Tag Archives: Brides

Do You Know If Your Business is Offering Pain or Gain?

Posted on 03/26/2012 by admin
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In a post the other day I mentioned that customers primarily only buy for 2 reasons – Pain (avoidance) and Gain. Now in the Wedding Industry we are mainly on the happy side of things and the customers are buying for Gain, but WHAT are they gaining – a new dress, a cake, a photographer? Well yes all those things but the psychology behind it is a whole lot more.

When I talk about Pain and Gain what is meant? Well Gain is when people perceive they will gain from the purchase, they will gain things like peer admirations, higher standing in their social circle (why many people buy certain cars), makes you look better, makes you healthier etc. And Pain is reasons such as looking bad amongst your peers, losing money, losing health etc etc. The reason women spend billions on beauty products is to look better, but also because they don’t want to look old. The reason we all fork out on insurance is because we want to avoid the nighmare of NOT having it!

So what are your brides buying? Fancy stationery yes but more than that they are buying romance, one-upmanship on every other wedding they’ve been to, something that will add to the perfect day. In some way they believe that al the small things will make them look good, make the day happier and if they start married life with a perfect day then the marriage will be perfect too…..

Wedding planning is a perfect example of something that is booked because of the avoidance of pain – they don’t want anything to go wrong! And so is photography to some extent, yes the gain is that they have gorgeous images to remember the day but the pain avoidance is that they wont FORGET how they felt that day!

So, when you are marketing to your brides, instead of telling them what your selling, tell them what they want to buy – tell them what problem you are going to solve for them, tell them what they are going to gain from your product or service and tell them what pain they will avoid by working with you……

 

Claire x0x

 

If you want help with your business, I can offer marketing, mentoring and coaching all rolled in to one. Book your first FREE Breakthrough session, email me now claire@bombshellacademy.com

 

Sometimes You DO Get Something For Nothing…..

Posted on 03/23/2012 by admin
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Me and my 4 month old daughter, well mainly me, are BIG fans of everything made by the company JellyCat – their range is awesome, unique, tactile, cute and all the soft toys look like they have real character. They are NOT cheap toys but they are made well and I reckon worth the money.

The other day I had a lovely surprise in the post and it was a JellyCat book about Cordy Roy Elephant. The JellyCat range of characters all have books to go along with them that tells a story of the character. They are lovely stories with pictures and the child can sit with the toy and read the story. Back to the book, I received the book in the post from JellyCat because I’d entered a competition or something somewhere, thats not the important bit, the important bit is that I was SO thrilled with this book – they normally retail around the £5 mark so its not a cheap freebie but by receiving this book they now have a definite sale of a Cordy Roy Elephant at around £20 and not only that they have a guaranteed life long customer (who will probably spend a fortune over the years)  and a raving fan that will tell loads of people about how fab they are.

How can you incentivise your waivering customers? If you add up the cost of freebies you have to be realistic about whether you can afford it but you must think ahead and work out whether you can gain long term from these same customers over the years ahead. Its why the supermarkets are so keen for your loyalty to the extent that they send you voucers worth quite a lot of money, they know that in your lifetime you will spend a LOT of money with them and if they can get your loyalty its worth it.

As a wedding supplier you probably only think you are getting a one off sale with your brides but if you are a photographer, after the wedding you can do pregnancy, newborn, family photos etc – the lifetime value of that one bride is enormous!  And there are many other types of products and services that can benefit from that lifetime loyalty.

 

Claire xox

If you need help building your business or attracting more customers then get in contact to arrange a FREE initial Breakthrough Session. Email Now Claire@bombshellacademy.com

 

 

 

What You Need To Know About Specialising That Could Otherwise Lose You Money !

Posted on 03/05/2012 by admin
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I love the series The Apprentice’ and one of the reasons I love it so much because its a great way to see how NOT to run a business. For all their fancy titles and apparent business skills and knowledge not many of the candidates have a clue and I think they’d find running their own business actually very difficult indeed.

