Wedding Marketing Blog

Wedding fairs in Ireland fall broadly into two main categories: local hotels (usually 5 to 20 exhibitors) and wedding fairs held at large multi-purpose venues (usually a few hundred exhibitors).
Let’s face it: as a wedding exhibitor, taking a stand at a wedding fair can be very hit or miss. You can attend a fair and get multiple bookings with deposits paid or absolutely no bookings at all. It can be a big risk taking out a stand, particularly at the larger fairs which can cost thousands of euro to exhibit.
Here are 8 questions to ask yourself before deciding to take out a stand at a wedding fair:

1. Where is it?

If you are based in Cork and the wedding fair in question is based in Dublin, you will have a logistically more difficult (and more expensive) time to coordinate getting your stand ready. Also, if the fair is a small local hotel in a remote village, you’ll need to consider how well it will be attended by potential brides.

2. How much does it cost?

An important consideration especially in the current economic climate. The smaller hotel fairs arrange from free (rarely) to €150 to €250. The larger fairs can cost €1500 and upwards. This is before you consider the hidden costs (see next point). Besides the cost of the stand, will you need to get leaflets or brochures prepared? How are you planning to decorate your stand? Unless you are extremely resourceful, it will cost you money! Will you have to hire any AV equipment? Extra staff to man your stand? Accommodation if having to stay overnight? The list goes on. You’ll have to budget your entire stand cost and work out if you think it will be worth your while.

3. Are there hidden costs?

The larger fairs in Ireland are notorious for charging for “extras” such as power points, tables and chairs. Expect to pay anywhere from €60 to €100 + VAT extra just to get a double socket available at your stand. To be fair, the costs are generally highlighted in the information packs as supplied by the organisers but nonetheless, they are costs that most suppliers forget about until they arrive at their stand to set up and discover that they have no power to supply juice for their display screens.

4. When is it?

There are typical times of each calendar year that are busier for bookings. Typically September to February of each year are when most brides book suppliers for their wedding. Taking a stand at a wedding fair out of this time is unlikely to attract the same throughput of brides.

5. How many other exhibitors from your service category will be there?

For the larger fairs, this can be a huge issue. I can recall that at a recent fair in Dublin, there were 18 photographers in attendance. Understandably, the vast majority of them were very unhappy about this! With fewer brides in attendance, it was another nail in the coffin.

6. What advertising have the organisers done?

A thorny subject. Most exhibitors that I talk to will say that the larger fairs don’t do enough advertising. Besides radio and newspaper advertising, the larger fairs and main hotel wedding fairs should consider taking out an advertising banner on the busier of the wedding forums where thousands of Irish brides hang out e.g. mrs2be.ie [Disclosure: forgive my shameless plug: I'm a director of the company that owns and runs mrs2be.ie].

7. Can you get a discount?

If you get a call from a wedding fair organiser a week before a wedding fair, chances are that you can haggle with them and get a very good deal. There is usually a reason why you would be getting a call at such late notice. It generally means they are having difficulty in filling places with suppliers. It could also be a good indication that other suppliers may feel that the fair isn’t going to be well attended by brides. So, you may well get a generous discount, but at what price?

8. Can you share a stand with another supplier?

This can be a good strategy to save exhibition costs and may suit start-up wedding businesses. You may find a suitable non-competeting supplier that will share the cost of stand with you. Make sure it’s large enough so that you can comfortably work away independent of each other. A larger stand may be better. Not all wedding fair organisers will allow this because they’ll view it as lost revenue for them.
So there you have it, some food for thought. There is no doubt that wedding fairs will suit certain categories of wedding suppliers far better than others. Also, no other advertising option that I can think of puts you in the position of being able to talk to so many brides in person at the one time.

What about you?

How do wedding fairs work out for you? Are they worth it? Do you have any experiences to share, good or bad? Feel free to add your comments below.

