I’ve attended several bridal shows here in Houston, and meeting the brides face to face is a great way to get good business from attending a bridal show. Usually you get to meet the bride face to face, discuss some of the elements of your services to them and you are either a good fit together or you don’t offer the right service for that particular bride. If it’s a great match, you have classified the bride and/or the bride has classified you as a potential wedding vendor for their wedding day.

Most of the time, meeting the bride in person is all you need to seal the deal, however, if they are currently interested in 2 or more wedding vendors, then they usually opt to go home and review their notes or the wedding vendors’ marketing material.

Guess what one place they are sure to go? Your website!

There are 8  ways to use the power of your website, to finish convincing your bride that they should chose your service over your competition.

Before I move on to listing these, please read the following warning!

WARNING!!

Although, you collected a whole lot of leads at the bridal show, there is one place of concern that you should be aware of and that is… Spamming the brides’ email addresses.

The spam laws are getting tougher and tougher, more online services are cracking down on email spam and more reports are being placed on illegal use of email.

So what is spam?

According to the web site, SpamLaws.com, Spam is…

The term spam refers to submitting the same message to a large group of individuals in an effort to force the message onto people who would otherwise choose not to receive this message.

You may think that you are saving time by sending a mass email to these brides, and although you did get their email address in a valid manner, you may still get in trouble for sending them a mass email with your services and information if they report you.

So what are the 8 ways to (safely) convert your bridal show leads into clients using the power of your website?

1. Include a Double Opt-in system to get their email addresses.

   The first thing you should do is have a double opt-in system in place so that you can avoid the spam laws. By having a double opt in system in your site, you can guarantee yourself and the bride that they indeed were the ones that submitted their email address on your website. The way a double opt-in system works is like this. A bride visits your website and submits their information, now at this point, it could be anyone, not just her. The double opt-in system sends a confirmation email to the bride’s email address, and since only that bride has access to her email address, she can confirm that it was indeed her that wanted to join your email list. See more information about Double Opt-ins here. A good service to use is Awebber.com.

2. Have a tactically designed, series of emails for  your brides.

   This one require brain power and planning and is a combination of marketing and sales techniques. You’ve already met the bride, you already know they stopped by your booth and are somewhat interested, by this point, you already have her committed to joining your list (Step 1), so use those facts to your advantage. This series of emails should be automated and I would recommend a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 10. The sole purpose of these emails are to compel your bride to make an effort to make an appointment with you or to get them to call you. For example, Email 1 may be a thank you for joining your list and a remainder of what website they signed up from. Email 2 may be a remainder that you met at a recent bridal show and that you want to thank them for stopping by but by this point you want to compel them to reply to your email so that you can engage them in an email conversation. Email 3 may be a remainder that there is a limited amount of time for them to use the ‘discount’ or asking for the best time to call them. Most importantly you want to compel your email user to act or to get into your office. Again, a great tool to use to set up these emails on autopilot is Awebber.com.

3. Set up a Web Page dedicated to that bridal show and place it on your fliers.

   The previous 2 steps work best if you take the time to complete this one. What you want to do here is set up a completely hidden page that the only way they can access it is if they have one of your fliers or literature that you passed out during the bridal show that you attended. For example, in January of 2008, the last time I attended the bridal extravaganza, I tried this out and set up a page at http://www.fhpentertainment.com/be-offer. I put that in all my post cards that I passed out and I was able to track exactly how many brides came to my website from the Bridal Extravaganza Show. In order to get them to join my list, I held a raffle and offered some really good incentives for them to join. This worked like a charm.  Exactly 107 Bridal Extravaganza Brides Visited that website. And to this day there are people that for some reason or another land on that website. It is not indexed by the search engines, it is not linked to by anyone or anything else, in fact this is only the first time I make this information public.

4. Have a Discount Coupon.

   Brides are looking to save money, whether giving coupons are for you or not, this is a great ides to have a coupon that they can print out and take to you. Again, the purpose of these ideas are to get brides to visit you or to call you to make an appointment to visit you. This may work with any or all of the ideas mentioned before.