Last night they had to buy vintage items and then sell them for a profit in a shop. One team definitely seemed to get it right and went to a Car Boot Sale and got some really nice bits and with the help of being provided with a lovely looking (free) shop to display them in they made a healthy profit after just a couple of days. But we all know in the real world our costs would have included rent, petrol, heat, light, advertising, flyer production etc and the profit would have been a lot less.  While I was watching I was just WILLING one of the candidates to come up with a plan of action that actually WOULD work in the real world, I wanted someone to say…… “Lets concentrate on 70′s products” so that everyone buying things would buy the same, the shop would have a consistent feel about it, they could name it consistently and even the people selling in the shop could have dressed in the same them – it not only would have been awesome to watch but would have been a REAL winner!

But why you may ask would you want to limit your customer base, because thats what specialising does right? Wrong! It’s true, if you don’t specialise then in theory EVERYONE is your customer, but are they really? Lets imagine a town where on one street everyone sells Wedding Stationery – I know, it would definitely be the prettiest street in the country, but all the little shops would be competing for all the business and the brides would be walking up and down the street looking for their ideal Wedding Invitations and going in one shop after another. So if you were in the shop and a customer walked in chances are they would look around and then go somewhere else to look at what they’ve got.

Now imagine you have a ship on this street and you thought, ok, I’m not going to compete on price with everyone else I’m gonna specialise and I’m only going to sell Wedding Stationery with a Butterfly theme. Now, you are limiting yourself to customers because not everyone wants Butterflys but equally you would know that everyone that came through your do was interested in the Butterfly theme that you were offering and so you wouldn’t have to waste any of your time or effort on someone that had no intention of buying from you. Not only that but every single bride that WANTED a butterfly theme would come to you and BUY from you because you are the expert on the Butterfly theme – why would they even think of going to someone that did everything for Butterflys when you are the expert? They wouldn’t!

So yes, you would have less customers coming through your door but the chance of you making a sale from those that come through that door are WAY higher than everyone elses chances of a sale, and at the end of the day, the amount of people that LOOK at your product does not effect your profit, only the ones that actually BUY do!

I look forward to the next instalment of The Apprentice to see what gem that throws up.

Claire xox

If you need help with growing your business or increasing your profits then email claire@bombshellacademy.com to arrange your FREE Breakthrough Session 

Are You a Square Peg in a Round Hole?

Posted on 09/29/2011 by admin
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Unfortunately in business things change all the time, and some business people like the challenge of keeping ahead of the competition and coming up with new ways to do business and make themselves original and others definitely do not!  If you want to succeed in business long term then you have to be in the former group I’m afraid because your customers requirements and problems change and unless you keep up then your business will simply run out of people to sell to.

One of the things I like to look at when working with a client is how can we keep streaks ahead of whats already out there, what innovation can we come up with or new way of presenting our skills is there? If you can constantly think outside the box with regards to your business then you are definitely on to a winner.

Did anyone see Dragons Den this week? Two women were on there because they have come up with the idea of people doing their own Wedding Videos. Now this struck me as odd because why aren’t videographers nationwide offering this service already? Lets face it Videos have changed a LOT in the past 10 years, they used to be a novelty that people went for then the price of videos came down and down so people did their own, then the CLEVER videographers started doing videos to music almost like pop videos and they were everywhere on YouTube and now we seem to be going back to the DIY version but brides want them professionally edited, so its changed a LOT!

Other businesses have changed a LOT – cakes are more fancy and quirky, photography has got more artistic, everything has had to change to meet the requirements of the bride and unless you supply what your customer actually wants then you will get left behind. So how do you know what they want? Well the easiest way is to ASK! Keep chatting to future brides at every opportunity and ask them EXACTLY what they want, don’t try and pigeon hole them into what you are offering – its their wedding, they are the customer and they are the ones paying so make sure you listen.  And especially important is to ask when you DON’T get the business, ask the bride why not, was iit price (very rarely is) or was it what you were offering?!?!

 

Claire x

 

Have you heard? I’ve just released my latest book… Wedding Fairs – From Waste of Time to Goldmine. The book tells you EXACTLY how to generate a huge income from every single Wedding Fair you do and bring in all the customers you want from them.

 

 

 

Do You Test and Measure Everything?

Posted on 06/14/2011 by admin
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One of the first things I ask new clients or people that are just asking for marketing advice is “Whats working for you currently?” I want to know this because if something is working then my philosophy is ‘If it aint broke don’t fix it’ although I do know some people with marketing strategies that seem to have the philosophy ‘If it aint broke fix it until it is’ but thats a whole ‘nothr blog!