I get asked a lot of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) questions by my fellow wedding suppliers. I won’t blow my own trumpet here – I’m not an SEO expert by any means. Any of the SEO tricks that I have learnt have been picked up from reading various SEO articles and from casually talking to the occasional SEO expert over the past number of years.

I’ve put together this basic list of 11 SEO techniques that can help your wedding website rank better in Google. There is nothing complicated here, they are simple techniques that together should have a positive effect on how well your wedding business website ranks in Google.

What’s the point of this article? Well, I assume you want to be found by prospective brides? There is no point in having a sexy website if nobody can find it! This article will hopefully help with that endeavor.

I’ve assumed here that you know basic HTML and how to construct a simple webpage. If you happen to use a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla, it may be possible to tweak a lot of the features mentioned below directly via the software. Wherever possible, refer to the documentation of your particular CMS.

Let me jump right in: here is my list of 11 pointers that can improve the ranking of your wedding website in Google:

1. Research Your Keywords – you may have an amazing looking website, but without the right marketing copy on your homepage and respective pages, you are probably wasting your time. Think about what words and phrases you actually want to rank for and write some nice marketing copy that includes those keywords and possible variations. You need to get into the mindset of what brides and grooms are searching for. Writing good marketing copy is not easy – you’ll need to avoid jargon and yet still come across professional. Take some time to get it right, because the rewards are worth it. Also, don’t write copy that you think will fool the search engines. You don’t want your page to look spammy – Google apparently uses advanced linguistics software to detect pages that appear to be written purely for search engines. It will easily sniff out unnatural prose that overuses keywords and their variations. So, write for humans and you can’t go wrong.

2. Page Titles – one of the most important metatags on each and every webpage. This tag tells Google what your page is about. Make sure that it relates to the page content, because otherwise you may be penalised. Try to include your main keywords close to the very start of the title. Make sure the title makes sense and is not simply a comma separated list of keywords.

3. Description Metatag – it’s not usually a key ranking factor but it’s important to get it right because Google sometimes uses your description metatag when listing sites in its search engine results pages (SERPs). So, write a nice accurate description that will attract humans to your site. Don’t make it look spammy and also remember to include a few keywords that relate to the content of the page.

4. Format Your Content – by this I mean structure the content on each page properly. Use a H1 Heading at the top of your page that is an accurate description of what the page is about. Include the important keywords in this heading, but make sure that it makes sense and isn’t merely a list of keywords. For the main body, break the content into appropriate sections with titles and sparingly make use of the bold or strong tag to highlight important keywords. It’s important to get the balance right. Be subtle and this will work best. Formating the hell out of a page will only make it look spammy. Again, think like a human, write like a human.

5. Hyperlink Important Keywords – put important keywords in the actual clickable links on your page. Make sure that they link to pages on your site that relate to the subject of the clickable keywords. Otherwise, Google will detect the deception. Which do you think is better? To view my portfolio, click here. OR Click to view my portfolio ?

6. Use Image Alt Tags – make sure that you use the Alt tag for all of the main images displayed on your site. For example a photographer can make excellent use of this by tagging a photo on his site as follows: “photograph of a bride and groom after their wedding outside St. Patrick’s Church, Wicklow Town“. This increases the liklihood of relevant visitors finding the photographer’s website when searching for keywords that closely resemble the Alt tags used.

7. Friendly URLs – what do I mean by this? A typical URL from a website that doesn’t use friendly URLs might look something like this: http://www.website.ie/index.php?view_content=?4533322211?v=detail

If that same website implemented friendly URLs, the URL above may change to something like: http://www.website.ie/articles/good-wedding-article.html

Be careful with sudden changes of many URLs on your site at the one time. All currently indexed pages may no longer work when clicked by users. Make sure that you don’t create any broken links resulting in 404 error pages. You’ll need to do what is known as a 301 permanent redirect but discussing redirections is well beyond the scope of this article for now. From an SEO point of view, having human friendly URLs is supposed to make a small difference but it is by no means a crucial requirement from what I can see.

