Wedding Marketing Case Study Introduction

Wedding Marketing is a subject that covers many topics. First, there is Print Marketing which it itself is divided into subtopics such as magazine marketing, post card marketing, business card marketing, etc…

Next we have the online marketing which is endless in possibilities and MOST of them are free. There is Blogging, Social Medias (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace), Paid Search Engine Marketing, Organic Search Engine Marketing, Link trading, Directory listings, etc…

As mentioned on my previous post about Wedding Marketing News, I am a firm believer that all you need is a website,  a properly hosted blog, and a bit of patience in order to build up a business. I have completely survived without any offline marketing for the last 3 years. I had an ad on one magazine, but it did not generate much income, mainly because by the time I got a lead from the magazine I was already booked. I have not done a Bridal Show in years… I can’t even remember off the top of my head when my last Bridal show was. I was considering doing the Houston Bridal Showcase in August, but I could not find anyone to help me with my booth. I did not want an untrained person there either.

Wedding Marketing Case Study

Well to prove that effective blogging, blogging with a properly installed blog on your existing domain name, as stated on my previous post about wedding marketing news, I have taken an existing website, one with a blog on those free blogging platforms, and completely redesigned the website to include the blog on it’s own domain name as opposed to having it on the free blogging platforms.

Audrey Hu-Gonzales is a wedding coordinator in the Houston Area, she used to host her blog at wordpress.com. Her OLD blog can be found at http://eventsbyaudrey.wordpress.com/. She was under the false impression that she was doing good by blogging on the free blogging sites and had no clue that her efforts were really pointless.

After Months and months of blogging, her website

1. did NOT generate any traffic because of her blogging
2. did NOT go up in the search engine traffic rankings
3. did NOT increase it’s lead generation
4. and did NOT benefit completely through her blogging efforts.

I took on this project back in March (March 27th, 2009 to be exact) and the first thing I did was to set an initial benchmark to see how her website ranked on Google.com, Yahoo.com, and Live.com (now Bing.com)… Yahoo and MSN Live did not even know her website existed, Google knew it existed but ranked her very very low…

OUT OF 24 KEYWORDS, GOOGLE ONLY RANKED HER FOR 7 (NOTE THE LOWER THE NUMBER THE BETTER)

Keyword	Google.com position	Yahoo.com position	MSN Live.com position
Events Planners in Houston	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	167	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	83	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	93	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	91	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	134	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	167	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked

Do you know if your website is even showing up on the search engines, and for what keywords???

Out of those seven keywords, the closest she could get to the first page of the Google.com search results was one keyword which ranked #83. That showed up on the 9th page of the Google.com search results for that one keyword. That means that people looking for a wedding planner using that ONE keyword had to go through 9 pages of results before they got to her website… NINE PAGES!!!

There is a common belief on the web that says that most people do not even go past the 3rd or 4th page of Google.com when they search for information.

Just think about when you search for something, and can’t find it, how many pages into the search results do you go in before you try another keyword or phrase or just select the best looking page for what you are looking for? I’m guessing not very far, and the majority of the time you don’t go to the 9th page. I know I don’t.

Wedding Marketing Case Study – the Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

With some minor tweaking to her site, a few off-site optimization techniques, and some Search Engine Optimization to her website, only a month later, on April 24th, 2009 to be exact, was already indexed by Yahoo, MSN Live and Google.com

Out of her 24 targeted keywords her website was ranked as follows (NOTE THE LOWER THE NUMBER THE BETTER)

Keyword	Google.com position	Yahoo.com position	MSN Live.com position
Events Planners in Houston	192	11	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	25	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	36	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	10	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	190	71	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	19	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	43	Not Ranked	49
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	173	Not Ranked	115
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	146	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	103	34	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	98	Not Ranked	48
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	145	79
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	75	50
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	135	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	36	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	Not Ranked	Not Ranked	Not Ranked
Hidden Wedding Marketing Keyword	148	Not Ranked	182

Well as you can see, just by doing some Search Engine Optimization to her website, the search engines started to rank her website and more importantly, to rank her higher for some of her highly targeted keywords. Now I cannot release the keywords that she is going after because that would is one of the things that I am highly guarding. After all, the keyword hunting was one of the first things we did and that gave us a target to shoot for.

Some keywords are more more important than others because they are searched for, more often.

The keyword hunting took us about a couple of days and it was not too hard but it did involved some head-aching brainstorming and figuring out which keywords were the ones we wanted to go after.

As you can see from the Search engine results, we can conclude that Google.com is slow on ranking a website higher, yahoo.com immediately took her website to the #10, 11, and 19 for some very competitive and highly targeted keywords.

