The rise of online shopping provides an amazing opportunity for bridal retailers — but it also means you’re up against every other boutique on the internet, not just those in your own area. While the internet can be a powerful tool, it’s also a very competitive arena, as you’ll be up against countless other boutiques for the attention of your target audience.

Jonathan Birch Creative Director at digital marketing agency Glass Digital said, “As a boutique, your main goal is to get your prospective customers to visit your physical store for a fitting. So, even if you don’t offer online shopping as part of your services, search engines and online tools can still play a major role in helping people discover your business, which means you really can’t afford neglect your digital marketing.”

So what can bridal retailers do to have with a good digital marketing strategy that will stand out?

Read More: Treating Your Website as Well as Your Shop Window

Optimise Your ‘My Business’ listing

As brides will need to visit your store in person to try on dresses, local search is likely to be a very important aspect of your marketing campaign. One way you can instantly give your business more visibility at a local level is to complete your ‘Google My Business’ profile.

Google My Business (GMB) is a free online tool that lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps.

“The more information you provide for your My Business profile, the better the results will be, so be as thorough as you can. Profiles with images also perform better, with and those with photos receive 42% more requests for directions to their location from users on Google, and 35% more clicks through to their websites than those without images. So, try to include a few high-quality snaps of your products and boutique if possible,” adds Jonathan.

Read More: 10 PR Tips for Your Bridal Business

Publish High-Quality, Relevant Content

Another way to improve your rankings on search engines is by publishing plenty of high-quality, informative articles that are relevant to your business – this is called content marketing!

Content marketing can bring all sorts of benefits to your site. Firstly, it will improve your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in the eyes of Google and other search engines, which will boost your rankings across all of your other pages. Secondly, good content can help to attract organic traffic to your site. And, if you target the right questions and topics and impress searchers with your content, it could just persuade them to book an appointment or call into your shop.

Jonathan Birch adds, “When coming up with ideas for your content marketing, try to think about the sort of topics and questions that your prospective customers are likely to have about your services, or planning a wedding more generally.”

“For example, many brides to be might be wondering how many fittings they need, or when they should start shopping for their dress. This will help you to target searchers who are still early stages of choosing their wedding dress, as this will bring the most valuable traffic for your site.”

Read More: How Blogging Could Boost Your Business

Improving Your Site Structure and Design

“It goes without saying that a stunning website with plenty of gorgeous photographs of your boutique and your products will help you bag sales. But, there’s more to a great site than just the aesthetics, especially when it comes to improving your ranking on search engines,” says Jonathan Birch.

To do so, your website has to offer a good user experience. This means that your site needs to be user-friendly, easy to use and fast to load in order to rank well on Google. Therefore, it’s definitely worth auditing your website to see if there is anything that could be improved.

It’s also worth pointing out that more and more people are searching for products and services via their mobile phone, so it’s essential that your website has been optimised for this. Making your website smartphone-friendly is just as important as having a site that works well on a desktop.

Jonathan adds, “If you’re not sure how your website measures up, you can use Google’s free mobile responsiveness test to see if there’s any room for improvement.”

To conclude, it can be tough to stand out from the crowd. But, with a good digital marketing strategy and the top tips above, you should be able to attract a valuable audience to your site.

For more information on how to improve the digital marketing for your bridal business, take a look at our guide to improving your social media strategy by digital expert Warren Knight.