8. Register for a Google Webmaster Account – this will allow you to tell Google all about your site. You can upload an XML sitemap and automatically ping Google (i.e. send Google an automated message) every time your site is updated with some fresh content. Having a Google Webmaster account is an important SEO step for every website, but it doesn’t guarantee high ranking (or indeed any ranking). It is however a good opportunity to ensure that Google is aware of your site and Google Webmaster will also notify you if it has any problems accessing or indexing your site. It’s a free tool by the way.

9. Use a Robots.txt file – this is placed on your site root folder and it tells (well-behaved) search engine bots where they can and cannot look and index on your website server. It’s a simple way of preventing the main search engines from indexing a particular section of your site. There is plenty of free help on the net about how to create and use a robots.txt file.

10. Utilise Social Media – the most modern of all our techniques mentioned above. Social media is becoming hugely popular in Ireland. Just look at the growing number of Irish wedding suppliers on Facebook and Twitter. You probably found this blog entry doing the rounds on Twitter (hopefully!). Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Stumpbleupon, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr are all powerful social networks where you can build up a presence and promote your wedding website for free. There is a balance requirement of course. You will have much better success if you helpfully engage with your peers and throw the occasional business message out there. This approach works much better than constantly broadcasting about how great your site is. Fans and followers who are being bombarded with your advertising message will soon get tired and move on. As I said, it’s all about balance.

11. Get Relevant Links – when it comes to links, it’s no longer strictly a numbers game. From Google’s perspective, two links from authorative sites can be much better than two hundred links from crappy spammy sites. Think about this when acquiring links. When it comes to link building, less is often more. Avoid spammy link farms like the plague.

By the way, I’ll end with a little caveat… when it comes to SEO, nothing is ever guaranteed. All you can really do is get the basics right and hope for the best! Good luck!

Can you think of any other SEO pointers to help Wedding Websites rank better in Google?

I’d like to hear your feedback on this article. Did I omit anything important? Do you have any other pointers to share? Please leave your comments below.

Marketing your wedding business is crucial. Getting your name out there and being seen. However, big changes are happening in wedding advertising and marketing. It used to be the only option was print advertising, then online advertising where wedding suppliers and wedding service providers are able to cover a larger, worldwide market. Now enter social media marketing. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to name a few, is viral and you are actually having conversations with your target market and your peers.

How do you put it all together? What does your bride expect in this economy? How do you close the sale and still keep your profits?

It seems Annie Byrne, of Aislinn Events, a Wedding Planner based in Kerry, asked herself these questions and decided maybe others were asking them too.  To answer them, she is putting on The Business of Weddings Ireland conference. I had a chat with her recently and this is a bit of our conversation.

What is The Business of Weddings Ireland conference about?

It is about a lot really. Getting the Irish wedding community together and supporting each other. Educating ourselves as to what is going on in the industry as a whole in Ireland and in America.  How to utilize Social Media marketing to find brides in our target market and once we have found them, getting to grips with what brides are doing and expect  in this climate. How we can really sell our services to them at the price we are worth.

So will engaged couples be attending that we can meet and tell about our services?

No. This is strictly wedding business to wedding business. We need to be able to speak freely and frankly with each other.

Then why are you doing it?

I had been looking for something like this to attend for years. The only similar conferences or seminars I found that were strictly for wedding businesses were in America. Also I have been networking locally and attending smaller educational seminars for businesses but none of them seemed to fill the niche I needed for my wedding business. A creative, service based industry. Selling to a bride is totally different than selling a more tangible retail object to the general public. It is much more sensitive. Long story short, I decided to have one myself.

Surely there are others out there?

None that I have found. None that are by the wedding industry for the wedding industry and not trying to sell you something. I have allowed space for businesses to stand up and talk about their businesses but as a way of introducing themselves to the group. I genuinely believe that together we are our best marketing resource and by collaborating as an industry together in Ireland we become stronger businesses and a stronger league of professionals.  By the way, if anyone knows of another one in Ireland I’ll be there! so let me know!