To Be continued…

Happy Blogging!

|o| Simply Frank |o|
Professional Blogging Wedding DJ in Houston

I was inspired to write today because one of my readers sent me a friendly reminder that I have an interesting blog, but that I had not posted since JULY!!!!

That’s like the #1 rule of blogging that I broke, post often.

Due to many things going on in life like, my PHOTO BOOTH Rental business growing tremendously, My Houston DJ Service business BOOMING with events, dedicating as much time to my wife and daughters as possible (there is never enough time in the world for that) and maintaining a ‘regular job’ from Monday through Friday… I’ve left blogging to the side.

Blogging is an important part of any online business. I’ve grown two very successful businesses through blogging and I’ve helped countless other people do the same. I guess because of my success that I’ve already achieved I’ve left blogging alone for, well now going on two months. It has not affected my bottom line, I have established both of my wedding vendor websites on the first page of Google.com for my targeted keywords and the business has been so steady that I actually turn away business on a daily basis.

But that is no excuse to find an hour a day to dedicate to my blogging habits.

Wedding Marketing News

As time goes on, I am finding out that more and more Wedding vendors are creating new blogs incorrectly. And that is by going to the FREE blogging platforms and getting a blog started on Wordpress.com, Blogger.com or Blogspot.com.

Those who spend the extra $50 to have a blog installed on their domain name will almost instantly see the effects of it.

When you get a free blog at wordpress.com, for example, your domain name is
my-wedding-blog.wordpress.com.
So wordpress.com gets credit for everything you post and all the traffic that you generate.  Your website will never get any credit for that. Why is that important? Well the reason you blog is #1 to attract readers to your blog and #2 to attract traffic for the search engines… in order of importance. And in the hopes that those readers or that traffic converts into a lead and then into a client.

When you get a blog at your website, my-website.com, for example, the blog would be
my-blog.my-website.com
and all the traffic generated by your blogging efforts will go to my-website.com. So every time you create a new blog post, the search engines start ranking your website since it is hosted by you, not the FREE blogging websites.

Getting a blog through blogger, blogspot, or wordpress.com is free and easy for many reasons …

1. All your hard efforts WILL go unrewarded, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
2. Your website will NOT get credit for any new traffic that you generate (Traffic is key to any website). the FREE Hosts get ALL the traffic benefits
3. It is NOT a professional way to blog (Kinda like printing your own business cards at home)
4. Whenever you post a new blog post, the search engines WILL NOT index your site, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
5. Your Website WILL NOT move up in the search engine rankings for your targeted keywords, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
6. You CANNOT target your keywords effectively, the FREE Hosts get ALL the benefits
7. YOU DON”T OWN YOUR BLOG!!! (At anytime, for any reason they can take it away and leave you back at NOTHING). This has happened over and over again and why would you risk someone taking away your blog? All the hard work and brainstorming that you have done… GONE, in an instant, no warning, to time to back up, no time to save or transfer your previous posts… just GONE!

Do you remember when websites first came out, NOBODY wanted to invest in putting their website on their very own domain name. People would go to the free hosting places like Geocities or AOL and they would put that address on their website on their Professionally designed business cards. I can even remember people not wanting to tell others they had a website for that same reason… they were ashamed of it… cuz it was free, or very badly developed. Man how times have changed.

Now, YOU KNOW you must put your website on your own domain name because it looks more professional.
Today, we are in the same situation with blogging. We don’t now what is the best way to do it, so we see what others are doing and we figure, hey if they are doing it, why can’t I? Right?  Save yourself a few years of going in the wrong direction.  PUT YOUR BLOG ON YOUR DOMAIN NAME.

I would NOT recommend that you go out and buy a new domain name for your blog as it will also not help you in your quest for more traffic and better search engine results.

Here are the top 5 Reasons I’ve discovered of why hosting your blog on your already-existing domain name helps your search engine rankings.

1. Every time  you post a new article, the blogging software automatically pings, or tells the search engines, that there is some new content on your webstie.  Search Engines LOVE new, unique content, so they visit your website and add it to their search results.
2. Every Post increases your page count. This is important because the more pages that you have the more authority that your site builds up.
3. You can target MORE keywords that you are going after. So if you find a new keyword that you want to rank for, you simply write a new post about it, do some search engine optimization and before you know it you will be ranked for those keywords. I used this to get ranked for Wedding Venues in the houston area, up lighting, etc…
4. Your clients only need to remember 1 domain name.
5. It is the most effective use of your time.

So spend some money, to the right thing and host your blog on your professional website. You will almost immediately see the power of a blog!

Happy Bloggin!

|o| Simply Frank |o|

Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

Ok so it’s been a little over 4 months since I posted any sort of post. In that time, we’ve had a long season of successful Holidays, a new president has been elected, we’ve entered the year 2009 and now it’s time for me to show you guys the standings for traffic during that entire time.

