Wedding planning starts now — so should wedding marketing

By ISJ Media

Couples who are getting hitched should start planning their wedding six to nine months before the date, according to realsimple.com

Since most weddings take place June through September, couples — and wedding planners, photographers, etc. should start planning, well, now.

This is great news for business involved in the wedding industry. Businesses like photographers, florists, bakeries; vacation and travel services and wedding venues should take advantage of this early opportunity to get the attention of both the bride and groom.

So how can you make your service or business stand out during the early stages of wedding planning? Here are some tips:

1. You must have a digital presence.  There is no bend here. If your wedding planning related business or service is not online, and more importantly available on mobile devices, you’re not going to be successful in this market, period.

Think about your target audience.  According to mentalfloss.com the average age people in Idaho get married is 26.5 for men and 25 for women.  Do you think these people are scanning billboards for photographers and wedding dresses? Nope, they are on their mobile devices — a lot.

Is your website mobile-friendly? Does it need an overhaul? Now is the time to check.

Considering advertising on mobile apps and for mobile devices. Ad campaigns can be designed just for the purpose of reaching mobile customers, and mobile campaigns have proven to be highly effective in east Idaho.

2. Sell the solution, not the product. This applies to any business or service, not just the wedding industry. Identify your target customer.  You need to go beyond the simple “I’m targeting brides.”  Create a customer profile, for example, Julie is a 25 year-old getting married in June. She wants a modest dress with a removable train that won’t break the bank. Does your shop sell modest dresses? Don’t just advertise that you sell dresses, offer a solution by offering modest dresses, free adjustments etc. Solve a problem.

3.  Provide information too. Consider providing a blog with weekly wedding planning advice or a wedding planning checklist on your website. By showing that you are an expert in your industry you’ll build brand loyalty and increase your Google search ranking.

Do you need help planning a mobile campaign? Contact www.isjmedia.com at 239-3532 for a free consultation.

Think With Google - free download

Have you visited thinkwithgoogle.com yet?

If you are a marketer, business owner or anyone who wants to keep up with consumer buying trends in the digital world you'll be amazed at the wealth of information there.

Google is by far the leader when it comes to online — well, just about anything. Think With Google has tons of insights on consumer behavior across different audiences and platforms such as how sports fans use YouTube, for example. There is a section on mobile advertising trends including how to design a better mobile experience for shoppers and creating effective video ads.

The tools section features planning tools such as shopping insights; just type in the brand or product you'd like to research into the search bar and a map will appear that shows the areas where the product is popular as well as each quarter's sales results.

Probably most useful to business owners is The Customer Journey to Online Purchase. Select your industry, business size, country, and what channel you'd like to search (organic traffic, paid traffic, referral, etc.) and you'll see percentage results for consumers who are in the beginning, middle and end of the purchase cycle.

Consumers more often use organic search at the beginning of the purchase cycle and direct click is near the end of the cycle when the consumer buys. Knowing what stage your target audience is in will help you to better direct your advertising and promotion focus.

Today I have been reading through the section on Mirco Morments. Did you post back to school photos of your kids on Facebook? Do a quick search for movie times? Those are Micro Moments. People want what they need quickly and easily. If you can anticipate the micro moments for your target audience you can make better decisions when deciding when and where to promote your brand.

There is so much more that I could write about, but why don't you go check it out for yourself? I guarantee you will find something useful there, regardless of your business size, service or product.

Let me know what you think!

Download the free guide "Micro Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile" to learn more.

Going mobile means more now than ever

Chances are you've used your smart phone to search for a local business in the last few months.  Search engines like Google are great for finding the phone number and addresses of local restaurants and stores, but online business listings offer so much more than the ancient phone book. Online business listings can offer reviews, directions, specials, services and more.

With so much information literally at our fingertips we can be much more selective about the information we want to find. And if you are a consumer searching for a specific product or service, such as coffee shops that are open at 6 a.m., if you coffee shop does not have an online presence those searchers might not even know you exist and will take their business to a shop that has hours, prices, specials etc. online.

Think about what you expect when doing an online search. Your keywords bring up a list of web sites, and if your click on the first one does not yield useful information then you're on to the next.

So having an  informative and well-designed website is a great way to get new customers, but in this increasingly mobile era it is not enough.  It is estimated that 60% of searches are done on a mobile device. Is your website mobile friendly? Sure it looks great on your office desktop, but remember that mobile device screens are much smaller and things like videos and large image files can slow down how fast your page loads, especially on a mobile device.

Most people won't sit around and wait for a page to load on their device. If it does not load they'll simply go to a different web site or get frustrated and
 not come back.

Need another reason to make your website mobile friendly? Google searches done on a mobile device will no longer yield results with non mobile-friendly websites.  That's a relief for consumers, but if your business has not hopped on the mobile bandwagon it could be suffering.

So what does having a mobile-friendly website mean?

The design should be responsive. Responsive websites can detect when a user is visiting from a mobile device and automatically fits the content to the correct size.

Read more about how mobile can benefit your business in the article How to Seize Untapped Mobile Opportunity in 2016