Are you one of the speakers?

Oh my gosh, no. I am wedding planner, not a marketing expert. And I’m terrified of public speaking! I have learned a lot and have had to learn and adapt quickly to keep business my business forward just like other wedding businesses . I am leaving that up to our speaker and professional, Meghan Ely. Meghan’s business is OFD Consulting in America, a niche marketing and public relations group that offers specific and comprehensive services to small businesses in the wedding industry. I had followed Meghan’s wedding business blog for months so when I needed an expert I knew who to call.

Where and when will it be?

At the Muckross Park Hotel in Killarney on the 2nd and 3rd of November. That’s a Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s a beautiful hotel and I wanted this to be a bit of a retreat for everyone as well. Someplace we all could really relax. No one place was going to suit everyone but Killarney is easily accessible to even Dublin based suppliers with flights to Kerry airport and good train links from everywhere. Also I wanted to get this in before ‘engagement season’ of December and January when the enquiries will be coming in!

Where can wedding business owners find out more about the conference?

There has been a website set up specifically. http://www.thebusinessofweddings-ireland.com/index.html and anyone interested can register on the website or contact me directly on annie@aislinnevents.com or phone 087 6761900 to make other arrangements or ask further questions.

Anything else we should know?

I suppose to say that I have tried to make it really affordable for everyone from new to established wedding businesses and that is suitable for anyone involved in the wedding industry. Anyone selling to brides today. I have had a good and very positive response so am really looking forward to meeting everyone that I know from Facebook and Twitter along with new colleagues in person! Thanks Keith!

I’m excited to reveal Maurice O’Carroll from Velvetine Studios as my first guest blogger. Maurice runs one of Ireland’s leading wedding film studios and I asked him to give us his take on the sometimes thorny subject of setting a suitable price for our wedding services. I hope you enjoy reading it and I think the advice given applies to all wedding services and not just videography. Take it away Maurice…

I returned to Ireland after a decade abroad to start my new business and I will always remember the words of one of Kerry’s busiest and most successful videographers. He told me with great conviction and belief “You will never get more than €1000 for wedding video in Kerry.”

Five years later, a videographer from the capital said to me “I can’t charge €2400 starting prices like you because Dublin is far more competitive than Kerry! My full day prices are almost third cheaper than yours.”

My argument against this assessment would be that there’s far more money floating around Dublin than there is in Kerry.  The fact is, it is a lot harder to charge higher prices in my end of the country.

It goes without saying that getting your pricing right is vital for the survival of your business – and sanity – and there is no magic one-fits-all method out there at the moment.

Keith has asked me to write about my own experiences but before I share my pricing policies at the higher end of the scale, I’m going to start by addressing the lower end where the bride bases most of her decisions on price alone.

The Lower End

Even though the budget conscious bride is weighing up your service on the bottom line of price, she still wants value for money.  So, it’s up to you to make your package as attractive as possible to her at her price point and still make a profit.

In order to do this you need to have a lean, no frills, streamlined service in place and you must be prepared to take on a lot of weddings and turn them over as quickly possible.

Before you ever think about pricing you need to determine want she wants for her money and if you can make a profit from it.

In terms of wedding videography, I’ll bet she’s looking for someone reliable to capture all the key moments of most of her day for around €500 to €700.  Can you make a profitable business out of this?  Absolutely.

Shoot with one solid camera on a tripod for the day, move as little as possible, try not to fall asleep, template the edit so that it is a streamlined and fast process, package in generic covers with your advertising all over it, and hand deliver the package with a smile before they go on honeymoon.

The lower end is a dog eat dog market which is made up of newbies, hobbyists, has-beens-who-don’t-care-anymore, and simple no-frills outfits.

If you are not overly proud about your product/service and don’t mind becoming part of a wedding factory then this market can actually turn into a nice earner when you get the pricing and product right.

In fact, the middle end of the market is often considered as a far more dangerous ground to play in.