We all know, if you’ve been doing any type of online marketing, that January is the month that brides flock to your website. Why? For many reasons, here are three;

1. NEW YEAR’S or CHRISTMAS ENGAGEMENTS
2. THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER, OH YEA, WE HAVE A WEDDING TO PLAN
3. NEW YEARS RESOLUTION TO FINISH THEIR WEDDING PLANNING

1. NEW YEAR’S or CHRISTMAS ENGAGEMENTS

Christmas is probably one of the days that, us guys, think it’s a great idea to proposed to that loved one.

Our thought probably go something like this: “We’ve gotten her sweaters, perfumes, dresses, jewlery… We love her, what else can we get her?? Oh, yea a huge diamond engagement ring, she will surely love me now!!!”

Ok, so a bit of humor there, but it really is one of the most popular days to get engaged. So once Christmas is over and New years has gone by. The first thing they have to do, is start searching for people to do their wedding. Everything is usually closed New Years and Christmas day, so most Brides go online to do a few web searches to see who the top dogs industry are. Where do they go…. It’s almost a verb…. Google.com, they ‘Google’ their vendors. Ok so it is a verb, just not in the dictionary yet.

From the comfort of their home, they get to read your websites and your Sales Copy to see if you have what they are looking for, more importantly if you can convince them to buy from you!

2.THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER, OH YEA, WE HAVE A WEDDING TO PLAN

During the Holidays, it’s hard to do any research for wedding related planning. Most brides, well most of my brides at least, do all their planning all the way up to November, after Thanksgiving, they enter into Holiday Mode, where, if they have the time, they will completely procrastinate their wedding planning up until the holidays are over. Unless their wedding is the Month of January, February, or March, chances are they will not be looking online for a wedding vendor. This is also a huge part of why there is such a huge rush of brides to your webstie. If you don’t know this… shame on you.. you don’t know what you are missing… Top paying brides looking for wedding vendors, again, from the comfort of their very own home.

3. NEW YEARS RESOLUTION TO FINISH THEIR WEDDING PLANNING

Ok, this one is not as popular, but it is a reason why brides rush your site during the month of Januray.  Brides make it a part of their new years resolution to finish that harsh, endless, job of planning their wedding. Planning a wedding is hard, it’s no easy task, that’s what Wedding Planners are there for. But a lot of brides decide to do it for themselves and before you know it, they are behind on all their tasks and their goals have gone out the window. So they have to do something like, make it a new years resolution to finish planning the wedding by March 13th… The day before their wedding!

BONUS: THERE ARE NO OTHER HUGE DISTRACTIONS

Here is a bonus reason why brides rush to your websites during the month of Januray. For once there is a month with no distractions! There may be a Bridal Show or two to attend, but for the most part. There are no huge distractions during January. The brides have time to relax, clear their head, go to their computer and calmly take a few minutes to do a quick search and find the local talents. What better way to relax than to the calm sounds of your home, sitting in front of your computer, and searching for vendors to fulfill their needs and expectations!

Why did I not Put Bridal Shows?

Ok, so most of you are wondering, why would I not put Bridal shows like the Houston Bridal Extravaganza, or the Bridal Symposium, or Sonja’s Bridal Showcase… Well, mainly because I don’t attend those events and I sitll get more traffic than 90% of the people that do attend. Most of the time it’s the exact same brides… Why?  Good question, I will answer that in a later post, just remind me. Don’t get me wrong, bridal shows are a great way to drive traffic to your website, but what’s the point, you’ve already had a one-on-one with the bride, a personal Sale is a lot more important to me than a remote sale, or selling them through your website. I think the reason you want people on your website is to drive them to call you or set up an appointment. Not to drive them away once you meet them. That is not good business and it makes no sense to me why people tell the bride, when SHE’S RIGHT IN FRONT FO YOU, “just go to the webstie.” My interpretation, if I were the bride, you don’t want my business.

Compare the Results

Lastly, you want proof. You want to see that I’m not just making this up. Of that I’m sure… So I logged on to my Google Analytics program to get a display of the past few months of traffic. Additionally, I have another visitor tracking program on my website, which I think is more accurate and I will display some details from there.

In the image above, you can see that starting from September 2008, wedding inquiries died down little by little all the way until December 2008, and in January 2009, they just sky rocketed almost doubling the number from December.

In the image above you can see the actual numbers as reported by the visitor tracking program I use on my website, which is called Trace Watch. That is probably the greatest, or second greatest, tool I installed on my website. Without it I am blind as to what to do and more importantly, when to do it. And if what I did resulted in a positive or negative outcome.

What do the terms above mean?