5. Have a contact form on your page.

   If you use Awebber.com, the generation of a contact for can be made easily for you. But you don’t have to use Awebber.com, you could simply  have your programmer create one for you, however, I find it extremely difficult to keep up with all the different inquiries that may come from your page if you don’t use a service like Awebber.com to manage your list. Not to mention that you can have it to where once they enter their information into your contact form, and they confirm their email address, your tactfully designed series of emails will automatically start for you. It’s all automated.

6. Give them something of value for their information.

   The great internet marketers always say; “Give your best stuff for free.” Well, you can’t give your information for free, but you can give SOME of the knowledge that will help them for free. Create a Free report and publicize it. On your report you want to include information that may aid the bride in planning her wedding. You may not realize it now, but giving away free information is a great way to establish your self as a leader in your field. I believe the biggest success of my website is that my blog is so focused on giving away great, and sometimes not so great, information to my brides.  This starts to instill a sense of trust, a sense of understanding, and a sense of compassion for me as a human being. Besides isn’t one of the most popular laws of humanity is to give?

7. Have a tactfully designed Sales letter (sales copy) in place.

   This is very important. If your material on your web page or website does not do a good enough job to compel the user to take action, you will lose out on a once in a lifetime opportunity to convert a bride to a client. Now sometimes the brides does plan to use your service regardless of what your sales copy is on your page, but most of the time, if you put a lot of effort into creating great sales copy, you will get the brides that were somewhat leaning towards your competition. Writing great sales copy is not easy, it requires effort. If you were going to do 1 out theses 8 steps, this is the one that I would concentrate most of my efforts on. Writing great sales copy on a page requires you to 1. gain the trust of your bride, 2. tell her how you are going to fix her problems, and 3. establish yourself as the best person that can fix her problems.  Now this is hard because you don’t have any contact with the bride during the sales process, you leave it up to your carefully designed sales letter to do all the talking for you. And remember, the bride is probably not coming back if you don’t do a good job of addressing how you will be fixing her problems.

8. Add Media to your Pages.

   Media is relatively new, there are very few to no wedding vendors using media. This is a great thing because there is no established model for ’selling’ your services by the use of video or audio on your website. Also, audio or video is actually easier to do, since you can most of the time just talk about what you want to talk about, where as in writing you have to make sure your spelling is correct, your punctuations is correct and that your grammar is correct. Not to mention that it takes longer to write as opposed to talking about it. Again, your audio has to serve a specific purpose, and that is to inform the bride of your services, thank them for visiting your page after they visited your booth at the bridal show, etc…

These are 8 great ides you can use/combine to make sure that a large part of the brides you meet at a bridal show make their way into your booking calendar.

You don’t have to use all 8 and you can actually combine a few ides with other to get the best use of these ideas. And like I mentioned before, if you decide to just use one idea out of all these, make sure you select idea #7 and put a lot of time, effort, and money into it as it is probably the single best idea that you can use.  Make the front page of your website your sales letter and you will see how much power well written sales copy can convert your visitors into customers.

Happy Bloggin
|o| Simply Frank |o|

Writing a Blog post everyday is ideal for any blogger that wants to have success on the internet, however, it’s time consuming and it’s hart to come up with a good topic to blog about on a daily basis. That’s mainly because we don’t take the time to read and learn about some of the techniques that most professional bloggers use to stay at the top of their game. Reading a few minutes a day, posts by the top bloggers, will help you generate some great ides for coming up with useful content.

Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, John Chow, Brian Clark. They all come up with the most helpful, up-to-date posts to their blog on a consistent basis. That’s why they have so many subscribers that read their blogs daily.

Here are 3 resources on Bloggin’ for Complete Beginners.

Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program – This is the best coaching program and “getting-started-with-bloggin” program that I have ever taken and it is worth the investment.

Become a Blogger Videos – A free resource for complete bloggin beginners. It takes you through the steps necessary to install and create your blog.

Blog Profits Blueprint – A report to get you to understand the logic behind making money from your blog. Free PDF Report.

7 articles the pro-bloggers have written to help other bloggers stay at the top of the bloggin game.

• 20 Types of Blog Posts – Battling Bloggers Block
• 31 Days to Building a Better Blog
• Writing Good Content
• Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?
• Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques
• 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer
• Podcast: How To Launch A Product Using Your Blog (May be used for services too)

Reading, or even scanning and reading the parts you don’t understand, will get you caught up on your bloggin terms and on a mindset that most successful bloggers have. Happy Bloggin!!! — DJ Francisco Your Bloggin DJ in Houston

Did you know you can strategically use your website to track your Bridal Show success?