I want to know whats working because sometimes the best marketing strategy is to increase and refine what you’re already doing if something is working for you rather than introduce a whole load of new things that take time and money and maybe wont work at all, but back to the point of the blog.  It simply amazes me when some people have no idea what is working or not working for them, they have a website, they advertise, the use Facebook and Twitter and they have no idea where their customers are coming from. This is madness in the extreme – if you are spending your time on Twitter, maybe several hours a day remember what your time is worth (hopefully a minimum of about £30 per hour) and thats a WHOLE lot of money you are spending on Twitter – are you getting enough returns from that to justify it?

The same goes with advertising (my soapbox topic so I’ll try not to get on it!) Its ok advertising in glossy magazines if you are GENUINELY getting the sales from it that not only cover the cost of the advert but also end up making you a profit, otherwise whats the point? Yes you could say that its brand awareness etc but let face it , you are NOT Coco-Cola or Cadbury’s you haven’t got millions to throw away on brand awareness, all your budget NEEDS to get you a return. Not only that but what use is brand awareness when the wedding industry is so continuously moving? Your brides and potential customers are potential customers for a year, maybe 18months tops, after that they are married and aren’t interested in the wedding industry anymore – weddings customers are around for a short time, chocolate customers are there for life!

So – what is all your hard work marketing REALLY costing you and what is it REALLY getting you? If you don’t measure it then you cannot improve it and if you can’t improve it then you could be just throwing your money away. One of my favourite sayings is from Ben Franklin “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” Yet that is EXACTLY what some people do with their advertising and marketing…..

 

 

Claire xox

 

 

Need help attracting more brides and getting more profit? Join the Wedding Wealth Program NOW!

How To Make Sure Your Emails Are Getting Read???

Posted on 05/04/2011 by admin
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These days we get absolutely inundated with emails and messages and if you’re anything like me a lot of them I delete without even reading, and your customers are exactly the same, so how do you make sure that YOUR emails are the ones that get read and noticed?

When sending emails to your potential customers there is nothing worse than sending constant ‘buy me, buy me, buy me’ messages – these are guaranteed to be deleted and marked as junk straight away. The wholepoint, once again, is to build a relationship with your customer so that they can get to know you, get to know your business and what you are offering and decide for themselves whether they want to do business with you. This is the easiest, less pushy and in my experience the much more successful way of converting potentials into customers!

So what should your emails say? They should always be informative and valuable to the people you are contacting, make them about the latest trends, focus on case studies, testimonials, latest products, celeb weddings in the news, anything that your potential customer will actually be interested to read and know about do NOT, and I repeat do NOT make it all about you! Tempting as it might be to tell people how wonderful you are at this stage in the relationship they are really not interested, you want them to come to that conclusion on their own!

So thats what to put inside your emails but how do you actually get your brides to even open the email? Well the title has to be FAB! It has to make your potential customers sit-up and want to read more, it has to be relevant to them and it has to incite curiosity enough to make them read further…

If you want some inspiration on how to write fabulous headlines start checking out all the womens mags on the shelves, the headlines on the front are amazing and the people that write those have researched and researched what works so use their results! They often have Top Tips, or really emotive words in the titles, no one is ever ‘sad’ that they’ve broken up with their partner in ‘Hello and OK’ world, they are always ‘devastated’ ! It creates much more of a response that just sad doesn’t it? Also get ideas from some of the best selling books, they are always Seven Steps to… Ten ways to….. The secret of……

Remember some of the key motivating factors when coming up with your titles  are

  • Saving time
  • Being appreciated by others
  • Improving appearance
  • Being up-to-date
  • Avoiding criticism
  • Avoiding pain
  • Avoiding losing money
  • Improving Social status

………to name but a few

Of course, remember YOU are marketing to brides so the biggest things on THEIR minds are their WEDDING DATE and their NEW NAME so if you can get those into your titles you are onto a guaranteed opener!!!!!

 

Claire x0x

 

Do you need help with attracting more clients to your Wedding Business? The Wedding Wealth program is specifically designed to generate more leads and more customers in an effortless and cost effective way. Find out more HERE Now…


In order to do business you need to take away the fear…..