• Unique Visitors: The number of unique visitors to my website that day, or under the months, that month. The way it is measured is that it counts each person once per day. So if I visit my website more than once, it will only count me one time. However, the next day, it will count me again, but just one time.
• Sessions: This one counts me or any other person, every time the access the website, leave and come back again. So if a bride visits me once in the morning and once in the evening, it will count her twice, as two sessions.
• Page Views: Pretty self explanatory, the number of pages viewed by the visitor, or bride. Page Views are also known as hits by other trackers.
• Robot PViews: This one is important, it tells you how many robots visited your website in one day. Robots are sent by the search engines to gather new information. This information is then stored by their databases and displayed when a user goes to the search engine to perform a search. Robots, are not counted in the Unique views nor are they counted anywhere else.
• The rest are daily averages of all the other results. Those are more important on the far right hand side, where you can see your daily average, for that month.

As you can see, by the above images, my DJ Website gets over 150 Hits a day, which is awesome, it’s more than most wedding directories and most local wedding websites can get. Those people you pay money to be on their website… They don’t get nearly as many hits as Elegante Entertainment DJ Website does on a daily, consistent basis.

YOU DON’T NEED THEM. Stopy paying them money for nothing!!!!

Remember the Bridal Extravaganza Show in Houston??? Well even because of that, I got some traffic. Wanna know how???

Well if you are smart enough to figure it out, you can try it on your website, and you will see for yourself… Below are two images,  One for the number of total visitors the Elegante Entertainment DJ Service and the other of what the people who arrived at Elegante Entertainment DJ were searching for (keep in mind that the Houston Bridal Extravaganza Show was on January the 10th and 11th of 2009):

These are the results for One Day, through One Search Engine. The first image show the number of results for three days and many different search engines, the second image shows you what people actually typed into the search engine to arrive at Elegante Entertainment’s DJ Website.

Well, that’s all for today, that should get you going on installing a blog onto your website. They are effective and they work. It may be too late for this January, but more than right on time for next January: January 2010!

Happy Bloggin!

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

Last month, June 24th 2008, I wrote an article entitled:How POWERFUL can your Blog be?

Pretty much I wanted to show you how powerful blogs are and how much Google loves them.

As a marketer, your objective is to get your logo or your website in front of as many brides/customers as you can, where ever they may be or go. I know that a lot of brides use the internet to find information about whatever they may need at that time.

So I got an idea to get in front of the brides that would attend the Bridal Extravaganza Show in Houston. I knew they would be using key words such as “bridal extravaganza,” “Houston bridal extravaganza,” “Bridal Show July Houston.” So I wrote an article on my DJ in Houston Website and called it: Houston Bridal Extravaganza Show – July 2008.

It immediately ranked extremely high (1st page results in Google.com) in the search engines for terms related to the Bridal Extravaganza Show. I am talking about, hours after the post, I was indexed and ranked on the first page of Google for most of those keywords.

Luckily I use a visitor tracking program on my website and here are the results of the additional traffic and the keywords used to access my website.

# Visitors	Keyword
18	houston bridal extravaganza
7	Houston Bridal Extravaganza Show
5	BRIDAL EXTRAVAGANZA HOUSTON
5	houston bridal show July
3	houston bridal show july 2008
2	houston bridal extraveganza
2	bridal extravaganza houston tx
2	bridal extravaganza in Houston
2	Houston Wedding Extravaganza
2	houston bridal show, july 2008
2	bridal extravaganza july 2008
2	bridal extravaganza show
2	Bridal Extravaganza Show houston tx
1	houston bridal extravaganza vendors July 2008
over 20	Various Kewords with only 1 visitor

For a Complete list of all the Google Tracking Details from my DJ in Houston Website Download the PDF Report Below.
2008_07_30-google-details-fhpentertainment

This report show ALL the traffic that came into my website as a result of Google.com only. In the month of July, Google.com provided me with 52% of my total monthly traffic, Yahoo 18%, and MSN/Live with 6% of my total monthly traffic. At the time of this post, July 30th, 2008 12:00 pm Central time, I’ve had a total of 3,651 visitors to my website this month. Note: This tracking program will count one person as 1 visitor for each day he or she visits the website. EX. if you visit it today, it will count you as 1 for the entire day (no matter how many times you return), if you visit it tomorrow it will count you again, so you become 2 visitors.

Now, I understand, these are just traffic numbers, they really don’t mean nothing to you until I report income as a result of that traffic.

All I can answer to that is that 85% of my DJ Business Income comes as a result of my website. I have one Ad in Premiere Bride Magazine, and that is ALL the advertising I do. Even that traffic is directed to my website.

Happy Bloggin!!

–
DJ Francisco
Blogger and DJ in Houston