Ever wonder how to effectively sell to more brides at a Bridal Show?

If you’re like me, you probably have asked yourself this question before or how to increase the number of brides that purchase your services after meeting you at a bridal show.

Sonja van Florestein, of the Houston Wedding Showcase, has put together a seminar for not only her existing clients, but for anyone who exhibits at bridal shows. Best of all it’s free and you don’t even have to sign up for her Bridal Show to get all the great information she has to offer.

I am going to give my honest opinion and review to the best that I can. It is not influenced by anyone nor was I asked to do this.  I was intrigued by the email Sonja sent and I honestly had no intention of attending her show.  I just wanted the free information. After attending the seminar, I was compelled to write this review.

The seminar I attended was held on Wednesday, May 27th at Chateau Crystale. Doors opened at 5:30 pm for networking and the seminar started at 6:00 pm and went until 8:00 pm. She also offers one, today, May 28th, but it did not fit my schedule and besides I wanted to get in early to the information.

The name of the seminar is perfect:

The Secrets of Selling to Brides

If you got her email you could see that she asks a few key questions about Selling to more brides, getting the most out of your marketing dollar, and increasing your sales.

I think she delivered right on target!

The presentation was excellent, very well prepared, and very professional.  Two hours did not feel like two hours, they went by fast.

Without giving away all her secrets, here are a few things that I picked up that could definitely drastically increase my sales as a result of attending a bridal show.

1. I generated 3 key ideas on how I can  stand apart from my competition (no I’m not giving those away)
2. I was able to ’see’ the different components that make up a well organized and effective booth. I could see a booth and say it looks good, but I could never put my finger on why or what made it look good. There are some key components that I had not realized before.
3. The seminar covered in great detail the importance of advertising and really made me understand how and why advertising works. It made me want to advertise, and that is hard to do, since I have all the free traffic in the world from Google and Yahoo and all the search engines.
4. How to figure out how much you are spending per bride, and the importance of knowing that one figure.
5. The #1 secret, in my opinion, to effectively sell to more brides at the show. I almost feel like giving it away, but that would be unfair to Sonja, you have to attend the show yourself in order to completely understand it.

I could go on with 5 more key concepts that I learned, but you will not get the full effect until you attend the seminar.

In my opinion this seminar was worth over $300 dollar if you had to put a price tag for attending, however in benefits, it is up to you on how you implement what you learned but you will definitely increase the number of visitors to your booth if you implement the ideas well.

There were over 17 points well covered in great detail. Any exhibitor (me or any other wedding vendor) could easily understand and implement all or any of them  into their booth.

The only thing I wish I would have seen covered more in detail would have been “Compelling Content.” They threw that word around a couple of times, and in my opinion that is one of the key factors in selling to the brides.  This is just a suggestion that I think could add another dimension to an already great presentation. However, it may increase the length of the presentation a little.

Like I said before, this was a well organized presentation, very professional and inspiring, and many other people would have charged well over $300 to sell that same information. Sonja gave it away for free. In my opinion, she wants to gain your business and your trust by helping you have a better turn out at any bridal show, no matter what bridal show you attend. Who does that? Would you give away your secrets for free, even if your client bought from your competition?

Congratulations Sonja on a great seminar.  you can’t beat the price, the ideas presented were great, and if implemented well, you will definitely;

1. Sell to more brides
2. Get the most out of your marketing dollar
3. Increase sales

If everything works out well, I hope to see you at the  Houston Wedding Showcase on August 29th. For more information visit their website at HoustonWeddingShowcase.com!

Happy Bloggin!

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|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

What’s the #1 Question you should be asking yourself before every post?

Why am I doing this? What is my overall objective?

Most bloggers fail to understand the main reason for bloggin, for me there are only two: To attract readers to my blog(s) or to attract traffic through a targeted keyword or keywords.

If you aren’t bloggin for any of these two reasons, why blog at all.. Just to have something on  your blog?

I guess you could add reason #3 and that’s to add images of work you’ve recently done, but without an audience and without targeted keyword tactics… Who is actually going to look at your imgages?

It’s hard for us wedding vendors to create an a blog and have followers who read it. Most brides read blogs that are in general about the wedding industry, I mean what kind of advice can a DJ or a photographer offer to a bride that would encourage her to share the blog with other brides? Not much, well not on a daily basis at least.

Your tactics for blogging should be to write content that will attract more readers, possibly other phtographers or DJ’s or possibly some wedding coordinators… or to target certain keywords that you want to rank well for as I stated on a previous post about keywords.

Having a clear objective before your blog will not only help you rank well for certain keywords or attract more readers, it will help you feel great about yourself once you complete your blog entry.

Happy Bloggin!

|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding Dj in Houston

Looking to improve on the number of links pointing to your website or blog?

Wordpress by default adds the “nofollow” attribute to any comment placed in a blog. I’ve gone and found a plug in that that takes away that attribute, so your comments can have some link value added to them.

What is the Nofollow attribute?

According to Wikipedia:

nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring.

Pretty much what it means to the search engines is do not follow a link, it has no relevance or importance.

In an effort to increase commenting on this blog, I’ve added the NoFollow Free plug in to my wordpress. It removes the nofollow attribute from all links placed on comments. So please, feel free to place a link to your blog and leave a comment below.

For more information on the pluging, visit the wordpress page; NoFollow Free.

Happy Bloggin!

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|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

A recent Eye tracking study reveals some of the hot spots you may want to concentrate on.

