Getting married is still an important milestone, and the anticipation and excitement of choosing ‘the dress’ is top of every bride’s wish list - all good news for bridal retailers! But in a competitive industry with little scope for repeat clients, getting brides through the doors is one of your businesses biggest challenges and one I hope to help you with today.

The secret lies in marketing.

The definition of marketing is simply ‘the action of promoting and selling products or services’, but I like to think of it as selling the experience. Successful marketing is showing potential clients how shopping with you looks and feels - and it isn’t restricted to social media, features and advertising!

Marketing is part of every interaction your brides have with your business; from the very first discovery of your boutique on the page of a magazine or social media post to the excited conversation with their stylist when collecting their dress. More than that, the experience of finding their dress lives on in their wedding day photos and videos, so creating a memorable experience that your brides want to share with everyone and anyone who is getting married is where you should be aiming.

The key to successful marketing in any business is understanding your client, and by this I don’t just mean ‘brides’ but specifically ‘your kind of bride’. Understanding what makes them tick, what is important, their likes and dislikes, what they are looking for in a bridal experience and how you can surpass their expectations. Are your brides outgoing and daring, looking for something different to show off their personality on their big day, or reserved and graceful, looking for refined elegance? Researching my brides and understanding what they are looking for is a constant process for Nora Eve, it informs so many decisions; from our social media posts to how our boutique looks and feels.

I find marketing (in fact, any aspect of business!) most effective when I have a plan, so I try to sit down with my boutique manager and content creator regularly to discuss the type of content we’re putting out, the areas we need to invest more in, and where to pull back from to increase ROI.

Understanding our clients perfectly helps to determine where to best invest our time and money. We know our brides find us on Instagram and TikTok, so our social media content focuses on these platforms to bring in new appointments, but when we have a sale on Facebook it is one of our key platforms for driving bookings so we focus our attention here.

We also work with a limited number of directories and publications that target high end clients in and around the Midlands and north of England where most of our clients live, writing articles that showcase our stylish designers, super-cool boutique and award-winning customer service as we know these are all things our brides care about. Limiting the number of places we market increases our visibility and reduces workload, so it’s win-win to me. No boutique owner has time to write hundreds of articles for blogs and magazines!

Being a physical business over an online one is such an advantage for marketing. I laboured over every detail of our boutique, from the private fitting rooms to the design studio and trendy bar area to ensure there are great talking points that we can use across our online marketing AND that visiting brides and their entourage can’t wait to go and tell all their friends about!

In fact, we know there is nothing more effective for marketing our business than word of mouth, so all our staff are trained in providing a seamless experience for anyone we come into contact with - be it a bride, mother of the bride, supplier, designer or even the delivery driver.

Marketing should touch every aspect of your business - you never know where your next client will come from!