Posted on 04/08/2011 by admin
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Lets face it Wedding Days are very stressful for the bride and the pressure to get it right first time (and hopefully only time) is enormous! Every detail about the wedding day they have to carefully think about and plan to the smallest detail and they only get one chance so its no surprise that they are really cautious and take their time about who to book for their special day. Unfortunately this thinking time and delay can be hard work for the suppliers that are trying to get booked by these brides so how can you speed up the process so they make the decision quicker?

The thing you need to overcome to enable the sale to a bride or anyone else is FEAR!  Think about this scenario: I was in Tesco the other day looking at air fresheners, I’d seen lots of adverts on tv and the woman on the advert looked pretty please with the smell in her make believe house but I wasn’t convinced. The air freshener was about a fiver and my FEAR was that I’d spend my hard earned fiver, get it home and I would hate the smell. This wouldn’t be the end of the world because it was only a fiver, I could throw it out and no harm done except the lost fiver. Now think of something bigger and more expensive, say a new sofa…. Ok, now we’re talking about £500 ! I’ve got a LOT of fear spending that kind of money so I need to be sure its right. I take a photo and ‘try it out’ at home to see if I think it will fit in, I sit on it to see if its going to be comfortable, I probably even take measurements of the sofa to make sure it will fit in the intended space – all these things are eliminating my FEAR associated with such an important purchase. Again, worse case scenario I buy it, get it home, hate it, stick it on Ebay and lose some money but ultimately not much harm done.

NOW – final scenario – your wedding day! You’re getting married, its going to be the biggest amount of money you’ve EVER spent in your life, especially on a single day and you have just ONE chance to get it right! Worse case scenario its a disaster and your stuck with the memory of a dreadful day FOREVER!!! Thats a LOT of FEAR!!!!

So what can you do to take away the fear and to help the bride with her buying decision? Well for some products you can give free samples so thy know what they are getting, you can have consultations so they can get to know you, you can have trial runs, you can communicate often and efficiently, you can send newsletters demonstrating your expertise, you can show testimonials from other happy clients, the list is long and is as long as your imagination but ALL these things help to take away the FEAR for the purchaser and let them know you are the right person to do business with.

Don’t rely on just one thing to convert your prospects into customers, that might not be enough, put your thinking cap on and come up with a FEAR ELIMINATING strategy!

 

Claire x0x

 

Do you need help to put together a Marketing Strategy for your business that will make it SOAR! Are you ready to Step Up??? Click Here NOW

How To Answer – You’re Too Expensive…..

Posted on 04/05/2011 by admin
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How many times have you heard that? When I was  Wedding planning I used to hear it from people all the time and do you know what I said? YES!!!!  Were you mad I hear you say? Well maybe just a little but after I said yes I continued….
YES, I AM too expensive if my service was like that of every other wedding planner, but its not…… and then I went on to explain why my business and service was better than everyone elses, and do you know what? I almost always got the job!

One piece of advice I was given many years ago that proved invaluable and really thought-provoking was that people only say no to what you are offering if they don’t fully understand how you will benefit them. The excuses they say, such as your too expensive or they need to think about it are just ways of saying that you haven’t explained your offering enough.  Now this advice is hard to get your head around but when you do it is SO true – think of something in the past that you REALLY, REALLY wanted that was expensive, I bet you managed to find the money for it? I do it all the time with my passion which is shoes! I see a pair of shoes that I ADORE and they will be a ridiculous amount of money (I wont embarrass myself by revealing the actual figures involved but some have cost me a small fortune! ) I will do ANYTHING to get them, I will save the money or figure ways to raise the money until I’ve bought them, but show me something practical that costs 20 quid that I need but don’t necessarily want and I’ll think its expensive!

You will always get brides that set themselves a budget and really need to stick to the budget but if they take the time to have a consultation with you and THEN tell you its too expensive then the problem is NOT the price!

So how do you deal with this objection? Well you need to explain the VALUE of your product, whether its a cake, stationery, photography, whatever your service is, if you’ve spent the consultation time listening to the client and finding out what is important to them, then you can use this to demonstrate how you can fulfill their needs  in a way that makes them appreciate the VALUE of your service and therefore makes them happy with the price you are asking.

Be confident about your product and service and confident about your uniqueness and communicate this to your prospects and price will never be an objection again……

 

Claire x0x

 

Do you need help to put together a Marketing Strategy for your business that will make it SOAR! Are you ready to Step Up??? Click Here NOW

Are You Discounting or Adding Value?

