertising

Free Wedding Advertising

Okay so I may have already spoken to most of you and offered you your free advert on our new site which is going live very soon. If for any reason I’ve missed you though you can visit the free wedding advertising page on the main Evolution site and register you details. If you can’t find the page on the site for any reason then you can follow the link on the right of this page in the blogroll section.

If you want more than just a standard ad, then all my loyal blog readers are entitled to upgrade to a featured listing for just £10 for the entire year - this normally costs £99 so you’ll be saving nearly 90%! To get your featured wedding listing contact the office and one of the team will walk you through the process.

If you have any suggestions for the new site then please leave them in a comment below, I’m going to be selecting the best one and giving away a prize to whoever suggested it!

If you want to see our guide to websites which offer free wedding advertising then visit the page on the main Evolution site. 

I’ll be posting another marketing article in the next couple of days.

Until then.

Edward

Advertising, Free Stuff