Wedding Industry Blog

We’re now on to the third part of my “Getting the Most from Wedding Fairs” mini series and by now you should have some good ideas on how you can improve your effectiveness at the fairs you attend. You may have even implemented the ideas in parts one and two already - I’d love to hear about the results you’ve seen.

You’ll be pleased to know that part 3 is a very short part but often overlooked by many and covers that of maximising the number of people you are able to talk to. I see so many people turn up to the fairs on their own and have to stand by their stand all day and get well and truly swamped when things get a bit busy.

Not only is it an extremely lonely experience exhibiting on your own, its also very ineffective. I mentioned in part 1 of this series that having people at your site attracts more people, so if there is just one person manning your stand any more than one potential customer at a time and they have to wait in line. Now the very nature of wedding fairs means that people want to talk things through with you, no matter how much you try and persuade them to leave their details so you can arrange a time to meet or talk at a later date they will keep asking more questions neglecting the waiting prospects who ultimately leave.

Many of the suppliers I have advised on this in the past have sworn to me that its not the case and people wait quietly in line until they are free and they don’t lose out at all. This just isn’t true and all have agreed that they were wrong after taking my advice and trying it just once - there isn’t one exception!

The other objection I hear is “No one knows as much as me about my business and what I do so it’s pointless having them there jsut for the sake of it”. Well I’ll tell you this, even if they know nothing about your business, having someone there just to acknowledge people and ask if their details can be noted down for a telephone call after the fair if they’re not prepared to wait, will vastly increase the number of leads you generate from each fair.

If you are interested in learning more about wedding fair marketing techniques, the Evolution Programme covers various other methods along with varoious other wedding business marketing information. For further details visit the main Evolution Wedding Services site.

General Marketing, Uncategorized, Wedding Fairs

In my opinion, the wedding industry is the best industry in the world to work in - you are working with people on the happiest occassion in their life and, provided you keep your end of the bargain, you should thougroughly enjoy every step of the journey.

Its not all fun and games for a wedding supplier though. For all its good points it has a fairly major downside - the short customer life. In 99% of cases, you will only sell to a customer once, after they’re married that’s it you have to find a completely new person to make your next sale.

That’s the trouble with the wedding industry, successful businesses in every other walk of life build their success on a loyal customer base, but that’s just not possible when you are selling to Brides so you must find another way.

So what is the solution?

There are a variety of different methods that can be used to build a wedding business, but one of my personal favourites is establish and introduce a product range.

If your customer is only going to be your customer once, you need to sell as much as you can to them when you can and to do this, you need to have other products and services to compliment your core offer.

For example a bridal shop normally sells wedding dresses, maybe shoes and sometimes accessories. Shoes and accessories are an absolute must and the shop should also be thinking about things like a guide to choosing your wedding dress, dress cleaning, dress storage, keepsake boxes, memoirs, a guide to keeping you wedding dress and anything else that you think could be added and sold.

Lets say the average sale value of your wedding dress was £1000 and you made 50% margin giving you £500 gross profit per customer as standard. Implementing this strategy would give you the following process and potential profits:

£12    Guide to Choosing the Perfect Wedding Dress
£500  Wedding Dress                                                                      
£50    Bridal Shoes                                                                           
£30    Bridal Accessories                                                                 
£10    Keepsake Box                                                                        
£40    Dress Cleaning                                                                       
£25    Dress Storage Box                                                                 
£10    Wedding Dress Memoir                                                         
£657 Total Gross Profit                                                                  

The beauty of this process is that although the increase in your gross profit is over 30%, increases in Net profit can be well over 50% as there are no expensive marketing and acquisition costs with the additional sales - where would you be if you could increase your Net profit by 50%?

This is a fantastic strategy which is going to be even more prominent in the next couple of years. Whatever product you are supplying, you can add additional products to your offering no matter how abstract you think they may be, I can’t guarantee that everyone will buy them, but I can guarantee that if you don’t have them, no one will!!!

If you are interested in learning more about introducing this strategy and increasing the profitability of your wedding business, then take a look at the Evolution Programme which is an easy to follow, step by step guide to building and running a business selling to the wedding industry.