Posted on 03/28/2011 by admin
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I often get asked whether you should include prices on a website and to be honest I have no idea whether there is a right or wrong answer to that. If someone is going to go elsewhere because of the price they see on your website then it really saves you the hassle of them making contact, you chatting, maybe visiting them and then them saying its too expensive and going somewhere else. On the other hand you could argue that without quoting the price you have a chance to ‘sell’ to the potential customer and they will be so taken with you that they’ll pay anything…… Personally, and this IS only my personal opinion I don’t think it makes any difference because weddings are so emotional occasions that if you provide something a bride particularly wants then the price aspect goes out of the window immediately and I think very few brides actually purchase based on price.

Whether you choose to display prices or not there is one thing that I often see people doing and I would really, really ask you to think twice and that is DISCOUNTING!!!!  We’ve all seen the ads on tv over and over again for DFS furniture and their sofas are reduced to some tiny amount compared to what they are apparently worth, and what are we all thinking? We are thinking that the reduced price is probably what they are worth, not the inflated price at all, and it actually deflates the VALUE of the product. Top supermarkets, who spend millions on their marketing have done extensive research on how to offer their products. Which offer would you prefer:-
Half Price
50% Off
Buy One Get One Free
Basically they are, of course all the same but Buy One Get One Free consistently gets 300-500% more sales than the others!

If you want to make an offer to potential clients, maybe at a wedding fair or as a limited time offer, rather than make a discount increase your VALUE instead. You can do this by adding something of value to your package. If you are a photographer for example offer a FREE engagement shoot (you might do this anyway but make it known!) and make sure you tell people how much this shoot is worth, add a VALUE to it.  If you are making an offering that involves just your time make sure you add a value to it and advertise that value, attach an hourly rate to your service and make it known to your potential customers exactly what they are getting.

So next time you are tempted to discount and reduce the value of YOU and YOUR service think again and get creative about how you can instead add VALUE to your offering.

 

Claire x0x

 

Do you need help to put together a Marketing Strategy for your business that will make it SOAR? Are you ready to Step Up??? Click Here NOW

Wedding Fairs – The Right Mindset and Preparation

Posted on 03/21/2011 by admin
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I often go to Wedding Fairs to keep up with trends and ideas and generally see what people are selling and what brides are going for and interested in, after all the only way to know your customer really well is to get close to them. Whilst walking round the wedding fair I am a completely amazed at how many suppliers go to Wedding Fairs with the sole purpose of manically selling to the brides at the fair! This is all very well but imagine if you are a bride and you go into a wedding fair and there are 50 or so wedding suppliers desperately trying to sell to you as soon as you get through the door. The poor bride may have only got engaged a couple of weeks before and my be just there to gather a few ideas and think about what kind of wedding she wants to plan, she may be getting married abroad or the other side of the country, may be planning a big or small or wedding or may just not have a single clue so she REALLY will not appreciate the hard sell!

On the other hand, I’ve seen the suppliers that are completely opposite to this, they sit on their chair near their table/stand and they hardly say anything unless a bride starts to ask questions, then they answer the questions with knowledge and enthusiasm and the bride smiles…… and walks off never to be seen again! In this scenario it IS possible to be TOO nice, after all your not there to just impart information you ARE there to actually sell, otherwise why bother going?

I’ve also been to wedding fairs where the people manning the stand spent the entire time either talking to each other or being on the phone and I don’t think they actually spoke to a SINGLE bride! I wonder how many sales THEY got? I’ve also walked round fairs where the stand holders were miserable to the point of being rude and I’ve gone away thinking that they would have actually done themselves and all the brides a favour if they’d have just stayed at home.

One of the many things I’ll cover in my next Teleclass is how to get into the right mindset for a wedding fair and to get straight in your head the EXACT reason you are there! Yes, it is of course to make sales but there is definitely a way to do it that can make it much more pleasurable for both YOU and the bride!

So – next time you do a Wedding Fair, get your head right, put on a smile, be friendly, and don’t be desperate!

 

Claire xox

 

Do you need help to put together a Marketing Strategy for your business that will make it SOAR? Are you ready to Step Up??? Click Here NOW