“The Business Resource For Wedding Entrepreneurs”

Determining a marketing budget and the right marketing channels have no doubt become two common issues that many wedding vendors struggle with. What works for others may not be right for your business model and therefore it's difficult to pick a formula that works for all. So today, we'd like to dive deeper into this subject and help you find the right marketing strategies for your own wedding business.

Spending your budget accordingly
A number of business reports state that your marketing spending should not exceed 10% of your total revenue! However, as businesses vary in size and target market, the '10% rule' can be a bit vague. On contrary, we believe that your marketing spend should reflect your business goals and never hurt your bottom line. Ask yourself these three questions before allocating a marketing budget and coming up with a marketing plan:

1. What are your needs?
What do you need? Is it traffic, sales or awareness? Deciding on what you want to achieve is important to build a clear marketing plan that shows what to do, how much to spend, where to spend, and what the next step is if your marketing objective has not been met. So, back to the original question, what does your business need?

2. How much to spend?
This second question is a bit tricky. Is it about how much you can or how much you are willing to spend? Spending for promotional activities can be met with harsh reluctance as a lot of money could be going out without an obvious result in sight. However, let's think it this way: the only way to figure out the right marketing budget and where to spread it out is by executing the marketing strategy itself. So, set yourself a time cap, do the math, see how you can maximize the budget. Remember to prioritize your spending to avoid wasting your limited budget.

3. What is your expectation?
Once you decide to spend on marketing, there is little to no guarantee that it will be 100 successful. You may or may not get new clients. If you can't confide on spending for something big such as online or magazine ads, do smaller-scale marketing activity such as promoting on Facebook or Instagram. Also, do not be stubborn and acknowledge which marketing strategies do not fit you. Sometimes, they fail not for you to try again and so that you can create better ones.

Marketing channels for wedding vendors
There are many marketing channels out there that you can use to market your products and services. However, the fact that being a wedding vendor is considered niche, there are limited options to promote yourselves. These are the top three common marketing channels wedding vendors can opt choose to market themselves.

• Listing on wedding websites or apps
  There are also a lot of wedding websites and apps that you can sign up to get your business up on-the-line just like Bridestory. By paying a fee, your wedding business is promoted through SEOs, SEMs, and advertisements via social media sites like Facebook and Instagram ads. It's simple to join, just create a business profile, add your past projects and keep-in-touch with potential leads enquiring about your service.

• Wedding fairs or bridal exhibitions
  It is no surprise for most wedding vendors to join a wedding fair at least once year. Not only couple get to meet with their prospective vendors, but you can also get to engage closely with the couples and cater to their needs. Joining a wedding fair is a great chance for you to network with other fellow wedding vendors as well, but most of all collect highly potential clients for your business.

• Wedding magazines
  From Martha Stewart Weddings to our very own Bridestory Magazine, there are a lot of wedding magazines brides-to-be read to find not only inspirations but also find the vendors working behind those works. You can advertise your business in the magazine as a sole vendors or you can contribute in a styled shoot. Additionally, most wedding magazines have a vendor directory in which all vendors contact information with be listed for readers to see.

The thing about social media marketing
Social media is indeed a very popular tool for marketing to engaged couples. According to a research from Facebook by TNS, 71% of engaged couples use Facebook to help organize their wedding, with a whooping 58% of them using Facebook to look for wedding inspiration articles that specify the participating vendors.

With these facts, we can safely say that marketing through social media is a good investment. Especially with user-friendly tools such as Instagram for Business and Facebook ads, wedding vendors nowadays can easily advertise their business to a targeted pool of potential clients.

So, while marketing activities are very unique for every business, we would like to hear some of your own experience with promoting your wedding business. Share your stories and tips below!