If you are interested in knowing how successful a bridal show is, then you must read on!

If you are like any other vendor out there, chances are that your current system for tracking how successful a bridal show is, is by asking the bride, when she calls you, how she heard about your services… right?

To which she responds either, I don’t know, from an online inquiry, a Google search, I’m on your website right now, a friend referred her, or from ‘one of the bridal shows you did.’

I got the last answer even when I did not attend any bridal shows, so how effective is asking the bride? Not so effective, and that’s probably the reason you don’t ask them anymore.

So what do I need to track bridal show success?

1. Set up a Landing page for your Bridal Show and send bridal show attendees there.
2. Next, you will need to set up an account on Google Analytics so that you can track how many people visit the landing page.
3. Finally, you will need a Constant Contact – Free Trial or you could use our Email Marketing Software but it’s only open to select customers that are interested in it.

The Process?

The Landing Page

So the first thing you need to do is create a Landing page on your website and DIRECT visitors of that Bridal Show directly to that page. Usually a postcard, price list, or coupon with a direct link to that page (Not your main page) does the trick. Have a special offer for visitors of the bridal show as an incentive for them. Brides love to feel like they saved money and they love to get stuff for free! Well, then again who doesn’t.

I have only attended the Bridal Extravaganza Show in Houston and the first time I attended, back in January 2006, I realized I need a way to track exactly how many brides I was able to book as a result of having a booth there. I created a simple page with the benefits my brides were going to receive from using my services. Experienced Master of Ceremonies, Elegant Entertainment, Bilingual Announcements, Great Dj with Great Music, etc… I place that page to where only those brides can access it and I place that web address on my price sheet or on my postcard. Then I told them to visit that website to sign up for the Discount, raffle, special offer, etc..

The website I used for my January 2008 Bridal Extravaganza show was http://www.fhpentertainment.com/be-offer. It does not have to be extravagant, but it does have to be well thought.

Next, I experimented with different offers. Free Bubble Machine, Free Basic Lighting, $100 Discount if they booked within a few weeks of visiting my website, a raffle, etc… They all worked almost the same. The discount worked almost to well.

Finally I asked them to Take Action. I put a form at the end of the page where I ask for their Name, Phone Number, Email Address, and Wedding/Event Date. This form submits their information into my Email Marketing Program; Ex. Your Constant Contact Account.

Tracking with Google’s Free Analytics Program

This is a Fantastic tool to use. It’s free, it does a great job of tracking where your visitors land and where your visitors exit your website, and you can set up campaigns to measure your website’s success. But campaigns will not be covered in this post. That would just make it too long to read. 

This is very powerful information because you will not only see how successful your bridal show presence was, but you will also see how well your website ranks, how many visitors you are getting a day, where are they coming from, where are they leaving, are they visiting your website and NOT CALLING your or EMAILING you, etc…

All successful online marketers use some form of analytics program. You should too!

Email Marketing Program

The great thing about using an email marketing program is that you can set it to automatically respond to your bride with a personalized email. So the instant she clicks on that submit button, she has a well thought out email sent to her directly letting her know how excited you are that she contacted you, how you look foreword to working with her and that you will be contacting her soon. And you will. Also by having your email in her inbox, she will easily remember you and know who you are: “The one who immediately replied to her inquiry.”

Another great thing about using an email marketing program such as Constant Contact is that you have a manageable list of brides in one location where you can keep track of and you will know that all those brides came from one source: A recent bridal show you attended.

Summary

That’s the 1-2-3 Punch I’ve used to great success tracking those brides that want your information first before they book you as well as those brides that in the process of choosing between two vendors. The only difference, as stated before, is that I do not use constant contact, I actually use my own email marketing program which I feel is a lot better and EASIER to use than Constant Contact.

Initially all this may seem like a lot of work to do, but it’s not. Once you go through the registration processes, all you have to do is update your Landing Page and if you’d like you can create a new list in the email marketing program you decide to use.

Using this system you will not only know how successful your bridal show was, but if you set it up correctly and use some great compelling words in your Landing page, you will even convert more Non-Bride Customers into clients.

Happy Bloggin!