The Middle Market

This is where most of us sit and it is a tough place to do business. I know because it’s where I jumped straight into when I first started out.

The Middle Market suppliers are largely made up of talented businesses who take great pride in their work; so much so that they will often give the client more than they are paying for.  “It’s good enough” rarely comes into the equation.

So, not only are these suppliers competing on price but they are also competing against egos.

These vendors are constantly looking over one shoulder at the low end market and worrying if the low-low prices are tempting away business.  They must look over the other shoulder and keep a firm eye on their direct competition in the middle market.  And, in many cases, they find themselves attracted to the higher end bride and the temptation to raise prices and step up toward bigger pay days.

How does one price for The Middle Market? Very good question.

Obviously, the bride wants something a lot more special than what the cheapest guy in town has to offer.  She and her fiance both have good jobs and they are making a huge investment in their day.  They want the best they can afford. They expect a professional service and a good product… I’m willing to bet that they don’t want to receive their wedding DVDs in a Dunnes Stores bag before they jet off on honeymoon.

They want a good price, value for money, peace of mind… and a piece of you.  A piece of your pride. That piece that always makes you question “when is it ever good enough”.

And this creates perceived value in your service. It’s always hard to put a number on it.

My humble advice to the Middle Market suppliers is to tuck yourself firmly in the middle. In other words, stay a safe distance away from the guys who are either flirting with or worrying about the lower end and don’t get drawn to the higher end unless you are able, committed and brave enough to put it all on the line.

Through market research figure out what you must to do to satisfy your clients needs and wants, develop a package for them, and price it so that you make at least 40% gross profit for the year.  Then, be brave; add some perceived value to your pricing. You should be worth it!

Are you finding it hard to make such a profit? Is your service more time consuming than you thought?

If the answer is yes then the first thing you need to consider is to raise your prices!  The other alternatives are to embrace “good enough” and either find cheaper materials or pare back the package so it’s less time consuming.

The Higher End

From day one, I always wanted to service the higher end of the market.  I wrote out a detailed business plan and despite getting lost on occasion with some experimental pricing, I pretty much followed it to the letter and reached many of my goals on schedule.

My pricing policy is simple: Always make a profit, prices on the website and freely available, no discounts!

My studio offers a very unique, personalised service to a select group of people each year and this, along with our commitment to a professional and friendly experience with us from the first contact and beyond, our use of the latest technologies, producing broadcast standard wedding films, and our consistent body of work and experience all justify our pricing.

In fact, I honestly believe that we are too cheap… but, one step at a time!

I have goals for the next three years and in order to reach them we need to improve our service every year.  And this means we need to raise prices accordingly.  It’s never an easy thing to do and always scary.  Just one month ago, I raised my prices by €200.  It doesn’t sound like a lot but when your studio is twice as expensive as most other companies and everyone around you is slashing prices in a crippled economy, trust me, it’s a risk and it’s scary.

However, it’s a calculated risk; after all, half my calendar is already full for 2011 and I’m confident that I can book it out with my new prices… and make a significant increase next year.

Selling At Your Price

Some of our prospective clients nearly drop the telephone when they first hear our prices.  Sometimes we go on to make a sale but even when we don’t, we are always able to educate them on why our service costs what it does and that it represents great value if one can afford it.

No matter what market you are in, if you have taken the time to do your market research, discovered you customers’ needs, developed a package that suits your target market, and priced it so that it is competitive but profitable then you should have no problem in believing in your price.

All too often, suppliers don’t believe in themselves or their pricing.  They pluck the magic number €1000 out of thin air and work in hope off of that. So how are their customers supposed to trust them?

Knowing exactly what’s involved in producing your service and being able to articulate its costs to a prospective buyer are of huge importance for making a confident sale.

Dealing With Hagglers

The simple answer is we don’t.

I’ve nothing against anyone asking me for my best price – or even simply chancing their arm – but I’m very upfront on my pricing.  There’s nothing to hide.  We give the same high service to everyone… at the same price!

