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)

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)

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

Did you know you could use your blog to easily increase and climb up the search engine results?

Disclaimer: This will not work for you if your blog is hosted on a 3rd party host such as blogspot.com, blogger.com, typepad.com, wordpress.com, or any other FREE blogging host.

Here is a bit of background on this subject.

Did you know that if Google.com does not find many relevant websites that contain the keyword phrase that a user is looking for, they will just start adding results that Google thinks may be relevant to the search results? Most of the time they really are not even close to what the user is searching for. If you EVER see anything like this, it’s clear that there are very little to no websites out there that are targeting those keywords.

Let me give you a live example, because I suck at explaining concepts…

A few days ago, and I do mean Days, I was not even close to being ranked for the keywords “Gobo Design Houston.”  In fact the top spots were for very non related websites. There was one gobo design company in Houston and the rest were either from California, Gobo Manufacturers (not designers), and well wedding DJ’s from other cities and states.

What that means is that there either were very little to none actual websites that Google could show to people looking for a GOBO Designer in Houston or some poorly optimized websites of gobo designers.

I wrote a short article entitled, “Gobo Designs in Houston” and Viola!!!  My Website is Ranked #3 & #4 for the keywords “Gobo Design Houston” Not only That, I received a couple of  unrequested links to my website with the same keywords, a Digg and they are ranked #1, #2 &#10 for those keywords.

So Where I was not even ranked before, I now  own 5 of the 10 positions on the front page of the search engine results. It took actually a few minutes to an Hour for my website to be ranked so high with those keywords…

WHY?

As stated before…

1. Lack of competition
2. lack of websites targeting those words
3. lack of knowledge from business owners who are targeting those keywords.

What’s in it for me?

More business! More income! More Clients! More people going through my sales funnel and not only needing gobo design, but possibly even a DJ or a Photo Booth!

This is a great example of bloggin for the sole purpose of increasing Traffic to your website.  Additionally, be sure to track your traffic to see where it comes from and how you can use this one idea to increase traffic by capturing related terms to this search keyword.

There you have it, now go out and try it for yourself, be sure to use the google keyword analytics tool as discussed on the post on how to “Grow Your Wedding Traffic, One Simple Technique to Try” to gather ideas for keywords you may want to target.

Give it a try!!

Happy Bloggin!

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

As you all know, I love to keep up with all kinds of stats. More than I know what to do with, honestly. Today I was going through my visitor tracking program and I realized that I got traffic for things I never knew I would get traffic for. I got a visitor today for a person who was looking for “Good DJ Websites.” On the results page of Google, I show up as the #8 Result.

Isn’t that pretty neat??

That kinda led into my next idea, well that and the fact that I just revisited my two landing pages on my website: The one for Weddings and the one for Quinceaneras.

On a quick note, a landing page is a page designed to motivate your potential client into giving you his information.  So good Landing Page design is supposed to build confidence on your product or service, informing your potential client completely about what you can do for him, and answer the question what’s in it for me. Accomplish those objectives within your landing page and you will motivate your visitor to take action. After all, as I stated before, if he is not motivated enough to take action the first time, what will motivate him to come back again to your website?

I had not really looked at these pages in a while, and I have to say, they are horrible!!! I can’t believe I let them stay up as long as they have. They look very poorly made, and have absolutely no motivation for brides to contact me. As I stated before on a post, I get an average of 32 leads per month from potential clients that want to know more information about my services.

One thing to take note on, is that this was probably throughout the busiest time of the year. The beginning of the year, brides are looking for wedding vendors online, more than any other time.

So I guess the crappy looking page that is on that page right now is not really stopping them. There are countless errors and things not lining up. Honestly I’m ashamed of my work, so starting tomorrow I’m going to go through and redo these two pages, starting with the Quinceanera page and then on the the Weddings page.

I also would love to redo my DJ Upgrades, Up lighting, Monogram and Interactive DJ options page to match the new landing pages.

Stay tooned as I go through this transformation!

Happy Bloggin!

–
|o| Simply Frank |o|

Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston

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!

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