–

DJ Francisco
Blogger at a Houston DJ Company: FHP Entertainment

So what exactly are Landing Pages?

You learn something new everyday, that’s the great thing about life, just when you think you’ve got the hang of something, you find out there is a better, faster, more effective way to do it.

Today I am truly inspired by one small change I made to my website that literally, overnight, improved my responses… I am still in shock of happiness for this discovery…

What did I do ???

Well, first let me give you a background story…

I subscribe to a lot of blogs, newsletters, and websites which have great information that helps me on many things; my website, my personal life, my search engine marketing, etc.. Now I don’t read them all everyday, but I do read the headlines and if there is something appealing or eye-catching, I will read the rest of the article. Realize that your customers do the exact same thing.

A few days ago I received an email that Stompernet Going Natural 3.0 was about to be released. Now I’m sure a lot of you have no clue what Stompernet is. Let me give a small explanation.

Stompernet, according to their website is…

It’s a shortcut to making money online. It’s a business-building library of cutting-edge content. And it’s a network of like-minded entrepreneurs who constantly compare notes on how to run a successful online business.

It’s an unfair advantage over your competition.

StomperNet is many things, but it boils down to this. It’s THE program that teaches you everything need to know to start, grow, and explode your online business.

No matter how you make your money online.

And to prove their success, they released a video that will really make you question your website’s design and usability structure.

It made me question mine and I thought I had a pretty successful online presence.

Watch their video and find out for yourself, just a small warning, the video is over 50 minutes long of really good information, stats, specific examples, specific adwords tricks, eye tracking tests, etc.. you can use to improve income.

Watch the videos here: Stompernet Going Natural 3.0

I watched it and did JUST ONE THING as a result of watching the videos and overnight I had 4 inquiries for future business. To put that into perspective, my last method averaged 4-6 inquiries a week, last night I received 4 in just a few hours of implementation. I’m filled with joy!

What did you do?

I improved my landing page…

What is a Landing Page?

Ok, that’s too much info, what the heck is a landing page anyways?

A landing page… are you ready for this… is where people land on your website…

BUT… It’s critical for your online success. WHY?

Because most of your website visitors will NOT visit any other page, so you get just one try… EVER… to convert them into cash…. err customers.

So, again, are landing pages important?

no…

THEY ARE CRITICAL!

What are some different Landing Page Examples?

For starters, your home page is naturally a landing page, it’s probably your most important landing page.

If you have no technique for capturing your visitors, then you are missing out on A LOT of extra income. People who come to your site as a result of your business cards, your search results, your magazine ads, your newspaper ads, your mail outs, they all visit your home page as a default.

Remember, you just have one chance to capture them…

Here are other ideas for landing pages, however they do take a lot more work and brain power, but the results are worth it.

I created a few different landing pages on my website for different occasions, and here they are.

• For Email Marketing
• Trade Show Marketing (Ex. Bridal Extravaganza)
• Adwords Campaigns
• Magazine Ads (Ex. Premier Bride)
• Weddings and Quinceañeras (My Specialties)
• Business Cards (Started it but dropped it)
• Preferred Vendors

The idea behind all this is that I wanted to have a way to track all my marketing dollars and to see what was working the best so that I could spend the bulk of my marketing budget on. As opposed to blindly spending thousands of dollars and not knowing if it worked or not.

How does it work and why?

Now, to make it easier for me, I used the main basic idea for all my landing pages, and in most part the same information…

I Gave them an offer, an incentive, a discount, or any other motive for them to either call me or give me their information so that I could contact them.

That’s it! That’s the magic behind it… well I also added the benefits of selecting my service over my competition… But everyone does that…

Hmm… come to think of it… many people also think of giving away a discount or an incentive… so what’s so different and specail about mine?

THE placement (architecture) of it!!!!

It’s accessible, it’s visible, it’s THE ONLY ACTION they can take at that time…

To be exact here is what I did.

I added a form, right after all the benefits I offer

And at that time, once they get all the great information they want, that is the only action they can take, so they DO!!!

Visit the website so you can see for yourself: DJ in Houston.

Well, this turned out to be a long post, longer than I expected, but I was motivated, what can I say. I just found out something that created a lot of joy in my life.

Happy Bloggin

–
DJ Francisco
Blogger at http://www.FHPEntertainment.com