When anyone says to me we’re looking at a company that’s X amount cheaper than you I say without hesitation “If you honestly believe – 100% – that they are going to do what we do for that price then you need to hire them straight away!”

Some businesses like to have a premium price which gives them wiggle room to “give the customer a deal”.  Some businesses enjoy the art of haggling.  Everyone to their own but the only art I enjoy is filmmaking and I’ve always preferred to give every customer my lowest price which is never open to negotiation.

It works a treat for me.

Maurice O’Carroll

www.velvetinestudios.com

“Velvetine Studios is one of the Top 25 Event  Filmmakers in the World” EventDV Magazine Awards, 2008 and 2009

I don’t claim to know a huge amount about SEO (search engine optimisation). In fact, I’m only learning. However, along my travels as an Irish wedding videographer, it’s not unusual for me to meet many different wedding suppliers along the way. Our conversation almost always turns to the direction of SEO and what we can do ourselves to improve it.
Over the coming while on this blog, I plan to reveal the little knowledge I have accumulated of SEO and the basic steps you can take to improve your own website ranking.
Before I get going with those articles, I want to share a list of 10 myths that I regularly encounter when discussing SEO with Irish wedding website owners.

1. Creating a Blog full of crappy keyword focused articles will help my site to rank better. This is one of my favourites. I see it all the time (particularly in my area of wedding videography). I’m not sure who gave this particular advice, but spammy blog articles from firms such as Egypt (or Eejit) Marketing that repeat keywords such as “wedding video” over and over again on a page and associate with a Twitter account belong in one place and one place only – Google’s blacklist of spammy websites.
2. My website will be automatically found and indexed by Google. Not if no other site or page links to it. If you have a Google Webmaster account and configure your website properly, create relevant content, obtain a handful of quality links, then you’ll get indexed.
3. Linking to lots and lots of random sites will boost my rankings. Yes of course it will, not. Linking out to hundreds of sites from your site only shows how generous you are with your time. Just because you once heard that “links” is the key to SEO? Well links to your site (non-reciprocal) of a high relevance and authority will certainly pay dividends. However, randomly linking out to other sites will do nothing to help your own SEO.
4. Linking to Google.ie from my links page will improve my ranking. Another one of my favourites! Why would this be true? Do people think that Google loves to see links to itself and will express its gratitude by placing you at the top of the SERPs?
5. Buying Google Adwords will improve my SEO. Won’t have any effect on your natural listings. Being listed in sponsored site results is not natural SEO and most users ignore these results.
6. Having a fancy PURE Flash-based website will help my site rank better. How could it possibly? Especially a Flash site that doesn’t contain any non-flash code on the page for browsers who don’t understand Flash. A well crafted page title and some on site body text (of the non-spammy variety) may help.
7. Google will love my gorgeous 100% graphic based website. Another interesting one. Many of us will have seen the websites that are 100% graphic based. NEWSFLASH: Google is good but not yet good enough to “read” the text contained within your graphics.
8. Keywords Meta Tag is so important to SEO today. Google confirmed in 2009 that it ignores the Keywords Meta Tag.
9. Keyword density is crucial to SEO. Maybe in the 1990s. Not today. The trick is to write high quality original content and get relevant authoritative links.
10. Hiring a “Google Approved” firm will solve all of my SEO problems. I’ve heard of a few people who have been stung by the cold calls from dodgy SEO firms and especially those who claim to be calling from Google. Be aware, be very very aware. If a call from a company such as these sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Don’t get me wrong, there are a handul of very reputable Irish SEO firms operating in Ireland who do an excellent job of legitimate SEO work. How can you find them? Well use Google.ie and search for “SEO” or “search engine optimisation” and see who keeps coming up in the top 10 natural results. Carry out your own research to see who is suitable.

What do you think?

Have I left anything out? Do you agree or disagree with the points I have made? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Also, if you simply enjoyed this article, please let me know!