General Marketing, Profit Startegies, Wedding Recession

Firstly a Happy New Year to everyone, I hope the Christmas break was refreshing and you have returned ready and raring to go for the start of the year.

Personally this is my favourite time of year and stems from the time when I was a wedding supplier myself, I knew that this time of year is the best time to find new customers and, ultimately, make more money! It is very important to stay upbeat at this point, especially with the current much publicised financial problems. as if you don’t it is easy to slip into a rut.

The start of the year signals the start of wedding planning season and many of you will have your Sundays booked up for the next 4 months with wedding fairs as a result.

Wedding fairs used to be a matter of turning up and taking bookings, but, as with all good things, those days have come to an end and they are now as competitive as every other aspect of wedding marketing. There are ways in which you can maximise your return from these fairs however by doing a few small things and putting in a bit of extra work- it will all be worth it come May/June though when your diary or orderbook is full.

The first point to address after you have booked at a wedding fair is the location of your stand or pitch.

I am absolutely amazed by how few people pay attention to this point and all it takes is a call to the Fair organiser beforehand and maybe a trip to the venue beforehand to establish the most profitable loctaion for your stand to be located.

Think about the footfall of visitors to the fair, where do they enter? where will they walk to and through? If you can find a spot which maximises the number of people that have to walk past you then you will be busier for two reasons.

1) The more people that walk past you, the more people that will stop and look at your stand - this is simple maths. After this think about the other exhibitors that may be in this area and of those try and identify the one which will be the most popular and secure a pitch next to them. If they are busy, the people who are waiting for them will be more likely to look at your stand until they become free.

2) The more people who stop at your pitch, the more people will be drawn to it! Sounds ridiculous but its human nature. It all boils down to scarcity and greed from the time when we were wild and had to rely on information like this to survive. If someone appears to be interested in something on your stand it triggers a reaction in everyone elses brain that says there must be something of interest or value for them and it is worth going over and checking it out.

Thinmk about the times you have been to wedding fairs and been standing at your stand with no visitors there at all and worse still, everyone seems to be giving you a wide berth! This is all phsycological and can be changed fairly easily with a bit of consideration.

If you can maximise the number of people who pass your stand and increase the percentage of those who stop, then you will see the enquiries that come from each fair go through the roof without a doubt. 

Why not book a free wedding fair marketing consultation to make sure you make the most of the fairs you are attending?

There are a variety of other tools and techniques to help you market yourself better at wedding fairs located in the member pages of the Evolution Programme.

Wedding Fairs

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and Santa brought you everything you wanted. For some reason I seem to attract “Mr Men” slippers as presents and it must be a sign of me getting old that this year’s pair were emblazoned with Mr Grumpy - it was only two years that my skippers were Mr Perfect, how times change!

Anyway, I write this on a cold New Years Eve while in the office completely on my own, not even the receptionists are in these few days before New Year and I’m not sure if that makes me committed, obsessed or mad. Maybe a little bit of all three, but I’m sure my wife would tend more towards the latter two options!! As Christmas always puts me in a good mood and I’ve no one else to share it with other than you guys on the blog, I thought I would add a New Year offer to set 2009 off on the right foot!

If you have been following this blog for any length of time then you will know that I offer a free wedding advert to everyone and anyone, no ties or catches, just free wedding advertising. Well just to prove that I don’t warrant my Mr Grumpy slippers I’m going to offer a free featured advert for all the readers of my blog

Originally I wanted to keep this offer open for the rest of the year, but as that equates to just under 9 hours I didn’t want it to appear that my “Mr Grumpy” slippers were justified so I’m extending it to the whole of January until the site goes live!

If you want a free wedding advert then just sign up on the Evolution site. If you want to see more websites where you can advertise your business free of charge then read our free wedding advertising guide detailing the best 5 sites to choose.

Uncategorized

I just wanted to take this opporunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and every luck for the New Year.

The Evolution Office will be closed Christmas Day and Boxing Day and there will only be limited coverage for next week, however if there is anything urgent the please drop us an email as I’ll be picking them up all over the holiday period.

I look forward to speaking to you all in the New Year.

Edward & all at Evolution

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