The Best of Eye Track III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

This is a long read, it would be a good idea to scan the main highlighted points of interest and read the surrounding text.

Here are some 10 points I found interesting

1. “The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page”
2. “Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page — especially when they are in the upper left”
3. “Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior… larger type promotes lighter scanning”
4. “For headlines — especially longer ones — it would appear that the first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers”
5. “Navigation placed at the top of a homepage performed best”
6. “Shorter paragraphs performed better in Eyetrack III research than longer ones”
7. “We found that ads in the top and left portions of a homepage received the most eye fixations.”
8. “Close proximity to popular editorial content really helped ads get seen.”
9. “Text ads were viewed most intently, of all the types we tested. “
10. “Size matters. Bigger ads had a better chance of being seen.”

If you do think about reading the entire article, be prepared to spend about 10 minutes of your time…

Happy Bloggin!

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|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

My brain never stops working!

You see, I easily get bored and often wonder…. How else can I make extra money???

Who doesn’t want to make more money by only working a couple extra hours a day? I know I do and I am always coming across people who make $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month, $100,000 a month, $600,00 a month. All in US Dollars.

I want to know how I can make that much money myself, so I often try new things, but I don’t just jump at the first singn of a money making opportunity, I usually wait a year or two of doing research, reading testimonials and seeing results.

I don’t want to just jump into something and not know what I’m getting into. I love my money and I love to take care of it.

But the thought does cross my head… “If they do it, why can’t I?” I’d be happy wit an additional $5,000 USD a month… Who wouldn’t?

Most of these people that I am talking about are Bloggers! I have been following other professional bloggers for 3 years now and have seen some, such as Yaro Starak, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com take his blog from making a few thousand dollars a month to now claiming to Make over $10,899.83 in September of 2008!!!

How do they make money???

Besides blogging everyday, they teach people how to do their craft through a Membership site where their students pay them a  monthly fee, sometimes it’s a one time payment, but most people chose to pay monthly as it is easier on the pocket book.

Here’s how it works…

1. Action: They build great content on their blog daily.
   Result: People read their blog posts, love what they read, in some instances use their content to improve their blog, their business, or their lives. In turn, since they love what they read, they share it with their friends and family!
2. Action: They build an email list of followers.
   Result: Bloggers can keep their readers up to date with what’s going on, what’s new, what’s hot, what’s coming up… etc… Now you may ask yourself, why would they do that if they already have a lot of readers on their blog?? Well simple, not everyone visits their blog everyday, so by sending a quick email to their list, the blogger  can remind his readers to visit the blog when a new article or a new review has been posted. Maybe another great bloggin guru has released a new product that might interest the blogger’s readers. Through an affiliate program, the blogger can make recommendations to products that he would use, has used, or thinks his readers in his email list can use. If his readers buy the product, he makes a commission.
3. Action: They create a membership site.
   Result: By creating a membership site, the blogger, or creator of the membership site, can teach his followers the secrets behind how he makes money online. It is usually a step-by-step, detailed series of videos that the student can follow and create his own blog or even his own membership site.
4. Action: Build Testimonials from people who went through his course.
   Result: Encourage other, non-believers, or hesitant people to take an action an purchase the membership course next time they re-launch it or re-open it. When the non-believers ee that soneone already has purchased the course and used it to great success, the non-beliver will easily convert to a believer.

Why is this relevant to you and your wedding business???

Well, if you notice, 3 out of the 4 steps I described above, I have re-modeled and used on my Houston Wedding DJ Business and my Photo Booth Business , My Up Light Rental division of my Wedding DJ Business. I have a Blog: Brides who read it are almost instantly filled with confidence about my experience and are so ready to book my services, it’s unbelievable sometimes. I have a list of brides:  If you remember, I posted a few days ago about not being able to keep up with the number of brides that inquire on my website, well I use an email list to keep track of them. I use testimonials: Who doesn’t understand the power of well written testimonials?

Now, you remember I told you I get bored easily? My brain is ticking and thinking…

How can I use the all 4 steps above with my brides???

How can I create a membership site for my brides?

I have a few concepts, of which I am not ready to share, hell, I have not even put them to test myself… But once I do, I’m sure it will be a success just like the other 3 action steps I have discussed above.

So see for yourself, read other professional bloggers and get an idea of what they do to make money online and how they actually do it. Most of the time they are just eager to tell you how they do it so that you can pay them to teach you how you can do it yourself.

Bloggers I Recommend!

Yaro Starak, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com
The Membership Site Masterplan, a free report that tells you how Yaro makes his money. Join his newsletter, I’ve been a member for a year and Love the way Yaro writes and how easy it is to understand his teaching methods.
The Membership Site Masterplan Sales Letter: Watch the video to see what he has to offer.
The Daniel Scocco Interview: A case study of one of the students that went through his program and now has h is own $10,000 month membership site .

Darren Rowse : ProBlogger.net
31 days to a better blog Series I am in the process of trying out this 31 day challenge.
Day 1:Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog [Day 1 -31DBBB] Give it a try…

Brian Clark : Copyblogger.com
Tips and Ideas to create captivating titles, attractive headlines and compelling sales copy!

Jeremy Schoemaker : ShoeMoney.com
Ideas on how to make money online…

These are the top bloggers that I read almost every day. I love their content and I love what they are trying to do: Create Professional Bloggers that can generate a great source of income on the internet!

Happy Bloggin!

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|o| Simply Frank |o|
Professional Wedding DJ Blogger