Marketing your way to success in 2024
Former Head of Marketing for Bridal Buyer, Bridal Week & White Gallery, Ella O’Keefe, joins us as an expert for 2024. In the first of her new series, she gives you a 5-step breakdown of how to get on top of your marketing.
We all know we need to market our business. To some it comes naturally, to others it’s something that they dread. Whilst a few bridal boutique owners come from a marketing background, the majority have to learn on their feet once they open their store. And that learning process never stops (even for those of us who have spent their entire career dedicated to the profession), as marketing continually evolves. However, there are some fundamentals that stay the same and will set your business up for success.
Step 1 – Analysis
Use the beginning of the year to look back on last year and figure out what worked and what didn’t when marketing your business. Was there a certain social media platform that worked well for you in 2023? Did your email marketing drive appointment? Were wedding fairs effective for sales or leads? How many people visited your website and left immediately? Is your branding right for your business?
If you aren’t currently analysing the effectiveness of your activity, then I’d suggest you set this as one of your marketing goals for the year, because having this data is vital to understanding where you should (and shouldn’t) be spending your money.
Once you’ve analysed the performance of your activity you’ll know where to put your focus this year.
Step 2 – Goal setting & focus areas
You can’t focus on everything all at once, so you need to choose where to spend time and money. Here are some questions to ask yourself about some key marketing channels to help you decide what your business will focus on this year.
Branding – Does my visual brand represent my business? Have I got a set tone of voice and brand guidelines to ensure my messaging is consistent across my marketing channels?
Website – Is it easy for my customer to find out all the information on my site? Is my website appearing for the right keywords on google?
Social media – What platforms are my ideal customer using? What’s my best performing type of content?
Partnerships – Are there any other local businesses in my area that have a similar demographic to me I could team up with? Could I collaborate more with my designers?
Live events – Do I want brand promotion, appointments or on the day sales? Are the visitors the right audience for my business?
PPC – Do I need to introduce a paid digital advertising channel? How are my ads performing?
Once you’ve been through the options, decide on what areas you’d like to improve and build on in 2024 and set yourself
SMART goals to work towards. SMART goals are an effective way to ensure you achieve your objectives.
Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time-based
Step 3 – Budget
You can’t market your business off thin air, so decide on a set amount (it will be different for each store, and each goal).
Be realistic, but allow yourself the opportunity to try new things alongside investing in the channels that are proven.
Step 4 – Plan
I like to run my marketing plans in google docs so that my team/business consultants can also access them.
Make sure you include the following columns: task owner, date, platform, detailed activity, goal, analysis.
You can include all your activity, across multiple platforms in this plan and make sure you’re adding in key deadlines or start dates for future projects so they don’t get missed.
Check this each week and try to stay one month ahead to make sure you’re always aware of what’s coming up.
I have a free ‘Bridal Boutique Marketing Plan’ download available to Bridal Buyer readers. If you’d like to receive a copy, send me an email with the subject line ‘MARKETING PLAN’ to eokstudios@outlook.com and I’ll pop it over.
Step 5 – Analysis (AGAIN)
Yes! We’re starting and ending on analysis, but this final step is to ensure you’re consistently analysing your activity as you go. This will make it easy to see what’s working or not month by month and enable you to be reactive and halt any activity that’s not working before you’ve spent any more time and money on them. If you use a marketing plan with easy to update analysis tabs, this will take you 15 minutes each week, but help you see amazing results across the year.
WANT GUIDANCE WITH YOUR 2024 MARKETING, GET IN TOUCH
EOK Studios is a marketing studio dedicated to the bridal market.
I offer 1-2-1 marketing consultancy for boutiques to help them streamline their processes and take ownership of their business marketing strategy. This starts with a Review, Strategy & Planning session and is followed up by a monthly mentoring meeting to ensure consistency and growth.
Plus, we offer a range of services focused on specific areas of your business including branding, content planning, website reviews and more.
If you fancy a chat about your business marketing or want some more information, send us an email:
Eokstudios@outlook.com or follow us on Instagram @eokstudios
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